Interview: Fred Mannarino
Artist and Brooklyn native Fred Mannarino lives in the house he had built 29 years ago in Spring Hill, Florida. Mannarino is now 87 years old and remembers a stunning amount of details from his Williamsburg, Brooklyn childhood during the 1930s until the 50s. Yet, as he pointed out with a laugh; “Although I can remember when I delivered the Brooklyn Eagle in the 1940s when it cost just a nickel, but hell, I’m getting so old now I can’t remember what I was doing an hour ago.” His father, Joseph Mannarino, was an immigrant from Calabria, Italy, who came directly to Brooklyn when he was 13 years old. During his teens he worked in German restaurants as a potato peeler making $37 a week, which was where he learned how to cook. His mother was also from Calabria. She was a seamstress and played the “numbers” a lot. Once she won really big and was able to buy the family a diner that was for sale on Flushing Avenue.
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