Read Online Island of Divine Music by John Addiego - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Addiego
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young man took friends and family on thrilling rides about town until Giuseppe returned from two months working north of the bay. The old man promptly hitched his yard trailer to the beautiful sedan and had his son drive it to his next demolition job.
B y the mid-1940s Narciso and his younger brothers had found their way to the other side of their father’s coin, pouring foundations and filling East Bay swamp with apartments during the war boom years. By the end of Eisenhower and the first year of the Catholic presidency, Narciso met daily with his brothers and their friends for breakfast at a Holiday Inn near the freeway, ostensibly to be in on the schemes and deals they discussed. Then he would wander in his convertible Cadillac, play golf, pick up groceries for his wife or mother, visit a building site, or yak with some guys leaning on shovels. He often drove his wife, Alice Elaine, to stores and forgot her, taking off alone while she was shopping or in the ladies’ room. She would call for a ride, sometimes to Narciso’s brother Ludovico. Lu, she would shout into the pay phone’s mouthpiece, Ciso took off again. Is he at the office? Ludovico would leave his desk, cursing, and give Alice and her groceries a ride home.
One lovely afternoon in the Kennedy years Narciso took Alice Elaine to the Hink’s department store in Berkeley and left her there while she was trying on pedal pushers. He headed north from the San Francisco Bay on Interstate 80, absorbed in a radio program about Mel Tormé, and by the time he reached the Sierras he washungry and wondering if he shouldn’t try to get home before dark. He took an exit, unable to read the sign (he’d never actually learned to read), and found a restaurant with a gold mining motif, with old picks and pans and shovels hanging on the walls.
Ciso was fifty-three, but he looked as if the numbers were reversed to the waitress who kept laughing and squeezing his pinstriped arm and leg. She wanted to know if he had seen that funny colored guy in Reno, Sammy Davis? Ciso offered to drive the waitress there, and soon they were at Donner Pass, winding down the old highway in the dark with the top up because the snow was dancing across the road, Ciso taking the hairpin turns fast enough to make the Caddy’s fins tap the guard rails at the edges of thousand-foot cliffs. By the time they reached Truckee the young woman begged to be let out of the car, her face white as the snow on the peaks around them. Ciso got coffee, consulted the compass next to the Virgin on his dashboard (both desperate gifts from his wife), and took off alone, thinking he was heading toward home.
Frank Sinatra owned the Cal-Neva Casino on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, and this was where Narciso’s Cadillac found itself late that evening, under a clear and frigid sky. The mountain air and the sweet scent of ponderosa pine needles filled his nostrils. He didn’t mind being lost. Wherever he ended up always seemed an opportunity for some adventure, some flirtation or conversation, something new to see. Ciso’s mind was pre-Copernican: the sun and its planets, the galaxies and constellations, which he thought of as lanterns hanging from a ceiling, orbited the fixed place where he stood. In his geocentric cosmos, mysteries, such as why those candles weresnuffed every morning, didn’t bother him. High in the Sierras, in Old Blue Eyes’ parking lot, he could see thousands of them flickering in the heavens, lighting his way to the craps tables.
It often infuriated Ludovico and the other siblings that Lucky Pants didn’t much care for gambling. He loved casinos, but he rarely played. His brothers and sisters, his sons and nieces and nephews, would lose their shirts and curse. They’d beg him to play and, after an hour or so, he might saunter up to the wheel of fortune, lay a few fivers on a twenty, and win a hundred dollars. Then he’d lend them the hundred to play with, and watch.
That night Johnny
B y the mid-1940s Narciso and his younger brothers had found their way to the other side of their father’s coin, pouring foundations and filling East Bay swamp with apartments during the war boom years. By the end of Eisenhower and the first year of the Catholic presidency, Narciso met daily with his brothers and their friends for breakfast at a Holiday Inn near the freeway, ostensibly to be in on the schemes and deals they discussed. Then he would wander in his convertible Cadillac, play golf, pick up groceries for his wife or mother, visit a building site, or yak with some guys leaning on shovels. He often drove his wife, Alice Elaine, to stores and forgot her, taking off alone while she was shopping or in the ladies’ room. She would call for a ride, sometimes to Narciso’s brother Ludovico. Lu, she would shout into the pay phone’s mouthpiece, Ciso took off again. Is he at the office? Ludovico would leave his desk, cursing, and give Alice and her groceries a ride home.
One lovely afternoon in the Kennedy years Narciso took Alice Elaine to the Hink’s department store in Berkeley and left her there while she was trying on pedal pushers. He headed north from the San Francisco Bay on Interstate 80, absorbed in a radio program about Mel Tormé, and by the time he reached the Sierras he washungry and wondering if he shouldn’t try to get home before dark. He took an exit, unable to read the sign (he’d never actually learned to read), and found a restaurant with a gold mining motif, with old picks and pans and shovels hanging on the walls.
Ciso was fifty-three, but he looked as if the numbers were reversed to the waitress who kept laughing and squeezing his pinstriped arm and leg. She wanted to know if he had seen that funny colored guy in Reno, Sammy Davis? Ciso offered to drive the waitress there, and soon they were at Donner Pass, winding down the old highway in the dark with the top up because the snow was dancing across the road, Ciso taking the hairpin turns fast enough to make the Caddy’s fins tap the guard rails at the edges of thousand-foot cliffs. By the time they reached Truckee the young woman begged to be let out of the car, her face white as the snow on the peaks around them. Ciso got coffee, consulted the compass next to the Virgin on his dashboard (both desperate gifts from his wife), and took off alone, thinking he was heading toward home.
Frank Sinatra owned the Cal-Neva Casino on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, and this was where Narciso’s Cadillac found itself late that evening, under a clear and frigid sky. The mountain air and the sweet scent of ponderosa pine needles filled his nostrils. He didn’t mind being lost. Wherever he ended up always seemed an opportunity for some adventure, some flirtation or conversation, something new to see. Ciso’s mind was pre-Copernican: the sun and its planets, the galaxies and constellations, which he thought of as lanterns hanging from a ceiling, orbited the fixed place where he stood. In his geocentric cosmos, mysteries, such as why those candles weresnuffed every morning, didn’t bother him. High in the Sierras, in Old Blue Eyes’ parking lot, he could see thousands of them flickering in the heavens, lighting his way to the craps tables.
It often infuriated Ludovico and the other siblings that Lucky Pants didn’t much care for gambling. He loved casinos, but he rarely played. His brothers and sisters, his sons and nieces and nephews, would lose their shirts and curse. They’d beg him to play and, after an hour or so, he might saunter up to the wheel of fortune, lay a few fivers on a twenty, and win a hundred dollars. Then he’d lend them the hundred to play with, and watch.
That night Johnny
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