In Times of Great Flood presents an eclectic collection of stories about Sicilian immigrant life and family experiences spanning from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Along with these personal tales, Author Anthony Peranio interweaves humorous Sicilian stories and fables and autobiographical descriptions of landmarks in his life and family history. Anthony was first and foremost a scientist-an inventor, a deep thinker, and philosopher, predicting events and economical changes years before they actually occurred. In addition to personal stories, In Times of Great Flood offers enlightening and thought-provoking observations expressing Anthony's thoughts and views on life on this ever-changing, often surprising planet. He shares his philosophical ideas concerning human nature and survival within a complicated, difficult, and challenging environment, Anthony passed away after a long illness, unable to complete In Times of Great Flood. Now presented here is his incomplete work, which, viewed as a whole, offers insight, humor, and potent warnings for the future.

IN TIMES OF GREAT FLOOD ...

Stories to help us stay afloatBy Anthony Peranio

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2011 Anthony Peranio
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4269-5101-5

Contents

Preface.............................................................................xiEpiphany at Hiroshima...............................................................1The Radioactive Dust of Flattened Hiroshima.........................................1Some Atomic Bomb History............................................................6Curse of Babylon ... Taunting the Gods!.............................................15Applying Babel's Curse to Several Situations........................................17The Curse Applied to Babbling amongst People of the same Tongue.....................19A Shaggy Dog Story..................................................................19Scilian Family Life.................................................................24The Marino Clan.....................................................................24Grandpa Checks Out at Caporetto.....................................................24Grandma Maria in the New World......................................................29The Anastasio Interlude.............................................................45Hard Times in Chicago...............................................................47Finding a Job for Guiseppe in the Windy City........................................50Beware of Stubborn Asses............................................................54Experts and their Predictions.......................................................56Lady under the Stairs...............................................................60The Lampedusan Goose that Minted Golden Ducats......................................65Grandson Gittai's "Death of Trumpeldor".............................................75Farts that can be Heard around the World............................................76A Waxen-ass offering for Curing Constipation........................................78Dad's "Heart Failure" and Dried Chestnuts...........................................81Chapter IV—Philosophical Matters..............................................84Trump's Apocalypse..................................................................84Freud's Model of Human Aggression...................................................91EPILOGUE............................................................................96Bibliography........................................................................98

Chapter One

Matters of Enlightenment

Epiphany at Hiroshima

I took a sudden intuitive leap of understanding, when, with my own eyes; I saw the reality of destruction that had been wrought at Hiroshima. Early December 1945—on the spot—it came to me that here was an event which would change my life and the history of our entire world.

I was an inexperienced-in-the-ways-of-life US 2nd Lieutenant, twenty two-years of age, doing service in the Far Eastern Air Forces at Tokyo. It is true that during service I had personally witnessed other scenes of destruction in the Philippines, Okinawa and Tokyo, but Hiroshima's were devastatingly different! The annihilation of this Japanese city was so complete and absolute that it evoked intense feelings in me—like no other I had ever experienced.

The Radioactive Dust of Flattened Hiroshima

Standing on the cupped mountain ridge that stored its remains, prostrate before me, I could see and feel the presence of the corpse of the city that once was Hiroshima. It was just before noon on this cold winter's day. There was no sun shining. Slowly, ever so slowly, the scene below began to blot out all other stimuli to my being. I stood there with no other awareness of my surroundings.

Just behind me was the Japanese railroad train from which I had alighted to take a thirty-minute break. I had lost concern over the purpose of the trip that was taking me and several other officers to Fukuoka, on Japan's southern Island of Kyushu.

Only an instant before I had been aware of the hissing sound of the engineer blowing off some of the locomotive boiler steam and the clang and rattling of metallic pipes and other machinery, making the loading of coal and taking on water for the remainder of our 800 mile trip from Tokyo. Just now these sounds were not being relayed to my brain. Nor did I feel the effect of the cold ridge-top breeze cutting into my heavy woolen service jacket. Even with all the bustle of several hundred Japanese passengers, alighting to stretch their legs, and a steaming railroad train right next to me, my world was silent.

Above, a dull and listless sky served as our cover; unmoving gray, unbroken formless low-hanging clouds. From this overhead blanket, there were no signs of movement that might have competed with the scene below.

What the Holy Hell was this scene before me? I knew there had been a bombing here, but the complete devastation from this one was different from two-ton bombs, quite capable of producing serious destruction! Still, afterwards in the "block-busters" mess, one could discern at least part of the masonry or wood of what once had been a building line; or pieces of twisted and uprooted railroad tracks, snaking their way through blown-over earth. There might even be the pilings and supports, or parts of them, for what was once a bridge, or what might have been the remains of an industrial plant with grotesquely torn open and dismembered, twisted steel storage tanks. But below me, now and here, there was none of that!

It was as though several square miles of the city once called Hiroshima had been scooped up by some giant hand and thrown into a blending machine; a homogenizer kept at very high temperature, capable of vaporizing steel and all materials extant. Fiendishly, additional power had been injected into the fiery cauldron to unleash the fury of giant, hard, sharp mincing blades, moving at supersonic speed. The result, I imagined, would be what I now saw; radioactive, hot and messy matter, which—after being poured out of this previously unimaginable blender—would cool into the black and gray dust and rubble that had settled down into the flattened area that was once the center of Hiroshima.

I estimated that the "ground zero" area of virtually complete annihilation covered an area of a thousand or more "blocks" as I knew them in my native New York City (A destruction, for example, of all of the lower tip of Manhattan; or all of Central Park and everything round about for a mile or so).

And then, having repressed it up to this point, I began to think of the horrible death of the humans and all other living things in that blotted out circle. There must have been, I estimated, many tens of thousands of Japanese "osterized" at Hiroshima.

At the instant before the bomb was triggered on that fateful August morning, a mass of humanity was going through its routine activities and chores. Immediately afterwards, it was gone! no recognizable trace of their remains was left. Everything alive had been transformed from biological to inert chemical matter, souped-up radioactively.

I studied the scene more closely and my technical mind wondered how far out the circle of instant obliteration might have gone. And, standing as silent sentinels, I saw the distance markers providing my answer. Here and there, sticking out of the now more...