Excerpts
Sample Passage: (sentimental memories of Stepdad Lou)
La Puma’s Leone, the proprietor of a pastry shop in Little Italy, wasn’t verbally “convincing” against insistent fedoras. He was obliged to blast two vile traviatóre, vile rats, with his long-barreled shotgun when he was pushed to set up a protection contract. When Leone moved his pasticceria from Little Italy to Bensonhurst, he was left alone (Guys Under Their Fedoras [1943]).
Stepdad told me he kicked some “gorillas” out of our [linoleum] store when they pushed him to buy protection. (He used the Neapolitan cazzoni, as if Sicilians would not act that way.) Over the years, I never saw Stepdad come close to backing down, in the store or on the road where angry young guys twice threatened to break his nose—road rage before it had a name. Stepdad’s schnoz was already especially aquiline from “nasal accidents”—a genetic trait environmentally enhanced. When offered yet another free “nose job,” he just responded,
“Oh, yeah? Let’s see you try.”
Both times he was in the driver’s seat, window down, his nose a tempting target. One guy was a motorcycle honcho, with his gang in tow, and the other a pazzo (crazy man) in a car trying to pass us on one-way single lane 85th Street as Stepdad looked for an address to collect on a bill. My presence in the passenger seat was not much of a deterrent. On both occasions, the guys just walked away cursing. For a guy so worried about his health, Stepdad had little regard for bodily injury in a fight.
Sample Poems:
Chapter Six: No Way to Make a Living (1962, 1966)
(A jeremiad against boxing and its promoters)
Keep your youthful verve and innocence
Away from old men’s grasping avarice
They crave your passion’s omnipotence
Draining it to feed a hunger cadaverous
Chapter Three: A Stroll Through the Park (ca. 1961)
(An encounter with angry Puerto Rican youth)
While walking along a bucolic path
I was met by some angry young people
Could I assuage their strident wrath
With words of wisdom, in no way feeble?
Later I asked, what provokes such rage?
Do the youngsters read rejection and hate
In those who won’t share the stage
But rather cast scorn and incriminate?
**********
Caminando por un sendero bucólico
Me encontré con rabiosos mozalbetes
Manteniendo mi balance armónico
Sobreviví con gestos de un Manolete
Luego me pregunté ¿por qué tanta rabia?
¿Sienten los jóvenes rechazo y enemistad?
Y en lugar de disfrutar la dulce savia
¿Aguantan golpes amargos a su dignidad?
© Joe Po
Praise for Brooklyn Joe and Sal, Two Bensonhurst Boys
«Open this book and you can taste the tomatoes, hear the arguments, bemoan local politics, and feel the hugs from people you just met. It’s a gift.»
-Mary Barile. Author, Playwright, and Granddaughter of Brooklyn
«His neighborhood, Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst, was full of people not far from immigrant roots. Joe brilliantly shares how his Bensonhurst boyhood shaped his life’s experiences from street stickball to the heights of the American dream.»
-David Cohen. New York City Police Department, Deputy Commissioner, Intelligence (retired)
«As you read Joe’s stories, you will be brought back-transported to Brooklyn the way it was for those of us who grew up in an Italian- American or ethnic neighborhood like it.»
-Salvatore Primeggia, PhD. Professor of Sociology, Adelphi University, Specialist in the Italian American Experience
Purchase Link Below (for this and other books by Joe Polacco)
Check Out This Interview
«The Endless Curiosity of Joe Polacco» by Drew Berry (June 2, 2019)
Author Biography
Joe is a native of Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at the University of Missouri.
Joe and colleagues authored research papers, book chapters, reviews, patents and monographs. They made contributions to understanding plant nitrogen and mineral metabolism and plant interactions with bacteria.
Non-science books by Joe: Vina, A Brooklyn Memoir; Giovanni, Street Urchin of Naples (Historical fiction novel); A Life’s Rambles/Ramblas de una Vida (Bilingual English-Spanish rhyming verse); Brooklyn Joe and Sal—Two Bensonhurst Boys (A memoir and tribute to Salvatore La Puma)
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