A Proud Family

In the 1940's, East St. Louis' many second generation immigrants from Europe lived in proximity to parents/grandparents mostly for language support but also for cultural preferences. I suppose that was understandable segregation. I still remember the East St. Louis areas known as French Village and the other ethnic neighborhoods, I.e. Germans, Italian, Polish, Greek, Blacks, etc.

The Roustios were not Italian descendants as many would believe. Imagine some teacher decided to change the spelling from Rousteau-to-Roustio. Many of the Roustio clan not only lived in the same area, hell they lived on the SAME street...56th Street in Washington Park, which was near Chemical Companies where they worked. The Roustios were fun-loving, game playing, beer drinking, competitive, feisty and oft-times fighting folks.

 I don't recall ever going to Grandpa and Grandma Roustio's house that their was not a card game, dominoes game or intricate picture-puzzle building going on; sometimes all three. Grandpa Frank never passed up a chance on teasing, sometimes pretty strongly. You had to be tough skinned around Frank. Grandma Rosedelle was a big strong women. Perhaps, 5'9 & 165 pounds and not a bit of fat. When I took my girlfriend (wife-Gerry) to meet Grandma Rosedelle (1955), she was carrying two 8" concrete blocks from the back of a pickup truck to a shed she was building.

My immediate family became a bit more colorful with our table-board-games as we abandoned card games and Dominoes for Shoots & Ladders, Parcheesi and Uno. Ah, but there was nothing more fun and more entertaining than a backyard game of Croquet. My father and his neighbor-buddies approached the match with strategy akin to the Normandy Invasion. Oh, they pretended that having their ball hit by another player's ball and then driven half way down the alley didn't bother them but their pouty body language told a much different story. Poor Sherrill believed everybody picked on him. As Archie sang, "Those were the days."