H e a r t S o n s &
H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e
n G i n s b e r g
N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a
: R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i v e
s E d i t i o n
THOMAS R.
PETERS, Jr.
My
Grandpa Tremonti
(part 1)
my Grandpa
was born on the same day
as Ed Wood
& Thelonious Monk
& looked so much
like George Raft
that some people
were sure that it was him
(if you don't know who
George Raft is that
is your problem)
he was a gentle guy
who like bumble bees
for their help in the garden
kept wild birds as pets
smoked a pipe
& made wine in his house
every year he would pickup
100 boxes of grapes from
the train from California
& spread them out on his
basement
(or base e mente) as my Grandma
called it) floor where the boxes
covered every inch
he would crush them with
his feet before putting them
in the masher
& made 3 barrels a year
& one small barrel of liqueur
he drank wine with every meal
& an egg in the beer for
breakfast
sometimes at 5 am
he loved to go down to the
beer garden but rarely
did & was forbidden
by my Grandma to
drink
whiskey but
had a bottle under the bed
in the spare bedroom
the bed there
was my Mom's
four post bed
that she had made
my Grandpa saw
off the four posts
so she cd have a trendy
Hollywood Bed
in the 1940's
he was retired from his job
before I cd talk
so he never had to go to work
the 18 years that I knew him
once when I was in Hollywood
at a diner in 1981, I met the
only person I had ever met
outside of my family
that had known my Grandpa
from work, this guy who I thought
was nuts and a liar
said he knew my Grandpa
from the Vassar Chrysler Plant
& that people called him
Monty short for Tremonti
instead of Vito which
was too obviously not an
American name, it turned out he
was right & couldn't have known
this
in any other way
my Grandpa's brother who liked
"to talk to the cows"
jumped to his death from the
Ambassador bridge at 15
after a painful & disconcerting
ear infection
his Dad left his Mom &
5 kids at 33 years old
she died a few years later
of "a broke heart"
he never saw his Dad
again, but 50 years later
my Dad found out that
he had died in a mining
shack explosion in
California
Frank Tremonti
blown to bits
maybe with another
family, supposedly
no one in the family
ever saw him again
after he left to make
money
to bring the rest of
the family over
but his son Frank Jr.
Might have tracked him
down
When he worked
at Chrysler as
chief inspector
he would stump the
assembly line
workers by putting a
little lead from a pencil
on the head of the spark plug
& see if they cd figure out
why it was misfiring
[Originally published in
NHS 2007,
http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs07/Tom_Peters.htm.]