<p>Author Patricia Costa Viglucci has been waiting some 35 years to use the title of her most recent book. “Don’t Kiss Me Goodbye! I’m Going With You." That was the cry from their three-year-old daughter as Viglucci and her husband were about to run some errands. “And go she did,” said the author, “ everywhere and anywhere--along with her younger brother and sister when they came along—in part because our trio quickly exhausted the patience of most of the babysitters we knew, reducing some of them to tears.” The kids’ antics, however, proved fertile material for their journalist mother. Retiring as reporter and TV critic for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle to raise their family, she began chronicling their doings in sundry newspaper columns including the Catholic Courier Journal where she used the pen name Sarah Child. All first-borns (two are adopted), the kids’ energy, ingenuity and high jinks kept their parents on red alert. There was the neighborhood applesauce war (the applesauce still in the jars); showering the baby in her playpen with sand buckets of water from the bathroom; bringing in the garden hose to irrigate the “grassy” chartreuse living room carpet; and running away to hide behind the gravestones in an adjacent cemetery at dusk. Along with a sampling of columns written over the years, Viglucci also has reprinted some of her previously published magazine pieces along with a fictional Christmas story first published in the Rochester morning newspaper. Readers who enjoyed “Growing Up Italian: Stories From the Wilds of Pennsylvania,” can connect again with her kin in a section devoted to family recipes. Viglucci notes that in the clan’s hierarchy of good cooks she resides on the “lowest rung”. She gives credit to sisters Thomasina Buonocore and Judy Manza, aunts Louise Gerardy and Madeline Leonard and brothers Sam Costa and Paul Costa for help in compiling favorites. The recipes, most from the family's Potter County years in the Allegheny Mountains, have been passed down from Great-grandmother Vittoria Policastro whose farm was adjacent to the Hammersley Junction depot of the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad north of Wharton; Grandmothers Maria Costa of Austin and Anna Borelli of Conrad and Roulette; mother Margaret Costa of Smethport and aunt, Frances Costa, Coudersport. (more) . Viglucci currently writes a general interest column for the Rochester Golden Times under the name Pat Costa which can be accessed online. In addition to the aforementioned “Growing Up Italian in God’s Country: Stories From the Wilds of Pennsylvania,” Viglucci is also the author of two young adult novels, “Cassandra Robbins, Esq.” and “Sun Dance at Turtle Rock”. Viglucci and her editor husband Carmen live near Rochester. Their three children and seven grandchildren live nearby providing still more grist for the mill. Viglucci invites readers to contact her via email: patcosta@rochester.rr.com</p>

Don't Kiss Me Goodbye! I'm Going With You

Patricia Costa Viglucci

Stone Pine Books, Patri Publications

“The East Fork Revisited: A Memoir” is a new book by Alfred F. Borelli, a native of Conrad and graduate of Conrad and Austin, PA schools. The rural Potter County stories are played out against the wilderness backdrop of the Allegheny mountains. Born in 1925, Borelli just celebrated his 80th birthday, but the stories of his boyhood are as fresh as the bread his mother baked in their wood-fired oven, which with her handmade noodles, sustained the family. The tales are also full of delightful humor, e.g., as when the author describes what happens when he had to retrieve a squawking, flapping chicken from one of the holes in the family’s outhouse. Readers across the country first met Borelli in a chapter he wrote for “Growing Up Italian in God’s Country: Stories from the Wilds of Pennsylvania.” In it he painted a picture of rural life in Conrad in the Thirties. Borelli builds on those memories in his new book, describing what it was like to attend the one-room school in Conrad and to trudge through hip-deep snow to throw five buckets of coal into the huge stove to warm the building before the rest of the students arrived. There is also an entertaining chapter recounting the school’s Christmas play along with another in which one of his sisters bakes him a chocolate cake but mistakes the liniment bottle for vanilla extract. Railroads were an important legacy. His father, Patsy Borelli, emigrated to this country as a boy to work first on the legendary Buffalo and Susquehanna logging railway and then the Baltimore and Ohio. His mother, Anna Policastro Borelli,grew up at Hammersley Junction, the family home literally a stone’s throw away from the B&S logging depot north of Wharton. Railroad stories abounded and get-togethers with his father’s crew (The senior Borelli was a foreman on both the B&S and B&O maintaining tracks from Wharton to Galeton) were regular occurrences at their home in Conrad. “The talk was always of railroads,” the author recalls. Railroad buffs will appreciate his stirring adventure as a ten-year-old aboard the B&O when he meets Jenny’s Girls, “Ladies” who visited logging camps. Even more exciting is his tale about being entrusted by his father to take the motor car down the mountain only to lose control when his speeding results in the main drive belt. snapping. The story of the family having to move when the 1942 flood washed out the railroad tracks in the area details his father’s stoic farewell to the Conrad home and land he loved almost better than life. Readers will also share the hair-raising moments when a medical emergency hits the family, necessitating a Coudersport doctor to make a late night house call over snow-filled dirt roads to Cherry Springs and down the treacherous, twisting hill to treat Borelli’s ailing mother . His mother Anna is often a heroine as when wielding a broom she forces an air-borne hawk to relinquish one of the family’s fat hens. One of the most memorable stories in the book deals with the young Borelli’s reaction as he steals behind an outbuilding to watch his father and neighbor men butcher the family’s China Poland boar. Among the one-time Conrad residents who also appear are Blanche Greeley who helped save his life when the author swallowed part of a Jack Armstrong whistle; Harold Williams, son of the general store owners who remained Borelli’s good friend until the former’s death at age 86, and Florence Shields, the beloved school marm, who started the author on his piano career. Borelli’s sisters, Madeline Leonard of Rural Valley, Pa and Louise Gerardy of Port Allegany, both appear in the stories as does his older sister, the late Margaret Costa of Smethport.

The East Fork Revisited: A Memoir

Alfred Borelli

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Books by Stone Pine Books, Patri Publications

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Stone Pine Books, Patri Publications publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Don't Kiss Me Goodbye! I'm Going With You

The East Fork Revisited: A Memoir