Eugene Jerome is a young teen in 1937 living with his family in a crowded, lower middle-class Brooklyn walk-up. Dreaming of baseball and girls, Eugene must cope with the mundane existence of his family life in Brooklyn: formidable mother, overworked father, and his worldly older brother Stanley. Throw into the mix his widowed Aunt Blanche, her two young daughters and Grandpa the Socialist and you have a recipe for hilarity.