PAPA A Journey Back: Stories of Family, Friends & Life by an Italian American

Papa, a baby boomer, leaves a fun book of creative short stories for his descendants on life during the second half of the 20th century. Each trip back in time is a stand-alone memoir based in truth, laced with imagination, and ends in some reflection and perspective. This grandfather takes the reader on a journey from growing up in a vibrant, ethnic neighborhood in Cleveland’s inner city, through an extraordinary adolescence, to raising his own family in the suburbs.

Excerpts:

• Italians have this extraordinary reaction to drama and tragedy. They get angry before they can show compassion. I’m sure it has everything to do with the initial adrenaline rush, but I learned to wait it out since it never lasted long. I knew doting would soon follow. It always did, and it’s no wonder that I now exhibit this same trait as an adult.

• We had a saying in my old Italian neighborhood. “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I’ll kick your ass.”

• This was no church club of boys I was joining. It was a gang of boys who just happened to be in a church club. And I wanted in!

• I stopped behind my cousin with my heart pounding in my chest, and rightfully so. Getting my ass kicked was not on this evening’s agenda. I remained silent as the situation deteriorated in front of me.

• Ordinarily, I cringe whenever I hear my non-Italian friends are serving me their homemade pasta – only because my family has been cooking sauce every Sunday since the invention of the tomato.

• He stood there motionless for a moment as if he were making an important decision. “Here, take this,” he said, and then shoved something into my hand. I looked down at what I was holding. It was a blue steel handgun.