The Italian-American Demigod

This column was published June 29, 2025 in the Manhattan Mercury.

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“Will you be on time?” “Yes.”

“Will you work hard?” “Yes.”

With a two question interview I was hired for what turned out to be a job that helped shape the way I think about loyalty and trust.

The interviewer was Jack Fasciano, 30-something manager of Angelo’s Italian Foods. I was 16 with long hair and a short attention span. And now, I was a busboy. Black pants, white shirt, white apron, and the pièce de resistance, a paper soda jerk-style cap with the distinctive Angelo’s graphic script in red and green letters on either side.

Jack was first generation American, son of Angelo Fasciano, who was born in Caltinisetta, Sicily and landed in Wichita to take a job at Boeing. Friends and neighbors liked Angelo’s cooking so much, he opened a restaurant, then another, then a third.

Jack’s Italian heritage was unmistakable. Mediterranean skin, black hair, mustache. He had these sweet, yellow-tinted aviator shades, alligator loafers and double-knit polyester pants. To teenage busboys in Wichita, Kansas in 1974, Jack Fasciano was an Italian-American demigod.

Jack had a little Sonny Corleone in him. His brother, Lenny, was a cook and they’d engage in crescendo-ing discussions which often ended with one of them shouting, “Vaffanculo!” (Look it up). 

When we’d encounter a fellow Angelonian in the high school halls, we’d greet each other with a hearty “Vaffanculo!” rendered incomplete without an accompanying gesture often associated with 16-year old know-it-alls. It was like our own little secret Sicilian society. With a patina of olive oil.

Bussing tables is an under-appreciated art form. Glasses first, then silverware, followed by plates, salad bowls, cups, saucers. Swoop the paper placemats and napkins into the trash bucket attached to the bus cart and wipe that table clean. I could do a four-top in 30 seconds.

Jack noticed. After three months, he gave me a dime raise, to $1.70 per hour. The job market for Wichita high schoolers in the ‘70s was strong, and the new Furr’s cafeteria down the street was beckoning, offering $1.90 to wash dishes.

Seeya Jack.

Furr’s wouldn’t give me a week off for a church youth group retreat, so I did what 16-year old know-it-alls do. I quit. But not before going back to Jack and asking for my old job back. I could start right after the retreat. I had learned a valuable way of the world. Get the new job before quitting the old one.

“I already hired a busboy.” Jack was unapologetic. He had a business to run. I never even had a chance to remind him of my table bussing artistry. “But I could use a dishwasher.”

Deal.

Washing dishes at Angelo’s was hot, greasy and particularly nasty. Stacked up next to dishwashing, busboying was glamorous. You could engage with the customers, stay (relatively) clean, flirt with the waitresses, sneak the occasional zeppole.

I wanted back out in the restaurant so bad I hatched a plan to ice the new busboy. Whispered in his ear that Furr’s was hiring at $1.90 per. If I bit, maybe this kid would, too. Meantime, I parallel-tracked Jack and told him when his first busboy opening sprang up, he need look no further than his newest greasy dishwasher.

It worked. Jack didn’t have to hire me back. And he didn’t have to move me back to busboying.

I was beginning to catch on to the notion that impulsive decisions were nearly always bad and that if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. The other man’s eggplant is not always purpler.

Through time and experience, these lessons would become baked into my m.o. But the Italian-American demigod planted the seed.

Mike Matson’s column appears every other weekend in The Mercury, and he hosts ‘Within Reason,’ weekdays at 9 a.m. on NewsRadio KMAN. Follow his writings at mikematson.com