Monday, April 29, 2024
Condolences to Primo's family and to our extended family. Primo and I were first cousins once removed. I am the grandson of his father's brother Paolo, who sponsored Primo's family's immigration into the United States. My mother Anne and Primo were first cousins.
I owe a lot to Primo: he taught me how to work. I worked for him as a mason's helper in the summer after sophomore year of high school, when most of my friends were still caddying at Irondequoit Country Club. Primo picked me up each morning at our home on West Avenue where I climbed into the back of his pickup with other guys, mostly other Italian immigrants, to drive to the job site at new homes being built off Pittsford-Palmyra Rd. just past the canal (it was the Barge Canal then, before changing back to the Erie Canal). On hot days we would jump off the railroad bridge for a dip in the canal.
The work was hard. My job was to mix cement, sand and water in a flat-bottomed, heavy-duty mixing tub, using a long-handled hoe in a constant rowing motion, Rowing front-to-back, not to the side, forcing the blade against the strongest resistance to get a thorough mix. Every thirty seconds I switched right and left hands on the handle and right and left legs in my stance to balance the strain on what seemed like every muscle in the body. Then I had to carry bricks and blocks to the guys doing the masonry.
I had a dolly to transport blocks, but I usually had to wrestle the dolly and its heavy load over rough terrain – more work for more muscles. For bricks, I used tongs that carried ten bricks at a time, a pincer-like tool whose ends fitted around the load of bricks, then tightened their grip when I lifted the carrying handle. I lined up the bricks and set the tongs one under each arm, so I could lift two together in one motion. Each brick weighed about four pounds, so I carried 40 pounds in each arm, plus the weight of the tongs, over and over – then it was time to mix more cement.
By the end of the summer I had put on 20 pounds of new muscle. I also opened my first bank account with the pay from Primo. I was a new me, with a new understanding of hard work. Primo worked just as hard as everyone, while he also planned and directed the work. At that point in life I didn't understand what it meant to be entrepreneurial and to build a business from scratch. But I've learned since then, and have the utmost respect for what Primo accomplished and what he contributed to the lives of so many people in the Rochester area.
Riposa in pace, cugino!
