FOREWORD

This book was written by a friend of mine but that doesn’t make any difference. I have friends who can’t write, can’t juggle, can’t speak French and hate cats. I still like them. John Lonero happens to be able to write and, even better, can remember. He knows that memory comes through the heart, not the brain.

I USED TO BE ITALIAN is about a bright, warm-hearted boy growing up in the Italian ghetto of Cleveland, Ohio in the Thirties. It was a gentler, harder time; there were half as many people on the earth as there are now, and they all weren’t trying to get on talk shows. It was a country of flagpole sitters and streetcars and radio. It was a time of wide-eyed exploration, confusion, and first loves.

It was the familial war, fought across America, between the dreams of the New World and the roots of The Old Country.

Lonero, with remarkable humor and openness, takes us through adventures and heartbreaks of those innocent years of the Thirties. Then the rebellious adolescent years of the Forties, and finally surviving into the maturing and career-development year of the Fifties. Because even as he found the love of his life, even as he became a rising star on Madison Avenue, even through getting his Ph.D. and getting commendations from the state of New York for his contributions to art education, he never forgot Mamma’s hushed admonition, “Don’t bring dishonor to your family,” or the streetcorner advice of Vinnie Grosso, his life-long buddy, “If someone’s gotcha by the short hairs, you grab ‘em by the balls. The whole friggin’ world is one big friggin’ shell game. Forget that and you’re as useless as a second-hand suppository."

I USED TO BE ITALIAN reminds me of the constructed memoirs of writer-monologist Jean Shepherd, all classics, and several of which have been made into movies. Reading John’s manuscript made me wish I’d had his childhood.

I can think of no higher compliment.