Come along as the little Polish Village of East Hammond continues its struggle in this new country. Witness the suffering and actual loss of lives as marching workers are shot and killed challenging for recognition of their union. Join them as they rebound and find courage to sing and dance beneath the smokestack of a giant incinerator. Welcome visiting gypsies. Be captivated by their music and campfire lure. And, yes, there is still more Yellow Jacket football to be played with Lefty, Wolf, and the whole gang, complete with the customary grit, action, and lessons to be learned and passed on. Grab a sideline seat for two tough opponents-Chicago Heights and Joliet Prison. Become a young child and with the author share living with Busia(grandmother), basking in her quiet ways and running freely throughout her neighborhood. Go shopping in the quaint little shopping village, just walking distance from home. Find anything from penny candy to live chickens to communion suits for little boys and white dresses for little girls. Look out for the trolley. Back home, create magical places from the top of a giant backyard wood pile. Watch young women as they prepare so carefully for their wedding days, while the reality and challenges of WWII reached into their village, changing lives forever. Stick around when the going gets rugged for "Rajmund," as Busia's safe boundaries give way to storms and street fights that rage through his early school years. Watch as he struggles with his God for an answer to why his closest childhood friend ended up in prison shackles-but not him. Kneel in the soft light of St. Mary's sanctuary with three East Hammond Polish street kids who find comfort in the patient, still womb of family love, strong traditions, and God's mysterious grace.

If there's one thing that Americans have in common it's that the truth we seek is constantly being obscured. We are lied to. The lies come from commercials we watch, from politicians, from those like the tobacco company executives who swore that nicotine is not addictive, from fabrications suggesting that our children's lack of excelling on international tests somehow define us as second-class people, and from false statements declaring that American teachers are causal to the nation's educational problems. Unlike Jack Nicholson's angry declaration, "You can't handle the truth," as he played Colonel Nathan Jessup in the movie A Few Good Men, we think you can handle the truth. Therefore, this book is written. It's filled with stories and essays that tell the real truth about the plight of American education. Some of the stories will make you laugh, some make you cry. You will become angry, occasionally shocked. Each chapter will reveal deep problems and you will find yourself looking for easy answers. But there are none. What you will find are bold answers that will require the fighting spirit and courage of a nation. You will be challenged to join a "War worth Waging." We have not hesitated to identify, in addition to problems and bold solutions, the real villains, for there are villains. As the chapters undress them for you and expose their real identities, you will simultaneously be introduced to unsung heroes who teach in our nation's classrooms. They are heroes you will declare by book's end to be the cement that holds the nation together. They have never stopped teaching the skills and civility that the next generation needs to participate in and contribute to the perpetuation of the democracy. You will come to know, on a personal level, the American schoolteacher.

Ray Golarz paints a revealing pathway into the lives of a Depression era immigrant community. He takes the reader aboard a journey via the very early American game of football. Once aboard, the reader is introduced to a team of young semi-pro Polish football players, along with their friends, families, ethnic customs, and religious ways, then drawn into a community struggling to survive the Depression's challenges and maintain their unique identity in this newly-adopted country. This account has it all: football games filled with action, emotion, strategizing, and gritty determination. And like those who actually came to see the games, you will find it delightfully easy to walk along with family and friends, coming from all over their neighborhood, to stand or take a seat on a make-shift bench. Join in the singing of the National Anthem, agonize over plays gone wrong, and walk with them over to Wusic's gas station to gather and celebrate after game victories. Ah, but stick around. There's more. Before, during and between games and seasons, you can come to team meetings, share a Christmas Eve ethnic meal, and attend a Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. If you can wake up at two o'clock in the morning, you will be taken on a night trip to collect coal along the railroad tracks. Then in early morning, go off to Wusic's for coffee and a log in the pot-bellied stove. And you can get a close look at the Depression on a national level as you join Lefty who goes "on the bum" hitting the rails, driven by curiosity and want for food at home. Meet World War I vets on their way to Washington for promised bonuses, walk to Niagara Falls, and take a cot in a New York City mission.

If there's one thing that Americans have in common it's that the truth we seek is constantly being obscured. We are lied to. The lies come from commercials we watch, from politicians, from those like the tobacco company executives who swore that nicotine is not addictive, from fabrications suggesting that our children's lack of excelling on international tests somehow define us as second-class people, and from false statements declaring that American teachers are causal to the nation's educational problems. Unlike Jack Nicholson's angry declaration, "You can't handle the truth," as he played Colonel Nathan Jessup in the movie A Few Good Men, we think you can handle the truth. Therefore, this book is written. It's filled with stories and essays that tell the real truth about the plight of American education. Some of the stories will make you laugh, some make you cry. You will become angry, occasionally shocked. Each chapter will reveal deep problems and you will find yourself looking for easy answers. But there are none. What you will find are bold answers that will require the fighting spirit and courage of a nation. You will be challenged to join a "War worth Waging." We have not hesitated to identify, in addition to problems and bold solutions, the real villains, for there are villains. As the chapters undress them for you and expose their real identities, you will simultaneously be introduced to unsung heroes who teach in our nation's classrooms. They are heroes you will declare by book's end to be the cement that holds the nation together. They have never stopped teaching the skills and civility that the next generation needs to participate in and contribute to the perpetuation of the democracy. You will come to know, on a personal level, the American schoolteacher.

Come along as the little Polish Village of East Hammond continues its struggle in this new country. Witness the suffering and actual loss of lives as marching workers are shot and killed challenging for recognition of their union. Join them as they rebound and find courage to sing and dance beneath the smokestack of a giant incinerator. Welcome visiting gypsies. Be captivated by their music and campfire lure. And, yes, there is still more Yellow Jacket football to be played with Lefty, Wolf, and the whole gang, complete with the customary grit, action, and lessons to be learned and passed on. Grab a sideline seat for two tough opponents-Chicago Heights and Joliet Prison. Become a young child and with the author share living with Busia(grandmother), basking in her quiet ways and running freely throughout her neighborhood. Go shopping in the quaint little shopping village, just walking distance from home. Find anything from penny candy to live chickens to communion suits for little boys and white dresses for little girls. Look out for the trolley. Back home, create magical places from the top of a giant backyard wood pile. Watch young women as they prepare so carefully for their wedding days, while the reality and challenges of WWII reached into their village, changing lives forever. Stick around when the going gets rugged for "Rajmund," as Busia's safe boundaries give way to storms and street fights that rage through his early school years. Watch as he struggles with his God for an answer to why his closest childhood friend ended up in prison shackles-but not him. Kneel in the soft light of St. Mary's sanctuary with three East Hammond Polish street kids who find comfort in the patient, still womb of family love, strong traditions, and God's mysterious grace.

As I began the conclusion of the writing of this book, I finally started to understand its whole meaning. All the times I had sat and listened from my early childhood, all the times my father had taught with his eyes and soul on fire, I had not ever really understood. I had assumed time and again that I was listening to a story about a 1930s semi-pro football team. How had I missed the point. I was, all these years, being told a love story. A love story on so many levels. On one level, I was being told about how an American game captured the hearts of a group of mean, immigrant street kids and gave them some of the rules by which to live. How, on another level, they were supported and immersed in a depression community whose own rules and ways of loving complemented the game they played in ways that even they didn't always understand. And I came to understand the depth of feeling these individual young men had for their families, neighbors, teammates. They were crass and tough on the outside --boxers, laborers, steel workers. On the inside they were constantly swelling up with tears for those who all around them were unemployed, jailed, losing hope, and forever hungry. Finally, I think, I understood the power of Lefty. That his love of the game and his love of life were really the same. That the passion, hard work, the integrity, and the intelligence that went into playing hard and fair were the things that allowed him to play his best at the game of life. This was Lefty's real gift to me and to the others who were lucky enough to have heard these stories. I hope that you will enjoy the reading of this story as much as Lefty would have enjoyed the telling of it to you. And I assure you, had you been interested, he would have told it to you, and you would have slipped away to a place where you could laugh, cry, cheer, and be amazed at the strange places you could find hope and love.