Excerpt from Up From Ocean Avenue

“Mayor of Ocean Avenue”

So how does one rule over a landscape as diverse, sprawling, and economically rent as Depression-era Jersey City? It required a machine.

To say Frank Hague was simply the mayor of my hometown would disservice the vast reach of his Democratic empire. From 1917 until 1947, Hague was nothing less than the Granddaddy of Jersey Bosses. And it wasn’t just in JC where Hague could manipulate the strings of power. As vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Hague, for all intents and purposes, was the Democratic political machine.

Still, reigning over a state already flush with organized crime—signing bills into law on a desk that had a hidden two-way drawer for the convenient dropping of bribes—Hague maintained popular mandate by seeing that the urban poor and working class benefited from his leadership. Yes, he was a corrupt cog, but he also recognized that his down-trodden base would second-guess his three decades in power if he didn’t have their backs. As such, he was sure to have committeemen on the ground throughout Jersey City, where they could keep tabs on the concerns of the everyman—you know, the failed butchers or the candy store clerks.

Though my father was a generally reticent man, who was more likely to grumble a monosyllabic command at me than to engage in conversation, he was smart, generous, and civic-minded. And in time, Pop would become the mayor of his own forum right on our block, serving as liaison between our neighbors on Ocean Avenue and Hague’s local cronies.

In those days, the street doubled as living-room for many of us, particularly those residing in tenement buildings without such luxuries. And before news was readily accessible at every second of the day from any number of devices, the candy and stationary stores of urban America were hubs for information and discourse. Thus, as kids spent their pocket change on stray sweets before loitering in front of our shop, their adults would grab a newspaper of their choice, or drop a few cents on Pop’s numbers game, before loitering in this communal parlor for hours. But at Morris’s, there was never a time limit or a last call. Conversation was free to flow late into the night.

As such, my father became a recognizable pillar of the block, the host, caretaker and occasional moderator of our shared living-room. And he knew everybody. Naturally, Hague’s local henchmen made Morris their main man. What streetlight needed fixing? Which hydrant was rusting over? My father was on the frontline of keeping the mayor’s office up-to-date on the most pressing sidewalk issues .

But my dad’s connections with city hall ran deeper than such superficial concerns. When the neighbors needed a lawyer, they’d turn to Morris, who could use his city hall connections to find one. When my Aunt Jenny developed breast cancer, my father used his political links to get her a bed at Jersey City Medical Center, even though she was a resident of Newark.

All told, though Hague’s hold on Jersey City was corrupt, our kind never felt like the victims of a crooked system. When I fell and fractured my arm as a kid, an ambulance picked me up from Ocean Avenue and rushed me to the hospital, where it was reset for free. The Mayor even sent free turkeys to his constituents so we could all enjoy a filling Thanksgiving. His thirty years in power were autocratic, they were undemocratic—hell, I would never choose to raise my own kids under such a system. But no one ever went hungry under Hague’s socialist-adjacent machine.

It was enough to make my dad rationalize his part in the JC corruption factory. Whenever he pulled a favor for a friend, he asked for only one thing in return: “Remember to vote Democrat!”

This quid pro quo would explain the urgency and panic of that November afternoon when two local Hague men burst into the store seeking my father. “Morris!” the fatter of the pair called, “Hattie hasn’t voted yet!” My father turned to the back of the counter, heeding my mother.

“Hattie!” he shouted. “Ya gotta vote! Come on!” Mom blushed, embarrassed of her tricky position. As an immigrant, she was not born with the right to partake in American democracy like my father was. Was she even allowed to vote?

“I’m scared,” she admitted to Pop and the two committeemen. “I don’t even know if I’m a citizen. They could put me in jail for voting.”

Hague’s men laughed, as if the law would ever punish someone who had voted for their boss. “They can’t put you in jail,” the taller of the two goons consoled my mother. “We are the law!” Pop saw to it that my mother never forgot to vote again.

And it wasn’t just the committeemen who saw an ally in my father. The local policemen were also part of Pop’s circle, and he saw no contradiction in befriending cop and crook alike. Not that Morris shied from cutting his own corners when it came to the law.

All day, my neighbors hustled in and out of the candy store, slamming coins on the countertop and playing the daily numbers game. Long before the New Jersey Lottery became a legal flagship of any given corner store, America’s shopkeepers kept their poor clientele busy with the numbers, a quasi-legal betting game that let them predict three digits which would appear in the next day’s papers. Typically the three numbers would correlate to the total amount of money spent at a local racetrack. In our corner of Jersey City, everyone played the numbers, a 5-cent chance to get rich overnight. It wasn’t quite legal, but it also wasn’t on Hague’s list of inexcusable vices. Even the cops came into Morris’s to play the numbers.

That’s how they knew they could count on my old man, especially when they needed to stage a production to hit monthly arrest quotas. That’s right, if the local officers hadn’t booked enough law-breakers at the end of the month, they might pop into Morris’s and ask him to take part in a performative arrest.

“We need ya, Morris,” pled my father’s pal, Officer Milligan. “They’re checking the records at the station house and we gotta have a certain amount of bookings to keep ourselves clean. Ya know, show that we’re doing a good job.”

“Oh really?” Pop huffed, “and what crime should we say I’ve committed, Officer?”

“I happen to know that you run an illegal numbers game from your register,” Milligan winked, passing his own nickel across the countertop.

A moment passed, and Pop threw up his hands. “Alright,” he sighed, recognizing the part he played in the much larger clockwork of Jersey City civics. And so, as I shlepped behind the counter to take over his shift, the officer guided Pop to the police car, and booked it to back the station. After holding him in a cell for a half hour, the officers returned him to the store, just in time to put out the evening papers.

“Thanks, Morris,” Milligan called from the car window. “We really appreciate it!”

Pop would man the counter for another six hours that night, before dragging his feet to the bed in the backroom, where he’d collapse before even taking off his belt. Indeed, running the machinery took its toll on my father, who would be up again the next morning before the sun, stuffing weekend editions into the daily news. But for that night, at least, he slept easy, knowing he had done all he could to uphold his little corner of the mayoralty.