Disclaimer: (The following story is pure fiction. All names, places and events are coincidental and are only used to embellish the story.)Ancestral Seeds - (Adventures of The Romeo Gang)
by Mark Ryan © 2009
Mary’s wake was held at an old neighborhood funeral home located on a side street in Winthrop. She had several surviving sisters and a brother who greeted us in the main room. Mary was a great friend and very active in educational circles. Friends from all over sent their condolences and those at the wake remembered Mary by sharing stories about how she affected their lives. After an hour, most of the Romeo gang had arrived and we all had a chance to share are stories with Mary’s family. The Romeos are a group of retired educators who meet periodically for lunch and camaraderie.
After attending the wake, a few of the Romeos decided to go for dinner at a local restaurant along the beach in Winthrop. This was a small Italian place called Café Rosetti which was run by two brothers who also did the cooking. We had been here a few times before and the food was always great but you had to bring your own bottle, BYOB.
Joe brought a few bottles of his home made wine that he shared with the others. He named the wine after his father, (Pa’s Zinfandel). The wine went well with the Italian dishes as the aroma of tomato sauce, garlic, spices and pasta filled the air. Joe said that the wine was made from grapes that his father had grown at the family house in Somerville and originally from native vines that he had brought over from Italy. After dinner, we followed Joe to his car and he gave each of us a bottle of wine that he wanted to share with friends. Joe said that drinking wine every day was good for a long and healthy life and was a tradition in his family.
Joe also told us that he attended a wine making course at the Boston Winery where he learned more about the wine making process and made about 300 bottles from his father’s grapes. The whole process took about six months. As part of the course, all the wines were tested for flavors, color, bouquet and chemical content. From the tests, Joe found out that his wine had a deeper red color and contained large concentrations of Resveratrol which is an anti aging agent. The concentration was 100 times more than in any other red wines and current research has shown that this chemical can extend man’s longevity.
Curious about this and the fact that many of his relatives had lived past 100 years, he decided to investigate this more and contacted some researchers at MIT and Harvard University who were studying the aging phenomena. Dr. David Sinclair at Harvard and Leonard Guarente of MIT believe that reservratrol works by activating a protein known as sirtuin. They found that aging occurs when cell chromosomes break down. However, sirtuin rebuilds them and restores them to good health.
Hearing Joe’s story, Dr. Sinclair agreed to help and asked his lab assistant Tom Russo to assist Joe with gathering some information about his family ancestral tree. This would include ages of birth and death, places that they lived and other health and environmental factors. The information might help provide evidence for red wine and living longer.
Since Joe had already planned a skiing vacation to Tuscany and the Italian Alps, he would also take a side trip to a little village west of Palermo where his mother and father were born and gather some genealogical data. After skiing and staying in a vacation villa in Tuscany, Joe took the Eurail Train and arrived in Palermo where he met some of his relatives and learned that many of his older aunts and uncles lived to a ripe old age. Living out in the country side, they were free of environmental pollutants and were not prone to diseases like cancer and heart diseases. As he learned more about his family tree, he tried to document the information with photos and copies of family records.
Most family records were kept in the local church since the country of Italy was ruled by different conquers over the last few centuries and government record keeping was scarce. When Napoleon conquered Italy he mandated local government records while he was in power from 1804 to 1815. It wasn’t until 1866 that the ruling Italian government was stabilized and again began to keep records.
He visited the local church where the parish priest showed him the old church records of births, deaths and marriages dating as far back as 1300. Although Joe’s family tree could only be traced back a few hundred years, the village had a long history and was in a farming area since the first century during the early days of Christianity and wandering apostles.
The priest also told Joe that a local legend claimed that the church was built with rocks from a nearby quarry but that the corner stones were a gift from wandering missionaries who traveled from across the Mediterranean. The missionaries also gave the church elders other gifts including biblical relics, plants, herbs and grape vines. Among the biblical relics were an old testament and a book of healing potions. Knowing Joe would put the information to good use; the priest gave him the book of potions to borrow.
In recent years, translations of the Old Testament and the book of Genesis revealed stories of the origin of man, the great flood, and the names of ruling kings with their ages. Some of the kings listed were Methuselah 969 years, Noah 950 years, and Adam 930 years. The book of potions described various medical treatments for ailments and diseases and elixirs to extend life. The longevity elixirs were actually wines made from special grapes mixed with special herbs like the ones given to the local church.
After Joe had returned home from Italy he went back to MIT to share his knowledge with the lab assistant Tom Russo. When Tom heard this information he saw the enormous power and wealth that it could bring him. At that moment he knew that he had to have the book of potions and the secret elixir for himself and stop Joe from revealing the information to anyone else. Catching Joe off guard, Tom hit Joe on the head with a bat and knocked him unconscious. He then gagged and tied Joe up and put him in a locked lab closet to which he had the only key.
On that same day the Romeos had planned another lunch date in Cambridge. However, when Joe hadn’t showed up they all got worried and tried to contact him. We called his home and cell phone but there was no answer. Luckily all Romeos have a GPS locator on their cell phones which located him still at MIT. We all had a special GPS App on our cell phones that was programmed to track the location of all Romeos.
We called the MIT Lab and we were told that Joe had visited earlier that day but had already left. Knowing that this was not the case, I got the gang together and decided to make a surprise visit to MIT. However, after Tom got my phone call he knew we would come looking, so he decided to start a fire in the lab to destroy any evidence and get rid of Joe at the same time.
Luckily, the Romeo gang was already in Cambridge for a lunch meeting, so it was a short ride over to MIT. When we got there the lab building was on fire. In a panic I contacted the firemen on the scene and told them about the GPS signal from Joe’s phone. They quickly pinged and triangulated the phone location and found Joe locked in the closet and unconscious.
Joe was rushed to the hospital and later regained consciousness and recalled what Tom Russo had done. Tom was quickly arrested and sent to prison for a long time. Unfortunately, the book of secret potions was destroyed in the fire along with all the ancient remedies and the recipe for the elixir of life.
Months later Joe continues to drink his home made wine and looks forward to many future years telling this story to all his great, great, great grandchildren. Maybe someday someone else will discover the secret of life but for now he was content to just sit back and enjoy each day.
Comments: Send email to markryan82@comcast.net
Acknowledgements:
Many thanks to the Romeo gang for their camaraderie and providing me the general background and ideas for my imaginary tales.
References:
Aging and Red Wine
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/25/60minutes/main4752082.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/health/27aging.html
Biblical Longevity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah
Family Tree and Church Records
http://genealogy.about.com/od/italy/a/family_tree_2.htm
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