It's been so long since Chapter II that I forget where I left off.  I think it may have been in the house on Highlawn Avenue where all the newlyweds moved in together.  Grandma married Henry in 1937, Lily and Mary married in 38 or 39.  Now Joe and Mary Ala (grandma's son) had married earlier than all of them and lived in an apartment right near Grandma.  They had their son Charlie there.  It was only a short walk to their house from Grandma's house on Highlawn Ave.  I think I already mentioned that your Dad and Joe LoCascio Jr. were born in that Highlawn Avenue house. 

At this point we lived on Bay Parkway in Brooklyn where I attended first and second grade.  When I was starting 3rd Grade I must have been about 8.  At this point in our lives, things were very tight.  My father had lost his job in the leather shop where he made saddles, mostly due to the fact that cars were getting more and more popular.  The house we lived in (Ican still remember the address: 2131 69th St.) was owned by my father's brother-in-law Jimmy (Vincent Brancato) who was married to my father's oldest sister, Mary.  But the depression had left scars on everyone and Jimmy, who was considered very well to do, found it necessary to sell that house, but being a man of honor, he would not leave his brother-in-law homeless.  He owned two other houses (with about 6 or 7 apartments) in Bensonhurst, so we moved into one of the apartments (1602 Benson Avenue) and in due time, when the house on Highlawn Avenue became too cramped with babies coming, Lily moved into another of the apartments, and Mary and Mike into a third.  Joe and May Ala and their son Charlie  and Grandma and Henry also came to live next door in a house owned by a neighbor.

These were the happiest days I remember.  We were all together.  Grandma and Henry lived in the house next door to mine.  Now picture this.  Starting on Benson, the first house you came to with Alas was Grandma and Henry, and Uncle Joe, Aunt Mary and Charlie Ala.  We lived right next door.  Then you went around the corner and the other half of the house I lived in the upstairs apartment was Aunt Mary and Uncle Mike Caccuitto with only Franklin.  We didn't have telephones so we would just knock on the wall with a knife handle and Aunt Mary would hear and open her window where we could open ours and have a conversation.  If the weather was really bad, we could go down to the cellar and walk through and come up in Aunt Mary's side of the house.  Lily and Joe and Joe Jr. lived in the house next to that.  Again no phone, but the ingenuity was unbelievable.  Aunt Mary had a cowbell which she attached to a piece of rope.  She dropped it out a window in the alley where I picked it up and attached it to a long string Aunt Lily was holding in her bedroom window, and the rope was pulled up and fastened to another cow bell in Aunt Lily's apartment.  When either sister wanted to talk to the other, they would simply pull on the rope and the cowbell would ring in the other sister's apartment, where again with windows open, they could converse, something like "I have fresh coffee and I baked a cake, come down and we'll share it.  The same invitation would be passed to my mother with a simple knock on the wall (which separated Mary's bathroom with our kitchen).  What a wonderful way to grow up.

So time went by.  The little brothers started coming.  Charlie was followed by Frankie, and Michael Jr. was born at the same time, either a day earlier than Frankie, or a day later.  The mothers were in the same hospital too!  Then WWII started and Joe LoCascio Sr. was drafted.  My father was too old and I guess Uncle Mike was never the right age to fit into the draft, so he escaped it too as did Uncle Joe Ala probably due to the fact that when he was growing up, he got into some trouble that sent him to prison and made him unacceptable.  By this time, my sister Marie were baby sitting the kids for our Aunts and loving them all more and more.  Marie's favorites were Franklin and Mike Jr. I was growing up fast.  Too fast to suit my father.  I graduated grade school as Salutorian and made a speech at the graduation where my mother and aunts were all sitting in the audience and crying.  I was so proud.  I started high school that year and commuted to Bay Ridge by bus and trolley every day.  I was a grown up at last. During this time, I turned 16 and my mother gave me a party with all my friends invited.  She made me a blue gown in which I felt most elegant.  My aunts and their kids came to see how I looked.

As WWII ended, Lily and Joe started looking at houses in Levittown where they were building houses that were affordable to the G.I.s.  They bought the first house in Oceanside, and Mary and Mike found one in Merrick (yes, the homestead you still know as "Nanny's house", and as the months went by Aunt Mary announced that another Caccuitto was on the way.  This was the beloved Charles, a gentle and beautiful child who grew very close to my own Rick in later years. Time went on and as Mary and Joe Ala heard of my mother's plight with her landlady, talked her and Dad into buying the house across the street from them. 

In due time I had married my prom date, Vinnie and had Ricky found it necessary to go back to work.  With my mother and father living in Baldwin what was to be gained with Vinnie and I continuing to live in Brooklyn when our son was living in Baldwin with my mother and Dad, so they began an earnest search for a house that I could afford and their efforts paid off when they found a lovely old house at the right price just a few blocks away from them  And so it came to pass that I, too, lived in a neighboring town to my aunts and cousins.  By this time the little girls, Maryann and Gina to Aunt Lily, Kathy to Aunt Mary and Ricky to me, all became the next generation to go to high school at the same time, and the family just grew bigger and older. 

The second generation started to marry.  Charlie and Lyndon Ala who produced Kayleen and Christopher, and Perry, and then divorced.  Joe and Carol, who produced Lauren and Jody, also divorced, and Frank and Terri  who had Joe, Tracy and Tara and later also divorced. 
 
Grandma and Henry continued to live in Brooklyn in various different houses until Henry got sick one year and abruptly died.  I believe it was 1947 or 48, and Grandma was alone again.  She moved in with us for a while, but she and my father did not get along, so she moved out.  Years went by with Grandma moving in with Joe and Mary for a while, Lily and the kids while Joe served his time in the Army.  (This was while all of us lived in Brooklyn.) 

She continued through the years moving in with the various families, but always found a reason to go off on her own.  Years went by and pretty soon she met Tony Di Salvo who eventually became her 3rd husband. (Her marriage record was 10 years with my grandfather, 10 years with Henry and 25 years with Tony).  After burying the last of her husbands, she settled in Baldwin with my mother.  During this time, my sister Laurie married Bob Keller and had three children, Charles, Janine and Bobby Keller, my father died of cancer, and and Grandma continued to live with my mother.  After my father's death and just as I was moving to Florida with Vinnie, Rick and Donna who had been born in 1963.  Grandma resisted for a while, but finally came to Florida and lived most of her final years there, next door to Laurie, where she helped look after all of Laurie's children and watched the other all grow up. 

This went on until Grandma became very old and began to go senile.  She spent the last months of her life in a nursing home in St. James, where Kathy Ala (Charlie's second wife) was working, and she was well cared for until she died at the age of 93.