America has come home from the war and moved to the suburbs, and Mac and his brothers work for a construction gang run by a Polish guy who has his eye firmly fixed on the bottom line. The time is the early 1950s, and in Queens, as across the nation, there is a housing boom. It is a fantasy scene in an otherwise realistic movie that exists close to the daily lives of the characters. He is not happy with the workmanship on his coffin, or with much of anything else, and his restless need to excel has brought him back from the dead, still complaining. His sons line up beside the casket to pay their respects, and then, shockingly, the old man rises up to lecture them.
The movie opens at the funeral of Mac's own father.
