Like any kid growing up in the snowbelt otherwise known as Blasdell, I looked forward to three things each summer. The beginning of summer would signal going to 
Fantasy Island to celebrate a good report card, ride the steamboat and watch the live shootouts. The end of summer meant going to the Erie County Fair to see the vast array of other-worldly side shows on the Midway, the acrid smell of burnt oil and rubber at the demolition derby and the taste of my grandfather’s sumptuous pizza. Sandwiched in between, both chronologically and geographically was the Big Tree Fireman’s Carnival. I think it was actually called the Big Tree Firemen’s Annual Field Days. But for kids (and headline writers short on space) it was the Big Tree Carnival.
Here’s the real difference between Fantasy Island, the Erie County Fair and the Big Tree Continue Reading “Life is a (Small Town) Carnival”
Remembering Father Latus
Father Charles Latus presides over the first Wedding Mass celebrated at the new opened St. Catherine’s Church in the hamlet of Mendon, NY on September 28, 1991.
My father and brother erected the family estate with their own hands. After a long search my parents found a perfect parcel on which to build. While I toiled away deskbound in some distant cubicle, the other men in the family conveyed materials in a beat-up Ford pick-up to the site. Reminiscent of “Carosa and Son” (the masonry business started by my grandfather with my father riding shotgun), the two constructed a home of their dreams.
Oddly, it wasn’t their dream home. That would come decades later.
Coincidentally, they located both homes in the Town of Mendon. The first was the ideal family home. The second was the ideal home for retirement.
That first home was more than the “ideal” family home, it was the last home that housed the entire family – Mother, Father, two adult sons, a high school daughter and an elementary school daughter. We were all there. Until the company my father worked for decided to shut down the Rochester office and transfer him to Albany.
But that’s another story. This is a story about melding into a community.
We quickly adopted Mendon as our home. There are three things that make a community a Continue Reading “Remembering Father Latus”