The Last Fine Time

A pivotal moment in history comes to life in this portrait, starting in 1947, of the Wenzeks, bar owners for 50 years, of Buffalo, a city aspiring to greatness, and of urban America when it began to alter beyond recognition

From its deft first sentence ("Snow begins as a rumor in Buffalo, New York"), this detailed, wistfully affectionate re-creation of the immigrant experience clarifies the human cost of the disappearance of once-distinctive ethnic neighborhoods. Klinkenborg ( Making Hay ) tells the story of a tavern in Polish-American East Buffalo that his father-in-law, Eddie Wenzek, inherited in 1947 at age 27. Originally purchased by his father in 1922 during Prohibition, the workingman's bar was transformed by Eddie into a fashionable late-night spot. The flowing narrative evokes a time and place where streetcars clattered, where advertising had not yet molded a consumerist culture in a postwar America "beating its swords into appliances." The Wenzels sold the tavern in 1970 and moved to the suburbs. Klinkenborg links the bar's fortunes to the gradual erosion of Buffalo's sense of destiny, "a sad tale of unknotting."
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Klinkenborg ( Making Hay, Lyons & Burford, 1986) has written the history of a bar that flourished on the East Side of Buffalo from the 1920s to 1970. He also portrays two generations of the Wenzek family, the Polish Americans who ran and lived above "George and Eddie's" until the bar closed down. Yet, his incredibly moving book is much more than the history of a declining neighborhood bar and a city in transition. Klinkenborg's writing is superb; his sensitivity to the story is extraordinary; and his ability to capture a watershed period in the transition of American cities in one tiny institution like "George and Eddie's" is unique. Recommended for most public and academic libraries for its historical and sociological insights. This book deserves a wide readership.
- Anne H. Sullivan, Tompkins Cortland Community Coll. Lib., Dryden, N.Y.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.