Welcome back as we continue our discussion on James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store and its representation of Montgomery County. Last time we focused on the setting of Pottstown and assorted landmarks mentioned. This post we are going to focus on the people of the story.
The owners of the titular store, Chona and Moshe, are Jewish. However, where they have situated their store, they serve predominately the African American population of Chicken Hill. In the mid-1880s, on Chicken Hill’s “streets resided Italians, Germans, Poles, Slovaks, black families up from the South, and Irish down from the coalfields. Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Russian and Greek Orthodox lived in the neighborhood, but no Episcopalians or Anglicans” (Cohen, p. 38). McBride certainly paints a multi-ethnic picture of the area similar to its actual composition.
In addition to various cultures, the characters also have diverse interests and pursuits. For example, one of the characters in the book is a tinkerer. He is thrilled when he finds a car which he believes to be a Great Chadwick Six. While a handful of companies in the area worked on producing horseless carriages, the most popular was “the Chadwick, the product of a Pottstown Company that flourished [in Pottstown] from 1905 to 1916” (Chancellor, p. 94). The Chadwick was a sports car, primarily used for racing but could be used for general transportation as well.
The main players of the story are fictional but that does not mean that real life residents were not mentioned throughout the tome. One of the most famous residents of Pottstown mentioned in passing is Buck Weaver. Weaver was born in Pottstown in 1890 and is most well known for being one of the eight players on the Chicago White Sox team that was banned following the 1919 Black Sox Scandal.
But why did McBride, a native New Yorker, decide to write about Pottstown? For us, it is an important industrial town in Montgomery County’s history. But for McBride? Well, he was familiar with it while working at the Variety Club Camp for Handicapped Children in Worcester, PA for four summers during his youth. The ground owned by the camp was originally donated by a theater owner, someone much like Moshe who owned his own theater in the book. Dodo, another character from the book who becomes deaf as a child, grows up to start a camp that serves a similar purpose as the Variety Club Camp. Without giving too much away, McBride definitely sympathizes with the “other” and shows how important community is to survival for all.
If you enjoyed these blog posts, let us know in the comments! As an avid reader I am happy to dive into more fictional tales set in Montgomery County. In addition, if you read McBride’s work and loved seeing a snap shot of the often overlooked aspects of the county, keep an eye out. With America’s 250th birthday coming up within the next couple of years and Montgomery County’s 250th in 2034, we will be highlighting a number of unheard voices that make our community what it is today.
References
Chancellor, Paul (1974). A History of Pottstown Pennsylvania.
Cohen, Norman B. & Lawrence E. Cohen (2011). Chicken Hill Chronicle: Memoir of a Jewish Family.
Thank you! It wonderful to have someone unraveling the mystery of where Chicken Hill is/was. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is amazing historical fiction that underscores exactly who we are in the USA. When folks need each other, we put aside our differences to help. Delighted to read the background and details.