Throwback Thursday - The Notebooks

The Godfathers

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:

My father's personality changed when his shop shut because of lack of business. His friends, so called, dropped him. He could not invite them to the card game. He moped a while and when my mother said, "even if they invited you, you don't have the money to play." He replied, "I know that. I just wanted to be invited. I would know that they cared, but I would not go."

Actually during this period [ed: The Great Depression] it was general not to ask a friend to an affair where a payment had to be made or to visit their friends because they knew that his friend could not set a table and thus be embarrassed. And what happened resulted in hurting your friend.

He never would be the same again. If he had a good week he would buy some wine and even get worse from the drinking.

Eventually he began to hang out with the men on the opposite street, Lubec Street. Where the Arianesi lived. [ed This is where my mother's family lived. Arianesi are from the town of Ariano Puglia now known as Ariano Irpino.] They also had a club. All were members and if a member died each surviving member would chip in a dollar to help the family. It is nothing today. However, back then $1.00 was money and was the minimum labor for 10 hours of work. I don't know what a person would do with them but they could buy 50 newspapers.Go to cowboy movies 20 times. Buy a quart of milk for ten cents, fruits for the same amount.

Since these men took him in, he gave them his loyalty and even accepted him into their club and called him Maestro.. While he changed for the better for this, he never was as I remember him when I was younger and he took me everywhere he went on Saturday afternoons and Sundays.

He could not give me any money but when I was old enough he got me a shoe shine job on Sundays with the father of one of the club members who had a shoe repair shop in the basement of our house. It was designed that way.

In the photograph, my mother's father is in the center and not wearing a hat. The tall gentleman directly behind him is my father's father. Sadly, I don't know the other gentleman.