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Lito remembers his Nana part 1

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Nanna’s house Part 1. My father’s mother, my paternal grandmother, was Nanna. Nanna’s true name was Irene Henrietta Zoeller born from solid German stock at Brooklyn New York City on April 6th 1900. When I would ask Nanna how old she consistently replied “I’m as old as the year.” (like Nanna was 54 in 1954 the year I was born). Nanna lived in a two storey wood frame suburban house at 16 McKinley Avenue in Hicksville, Nassau County, Long Island, New York. The home had a basement with a coal chute to receive coal deliveries used to feed the furnace for space heating. Hicksville, New York was founded by and named after Valentine Hicks (1782–1850), a Quaker businessman and son-in-law of Elias Hicks. Valentine was a key figure in the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and he established the village of Hicksville when the railroad arrived in 1837. Hicksville is adjacent to Levittown where I grew up. It was only after moving away from NY did I find that use of the term “Hicksville” meant a bo...
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Lito joins the Boat Lane Bombers

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The Boat Lane Bombers were a gang in the sense that Spanky and Our Gang were a gang in the Little Rascals. The Bombers formed when I was in elementary school living on Boat Lane in Levittown, New York on Long Island. Levittown was specifically planned for GIs returning from WWII to give them an inexpensive avenue to home ownership. Every house on Boat Lane had multiple children. The next street over was Bucket Lane. All the kids from these two streets played together. Games such as football, baseball, stick ball, basketball, and more home-made games such as Ringolevio ( like capture the flag), kick the can, hide and seek,buck buck, and freeze tag. Sometimes groups of children from other streets wanted to compete with us. AND that is when we decided to name ourselves the "Boat Lane Bombers". One of the most grueling games between "street gangs" was called "Buck Buck". One gang would line up like a conga line and make a sort of long bridge with the...
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Lito is spoken to through mini rainbows (prisms)

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It was a cold January of 1993 when I was baptized in Brannon Slough of the San Joaquin River near Concord, CA. Nathan Seable baptized me. However, he neglected to say, "Amen" at the end of the baptismal prayer. So I had to be reimmersed in the murkey water. It was a great feeling to be baptized and have a sense of newness and dedication providing new direction in my life. As the Seable family was giving me a ride home I was in a contemplative mood. I was thinking about what it means to take upon oneself the name of Jesus. As I turned my head and squinted in a Popeye like manner towards the sky I saw a mini rainbow, a floating prism against the blue sky. Like with Noah of the Old Testament, this rainbow symbolized the covenant I had embraced. I didn't mention this sighting to anyone as I was simply enjoying the sense that God knew me and was letting me know that He knew me.
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Almost Death in Yosemite

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I had just graduated with a master's degree and got my first job as an Environmental Engineer for Trihey and Associates. I was driving the company vehicle from Concord, CA through Yosemite to set up trasects in the streams of Lee Vining Creek and Rush Creek on the East Side of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. As I drove through the astoundingly beautiful scenic Yosemite I began to laugh with joy! I was being paid to drive through Yosemite National Park!!! Laughing gleefully I came around the corner of the winding two laned, narrow mountain road and saw a boulder the size of a very large microwave in front of me! I had some choices. I could swerve into the towering wall of stone on one side, I could vere off a 200 foot drop on the other side or I could go over the boulder and hope for the best. I plowed over the boulder! The truck rolled over it and the boulder lodged itself under the truck wrecking the differential gears on the back axle. I was flying... 45 mph with only...
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Where did Lito's cat, Blackie, come from?

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When I was in first grade my teacher's name Mrs. Hiller. One day she announced that her cat had had kittens and would anyone like one? She had them in a basket in the classroom. OF COURSE I WANTED ONE! I took the kitten home to my mother who said, "Humina Humina Humina". I thought it was a boy so I named him Sam. Sam was black with white socks and a white chest. Then one day Sam was pregnant and gave birth to a LOT of kittens. My mom said that was too many kittens and we'd have to give Sam to the Davis cousins so SHE could live on the farm and I could keep ONE male kitten and he would have to be neutered. I chose the little black one and named it "Blackie". Blackie lived to be 18 years old.
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Lito's first day in Kindergarten

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Nothing momentus happened from the time I first took a step until my first day of Kindergarten. You know, just all the usual stuff: eating, sleeping, etc. My mother walked with me to kindergarten at Summit Lane Elementary School in Levittown, NY. It was a ten minute walk and we had fun conversations along the way. I was excited to be going to kindergarten and I thought my mother was going to be with me. We were introduced to the teacher and some of the classmates and then my mother left. OH how I howled and cried! I had never been away from my mother before. In retrospect, it seemed like some socialogical experiment akin to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". My crying lasted for about 20 minutes until I found the sand box. Yes, a REAL sandbox in the kindergarten classroom. Even though it was loaded with bacteria, I had a great time playing in it and I'm sure I added much of my own bacteria into the petri dish of sand.
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Lito's FIRST MEMORY

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My first memory occured when I was a little older than a year. I was in the living room of my ancestral Levittown, Long Island, New York home and a number of family members were sitting and talking. I recall my mother, Doris Cullen, pointed at me and screamed loudly, "HE'S WALKING!!!!" I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know what walking was or felt like. But I do remember all the attention made my leg muscles weak and I just plopped down on the rug.
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