January 16th, 2023

Good Morning Folks,

   Friendship makes life palatable. Without friendship, we are just ships passing in the night. Friendship is what makes us stop in our tracks, assess our lives, and gives stability and purpose to our being. Friendship is not to be taken lightly. It is a sacred commodity. We may have many acquaintances over our lifetime but true friends are few and far between and are always there in life and death.

     On Friday the 13th my long time friend, Jim Spampinato, reached a milestone. We have been friends for 50 years. In the fall of 1972, I was hired as a special education teacher by BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services). "Learning disabilities" was actually a new field in education and scores of teachers were being hired. Our first meeting was in a big assembly hall and everyone was wearing name tags. As I wandered around trying to meet different folks, I was approached by one teacher who looked at my name tag and said, "you must be somebody I know". Our names were similar… they ended in a vowel. Everyone else there was a Smith or a Jones or a Johnson but we were the only Bernunzios or  Spampanatos , or anything remotely similar, in the entire group. As we became more acquainted, it turned out we grown up in the same neighborhood. Jim lived on Central Park across the street from my father’s bakery. As we started to compare our past It turned out that his grandfather and my grandmother’s uncle Nini were good friends.

     Now Jim was a frequent visitor to my first house on Culver Road. He was there for the christening of my children and most parties. He had gone to East High and told us he was 25 years old, which, at the time, was a year younger than me. A bit of a mystery developed as a friend of mine looked into the East High yearbooks and couldn’t find his picture. I received a sheepish call from him one night and he asked if he could come over to talk to me. We sat down, had a glass of wine and he told me that he had lied about his age. He said the problem was that he was the youngest in his family and all of his siblings always lied about their age so he had to keep up the front. He said to me, how old do you think I am? I guessed 26, 27, 28 and he kept shaking his head. He was 30 years old! At the time I didn’t know anybody 30 years old…I never had a friend that old! Well, now there’s not too many left to hide the truth, so it’s out…Jim Spampinato is a beautiful, healthy 80 year old! We still talk at least once a week and treat each other to dinner for our birthdays. In fact, it was Jim Spampinato who lent me the money for my first Gibson mandolin. He also accompanied me on many voyages to seek out instruments across the Northeast. It’s a great blessing to have a best friend.

Sincerely,

John Bernunzio 

The store was a cacophony of visitors and players all day on Saturday. Things are really seeming to come to life again. In February, we will start to be open on Thursdays and Fridays as well as Saturdays for a walk in traffic. We will continue to operate by appointment only on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

My breadmaking skills continue to improve. I made a loaf on Saturday and sent it to my daughter Kara’s house. She said her kids devoured it in minutes. The fact of the matter is a loaf of bread like this costs $.40 to make not including the energy used in baking it. Do you want to fight inflation? make your own bread!

Snowy pines…

Snowy landscape.

And Grace Bernunzio was at Highmark Stadium to watch the Buffalo Bills defeat the Miami Dolphins, and continue their quest for the world championship!