Wednesday, September 13, 2017
My grandfather, Pasquale Angelo "Patsy" Palotti was, to me, the living bridge from Basilicata, Italy so long ago to the United States of today. Apart from my parents, he was the most significant role model in my life. I truly looked to his gusto as a way to comport myself in the modern world. As a southern Italian, he was, in a word, stubborn . Actually, that should be written with a capital 'S'. So stubborn, in fact, that he alone decided that (on a perhaps flippant, whimsical decision) to remove one 'L' from the original 'Pallotti' just because he was compelled in the moment to do so. Just because he could.
Despite that, or because of that, everybody in the small town of Le Roy, NY seemed to love him. In so many ways, he had the soul of a poet, remembering each crucial detail of our family history--the saints, sinners, and 'stregas'. Personally, I soaked up all his stories, mannerisms, and inflections growing up. I swear, some of his stories were even true!
They broke the proverbial mold when they made him and I'll miss his garbled profanities until my dying days. He was the epicenter of my family and he will be forever remembered.
