They were young and hungry to buy, because they owned virtually nothing. They were prosperous but not rich. Above all they were confident in themselves and their futures in a way that Ferkauf, growing up in harder times and poorer neighborhoods, found striking. They did not fear debt, as their parents had. Their grandparents—Italian, Irish, Jewish—had been immigrants who lived in tenements on the Lower East Side, and their parents had eventually moved to better apartments in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. Now they were striking out on their own, going after their share of the American dream
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