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My father bought the upper floor of this house from the other relative of the priest. His name was De Franco. He was a brilliant and wealthy lawyer who lived in Naples with his wife Carolina and his two beautiful daughters, Beatrice and Pia. Beatrice, who happened to be in Fallo shortly after I was born, became my godmother at my Christening.

The other house, my maternal grandparents' house, was located in Via Santa Maria near the Chiesa della Madonna. While my father worked in Naples , my mother lived in this house to take care of her mother Brigida who was paralyzed and needed constant care. During my childhood I lived in this house also. My grandmother Brigida died December 10, 1940.

I would like to mention, at least for conversational curiosity, that both these houses had bathrooms, without basins, just with commodes. At this time there was no running water in any of the houses in Fallo so buckets of water, often rain water collected from the gutter drain pipes, were always available in these little rooms.

I also mention this because in Fallo in 1940 there were probably only four or five houses with such bathrooms. Having clearly established our social rank I shall continue.

I remember always living in these two houses, but I cannot clearly
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identify in which house I really grew up. I remember specific periods in which I may have slept in one or the other house but I always considered either of them as "my house". I grew up in Fallo while my father, like all the men in the village, worked in the city, Naples in his case. He was working at the Hotel Royal in Naples when he left Italy in May 1940 to come to the United States to work for the Italian Pavilion in the 1940 World's Fair in New York.

WW II exploded June 10, 1940 for Italy and my father remained in the United States where my mother and I rejoined him in 1948. My maternal grandfather, Carmine Di Gironimo, worked in Palermo until 1941 and he retired in Fallo, where he died in 1946. My paternal grandparents,Vincenzo and Laura (Di Gironimo) Catinella lived in the Valle Vecchia section of Fallo. I attended the elementary schools in Fallo, I finished the first four grades, and in the fall of 1939 I took a High School admission examination (in Naples) which allowed me to skip the Fifth Grade (then the last year of Elementary Schoo ) and enroll in the first year of the Ginnasio (High School) in Palermo in September, 1939.

Children in Fallo were enrolled in the five elementary grades required by law. There were three or four teachers appointed by the State (the equivalent of our Federal Government) in Fallo. They lived in rented rooms or houses if they did not come from a neighboring village. The villagers often brought them fruit and vegetables as gifts. The