I'll Never Work Where Other Men Play

The author describes the journey of a young boy growing up in a middle class neighborhood in Philadelphia born to a father whose life was destroyed by the Great Depression and a mother born in the United States who escaped in the most harrowing circumstances from the Ukraine in the middle of the Bolshevik revolution. These parents invested their entire being in their children in the hope that they could achieve what they could not due to circumstances over which they had no control. So began the journey of this young man as he attempted to fulfill their dream for a better life for himself than they were able to achieve for themselves. The journey took many twists and turns some of which could not be explained by circumstance alone. Many of these stories are described in the text. Many more could not be told because of issues of privacy. The author did not anticipate that entering a different social class would be a struggle or that attaining the goal would entail years of poverty. After joking about his future plans about "never working where other men play" he spent the next fifty years becoming a "woman's doctor". Do to the support of his wife, parents and parents-in-law he was able to persevere.