Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a house on 7 Prescott.

Behind the walls of this simple edifice, the history of one family can be traced. No heads of state were born here. No titans of industry. No sports heroes. Just some commonly uncommon folks – veterans of wars, hard work and raviolis. 

This house was built on top of the cooled embers of the Great Salem Fire by my grandfather, Giuseppe Giunta, a Sicilian immigrant who died forty years before I was born. None of us now living ever had the chance to meet him and with only a single solemn portrait to ponder, we have all speculated about his character and his life. What was he like? What did he go through coming to this country, raising such a large brood, buying a house, seeing it burn to the ground eleven days after he paid it off, and then building a completely new one? Just a couple years after his house was constructed he was struck by a motorcycle, hit his head on a trolley track and died on the corner of Lafayette Street and Ocean Ave. All we really know is that he was persistent and incredibly unlucky.