A few days ago I had a phone call from my brother Nick. After we caught up on the latest news, we started to reminisce about our younger days on the East Side of Youngstown, which reminded me of something that happened when we were very little boys.

Our father owned a dance hall, located in the same building as the apartment we lived in. It was a large, open space, where young boys and girls could run and play and have fun. One game we played involved one of us sitting on the bristle end of a very large push broom, and the other of us would pull the rider around the smooth woooden floor, as fast as we could.

Nick, who always was the boss, decided that our sister Palma and I would both have to pull him around on the broom. (This gave more speed to the rider!) As we were swinging the broom around, Nick fell off, bumping along the wooden floor, and started screaming, as though in pain.... because he had picked up a splinter from the floor.

When I asked Nick on the phone if he remembered that day, he laughed and said, "Yeah--and I got a splinter in my ass!"

As usual, older sister Martha came to the rescue, removed the splinter, and said she wouldn't tell our parents. (The game we were playing wasn't allowed.)

Naturally, I never took a ride on that broom again!