Don’t Look Behind You

assignments in the armed services. He served in World War II in the army. Later, he was in the air force, and he was called up from his reserve status after that. He was a natural salesman, a studied pitchman, and it was difficult to keep up with his various careers—sometimes door-to-door, occasionally from the back of a truck, sometimes behind a desk.
    Joe Tarricone also had a wanderlust that surfaced often. Where Rose longed to live in one house in one place and to have her garden and her precious furniture around her, Joe often came home in an ebullient mood and called out, “Rose, pack up! We’re moving! We’re going to Florida!”
    Or New Mexico, or Texas, or the Pacific Northwest.
    During many of the early years of their marriage, Rose was pregnant or recovering from childbirth. Claire, theoldest, was born in 1947. Then came Aldo in November 1950, Joey two years later, and Gypsy in 1957. Gina came along in 1960, Rosemary in 1963, and Dean, the baby, in 1966.
    Coping with seven children and a peripatetic husband who always saw rainbows over the next horizon wasn’t easy for Rose.
    “She left so much furniture behind,” Gypsy remembers. “Sometimes she would cry over it, but she went where my dad wanted to go for so many years.”
    Joe Tarricone was thrilled with the birth of all of his children, and he was a loving and caring father, however bombastic his personality. He cherished each baby and took the time to walk the floor with them, tussle with them, hug them, and let them know that each was special.
    He became the Pied Piper for kids on the blocks where he lived. He liked nothing better than to gather up his children and a lot of the neighbor kids every Sunday. He’d take them all to a movie, a ball game, or the zoo. He often took a bunch of them to Disneyland, enjoying it as much as the children did.
    Joe cooked huge spaghetti feeds on Sundays and invited all the neighbors. Joe, Rose, and their youngsters probably lived longer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, than any other place. They became friends with the Bob Silva family who lived across the street. The Silvas had children just about the same age as the Tarricone offspring and it was a happy time for all of them.
    “My dad figured out a way to make enough pizza for most of our neighborhood,” Gypsy recalls. “He got theseboards and covered them with clean linoleum so that he and the men on our street could roll out pizza dough in four-foot-by-four-foot sheets.
    “He also made something he called ‘Coo-Coo Fritz’; it was dough filled with mozzarella, Parmesan, and all different kinds of cheese. And then he would deep-fry it.”
    Joe Tarricone could energize any group and a lot of people loved him. Rose remained quieter and more thoughtful. As her children grew older, she wanted to get a job. Joe pictured a marriage much like his parents’ union: he wanted to be the breadwinner and have Rose stay home. But Rose had had a taste of forced independence during the months when her husband was away in the service and she was alone with their children.
    “She got a job in Old Town in Albuquerque,” Gypsy says. “It was in a specialty candy store and she was really good at rolling chocolates—so good that she was offered a management job there. But the woman who had that job was older, and an alcoholic. Mom said she just couldn’t accept if it meant that woman lost her job.”
    Joe made good money most of the time. He worked mostly in sales, selling everything from the Famous Schools job training courses to gas to meat. While he and the family lived in Seattle, he owned the Shamrock gas station under the viaduct in south Seattle. He had a huge billboard with his picture on it, and it said, HI! MY NAME IS JOE! That became a familiar sight to drivers.
    When he sold memberships to Famous Schools, he outsold most of his peers. One year, he was given a valuable painting as first prize in a sales competition. Joe could sellanything, and his customers were always glad when he came by.
    “When we were in Washington State,” Gypsy recalls, “we lived in Lower Preston, a very small town east of Seattle, and our house had a Coleman stove. Sundays were still special days for us. Mom got us all up and dressed, and Dad dragged us to church at Our Lady of Sorrows in Snoqualmie. Mom started the spaghetti sauce the night before, and she stayed home getting Sunday dinner ready. We all went out for hot chocolate after church, and then we went to K-Mart. My