On the Ropes

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“Hey Duff-did you hear what the Polack mom asked her pregnant daughter?” Sam from the business office said.

“Mornin’, Sam,” I said.

“Are you sure it’s yours?” Sam laughed himself back to his cubicle.

With the last name Dombrowski, I’ve heard every imaginable Polack joke and people like Sam made sure I kept up-to-date. I hate the routines, but I especially wasn’t in the mood on this particular Monday morning.

I am a caseworker at Jewish Unified Services in Crawford, a city in upstate New York, about fifty miles from New York City. Crawford is one of those northeastern cities that goes back to the time of the Revolutionary War. Years ago, it was a city with strong ethnic neighborhoods, the Irish, the Polish, the Jewish, the Italian, and the African American. Today, the neighborhoods are a shell of what they used to be, as most of the old families have participated in the white-flight to the suburbs. Much like a smaller version of New York City, the actual city confines are made up largely of poorer families of black and Latino extraction.

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