Thursday, April 6, 2023
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Dear Pauline, Angela, and Aunt Rosie
Trust that the passing of your "Frankie" - my dear cousin - saddens me. Funny. I never would have figured that sadness would be an emotion I'd experience in anything that had to do with Frankie. Maybe this is because Frankie and my times together - frequently together also with Jamesie - were so crazy and so much FUN! Ridiculously competitive, we could compete over 2 ants walking across a sidewalk: who had the fastest car.....who had the fastest horse . . . who had the best job.....who got the most girls.....who could order the most food when we knew we would be running out of the restaurant without paying! HA! That's right! Frankie and I - and Jamesie - when we were going through this "bolting" phase - would try to out-do each other in ordering food we wouldn't be paying for! This one night in Flatbush, Frankie won! He won when, with his chicken parmigiana, veal scalapini, and antipasto, he also ordered a bottle of Chianti!
These memories, combined with the memories of all of us together on Glenmore Avenue and then Queens - with our parents, Grandma, aunts, uncles, and all our cousins - are, for me, the greatest. However, take Frankie out of those memories and they are less. They're less because Frankie's "eggs' - daring or even courage if you will - made him do some hilarious things, hilarious things we all would have done but for FEAR. Yes. Fear. Frankie was UNAFRAID. Perhaps, though, if we also had not been able to escape the streets of East N.Y like Frankie, and instead made to grow up in a dangerous East N.Y., we also would have been unafraid - unafraid to live a life that was to the beat of our own drum.....not worrying about conforming to the conventions of a propriety that we did not believe in. There's something about this - about Frankie - that I respect. I have always respected it. Besides, Frankie could make a "cautious" guy like me - too often very undeservedly - look good.
To Frankie's children, my deepest condolences.
Sincerely,
Cousin Frankie, Uncle Tony's boy
