Relativity (?)

A Family Photograph, circa 1916

While sorting through old family photos and paraphernalia, I found this remarkable photograph. To me, it projects a transcendent dynamic.

At the center of this group of some of my relatives, your gaze will be drawn to a mustachioed, authoritative looking gentleman in a white shirt. He is Giovanni Porto, my maternal grandfather.

In all the time he lived in this country, he never had an identifiable job, career or profession. Yet he commuted regularly, and very often, between here and Sicily. His missions were darkly secretive. No one in the family knew why he made them, nor did anyone in the family have an inkling as to his financial status. But what we all knew for certain, was that he had uncountable numbers of diamonds of all sizes and shapes strewn through his belongings. We came to suspect that he must have had very strong connections to the Mafia and that perhaps one of his services to that organization was to carry information and money, back and forth from Sicily. In retrospect, I believe that his position at the geometric center of the group in the photo was clearly one of dubious honor and misplaced reverence.

On the left hand side of this same photograph, standing by himself, is another authoritative, mustachioed gentleman. He is Antonino Panseca, my maternal great-grandfather. He and his wife Concetta brought my mother, my Aunt Concetta, my Uncle Angelo and my Uncle Antonino to this country on October 22, 1898. He was 63 and my mother was 3 when they arrived at Ellis Island.

I was always, and I still am very proud of my great-grandfather. He was a carabiniere in Sicily. Mounted on his jackass, named Rosinante (my great-grandfather was an avid reader of Don Quixote) and with a Napoleon vintage carbine slung on his shoulder, he climbed up and down many mountains and foothills in Sicily, flushing out from their peccant lairs, brigands, thieves and murderers. He was awarded many medals and citations and it always delighted me to see and hold each one of them. A few years after this picture was taken, he drifted slowly into senility. I, still a boy, used to travel alone by “trolley car” to visit him in the hospital and bring him food prepared by my mother. During my visits there, I loved to make sketches of him. I revered my great-grandfather.

Photographs are often very eloquent, aren’t they?