Volume XXXVI Number 1

   In the absence of our Historian, Bill Coate, we prevailed upon one of the Historical Society's prolific writers, Angelina Fuller. From her collection of stories we picked one, knowing they would interest our members as they did us.

As the anniversary of Louie's birth approaches, April 16, my mind reflects back to that spring day in 1924. He was born at home, which at the time was a small two-room house on the first small farm our father bought. It bordered the largest Ernesto Mastrofini farm at Avenue 7 and Road 21 1A. Louie was the only one of us children to have been born in the daytime. It was a warm day. John and Tony were in school. I, being three years old, was sent out to play. Vince, a toddler, got to stay inside.
       Play, I did not. I kept walking back and forth along the rungs of a ladder that had been left lying on the ground at the back of the house, all the time wondering why I had been put outside. After a time, Mrs. Mastrofini came out to get me, saying as she reached for my hand, something about taking me in to see the baby. Baby? I did not understand. O, yes, a baby. There he was, in a diaper and undershirt, all pink and white, lying on the top covers of our parent's bed. Our mother, Tulia, was beside him with a happy smile on her face. That first sight of him, all pink and white, the excitement going on, even to the clothes I was wearing, was forever engraved in my mind. I learned this baby's name was Luigino, "Little Luigi," (our father's name) but he soon became "Gigi" to all of us.