day 104 italian pirates

Day 104 Thur Oct 24 Zoe Cant Stop Talkin

ITALIAN PIRATES AND WHAT’S FOR BREAKFAST

Oh boy did ole Mischa get an earful yesterday! She was kinda extra quiet on accounta she was still nursin that sty. In fact, she went and put a black patch on it and scared me and dana something awful as we did not see that comin. Also dana got nervous cause she was reading the newark times about all the pirates that’s runnin amok on the high seas. She said Mischa could attract one a them pirate ships and we could all get duelled off the gang plank...or somethin like that.

Anyway since Mischa was not in a talkin mood, dana took it upon herself to tell the whole nine yard long story of her family from tellwood city. It was like a soap opera. Me and mischa was transfixed all afternoon! We had to keep askin questions though cause all them italians and greeks was makin our heads spin. Plus everybody who you thought was married to one person ended up being married to a different one and people kept switchin out their mammas and also their last names their first names and their nationalities too.

I would love to be able to repeat the whole thing but really it is beyond my abilities at the present time. And my mom is not much use right now in the memory department as she is still busy self medicatin.

But I am gonna document some pieces of the story as I recall em,  as they’s noteworthy.

First off if it weren’t for philly aka philaminna this whole story might a never unravelled the way it did. Dana was gettin a haricut when a cousin a hers, who she hadnt seen in  like a hundred years, walks into the barber shop and they start talkin about tellwood city and all the relatives. Them two makes a lunch date and philly brings dana her picture albums. The first one they look at is a picture a spungo, aka dana’s dad, and philly says “oh look, spungo on his wedding day!” And ole dana is like “what!?” her head’s shakin  like she’s tryin to wake herself up from a dream “who’s that woman he’s standin with?” And ole philly she says “that’s gertie!” and she says it like it’s common knowledge. Dana says, “gertie who?” And philly starts gettin kinda sweaty all over and realizes she’s spillin out beans dana never had before. So real slow like she says “gert  spungo’s wife?” And insteada sayin it like a fact she says it like a question. Thing was dana’s mom’s name was dorothy and to the best of dana’s knowledge she was spungo’s only wife. Dana musta thought the mormons came through tellwood and converted ole spungo right outta the catholic church so he could have himself a coupla wives. “My dad had a wife named gert, before or during the time he had a wife named dorothy?” she asked. “Oh dana, long before.... I thought you knew, I really thought you knew....they were only married a month, and old gert took all the furniture, left poor spungo a divorcee!” “When your dad married your mom the whole italan contigency in tellwood never said a word about her bein greek they was so relieved to have him marryin a southern european!”

As time went on dana and her sister found out all sorts a stuff that totally changed the landscape a their lives. Like their aunt Mena who was the matriarch and who lived and breathed all things greek, drank at the fountain of the orthodox church and marched all her

family members to the same drum....they found out she eloped with a man named bill, on her wedding night ... cause her father had arranged for her to marry an old man she had never met... menna then got banished from the family for 20 years at which time bill divorced her on accounta ole menna went and had a baby with an italian who ran numbers and a speak easy in a nearby town!

But that wernt even the half of it. Man dana was tellin us about spungo’s pals stitchie and jack whose name was really frank,  buffie and ouisie babino who had a lot in common with bonnie parker and clyde barrow, aunt dewie the sainted black sheep, yiayia papadennis who wasn’t really anybody’s grandmother, cousins mildred and pearl who swear they was romanian and drove ole menna, the archetypal hellen, straight up a tree!

Then to top it all off dana finds out her mom’s name was somebody else’s name not hers! No one exactly could explain why.

The whole thing had dana twisted in a knot for years.

All I can say is it sure is colorful in them small towns.

and speakin a color...I see yellow the color of cheese gettin cut into bite size morsels on the kitchen counter....gotta go! Later.