Besides Pasta: My Early Years

by Peter Rizzolo

I tell of my early life experiences through a child’s eyes and voice to portray events as I saw them, in my innocence and limited understanding. Peter, the little boy, not the adult author, describes his family, friends, and surroundings as they appeared to him at the approximate time he experienced them. This random gathering of memories and events is like a family album, where the connections between the pictures and the stories they tell, often can only be surmised. These vignettes will introduce you to my family, relatives, family friends, and my childhood friend, Mark Stillman. As this memoir begins, I am five years old. My mother has seven children to raise on her own. I am the youngest. My oldest sister Helen is sixteen. Geraldine is fourteen, Phyllis twelve, Tony eleven, Chickey nine, and Frances seven. The year is 1933. My mother is thirty-four. She has been separated from my father for three years The nation is in the midst of the Great Depression. My mother supports her seven children from a part-time sewing job and a meager Relief check. My aunts and uncles are practically the sole sources of our hand-me-down clothing and an occasional bottle of homemade wine. But financial help from relatives is impossible because they too live on marginal incomes.

308 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 12, 2019