American Chronicles 4. originally airing June 26, 2015.
ON AGING
© 2015 John C. Merino
The note pinned to my paternal grandfather’s vest read, “my name is John Merino. I live at 1517 Ashland Avenue. If you find me wandering, please call a cab and send me home. The fare will be paid when I arrive”.
I grew up across the street.
There were days when grandpa would be found 50 or 60 blocks from home late in the afternoon. He would leave home in the morning telling my grandmother he was going around the corner to the city market in Niagara Falls to play Bocce and drink homemade wine with his “gumbas”.
Most days he’d come straight home, but often a cab would pull up and the driver would get out, ring the doorbell and ask if he was at the right house. After the first few times, the driver’s would see him walking…….blocks from home……….and simply pick him up and bring him back. They stopped charging, after that.
When I was just 5, my mother sent me to the corner store………to Castellani’s Groceries. Armand was our neighborhood butcher and later became the founder of Tops Markets.
I saw my grandfather walking………a half block away….…heading out of our neighborhood.
I crossed 15th street even though I wasn’t allowed to and neither was my grandfather. I ran until I caught up with him, and taking him by the hand, we walked back home.
It is one of the best memories I have of my childhood in that Italian neighborhood………..the day I brought Grandpa home.
Now, depending on which of my 12 aunts and uncles you spoke with, (when he died in 1958), Grandpa was anywhere from 97 to 101 years old.
As a 13 year old boy (they told the story), he had volunteered to fight with Garibaldi’s Red Shirts in Italy, but because of his age, he and the other young volunteers were assigned to clean the camp when the men went into battle.
He had learned to cut stone as a teenager in Tuscany………doing his apprenticeship on churches and municipal buildings………..becoming a craftsman, a stone mason by trade………
….and his craft supported his family when he came to America….three sons following in his footsteps, my father among them before he put himself through night school, receiving a degree in International Finance at Niagara University and moving into politics and higher education.
Grandpa was involved in the building of St. Joseph’s church in Niagara Falls, The Schoellkopf Power Plant, the Stella Niagara Education complex in Lewiston and he helped restore parts of Fort Niagara’s stone walls and moat.
When he and my grandmother arrived from Italy in 1901 they purchased a frame….one story….two bedroom house, originally built in the 1870’s.
It was attached to the back of Finley’s Tavern and unoccupied for years when Grandpa bought it for $50.00. He moved it down the block on telephone poll rollers pulled by horses borrowed from Lombardi’s farm………placing it over the basement hole he had dug by hand……..seating it on the stone foundation he had constructed.
Long before I was born in 1951 he had expanded it into a 7 bedroom house accommodating the brood of Merino’s he’d sired. He bricked the exterior………..and it sat on a triple lot with a grand garden.
Cherry and apple trees, a grape arbor under which the family would picnic…….the land filled with tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and peas, lettuce, raspberry bushes and garlic, corn and onions and chickens………and the occasional lamb.
It was the best place to play hide and seek. It was Grandma’s house and garden……….but Grandpa’s hands had built it.
When I turned 64 a few weeks ago, growing older and grayer gave me angst. Would I live as long as my Grandfather and my parents who both saw 90 years?
Would I have a family that pinned a note to my vest because they cared for me in old age at home……….or would I be placed in some “memory garden”, forgotten but for the Sunday visits and monthly payments that had to be made.
My father had 3 brothers and 3 sisters who never married. They all lived together in the family homestead until each had passed in his or her turn, all living long lives. My mother used to say they were the smart ones……never marrying……..less stress, but she outlived them all.
I told my son that should I someday get like my grandfather…………just too old, a bit lost and confused………treat me like the Vikings treated their elders.
Bring me home to Lake Ontario, place me on a raft, give me a bottle of wine, light the raft on fire and push it out into the lake.
He asked if he had to wait until I was old……….and we both laughed……..But when he left, I sat wondering what the remainder of aging will be like.
A few years ago, when the family homestead on Ashland Avenue was sold, I took a cutting from the grapevine my Grandfather planted there in 1905. I nurtured it over the winter and planted it my yard….. ……at my arbor, the following spring.
It grows in my backyard now……its stalk 3 inches in diameter……….producing grapes for the past two seasons. I hope my children take a cutting of it years from now……..for their arbor.
Grandpa spoke very little English. Among the few things he would say in English was …………”Little-a-gal”………”hey you, little-a-gal” in his soft voice.
He called my kid brother that because Marc had long curly blonde hair and blue eyes as a baby. …………. and Grandpa would smile and laugh when he said it…………..so too, would everyone else.
Maybe one day I’ll have grandchildren playing hide and seek in my garden………picnicking under my grape arbor next to my Bocce Court, taking my hand to walk me back home………
…..and I’ll call one of them…… “little-a-gal”………..just so as to not lose the memory of it.
But families don’t live that close anymore. Things have changed.
I guess I’ll need my own catch phrase………..one the kids in the neighborhood will remember and repeat when they grow older………
Let me try this one out…..(clearing throat)……….
………”hey……….you kids………get off my lawn…….God damn it”!
I’m John Merino and this is American Chronicles.
American Chronicles is a bi-weekly locally produced feature on WRFA written and produced by retired Gebbie Foundation CEO, John C. Merino. Currently, John is an Adjunct Professor of Micro-Economics, Organizational Management, and 20th Century World History at Mercyhurst University. American Chronicles airs twice monthly, Friday mornings at 7:15 and Friday Afternoons at 4:35. American Chronicles features original stories (partly fact and partly fiction), commentary on local, state , national, world conditions and more.
John & his Grandfather circa 1954
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