I Grew Up Poor But Lived a Rich Life

Hi, Everyone,

I always remain so very grateful for the various blessings that I have received and experienced over the years. I appreciate everything, whether it be a new car or a fresh bar of soap.

And that's mostly because of the modest upbringing I received from my family while growing up during the 1960s and 1970s in the inner-city of Rochester, New York with a big Italian-American Catholic family. Each of my parents had ten brothers and sisters and, as a result, every day was a party. My father never made a lot of money, we didn’t have a lot of bills, but we had a lot of love.

With the essay below, I share a few of those lovely memories with you now, as I continue my journey of appreciation. I hope these recollections serve in some way, inspiring to everyone's journey.

Blessings to All,

Herbie J Pilato

I Grew Up Poor But Lived a Rich Life

For a good portion of my childhood, my family lived rent-free in the homestead of my mother’s family. It was a red-brick double house with a solid foundation of love. I lived on one side with my parents, Herbie and Frances Pilato, and my older sister Pam. Next door was my Aunt Elva Turri Easton, sister to my mom, her husband Carl Easton, and their daughter, my cousin Evie.

Numerous extended family members, neighbors, and friends were frequent visitors to “the house.”

Yep — our house was?“the house,”?the center of the family; the place where it all happened; where everyone we knew wanted to be.

It was a good life, even though my immediate family really had nothing of what this world calls secure. We were clean, and the house was spotless, but attaining, retaining, and saving money was always an issue.

Still, we ate well and loved God.

We attended church every Sunday morning and sat down to pasta dinner every Sunday afternoon. We also enjoyed pasta every Tuesday and Thursday at 4:30 PM and on Mondays and Wednesdays, it was either fried chicken or my Mom’s awesome chicken or lentil soup.

On Friday nights we went out to dinner.

Come Saturday night, various extended family members and friends would visit over the years, and we would gather around the TV to watch shows starring Lawrence Welk, or Jackie Gleason, while?The Hollywood Palace,?Petticoat Junction,?Mission: Impossible, among others, were other favorites.

In one very short time period, circa 1973–1974, television on both Friday and Saturday nights was heaven:

The ideal line-up for Friday evening:?The Brady Bunch,?The Partridge Family,?Room 222,?The Odd Couple, and?Love, American Style.

The next night:?All in the Family,?M*A*S*H,?The Mary Tyler Moore Show,?The Bob Newhart Show, and?The Carol Burnett Show.

Seriously…what more could anyone want from free evening entertainment in your own living room??And whatever we watched at night was usually discussed the next day, when my mom’s sisters would come over for morning coffee.

Television wasn’t the only topic of conversation, of course, and it wasn’t always pleasant, the TV shows or the conversation, but the gatherings of good people were consistently plenty.?And before every last drop of coffee was shared and enjoyed along with a daily danish or a dose of?coogan?everyone always kissed and made up.

There were many arguments between the laughter and the joy, but not a whole lot of divorces. Disagreements were in full discourse. But the yelling and screaming were only and soon followed by large portions of immediate forgiveness, with everyone moving on to the next adventure in life and emotion.

And those were just the daily activities.

With every season our family gatherings would expand in math and geography.

Each spring, the numerous family picnics would begin, while we summered throughout Upstate, New York, in places like Waterport and Honeoye Lake, where both my dad and mom had siblings who owned summer homes. We also vacationed in Canandaigua, and Lake George, while one year, I believe during my school spring break of 1968, we went as far as Miami, Florida.

That was a good year.

My dad’s brother Mac lived in Miami, and we stayed one week at the Gold Dust Motel, and the second week at Uncle Mac’s house.

I was only allowed one week's vacation from school, but somehow my parents worked it out with school officials that I could have an extra 7 days in Miami.

So, as I said, 1968 was a good year.

While the world, then unbeknownst to me, was falling apart with race riots, the Vietnam War, and various political assassinations, I began to fully embrace the love of pet animals and life.

I always had dogs and cats, several at one time, in fact. But it was during my vacation in Miami that I seemed to form an even more special bond with the little critters and living.

My Uncle Mac and his wife Anne had two happy, healthy dogs, with brown and black fur coats that shone so bright and clean. And I remember how Aunt Ann used to say, “I L.O.V.E. you” to both those adorable canines, who responded with the full embrace to those words of affection.

From that moment on in Florida and beyond, I learned to love and be more fully aware of what I would later label the?simple treasures of life, with which, in retrospect, I had always been enormously blessed.

Once back in Rochester in 1968, and every year and second forward, I began to realize just how crazy “rich in love” I was if lacking in economic status.

But the lack of funds never stopped my family, immediate or otherwise, from enjoying life. There were countless weddings, banquets, and birthdays, the latter at least once a week, with some cousin or aunt or uncle celebrating their co-existence with ours.

We always laughed and made sure to thank each other for everything…each happy night before we went to sleep.

That’s what it was like all the time.

We had “structure” at my house. It was a good, sound “foundational structure,” in the geographic, physical sense, and in every other emotional and psychological way — even on the challenging days which, as I matured, were more frequent than I realized because I felt so loved.

Herbie J Pilato?is a writer, producer, TV personality, and author of over 14 books about classic TV shows and their stars. Those include?RETRO ACTIVE TELEVISION, which the Los Angeles Book Festival just named?Book of the Year. Pilato’s other books include?MARY: THE MARY TYLER MOORE STORY, which Pete Hammond of Deadline.com called “…another one of Herbie J Pilato’s all-encompassing biographies.” Peter King of CBS News Radio hailed, “Herbie J Pilato is a true ‘keeper of the flame’ for classic TV. With?MARY: THE MARY TYLER MOORE STORY, he’s given us an extensive, humanizing look at one of the medium’s biggest icons; the good, the bad, and sometimes, the ugly. But it’s real.” Pilato is a former actor who appeared on classic TV shows like The Golden Girls, and a former NBC Page who worked on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. In his book,?NBC & ME: MY LIFE AS A PAGE IN A BOOK, Pilato shares the various experiences of working on several classic TV shows of the 1980s. As the author of two biographies of Bewitched TV star Elizabeth Montgomery (TWITCH UPON A STAR?and?THE ESSENTIAL ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY), Pilato has served as an executive producer, writer, and on-screen commentator for the acclaimed new Reelz TV documentary,?ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY: A BEWITCHED LIFE. Pilato was recently profiled in?Remind Magazine?(published by TV Guide), and?Closer Weekly Magazine. In 2019, Pilato hosted and co-executive-produced his own classic TV talk show,?THEN AGAIN WITH HERBIE J PILATO, which streamed on Amazon Prime, Amazon Prime UK, and Shout! Factory TV. Guests included actors Ed Asner, Burt Ward, Cindy Williams, Robert Conrad, David Selby, and more. In 2013, Pilato founded the Classic TV Preservation Society (CTVPS), a formal 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the positive social influence of classic television programming. For more information, please visit?HerbieJPilato.com.