ever saw him again and left.

Tony slowly re-tied the bundle. He lit a cigar. With Tony pulling the crate, and my eight-year-old father pushing it from behind, they went home. They stacked the wood in the kitchen. My grandmother burned it all day. At night, she threw a few shovels full of coal in the stove, which kept the house warm until 4 a.m., when Tony’s alarm clock rang for work.

THE HOT SEAT

The apartment on West 39th Street was a railroad flat. You entered onto the kitchen, which was flanked by two small bedrooms. The windows of one looked out onto the backyard; those of the other faced the air shaft, which was a garbage repository for many tenants. At night, large Norway rats crawled among tin cansand cardboard boxes and fought over clumps of food.

The toilet was in the hallway. On especially frigid winter days, the water in the bowl would freeze. To keep this from happening the chain would be tied down so the water kept running all night.

This did not address the problem of the seat. Rolling out of a warm bed and placing your behind on the ice cold seat was an unpleasant shock. My father’s solution was to wait by his front door for Anna Lanza, who lived next door. She had an ample posterior. The moment he heard her return to her apartment after using the toilet, he rushed out and sat himself down on the warmed seat.

SCHOOL PRAYER

My father went to college at William & Mary in Williamsburg,