The Brandy Still Flows...

this is an "original" erasure story by Anita C. Fonte based on the original written by Corey Kilgannon, New York Times, 4/8/2017 "The Brandy Still Flows at His Fountain of Youth". The "erasure story" is a concept developed by Austin Kleon in his book, Steal Like An Artist.

photo by Anita C. Fonte at Ralph P. Fonte's birthday, Tucson, Arizona, February, 2013

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"The problem with turning 107 is that you can't work no more."

Until a few years ago, he tended Mario's parking lot, while working as a waiter of sorts.  Besides Mario's on Wednesdays, he goes on Saturday nights to Pasquale's Rigoletto restaurant down the block, where he dances with his girlfriend and performs burlesque songs.

He is Jewish and was raised by Yiddish speaking parents in Brooklyn, but now is more conversant in Italian.  He jokes that he was born Jewish but will die Italian.  Regarding his health, he said that more or less, "everything works."

"People plan, God laughs," he said.

Excerpt from "Family Members"

I wrote three descriptions (this is one of them) in response to a prompt from The Creative Writer's Notebook, complied by John Gillard.  In the style of James Joyce, the prompt was to write descriptions with a word count that matched the person's age in years and offeres a variety in sentence length.

Mark (age/word count 64):  As my husband ages, years of riding a motorcycle collapse his upper body into a permanent curve.  I worry about his heart.  Is it getting stuffed into the pillow of his stomach?  His feet itch from a fungus that also crusted his fingers.  But it's not all bad. The fingers have healed. And now he is more open to what lies beyond the desert road.