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ahead in life. Papa thought it might inspire them to do likewise. So when he met Tootsie’s cousin one day over at the Italian Club, he came up with a big idea. He would tell Angelo his story—have Angelo write it all down as he spoke and then type it up on the typewriter.
    The project had begun as something of an extravaganza, according to my mother. “Careful with his money” his whole life, Papa now spared no expense at first on his inspirational autobiography.
    He cleared some of the furniture out of the parlor and rented a typewriter for Angelo. “Things were hunky-dory for the first couple of days,” Ma said. “But after that, there were problems.”
    Papa decided he could not tell his story as freely with Angelo in the room—that he would be able to remember things better if he was by himself. “So the next thing you know, he was on the telephone with a bunch of office equipment companies—making all these long-distance calls, which I could hardly believe he was doing, Dominick, because he’d never even call his cousins down in Brooklyn to wish them a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter. They always had to call us every year because Papa didn’t want to waste his money. But for that project of his, he called all over creation. He ended up renting this Dictaphone machine from some place all the way down in Bridgeport.” Ma shook her head, wonder-struck still.
    “Jeepers, you should have seen that contraption when it got here! I almost fell over the day they lugged that thing into the house.”
    Two machines sat on rolling carts, she said—one for the person dictating, the other for the stenographer who would turn the I Know[001-115] 7/24/02 12:21 PM Page 25
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    recorded sounds first into squiggles and then into typewritten words. They set it up in the front parlor and moved Angelo’s typewriter into the spare room. “Poor Angelo,” Ma said. “I don’t think he knew what he was getting himself into.”
    Neither Angelo nor Papa could figure out how to run the Dictaphone at first, Ma said. They tried and tried. That whole day, Papa swore a blue streak! He finally made Angelo take the bus down to Bridgeport so that he could learn how to operate the foolish thing. “And here the poor guy could just barely speak English, Dominick. He’d just gotten over here from the Old Country. But anyway, when he came back again, he knew how to run it—how to make everything work.
    “Every morning, Angelo would set things up—get everything ready—and then he’d have to leave Papa alone. That was the rule.
    Papa got so he wouldn’t dictate a word of it until he was alone.
    Angelo used to come out in the kitchen and wait. So I got to know him a little. He was a nice man, Dominick, and so handsome . I’d make him coffee and we’d talk about this and that—his life back in Palermo, his family. I used to help him a little with his English. He was smart, too; you’d explain something to him and he’d pick it up just like that. You could just tell he was going places.”
    The Dictaphone had red plastic belts, Ma said; that was what the voice was recorded on, if she remembered right. Papa would stay in there for two or three hours at a time and then, when he was finished, he’d call Angelo and Angelo would have to go running. He’d wheel the cart into the back room where the typewriter was. Listen to whatever was recorded on the belts and take it down in short-hand. Then he’d type it up. “But my father hated the sound of typewriting, see? He didn’t want that clickety-clacking all over the house after he’d finished his end of things for the day. All that remembering made him cranky.”
    “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why didn’t he just dictate it to him directly?”
    “I don’t know. He was just nervous, I guess.” She reached over and touched the manuscript—passed her fingers across her father’s I Know[001-115] 7/24/02 12:21 PM Page 26
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    WALLY LAMB
    words. She