Here is a brief selection from the book to give you a taste of its stories:
"Luigi, the Lamplighter of Long, Long Ago"
We had to be lucky to see him because he usually came when we were having dinner, but it was a real joy to see Luigi, the Lamplighter. He was small and quick. He was well dressed for the part, with his sport coat and tie. I don’t think he had to be well dressed; his substitute wore old beat up clothes. He wore a newsboy cap like some of the Irish and Scots Irish people at Paddy’s Taproom and the Clearfield Bar do. He wore a scarf wrapped around his neck during in the winter. He never wore an overcoat or any coat except his sport coat. He never smiled or looked at anyone. He was there to do a job – he wasn’t being paid to make friends - and he was going to do it. You could see that on his face. He was sane and that meant a lot to me. Sane people were rare at times, especially those people who walked into alleys. He wore knee length galoshes, which could be washed off with a hose. I often wished that he had a handlebar mustache. He’d be a walking advertisement for Italian sausage or pizza if he did. His visible hair – under the cap – was black and full of Vitalis or Vaseline jelly.
He walked around the neighborhood carrying a stick-like gadget, like the lighter altar boys use to light tall candles. The gadget had a wax wick on the end of it. On his right shoulder, he carried a thin ladder about seven or eight feet long and a foot wide at the bottom. The wooden ladder tapered toward the top to four or five inches at the top. The ladder had a loop on the top of it. Our favorite Lamplighter put the ladder against the lamppost, which was at the turn in the alley where the vicious dogs lived behind the broken wooden fence, which the dogs broke. He put the loop around the pole for safety purposes. The lamp pole was at least thirty feet back from the curb on Carlisle Street. The post provided light for the yard behind us, where the neighbors had an annual pig roast. I thought it was meant to light up our street, but I guess not. Luigi climbed the ladder with the candle lighting gadget. I can’t remember if the wick on the end of the gadget was lit before he climbed the ladder or after he got to the top of the ladder. Anyway, Luigi lit the lamp, flipped the loop, descended the ladder, and pulled the ladder toward his shoulder. In a flash, the ladder was back around his shoulder and our Lamplighter was on his way to the next alley.
It was a wonderful sight to see and it took less than two minutes. The Lamplighter was as smooth doing his job as Robin Roberts was at pitching to Duke Snyder or Stan Musial or as Willie Mays catching a fly ball hit into deep left center or Pete Pihos running a pass play.