Category Archives: family history

The Greatest.

June 5, 2016dance, family history, memorials, tributes, UncategorizedCassius Clay, Father's Day 2016, Father's Day tributes, heavyweight boxing title holders, Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Ali tributes, prize fighters, runt of the litter, sting like a bee, the Great One, THE HUFFINGTON POST, The Polish Falcons, The Sportsmen's Club, Tony the Barber Scanzillo, wards of the state of Massachusetts, welter weight boxingruth ann scanzillo

The beauty of Dad’s storied history was all in the mystery. None of us could connect so much as a finger to any of it. The people, we never knew; the places, we’d never been. And, the experiences, well, nobody else could touch.

He talked often of his life as a young ward in the state of Massachusetts, living so briefly in the foster home of Mrs. Bracchi somewhere near Boston. While there, he’d be challenged to fight her big, redheaded sons. The winner would get a hot meal; the loser, a nickel – or, maybe it was the other way around. All Dad knew was, being the runt of a lost litter, he had to muster up some chops in short order.

And, this, apparently, led to some training in boxing.

He’d said he was, what, a welter weight? Only five foot three and a half, without shoes, he had to rely on quickness and agility, and we knew him to have these in abundance. Like a bird on a wire, his would be the very first head to turn at a sound or a sudden move in any room. And, when he’d raise his hand to anyone in defense, his tongue would curl under and get bitten down by his teeth. That’s how we’d know he was serious.

As father to myself and two brothers, he’d listen to the fights on the radio or watch them on the Tv in his barbershop. After Mum died, he’d view them alone, at the house, until well past his 90th birthday. And, while he enjoyed every fight he could find, his all time favorite, the best boxer he’d ever seen, was Cassius Clay. By the time the rest of the world caught on, they called him Muhammad Ali.

Dad, having the charm of a whole cast of clowns all wrapped up in one wiry little body, was captivated by Ali. He loved the quickness, and the moves, and reveled in the sassy, self confident challenge that always burst from Ali’s belly as soon as the mouth guard found its way out. He’d hoot with joy every time the man said anything.

But, Dad’s time stopping moment would come heading south on Ash Street, right before dusk, driving the Catalina home from just another day at the shop making long hair short. Always sharp of eye, he’d noticed a figure emerging from a parked car and looked twice, recognizing both the head and the cut. There, standing on the sidewalk right across from the Polish Falcons, was Muhammad Ali himself.

Ali had been brought in, for a charity event, perhaps to speak at the Sportsmen’s Club or be the special guest at an athletic awards ceremony. Those in attendance select VIP, the rest of our small city would gain its collective satisfaction just knowing the Great One was in town.

But, not Dad. He swerved the car to the curb, jumped out, scrambled for his wallet, selected a tiny, faded scrap of paper, fumbled into his pocket protector for a pen and, unabashedly, bounded right toward his hero.

I don’t remember what was said. Neither, as time passed, would Dad. He’d only known that Ali was gracious and kind, and signed his autograph to that little scrap of paper.

What I do remember was the moment when Dad tore through the back door, rushing the kitchen in exclaiming triumph: ” You’ll NEVAH believe it! I cayun’t hahdly, myself! LOOK! Look what I have, hea-uh!” He was trembling.

After Dad died, his little zippered pouch that carried only his precious things remained in the drawer in my bedroom. In it, he’d kept a handful of silver dollars, a couple rings, and his flat, smooth tan leather wallet. I haven’t looked in that wallet, but I’d bet a shave and a haircut that Muhammad Ali’s autograph is still there. After all, the Greatest, they know their own.

littlebarefeetblog.com

Honor.

May 30, 2016civic commentary, drama, family history, film reviews, gratitude, health and wellness, memorials, personal testimony, political commentary, social commentary, the power grid, tributes, WWIICorporals in the US Army, D-Day, Game of Thrones, General George S. Patton, James Bobick, Jerry Maren, Ken Burns documentaries, PBS war documentaries, Peter Dincklage, Peter Dinklage, PTSD, shell shocked, THE HUFFINGTON POST, The Munchkins, therapy for Veterans, Veterans of foreign wars, Walter E. Fernald School for the Feebleminded, Waverly Mass, World War II Memorials, WW II Bronze Star recipientsruth ann scanzillo

[ formerly titled “Objection.”]

Dad never knew his parents. He heard about them both, from his Uncle Gabriel and Aunt Marietta in Springfield, Mass on the rare respite they’d give him from the foster home or the Walter E. Fernald School in Waverly. They’d tell him things – how his brute of a father sang opera that you could hear down the block, in between the storied rumors of his philandering….about his mother, being committed, speaking only Italian, with no defense….and, about his cousin, Jerry Marengi, who would go on to become a world famous Munchkin. These things we all, as his family, would carry forward in the form of his legend.

So, when Dad escaped the confines of his anonymity, via the freight cars that carried him all the way to California from Boston, joining the US Army seemed almost logical. Free room and board, a hot meal (for which he’d panhandled so artfully as a self taught harmonica and bones man), a little physical agility, and he was in. In, to await deployment by the powers in place to submit him. No ties, no accountability; he was their easiest prey.

Fort Riley, Kansas was the first destination. Having had a few trumpet lessons in the Fernald school, he was ripe for lead bugle; each dawn and dusk, Private Anthony Scanzillo dutifully played Taps and Reveille on the horns the army gave him. Organizing, and then leading, a parade for the dignitaries on base earned him the rank of Corporal, which he held proudly until his death.

Dad, however, didn’t die in battle. Oh, no. He was one of the survivors.

In fact, when the war commenced, he being third fastest runner in his outfit they’d shipped him to Germany right off.

But, from that point, his always colorful stories were few; Dad would only speak in detail of the day he, as a member of the forward observing team of the 3rd armored, had to “infiltrate the enemy” at the Bulge. It was snowing, and he had a cough, and they had to shoot all the German prisoners on orders. But, they all lived through that hell and, in exchange for it, every infantryman received the Bronze Star.

Somewhere between enlisting and coming home the victor, there were less celebratory if more defining moments. There were the AWOLs. There was the all night guard duty. And, there was the guard house – where he’d frequently qualify, to all who would listen, his presence on Pearl Harbor Day, which was also his birthday. Dad’s role in all this emerged as a stand alone story; he wasn’t there for the medals.

I can’t remember what year it was. PBS was airing several mini-series, most of them documentaries, and the historian who stood out above the rest was Ken Burns. Ken Burns made his life work the chronicle of America, and he did it well. Never before seen footage, all the real thing, of everything from the jazz greats to, yes, American soldiers, in action.

Naturally, in the course of the Burns chronology of World War II, America’s most outstanding general received his own, multiple chapters. George S. Patton, the formidable, would be displayed in all his imposing force, with selected film clips in abundance.

One of these stopped me in my tracks.

I’ll never forget the evening. Probably dull of wit from a snacking binge, I had to be jolted awake by the scene. But, the image. The image was unmistakable.

Patton, Burns narrated, was always hard on his men. He never entertained the faint of heart, for any reason, chasing them down whenever he could. On one particular day, seems he’d found one: there, before our eyes, underscored by the unwitting Burns, was an army hospital, and one, lean, lone, raven haired soldier on a cot by the wall. The General loomed, raising his hand over this cowering young man, even in silent film barking forcefully at him to get up. The cameraman did not include the strike, but rumors were well circulated that this was part of the Patton package.

I recognized my father instantly.

No one knows when this happened. All anybody knew was Dad left the war a decorated forward observer, shell shocked, a victim of PTSD for the rest of his life. He could never tolerate fireworks (“screeming Meemies”) or sudden explosions of any kind, and would warn us repeatedly until his final years never, ever to come up behind him in the dark.

I wrote directly to Ken Burns, asking him to edit that segment from his series. The next time it aired, as God is my witness, actors portrayed that scene.

But, no actor could characterize my father as he was. Dad was a transparent innocent. He had none of the conventional role models, not a one. He was blessed with many gifts, one of them being the honest candor for which he was beloved by all. Dad was nobody’s victim.

God, in the wisdom mankind will never understand, spared Dad’s life – his, along with so many others, a fact for which the man himself always gave his Creator the glory. I like to think that Dad was protected because of his honesty. There is a fearlessness in such truth.

littlebarefeetblog.com

White Ptarmigan.

March 15, 2016contemplative essays, family history, mystical experience, nostalgia, relationshipsbrief marriages in the 1990s, East Woodstock Conn, New England game birds, Norwegian Americans, white ptarmiganruth ann scanzillo

There was a pond in their yard.

Not in some back corner, bordered by stone, featuring fat goldfish, built from a home improvement kit. This was a small lake, fully visible from the master bedroom window, on thirty one acres of forested New England, a body of water fed by brown trout and otters and current generation, pedigreed bullfrogs.

In the front yard.

And, that first Christmas, four months shy of their officially announced engagement, she’d traveled there with her intended to meet his parents.

Winter favored the contiguous Connecticut boroughs, their white Covenant spires gathering all to worship every Sunday in the heart of each town. East Woodstock was the destination and, to her delight, Currier and Ives,’ Christmas card perfect. As their tiny white Ford Festiva tooled around the bend, past the orchards and the fenced in horses toward the private drive, she was sure they had stepped into her grandmother’s “Ideals” catalogue.

Greeted at the door by a beaming Norwegian, and warmly embraced, she was led into the livingroom to meet the entire family. Perhaps it was the strings of Swedish and Norwegian flags lacing the Christmas tree in the bay window, or the Drambui on ice; but, by evening, a grandly atmospheric golden lighting bathing everything had found its way into her imagination, and she was heady from the fumes.

Her husband to be was a true blonde, with large, immediate, bright blue eyes. He loved his life. Always outside playing, whether it be to fish in the sound, or hunt small game, or deeply immerse in some well-planned orienteering, no day was complete without at least one eagerly awaiting adventure in the vastness of the great American refuge which surrounded him.

That afternoon – clear, not too cold – seemed perfect for a short expedition.

They’d stood at the kitchen window, she drying the colander with a tea towel, he gazing out across the pond as his mother prattled on. The opposite side of the water was bordered by a steep rise, forested towards the top, across which they could watch the eastward traveling path of flocks of fowl. As they stood gazing, to their astonishment there appeared four, possibly five large birds the size of pheasant, in horizontal flight just above the evergreen canopy – their feathers: solid white.

From the yard where he had hastened to take her, and through the high-powered binoculars, red crowns could clearly be seen. Her husband to be was beside himself: “They’re ptarmigan, Hon-Bun! Ptarmigan!”

She stood, staring out over the vast expanse, watching the white creatures in their slowly floating processional. White ptarmigan. These trumped the sighting of a bald eagle, or even one great blue heron. In the spirit of a four leafed clover, she wondered if this were an omen. The good kind, after all. She was almost 36 years old that year, and even meeting this young, eligible, white collar professional the previous spring had been a fluke.

Fluke. Summer flounder. They’d been fishing already, on the sound, the two of them. And, hiking – all the way up Mt. Washington, to the summit, in her mother’s cheap white track shoes from Hill’s Department Store. Camping – at Big Rock, next to a celebrity musician and his family. But, now. White ptarmigan. She turned, to see if this mystical experience had translated to her future husband.

He was nowhere to be found. She called out; her voice caught the ear of his mother. He and his father had gathered their gear – their buck shot, their hunter’s orange, and their rifles – and, made for the woods.

Sure enough, seasoned game boys, they weren’t long gone. In short order, her intended came bounding into the house like a Golden Retriever pup, his prize tucked proudly under one arm.

He’d shot one of the white ptarmigan.

***********

Following the wedding, her new spouse had reluctantly emptied his apartment and moved into her house, a short lived respite to be followed by a season of daily commutes to a nearby college for additional certification and, from there, a job relocation two states away. The freezer cleared of its contents, in the very back, wrapped repeatedly in plastic bags, was the body of the white ptarmigan. By the end of the next summer, her mother was dead; seven months later, so was her marriage.

The spring thaw arrived gracefully in the Great Lakes, this year. The winter, taken as a whole, was far less ferocious than in previous seasons. Bald eagles, rare snowy owls, and a remarkably tame coyote or two were photographed in the nearby state park. But, like that short, bewildering episode in her life, truncated by errant choices and death, never again would she see a white ptarmigan, dead or alive.

littlebarefeetblog.com