Totitto – A Life In Pictures – #6

So the years between 16 and 20 passed quickly; or so they seem now.

I had close extended family.  Our “gazebo” – My father’s sister Connie hamming it up; in the rear, her son Joseph ( a Korean War vet ), his wife Ann, me, my father’s half sister Margie, grandma Laura,  Margie’s husband Jack.   Only Ann and I still live.

I had good friends.  My best friend Billy and his brother in my brother’s go-cart.  Billy was like me; same age, same school, two younger siblings, poor.  And we didn’t have our own room in our little houses.   We both slept on convertible sofas.  Billy would pass in his mid-forties.

I had girlfriends, three of whom I dated serially for a while.

Me and Barbara

I had a job and a 1957 Pontiac.

  

And then I met her.  I was 20 and she was 17.

JoAnn – the future mother of my children 

It was off to another prom – this time hers.  May 29, 1963.  She is smiling because the background curtain perfectly matches her dress and shoes.

 

Life would never be the same.  We would marry over the frantic objections of our parents before the year was out.

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