Pipe dreams . . .

My cousin Johnny Porto and his wife Rita
5940 Pelican Bay Plaza, Gulfport, Florida 33707

On October 22, 1898, Johnny’s father (Antonino), Angelo (our Uncle Charlie), our Aunt Concetta and my mother arrived at Ellis Island from Sicily. They were brought here by their grandparents, Antonino and Concetta Panseca. Uncle Ignazio and our grandparents, Giovanni and Giuseppina Porto, got here at another time.

What needs to be noted about Johnny's father, my Uncle Tony, is that with only minimal schooling, and before he reached his mid twenties, he had already established himself as a Church and Cathedral, Pipe Organ installer. My family lived across the street from my Uncle and during my summer vacation periods, I used to enjoy working for him. He was a great teacher and I learned a great deal from him about pipe organs.

I doubt that anyone now reading this, has even the remotest idea of how gigantic in size a major Pipe Organ can be. In some large Churches and Cathedrals the space occupied by its Pipe Organ could approximate the cubic footage of a several room house. With its myriad arrays of pipes ranging from huge 10-ft tall wooden diapasons in the Pedal section to its smaller than pencil sized metal pipes in its Echo and Choir chambers, the pipe organ is truly one of the most inspired creations of man. The air that drives the system is provided by a colossal bellows that would be large enough to serve as a respirator for a dinosaur.

But to actually sit at the console of a Cathedral Pipe Organ, with its full panoply of foot pedals, its five keyboards and its countless stops, each connected to different groupings of pipes, is to experience an awe that can neither be described nor forgotten. And to close an incredible family circle, would you believe that another cousin of ours, also named Johnny Porto (Uncle Ignazio’s son) was for several years the chief organist at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City?

My cousin needs to tell us more about this astonishing Porto acumen. Perhaps I can even get him to tell us about his own remarkable career as a modern Kitchen Planner and Installer. But let it not surprise you to also know, that the beautiful lady sitting up there beside him has her own trove of fantastic family stories to tell. We'll need to nudge her.