The journey through childhood to adulthood on Manhattan's West Side is told here through the eyes of an essayist. Short stories about a life lived with the comfortable and the poor, Jews and Gentiles, people of color and White people, private and public school stories next to those about the pool hall and the bowling alley.

Eighty-Third Street was in a neighborhood rich with color translated here into words providing a sometimes fun and sometimes serious view of life in the '50s and '60's. These essays are about that life and its components, the friendly and the not-so-friendly, and the growing pains.