by Anthony Buccino

‘In catholic school, our seats were used for many things besides sitting. It was in these seats with swivel back rests that fourth grade boys discovered a penny inserted into the swivel ‘just so’ would bend President Lincoln into a C.

Sister Dressed Me Funny adventures close to the edge through humility and humor with these chronicles of catholic school nuns, Cub Scout contests, Grandma's house in the country, junior high school bus antics and more.

Essays recount childhood the 1950s and 1960s and later in Belleville and Nutley, N.J.

Published by Cherry Blossom Press. 

Nonfiction/Memoir

On Amazon

Covers vary by edition

‘In catholic school, our seats were used for many things besides sitting. It was in these seats with swivel back rests that fourth grade boys discovered a penny inserted into the swivel ‘just so’ would bend President Lincoln into a C.

Penny benders got in trouble. When caught, they were warned that if the damage to government property continued, “God, help you, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would come and haul you away and lock you up for defacing government property.”

We didn’t know what defacing meant but we could picture Eliot Ness and his Untouchables bursting through the front and rear fourth grade doors, Tommy guns flashing and hauling away the bad boys....’

Dressed by Nuns

Sister Dressed Me Funny

Sister Dressed Me Funny

Table of Contents

Lardier's Fountain

Grandma's House In The Country

Bell The Cat

Cat Lick School Flashback

Dressed By Nuns

Billy Newtner's Bus Rides

The Abie Statement

No Christmas

Job Rock In Prose

No Place To Work

Don't Forget, It's A Birthday Party

Countless and 21

Who Is Brother, Uncle Bim

At Spatola's

Jewels At Thanksgiving 

One spring on the pipeline dump trucks, back hoes, cranes and lorries with giant long pipes appeared like giant dinosaurs. Back hoes dug down to our pipeline and loaded dirt into dump truck after dump truck after dump truck. When the workers left, we kids looked into the deep long muddy man-made crater. While standing in wide-eyed wonder at the pit that someone said would go all the way to China if they kept on digging, a wasp lit on my temple and buried its stinger there unto its death.

I ran screaming through the field, my hand on my swollen temple, sure I would die the death. I ran crying past the house where the white-haired Polish lady and her son, Eddie the plumber, lived. I ran crying past the Bill Ebeling’s house, who filled the gumball machines. I ran crying past the Greek lady’s house with the flat roof.

I ran crying bloody murder past the house where Benny Mosior and I watched the Three Stooges till we died laughing. I ran crying up the driveway, around the back porch, up the four concrete steps, past the door where Grandma used to corner my sister with a needle and thread and shove it in her face until she threaded the needle. I ran up the wooden stairs Grandpa Domenic and his compares built 40 years earlier, to the second floor apartment. I was crying too hard and out of breath to tell my mother what was wrong. She wet a washcloth and held me until my stinging soreness passed.

Grandma's House in the Country