Growing up is bewildering and exciting to every child. This was particularly true for a child born during the Great Depression (1930's) and who also experienced the "Home Front" efforts of World War II. Coupled with these great national events was the fact that this child lived in a multi-ethnic "melting pot" city of Passaic, New Jersey. The true growing up adventures are told in a series of stories, some with side-splitting humor, others highly poignant. For example: How learning the "facts of life" from the older guys on the street corner caused a major lifetime disaster; how, with his best friend, he personally helped defeat Japan and Germany in WWII; how he witnessed the three greatest aeronautical events of the 20th century; how the handwriting rules in the Passaic schools caused a blunder in front of President John F. Kennedy which helped Kennedy to decide to send a man to the moon; how the structural design of the giant Saturn rocket booster was actually invented in a Passaic toilet bowl. But more important, the stories provide the secret of how the immigrant-dominated Passaic uniquely prepared its children to succeed in America, and how it still doing it today.

A series of true adventures is described in the life of Bob Rosenthal, one ofthe aerospace engineers who put the first man on the moon.

For more than 150 years, waves of poor immigrants flow into Passaic, a small city in New Jersey seeking jobs and a new life. The common dream of these hard working people is for their children to become educated and then successful in America. Climbing The Rainbow. And that's exactly what happens. Each generation is educated in the city's school system, then moved on to successful careers throughout our nation. This mobility allows a new flood of even poorer immigrants to take their place. The success process is again renewed. This book contains twenty-eight stories, each written by a person who grew up or worked in the unique City of Passaic at different times during the last ninety years. These authors are representative of the many ethnic, racial and religious groups that live peacefully side-by-side in this unique melting-pot city. Quoting from one of the book chapter authors, Jose Rodriguez who describes his reaction as a seven-year old on his first day in Passaic. ...As I walked into the parking lot on Market Street, I entered a strange new world, exciting and alive with activity, life and color...black, white, brown, yellow and yes, even red. This was not the pigment on the walls of this parking lot but the skin tones of the youth in this piece of the world. That day in 1978 in the wonderful City of Passaic I saw the rainbow that would make up the road of my youth...it was the truest of melting pots.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Passaic Flood of 1903" by Marshall Ora Leighton. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Reproduction of the original.