To clear up some confusion, the Notebook passages posted on Throwback Thursday were written by my father and found by me after he passed away. They were his attempt to tell the family history. He was in his late 80s or early 90s when he wrote them. Today's chapter:
In fact, when I was 14 years old I was singing the aria from
Pagliacci and Uncle Vincent came to visit and he heard me as he was coming down the hallway. Mama opened the door and he came right in with that's a voice! Then and there he offered me a scholarship at the Conservatory in Boston. He said he wanted three things from me. No smoking, no drinking, no women.
Uncle was a singer in his own right, like Grandmother T. [ed: Dad's mother], and his brother, Louie (Louis). He was a lawyer at the time and doing well. And the reason for his three things I had to steer away was due to the fact this his brother-in-law was a Director with the New York Opera Company. He was in charge of the music, sets, costumes, and hiring extras, of course, he had workers under him. And whenever the company came to Boston once a year they would go on the road so called. His name was Ernesto and he would come to visit, and my father, Uncle Michael, and Uncle Vincent were in their glory. My father loved operas he knew all the arias, all the plots and where things would happen. He and Uncle Mike would watch backstage. Uncle Vincent would be on stage as an extra. My cousin, Ned, called him, The Spear Bearer.
At Ernesto's visit the talk wold be about the operas and the divas and the men singers and who was sleeping with whose wife when the husband was on the road and vice versa and also who was ruining his career with partying and ruining his voice with drinking, smoking, and women. Hence this condition for my scholarship. I would have liked to do this. But this meant Uncle would pay for the lessons, but my parents had to come up with the books, transportation and any other things I needed. This was how things were done. So I said no go.
I was not going to go through the same things I was at school. It would only make things worse.
In a way it did. Because I began to hate the life I was living. There was very little I could do. The money for extras was not there and I just went to school and stood aloof as usual. I began to hate school at sixteen I began to think of dropping out.
In 1935, with 26 days to go to the end of school. I was fed up and I dropped out. Of course, this upset Father and Mother.
While I was sitting on the curb in front of my house, the truant officer came across the street to me and said I should be in school. (The school sent him). I told him that I didn't have to be in school. He asked me what made me think I didn't have to be in school. I told him that I checked the statute and it read that at 16 years one could leave school. I was 16 on March 17. He made a note in his book and left.
