I Remember Albany – The Calluccios
(This story is from the 2009 Saint-Jean-Baptiste)
My mom bore her third child, my sister, Michelle, when she was 21 years old, at a Catholic hospital in Albany. My 23-year-old dad attended AlbanyBusinessSchool during the day and supported his young family by working an eight-hour bowling alley shift at night.
They, my brother, Mitch, and I lived in a small basement apartment on Morton Avenue, with a front window allowing an ankle view of the sidewalk and a back kitchen door opening to a small enclosure of cracked concrete and garbage barrels. The apartment building was called a “brownstone” for its traditional three apartment flats, two and half story architecture, but ragged asphalt shingles with the shapes and color of bricks were nailed to the building’s wooden sides so that from a few blocks away, the structure looked as if it were masonry.
Mitch and I enjoyed the backyard space and would skip our little, bare legs a few hops and leap upon an old, musty cloth couch shoved against a higher wooden fence on one side. With heavy panting punctuated by young, soft grunts, we’d dig our toes into the wood and pull our T-shirted bodies over the top of it and quickly join some of the Calluccios.
The Calluccios were a large Italian family living on the other side of the fence and they had a lot of kids our age with whom to play. I was told Mr. Calluccio didn’t work, but I remember he’d sit on a kitchen chair and play twangy Italian songs on an accordion that hung over his lap. With a big smile that sparkled with a gold filling and pant legs stretched so that one could see all of his white socks and bits of leg hair, his right hand tickled keys and his left hand pumped the bellows. And all the while, a pot of garlicky tomato sauce—prepared by Mrs. Calluccio, who had large, dark eyes—shadowed by tiredness—invariably simmered on the stove to help feed her large brood and make the house smell homey.
It was always fun at the Calluccios.