Tomas, Sal—and me!
But the recess-ending bell saved his ass.
No, we didn’t make him one of the group—not really. We were too cool for that. But we did look after Paolo in the schoolyard and sometimes even walk him home afterward. It was hard not to feel sorry for him.
He was friendly like a puppy. He couldn’t do enough for you, even though it wasn’t what you wanted. I never saw him cry, even when kids like Sammy Welch snuck in a punch or tripped him when we weren’t looking. I think our protection made Sammy even angrier and more determined to invoke pain.
It only stopped when Sal, the strongest of us, broke Sammy’s arm. It was an accident, but it set in motion a series of events which, years later, culminated in a tragedy.
You see, Sammy’s father, Samuel Welch Sr., was a cop and, unlike most of the decent, hardworking police at the time, a crooked one...
Well, maybe I’ll tell that part of the story later.
On some Saturdays, when Angie, Tomas, and Sal had to “do things” instead of playing, I would contain my disappointment and meander around the neighborhood, shuffling my feet and trying to decide whether to hide out in Andrew Carnegie’s library or keep going until I reached the end of the world.
Sometimes when he saw me Paolo would appear out of the shadows of his building and tag along, puppy-like. I would talk to him—but not with him—and he would smile and smile, until I had to fight the urge to punch him myself.
One day he followed me for six blocks, away from our rat-infested enclave and into what everyone called the business district. That’s where Harold Ruddy ran his shoe shop and George Huff owned his motor and electrical repair business.
More about them later, too.
And there was an establishment that, even now, seemed incongruous to the neighborhood. It was a watch and clock shop.
No, it wasn’t one of those fancy boutiques you see today, selling high-priced Swiss wristwatches and antique ormolu clocks. This one was a hole-in-the-wall. It was a run-down flea trap packed floor to ceiling with clocks and machinery and shelves holding boxes of parts and just plain stuff.
Inside that shop lived a hunchback gnome who also smiled all the time.
His name was Raphaele Buccinelli, but everyone called him Mr. Buck.
He was almost eighty when I first met him, and though it was quite a few decades ago, I still can hear his gravelly voice casting out bits of wisdom that have stuck with me like glue.
Walking past his storefront, door wide open to whatever insects hadn’t deserted the neighborhood for better lodgings, I would yell, “Hey, Mr. Buck, come on outside. It’s a beautiful day.”
From inside the smiling ogre would call back.
“Berto, if I do that people will see me sitting in the sun, half-asleep. They will say ‘poor old man’ and think there is nothing to be had here, and they will continue on down the street. No, Berto, I stay inside. Then people will think I’m busy, and they will think I am good.”
He was right.
I found that out when I opened my practice many years later.
On this particular day, accompanied as I was by Paolo the human puppy, I called out, “Can we come in, Mr. Buck?”
Above the whir of motors and grinding wheels, I heard, “Yes, come in, come in.”
I turned to Paolo.
“Mr. Buck is the man who makes clocks. Do your mama and papa have a clock?”
By this time we had worked out a system of headshakes and body motions on his part to eliminate the agony of his speech. He quickly nodded, and we walked in.
Mr. Buck was in his workshop in the back.
We walked through the poorly lit room containing clocks on shelves, clocks hanging on the walls, and more clocks standing up against the walls.
We reached the cramped workroom, where tools of all shapes and sizes hung neatly from hooks on pegboard. I also recognized small lathes, pliers of all descriptions, inscribers, and more. Permeating the air was the mixed scent of machine oil and the distinct aroma of sweat and body odor that only the old exude.
I know that scent well now.
“Ciao, Berto! Who is your friend?”
When he spoke at length his Italian was different, an accent Papa later told me was Neapolitan. And there was something else I did not then perceive.
Before I knew it, Paolo had walked over to the old man, who was not much taller than he.
“Pup-puh-puh-paaaolo.”
The watchmaker looked long and hard at the boy. Then he bent down and effortlessly picked up Paolo and sat him on a stool.
“Hello, Paolo. Listen, listen to the measure of life.”
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
Oh yes, how could I have forgotten? The store literally vibrated from the army of escape mechanisms releasing gears powered by springs and pendulums, all tapping out in crazy-quilt cacophony the rhythm of existence.
Mr. Buck took the innards of a mantle clock from his workbench, set it in a brace, and put its pendulum in motion. We watched as each swing moved levers that in turn moved gears moving other gears moving more gears and finally the hands.
Paolo’s eyes gleamed with an excitement I’d never seen before. He turned to the old clockmaker.
“T-t-t-t-tick-t-tock?”
“Yes, Paolo,” he nodded.
The boy seemed hypnotized by the innards, but they were not the type of innards that interested me. I had already embarked by then on the path that would take me to medical school. Still, I was curious, too.
“Mr. Buck, how did you become a watchmaker?”
He leaned against the workbench, as Paolo kept tracing his fingers gently over the gears.
“Ahhh,” he sighed. “I was never really good at anything back in the old country. I just missed the great wars with Mazzini and Garibaldi. I worked in the fields and knew that I would grow old, a hunchback good for nothing. So I ran away. I came to America in 1890.”
He saw my jaw drop and laughed.
“Yes, Berto, I sailed across the Atlantic as a deckhand—on a boat with sails! When we landed in New York, I jumped ship.”
He regaled me with his tale of standing in the middle of a street in the city, a horse carriage nearly running him over. Jumping out of the way, he spotted a sign attached to a lamppost. He said he had learned some English from books the captain had lent him out of pity.
“It took a while for me to translate it but it was an advertisement for a school teaching the art of clock-making. I knew nothing about clocks, but it certainly
