Sciancato

Sal drove a gray two door '62 Studebaker Lark. He was in his early fifties (though he seemed older) when the car had been sold to him for a song in June of '70 by an appreciative friend: a handsomer, younger, more socially gifted and married man, a native of Alt' Italia who trained and developed boxing talent. Sal had always been interested in sports (baseball, football, basketball, horse racing as well as boxing) and many of his acquaintances included gamblers, sports columnists, bookmakers and coaches or trainers like his friend. Sal was a bachelor, lived alone and walked with a heavy limp. Though he shared his friend's ethnic heritage and love of the "manly art", he was a first generation native born American of southern Italian parentage, a New Yorker through and through, though he had none of the elan and cosmopolitan polish of his friend. He also had a sister who was an invalid in a nursing home about fifty miles away from his apartment. This was the reason he purchased the car.

Sal had maintained his license for decades but hadn't driven for those same many years. He owned and operated the Lark for about one week when one day its passenger side door, not fully closed, swung open on a sharp turn. He reached reflexively to grab the door's handle and the car meandered onto and over a curb and glanced off a tree. Sal was okay. The experience convinced him however, that he needed a chauffeur for his now somewhat battered little hardtop.

I was a twenty year old cipher, a drifting college sophomore, more than indifferent to my studies who loved to drive. In nearly ten years, Sal had become my father's best friend and I had grown used to seeing him, both as hanger-on at the fruit and produce store where Dad worked and more and more frequently as a dinner guest at our house. He had obtained World Series tickets for our family on at least four occasions through the years and had demonstrated his kindness in many other ways. Yet it was still tempting to take him for granted with his "Sad Sack" persona and unobtrusive ways. My immaturity failed to see the man inside the unfashionable and rumpled clothes with the uncomplaining visage behind the thick eyeglasses.

Sal was an intelligent though unschooled man. He immediately saw the mutual interest in selling the car to me. The price? A single piece of green paper with the image of the Father of Our Country on it was what he wanted. Oh, yes: whenever convenient, I would drive Sal to visit his sister. A deal! He had the car repaired and made road worthy. It was an agreeable arrangement and we visited his sister for about a half a dozen years, the only untoward event being an accident on a local street in Queens one summer's day. There were children playing ball not far from Sal's auto insurance broker's office from where we had just left. No doubt, as a young driver I did not adjust my speed under the circumstances: the narrow road and the darting kids. Thinking I had passed them all, one back pedaled just at the last second before my peripheral vision would have missed seeing him. Braking occurred, but it was too late to avoid clipping the youngster on his heel. He howled and I stopped almost instantaneously. I like to think that I would have handled the situation by myself exactly as we then did. I guess I'll never know for sure. In the event, Sal carefully questioned the boy about his condition and had made the decision to take him with us, if agreeable, to a nearby hospital when the child's grandmother appeared. She concurred with the proposal and we spent, what today would not probably be considered an extremely long time, waiting in the emergency room until the kid was examined. The wait then seemed interminable, as I sweated through the guilt and consequences (whatever they would be) that were dictated by taking responsibility for my actions as an adult. Sal, of course, stood by me, and with a clean bill of health (and bill paid by him) we returned the kid safely to the old woman.

Sal continued to help me in ways, not all of which I am probably even aware of to this day. He continued to be my Dad's best friend for the rest of his life and I was a bonus beneficiary of that relationship. In 1975, to be nearly precise: less than 30 minutes after the moment that began that then new year, I visited Sal. It was the only time that I really wanted to visit him and to just "hang out" with him. My motives were not pure. I wished him, of course, a happy new year and he was pleasantly surprised, but probably at least as much curious about the real reason for the very unexpected visit. He never intruded on a personal level, knowing that privacy was granted him "in spades" by others, though usually more out of indifference or neglect than a result of conscientious respect. He was always aware of the privacy of others however, and though very shy, it seemed that respect, not fear, was his primary motive in not prying. I wouldn't or couldn't tell him that I had tried to visit a new female acquaintance, uninvited, at her place in the waning last hour of 1974 not long before midnight. Her rejection of me (now quite understandable, viewed nearly forty years later) was expressed loudly and forcefully through her closed and locked apartment door and was a devastating blow to a relatively callow fellow's ego that long ago evening. I remember asking Sal for a cup of coffee and we must have exchanged banalities as perhaps he understood, even consciously, how much I needed a friend. No doubt, he could empathize, or at least I imagined that to be so having observed how he moved and comported himself in a cruel and heedless world. He was also "street smart" but he clearly knew right from wrong, as demonstrated by my accident with the kid. His idea of chicanery was encapsulated in his oft repeated advice to me: "Rus, you gotta beat the law within the law." Notwithstanding this remark, he was too decent a soul to ever be a politician or lawyer.

I honestly don't recall the exact trigger that led to the demise of the Studebaker, nor do I even remember the approximate date or the circumstances in any great detail. It must have happened in the late 1970's. And based on what I do remember: taking a very few parts from the vehicle with strong sentiments guiding my self-limiting choices, a junk dealer must have been contacted to tow it away. The pot metal letters across the vertical hang of the trunk's deck lid above the rear bumper and license plate that spelled out "S T U D E B A K E R " were plucked from the body, the AM radio was salvaged, also bearing the make's name, and the speedometer too was rescued. The dream was to carve a rough hewn, log cabin-like box for the radio and have it as a unique item for my night table. The need to obtain a transformer in order to convert it for A.C. current was and apparently is still conceived as too daunting a project. It sits, hopefully somewhere in one of my closets, awaiting ambition and motivation.

Sal continued being Sal and we became friendly with his brother as well. In 1979 I recall visiting Sal in his apartment and he didn't seem well. His face was flushed and he seemed to have some difficulty breathing. He said that he was okay, but we both knew he wasn't. I had taken a part time job late that year and had lost touch somewhat with him though my Dad had told me of Sal's occasional trips into and out of hospitals where I visited him several times. He died in June of 1980, never to know the joys and thankfully, any of the horrors of the world these past thirty plus years. He was a simple man, filled with the same humanity and decency of any Nobel prize winner or even the average, non-scandal plagued clergyman. My Dad recognized the goodness in this truly humble man and chose him for a friend because of his simplicity and faithfulness: some of the measures of character and true human wealth.