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Uncle Joe Takes us to the circus

by vincent scotti eirene (vincenteirene [at] gmail.com)
chapter from my book, "the day the empire feel
Uncle Joe Goes to the Circus.
by vincent scotti eirene'

Light years before the Pentagon was levitated, or Timothy Leary was kicked out of Harvard for proclaiming far and wide the benefits of LSD, or the armies of the night thrust flowers into the barrels of M-16s at the Pentagon, or the Black Panthers initiated their breakfast program... way before Abbie Hoffman ordered us to shoot our parents or the Pieman took aim at the homo-terrified orange juice queen Anita Bryant... before the Yippies hatched the idea to throw dollars onto the floor of the stock exchange or Vietnam Veterans threw their Purple Hearts on to the steps of Congress... before Martin Luther King went toMemphis, Uncle Joe took us to the circus.It was 1958 and after much booming, millions of post-war babies were let loose onto the world.Here in the USA, in Pittsburgh, the Scotti's were doing their part; they had conceived thirty-three first cousins (including the Navarro's, Della Gatti's, Zaccharo's and the Della Vecchia's) into this blossoming Italian-American family.With great expectation we sat in darkness on dirty bleachers, with an offensive acidic smell in the air. From the sky came a single beam of light that landed on a little man with a big manual megaphone to announce the night's activities.Women and men flew through the air, human cannon balls crossed the sky, elephants moved to their knees and gave out an other worldly bellow, tigers leapt through flaming hoops. A little car screamed across the big top floor and crashed in to a pole and out of the cracked shell of the car emerged a thousand clowns.

When my father, Adolfo, returned from WWII, he and his father Vincenzo were asked if they could pour cement sidewalks. They were amused by the question and answered in the affirmative.Then father and son were asked if they could construct all of the sidewalks in Mt. LebanonTownship. What had been an unobtainable treasure could now be gained by crisscrossing a sea of suburban green lawns with concrete paths. That is when the trouble began.As the iced Cokes and pillows of cotton candy were passed down the row to legions of squealing boomers, my father bent way down and whispered in my ear: Look at Uncle Joe. I looked over, his body shaking with laughter, he was imitating one of the clowns. He had a fist full of dollar bills, which he passed out to us...

See Uncle Joe, my father said. He will never amount to anything. Do not be like Uncle Joe! Save your money and make something of yourself!

Epochs before the John and Yoko bed-in for peace I realized who I was to be like, that I must run away and join the circus and that I must never never save my money. For Uncle Joe showed me that money is only valuable when given away. Uncle Joe died in 1984, outside the favor of his nuclear family. At the time of his death, he was volunteering his time teaching concrete construction to convicts at Pennsylvania’s Western Penitentiary
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