On the Avenues and Beyond by John Kolecki, 2007, book review (Dennis Reed Jr, 2023).htm
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Title
On the Avenues and Beyond by John Kolecki, 2007, book review (Dennis Reed Jr, 2023).htm
Description
It’s disorienting to contemplate how different the Avenues would have appeared to young Master Kolecki in 1925. If you’ve seen photographs of the era, you realize they might as well have been taken in Slovenia. It’s a decidedly more rural existence. Most families keep their own small vegetable gardens “either on their own lot or on a nearby vacant city-owned lot. Many ‘lot gardens’ were located between Gilmore Street and Payne Avenue” (35). The “upper” avenues (9th through 19th) only begin to get filled in with homes during the post-WWII era. Livestock abounds, including poultry, rabbits and pigs (“The aroma of smoked sausages, hams and bacon signaled the Easter season” (35)).
The author, John Kolecki, is about as homegrown as they grow ‘em: Born in North Tonawanda in 1920 and educated at OLC and NTHS, he later earns a degree from Canisius. He is a proud Polish WWII war veteran and educator. In the Acknowledgments he says he is now 86 years old, “more like an old horse than a young colt.” The earliest recollections are likely from around 1925, when he is a boy at 5 (a charming cover photo shows him on a palomino pony; we learn later it was staged by an entrepreneurial photographer who roamed the Avenues with the animal). It’s a time when the Polish presence on the Avenues is developing into a self-sufficient community; a time of new automobiles, Prohibition, and then the further privations of the Great Depression and WWII. His narrative is supplemented by church pamphlets preserved by his wife, Violet; articles from the Am-Pol Eagle; resources from local libraries and historical societies.
Neither Burger King nor McDonald’s were offering their Big Fish or Fishwich sandwiches yet, so the Niagara River had to provide protein in fish form. The rod and reel, baited throw lines and night lines were common among the “slip area” of the river where the avenues’ fishermen most often plied their skill. In other areas of the river, fisherman use the “unsportsmanlike method” of putting dynamite in a bottle, dropped to the bottom and detonated, stunning the fish above for relatively easy collection. The first and second slips are also popular swimming holes for the kids. The first slip, he writes, is now Fisherman’s Park, while the second is covered by the “industrial disposal complex” (68).
Religion is the center of this straight-as-an-arrow military hero. He takes some pains to explain the 1392 origin of Our Last of Czetochowa (it is named after an icon of Mary said to be painted by Saint Luke himself) and the founding in North Tonawanda of the Polish Roman Catholic parish on Oliver Street at Center Ave. “Young men competed to operate the bellows on the antique [church organ]. The Mass was in Latin, but the gospel, homily and hymns were in Polish” (2). There is a good description of the early development of the church and its related buildings, and even a few photographs. Kolecki also describes a short-lived but vicious rivalry between his establish Polish Roman Catholic Church and upstarts from the Polish National Catholic Church, who “initiated a movement to entrench itself on the avenues” by establishing a church at Oliver Street and Wheatfield Street (4).
As a proud Pole, Mr. Kolecki palpably resents the tradition of the “Polish joke,” which he says surfaces after WWII. He has two responses to people who want to tell him a Polish joke: either tell it to him in Polish, or say it “in the language of your ancestors so nothing is lost in translation” (92). The upshot: this so-called “dumb Pole” can speak two languages. Can you? One imagines that challenge was especially intimidating issued in-person by a Marine paratrooper.
Poles are mistreated in other ways. Prospective Polish home buyers are told properties they are interested in in other parts of the city are suddenly off the market. It is the same with jobs. A qualified mechanic, Mr. Krajanowski, applies for Remington Rand, and is turned down. He applies for the same job two days later under the name “Mr. Taper” and is hired (91).
North Tonawanda has always been a hard-drinking town, from the rowdy canawlers and lumbermen to the later industrial workers. According to Mr. Kolecki, taverns are on Ironton. In some circles, Prohibition must have seemed like an existential threat. Not so much the avenues. Mr. Kolecki maintains that the Poles were neither upset or happy about Prohibition. “A casual indifference prevailed” (11). They collectively shrug, and begin brewing at home, as they plant, and milk, and sew. They buy malt and yeast from a local hardware store for beer (three are listed on page 25). To make wine, they ferment whatever they can find. “Cherries were popular because they were inexpensive at 5-6 cents per pound. Dandelions also were experimented with” (15). Even after Prohibition, the practice continues. “A small number of avenue home wine cellars continued with the art of wine making. To them, there was an element of pride and a badge of accomplishment to grace a table with homemade wine” (15).
A strength of Mr. Kolecki’s book is that the financial fortunes of the “avenuers” are traced with the national picture in the background. WWI’s conclusion does not immediately increase prosperity, as industries have to be refitted to resume production of consumer goods, and returning “veterans flooded the unemployment ranks and exacerbated a bad situation” (31). Soon things do pick up, and the stock market soars. A few cash in their Liberty Bonds and buy stock—to their eventual ruin. Most of the Polish on the Avenues however were either uninterested in such investments, or couldn’t afford them.
“Vast majorities of families were penny-pinching to save enough to own a lot, which was adequate equity to negotiate a mortgage to build a house…Mothers wished to pay off the installments on a Swinger sewing machine; fathers had their hopes on a Ford Model T or A” (32). Even if they didn’t invest directly, residents feel the effects of the 1929 crash in almost immediate widespread unemployment. “The standard of living on the avenues plummeted…Lincoln Radiator on Ironton and Pierce Arrow on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo were just two examples” (33). Unemployment is at 75%. Values of everything from homes to automobiles continues to sink. Scavenging the railroad tracks for spilled coal is a common pastime. When people talk about the good old days and low prices, they sometimes fail to note it was partially because nobody had any money to buy anything. The Strand Theater at First and Oliver asks just 5 cents for Sunday admission; during the week, it was two people for 6 cents.
The cinder-covered back alleys are a convenient place to repair and test the early automobiles popular on the Avenues. During the Depression, these go for a song. Mr. Kolecki’s father buys a used 1924 four-door Chevrolet Sedan for just $5. John and his friends raise $35 for their own Model A four-door sedan, steering it around the alleys and fields east of Gilmore Street. (This sedan provides occasion for the funniest moment of the book: when the car needs a replacement carburetor, one of his friends tries to steal one from a local junkyard. A policeman catches him as he is pawing around the old parts. The boy claims he is just urinating. When the policeman demands to see his hands and observes they are black, he quips, “‘You surely have a greasy prick, let’s go to the station for an oil change’” (43)).
The sixth chapter is devoted almost entirely to “the play culture of children in the 1920s and 1930s,” and recounts such Avenues pastimes as “Pitching to a box” (throwing coins into a box on the ground), “Baby in the hole” (a form of tag involving rolling a ball into a competitor’s dug hole in the ground), and “Nip” (something like baseball but with a small chunk of wood for a ball). Two pages of photos of OLC sports teams follow.
The Avenues belong to the city’s Third Ward, and are mostly registered Democrats. Dom Polski Hall hosts boisterous campaign rallies. Progressive, 5’5,” red-headed Mayor Myles Joyce, Mr. Kolecki relates, becomes the subject of everlasting ridicule for the excuse he offers when he is pulled over for erratic driving in the city’s health car. When asked if he has been drinking, the visibly intoxicated and aromatic mayor replies that he has been drinking only buttermilk. This thigh-slapper allegedly reaches the pages of the New York Times (the only mention I find of the mayor in the Times is a March 26, 1944 article noting a failed attempt to evict him from his home.) Mr. Joyce must have been doing something right: the “fiery” Labor progressive is a six-time mayor of the city, wining in 1937, 1943, 1945, 1951, 1953 and 1959, and running for a 7th term in 1969; This June 18, 1969 article in the Tonawanda News narrates the Buttermilk and other misadventures of the mayor.
A chapter on Oliver Street describes it as the “main artery bisecting Polonia” (17). Its evolution from gravel to red brick is recalled, as well as the Gratwick Line of the trolley that joins Oliver from Robinson and continues north to Ward and beyond. After Prohibition, Oliver Street leaps to life with “taverns, ice cream parlors, delis, eateries and candy stores…the butcher and the baker” (18). “Cash registers rang and family coffers were clear of cobwebs” (Ibid). Call boxes for both the fire department and police are provided at Oliver and Center, “almost human-size electric devices” (18). He remembers the State Ditch, aka Pettit Creek, which “most of the year was just a 6-foot wide muddy stream,” once requiring a small stone bridge from the 1880s and just west a “narrow pedestrian bridge with wood handrails” to cross the stream at Oliver. It is now concealed by the OLC grotto.
Two pages are dedicated to the taverns of the Avenues, almost every name with a word or two about its specific claim to fame (if you want to talk politics, you went to Turecki’s on 10th; if you want a great fish fry and maybe a floor show, Palka’s Mirror Room on 8th is the place to go). Mr. Kolecki repeats the urban legend that Oliver Street once had the most taverns per mile than “any other municipality in the United States” (21). The many factory jobs in the area are pointed to as the reason for all these “watering holes,” and he lists a few. He tips a toe into the water of the origin of the name of Oliver Street (22) but endorses no one view. The chapter concludes with eight pages of business names, sorted by type.
On the Avenues begins with something between a mission statement and a prayer: “Lest we forget, the little, inconspicuous places, people and things that made life on the avenues interesting and unique” (i). Throughout the book, Mr. Kolecki pivots from prose into lengthy inventories of these “inconspicuous places” and once-familiar names, from bakers to milkmen. They are names that will “ring a bell” for an ever-dwindling number of people. But this isn’t mere nostalgia: it's a conscious act of resistance against the erasure of a shared past. It’s the veteran fulfilling his mission. From an 86-year-old who's navigated global upheavals, fought at Iwo Jima, and lived as an exchange student in the Soviet Union, the message is clear: remember, or risk losing the communal fabric that defines us.
The author, John Kolecki, is about as homegrown as they grow ‘em: Born in North Tonawanda in 1920 and educated at OLC and NTHS, he later earns a degree from Canisius. He is a proud Polish WWII war veteran and educator. In the Acknowledgments he says he is now 86 years old, “more like an old horse than a young colt.” The earliest recollections are likely from around 1925, when he is a boy at 5 (a charming cover photo shows him on a palomino pony; we learn later it was staged by an entrepreneurial photographer who roamed the Avenues with the animal). It’s a time when the Polish presence on the Avenues is developing into a self-sufficient community; a time of new automobiles, Prohibition, and then the further privations of the Great Depression and WWII. His narrative is supplemented by church pamphlets preserved by his wife, Violet; articles from the Am-Pol Eagle; resources from local libraries and historical societies.
Neither Burger King nor McDonald’s were offering their Big Fish or Fishwich sandwiches yet, so the Niagara River had to provide protein in fish form. The rod and reel, baited throw lines and night lines were common among the “slip area” of the river where the avenues’ fishermen most often plied their skill. In other areas of the river, fisherman use the “unsportsmanlike method” of putting dynamite in a bottle, dropped to the bottom and detonated, stunning the fish above for relatively easy collection. The first and second slips are also popular swimming holes for the kids. The first slip, he writes, is now Fisherman’s Park, while the second is covered by the “industrial disposal complex” (68).
Religion is the center of this straight-as-an-arrow military hero. He takes some pains to explain the 1392 origin of Our Last of Czetochowa (it is named after an icon of Mary said to be painted by Saint Luke himself) and the founding in North Tonawanda of the Polish Roman Catholic parish on Oliver Street at Center Ave. “Young men competed to operate the bellows on the antique [church organ]. The Mass was in Latin, but the gospel, homily and hymns were in Polish” (2). There is a good description of the early development of the church and its related buildings, and even a few photographs. Kolecki also describes a short-lived but vicious rivalry between his establish Polish Roman Catholic Church and upstarts from the Polish National Catholic Church, who “initiated a movement to entrench itself on the avenues” by establishing a church at Oliver Street and Wheatfield Street (4).
As a proud Pole, Mr. Kolecki palpably resents the tradition of the “Polish joke,” which he says surfaces after WWII. He has two responses to people who want to tell him a Polish joke: either tell it to him in Polish, or say it “in the language of your ancestors so nothing is lost in translation” (92). The upshot: this so-called “dumb Pole” can speak two languages. Can you? One imagines that challenge was especially intimidating issued in-person by a Marine paratrooper.
Poles are mistreated in other ways. Prospective Polish home buyers are told properties they are interested in in other parts of the city are suddenly off the market. It is the same with jobs. A qualified mechanic, Mr. Krajanowski, applies for Remington Rand, and is turned down. He applies for the same job two days later under the name “Mr. Taper” and is hired (91).
North Tonawanda has always been a hard-drinking town, from the rowdy canawlers and lumbermen to the later industrial workers. According to Mr. Kolecki, taverns are on Ironton. In some circles, Prohibition must have seemed like an existential threat. Not so much the avenues. Mr. Kolecki maintains that the Poles were neither upset or happy about Prohibition. “A casual indifference prevailed” (11). They collectively shrug, and begin brewing at home, as they plant, and milk, and sew. They buy malt and yeast from a local hardware store for beer (three are listed on page 25). To make wine, they ferment whatever they can find. “Cherries were popular because they were inexpensive at 5-6 cents per pound. Dandelions also were experimented with” (15). Even after Prohibition, the practice continues. “A small number of avenue home wine cellars continued with the art of wine making. To them, there was an element of pride and a badge of accomplishment to grace a table with homemade wine” (15).
A strength of Mr. Kolecki’s book is that the financial fortunes of the “avenuers” are traced with the national picture in the background. WWI’s conclusion does not immediately increase prosperity, as industries have to be refitted to resume production of consumer goods, and returning “veterans flooded the unemployment ranks and exacerbated a bad situation” (31). Soon things do pick up, and the stock market soars. A few cash in their Liberty Bonds and buy stock—to their eventual ruin. Most of the Polish on the Avenues however were either uninterested in such investments, or couldn’t afford them.
“Vast majorities of families were penny-pinching to save enough to own a lot, which was adequate equity to negotiate a mortgage to build a house…Mothers wished to pay off the installments on a Swinger sewing machine; fathers had their hopes on a Ford Model T or A” (32). Even if they didn’t invest directly, residents feel the effects of the 1929 crash in almost immediate widespread unemployment. “The standard of living on the avenues plummeted…Lincoln Radiator on Ironton and Pierce Arrow on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo were just two examples” (33). Unemployment is at 75%. Values of everything from homes to automobiles continues to sink. Scavenging the railroad tracks for spilled coal is a common pastime. When people talk about the good old days and low prices, they sometimes fail to note it was partially because nobody had any money to buy anything. The Strand Theater at First and Oliver asks just 5 cents for Sunday admission; during the week, it was two people for 6 cents.
The cinder-covered back alleys are a convenient place to repair and test the early automobiles popular on the Avenues. During the Depression, these go for a song. Mr. Kolecki’s father buys a used 1924 four-door Chevrolet Sedan for just $5. John and his friends raise $35 for their own Model A four-door sedan, steering it around the alleys and fields east of Gilmore Street. (This sedan provides occasion for the funniest moment of the book: when the car needs a replacement carburetor, one of his friends tries to steal one from a local junkyard. A policeman catches him as he is pawing around the old parts. The boy claims he is just urinating. When the policeman demands to see his hands and observes they are black, he quips, “‘You surely have a greasy prick, let’s go to the station for an oil change’” (43)).
The sixth chapter is devoted almost entirely to “the play culture of children in the 1920s and 1930s,” and recounts such Avenues pastimes as “Pitching to a box” (throwing coins into a box on the ground), “Baby in the hole” (a form of tag involving rolling a ball into a competitor’s dug hole in the ground), and “Nip” (something like baseball but with a small chunk of wood for a ball). Two pages of photos of OLC sports teams follow.
The Avenues belong to the city’s Third Ward, and are mostly registered Democrats. Dom Polski Hall hosts boisterous campaign rallies. Progressive, 5’5,” red-headed Mayor Myles Joyce, Mr. Kolecki relates, becomes the subject of everlasting ridicule for the excuse he offers when he is pulled over for erratic driving in the city’s health car. When asked if he has been drinking, the visibly intoxicated and aromatic mayor replies that he has been drinking only buttermilk. This thigh-slapper allegedly reaches the pages of the New York Times (the only mention I find of the mayor in the Times is a March 26, 1944 article noting a failed attempt to evict him from his home.) Mr. Joyce must have been doing something right: the “fiery” Labor progressive is a six-time mayor of the city, wining in 1937, 1943, 1945, 1951, 1953 and 1959, and running for a 7th term in 1969; This June 18, 1969 article in the Tonawanda News narrates the Buttermilk and other misadventures of the mayor.
A chapter on Oliver Street describes it as the “main artery bisecting Polonia” (17). Its evolution from gravel to red brick is recalled, as well as the Gratwick Line of the trolley that joins Oliver from Robinson and continues north to Ward and beyond. After Prohibition, Oliver Street leaps to life with “taverns, ice cream parlors, delis, eateries and candy stores…the butcher and the baker” (18). “Cash registers rang and family coffers were clear of cobwebs” (Ibid). Call boxes for both the fire department and police are provided at Oliver and Center, “almost human-size electric devices” (18). He remembers the State Ditch, aka Pettit Creek, which “most of the year was just a 6-foot wide muddy stream,” once requiring a small stone bridge from the 1880s and just west a “narrow pedestrian bridge with wood handrails” to cross the stream at Oliver. It is now concealed by the OLC grotto.
Two pages are dedicated to the taverns of the Avenues, almost every name with a word or two about its specific claim to fame (if you want to talk politics, you went to Turecki’s on 10th; if you want a great fish fry and maybe a floor show, Palka’s Mirror Room on 8th is the place to go). Mr. Kolecki repeats the urban legend that Oliver Street once had the most taverns per mile than “any other municipality in the United States” (21). The many factory jobs in the area are pointed to as the reason for all these “watering holes,” and he lists a few. He tips a toe into the water of the origin of the name of Oliver Street (22) but endorses no one view. The chapter concludes with eight pages of business names, sorted by type.
On the Avenues begins with something between a mission statement and a prayer: “Lest we forget, the little, inconspicuous places, people and things that made life on the avenues interesting and unique” (i). Throughout the book, Mr. Kolecki pivots from prose into lengthy inventories of these “inconspicuous places” and once-familiar names, from bakers to milkmen. They are names that will “ring a bell” for an ever-dwindling number of people. But this isn’t mere nostalgia: it's a conscious act of resistance against the erasure of a shared past. It’s the veteran fulfilling his mission. From an 86-year-old who's navigated global upheavals, fought at Iwo Jima, and lived as an exchange student in the Soviet Union, the message is clear: remember, or risk losing the communal fabric that defines us.
Citation
“On the Avenues and Beyond by John Kolecki, 2007, book review (Dennis Reed Jr, 2023).htm,” North Tonawanda History, accessed June 29, 2025, https://nthistory.com/items/show/3625.