As a self educated writer, business man, teacher, and historian, I have journeyed great distances encountering life's many pains, sorrows, joys, and happiness in my quest for knowledge. What began as a personal journey to find where I belonged in this maze of life, became in essence an education taught face to face by the many and varied peoples I met along the way. Little did I know that purpose was laced throughout these times.

My journey began long before I left home, but it was my quest to discover the meaning of life and family at eleven years of age that truly became my beginnings! Ernest Holsendolph of The Atlanta Journal/Constitution, in a front page article, described me fairly well, and I quote: "Fatherless since he was eight, he left home, first at age 11. And like a Charles Dickens character, Mr. Scarfone scrambled about on his own, making a living from odd jobs and his wits..."

Those wits were wits of a continued endeavor to find a home in which to rest my aching heart. Through out my journeys, God in fact had gifted me with a place of my own. I refused to sleep upon HIS bed of comfort, a bed that produces sleep so pure and refreshing that each awakening is new and alive with joy and revelation. I refused to welcome HIS roof of warmth and HIS walls of strength that protect us with mighty powers of dedication and perseverance. And yet HE never quit in HIS just way to educate me for my purpose with HIM.

Purpose remains the most confusing agenda which we must address each and everyday. For without spiritual purpose life is mundane and has no true meaning. When folks are faced with day to day, spiritless, mortal living, they become leaves in the wind thrust hither and dither upon this vast earth in perpetual search of answers -- answers that are often right in front of them! Often, when I speak this way, I am told: "You make it seem so easy." I always reply: "It is easy if one is motivated through God."

I have long been gifted with an ability to tell stories with energy and enthusiasm, but it took a truth -- and the pain that sometimes is truth's companion -- to learn that one can only open ears and eyes and truly gather hearts and educate minds after one comes to possess the knowledge and truth of God's love and ultimate power. With this truth, one can bestow information that one can understand and believe in. Eventually this knowledge and compassionate understanding will reach the subconscious minds of those with out the truth or the will to face their legacy, thereby removing the ragged blossoms of doubt, hate, and contempt which are planted through seeds of despair and confusion.

Allow me to assure you, Father Figure and The Oath of Alphonso is not a "Mafia" story. Father Figure and The oath Of Alphonso is a revealing and true his-story of a mother's love and compassion; of ultimate understanding through faith in God and His ever loving mercy; of a mother's son whom must come to terms with his past; a proof of the existence of a families ability to beget more than their traditions-- even a wretched curse of continuation... of hate, sorrow, pain, and poverty...Yes, one can beget good or bad, one can alter or remain, but if one allows themselves to deny, forget, and or not care for "anything but themselves and their lives", their succeeding generations will have to pay the sometimes dear and expensive price of continuation!

We will begin our 75 year his-story with a Prologue, one which will identify your narrator, introduce a main character, my mother, Jeanette DiCanio, and end with an important question, one which will follow us throughout our journey: "Is there a God and life after death?" Then we enter Book One, The Oath of Alphonso. The Oath of Alphonso is a brief, fifty page expose of the facts and background for the principal characters of Book Two, Father Figure, our primary story. You will journey back in time and discover as I did, the awesome truth of a family whom, for one generation after another, are thrust into a world where only the ruthless and conniving even dare attempt to survive. A world composing four generations of cognate men and woman whom are drawn into subterfuge, each against the other, through the curse of Alphonso: A curse that was as real as the suffering of it's victims and their ultimate sacrifice.

Then. Book Two, Father Figure, will begin on the Easter Sunday morning of the death of my father. Jeanette will make a break from tradition -- if only a temporary one -- and Joe will be exposed to factors of life other than the "Wiseguy Man of Respect Mentality". Joe will not understand the facts of this change -- which he views as a sentence of life in a Ghetto of poverty, never to become a true Man of Respect like his father--are the beginnings of the end of the Curse of Alphonso: a curse he is yet unaware of! He will immediately look for blame--ultimately placing it on his family... and his mother! Thus begins the battle that will bring tears, anger, and laughter to your heart. You will feel the fright of Joe as he excepts the gauntlet of challenge from Pete and then cheer him on! You will wonder and think of ways to escape... wanting to say: "Why didn't he..." many times! And, you will be there when the revelation of Joe's family's past is revealed to him... and his reaction! Yes! Your emotions will move up and down to the pied-piper tune of the revelations of Father Figure and The Oath of Alphonso! Journey you will: through cultures and ways and lands so varied and vast, they will be alien to most of you. Joe's memories, in a dictionary of emotions, will take you along for more than a mere ride into a fantasy of life.... along with visions of landscapes, from desert moonscapes of the Mexico's, to a California sun set viewed from a snowy mountain peak, Father Figure will incite you to a journey with in yourself! Yes, I also desired to entertain you as well as inform you!

From these pages on, the his-story truly begins: Father Figure and The Oath of Alphonso becomes truly more then simply a story of rigid fact; it is one of gentle persuasion in the face of savage reality. A touching of minds, hearts, and souls upon a slice of time; minute and insignificant in this vast universe of reality-- yet much to many! Father Figure must be told as it was and is: a complete and fascinating revelation of life and death, and of poverty and it's legacy of continuance--with all it's good and bad. Though, I have disguised all offensive language with "asterisk speak", scenes of violence were included within it's pages. For, in order for this story to reach into your very soul, it's life had to be depicted as it occurred.

I have legions of folk to thank for the many important lessons of life which made me whom I am today. To those whom nourished me, protected me, and forgave me when I sometimes "bit the hand that fed me", I deliver my story so that you may share in the great rewards of our Creator! For you, my times of trepidation eventually became times of joy!

Yes! It is incredible that we can rejoice in memory of horrid experiences and put to voice HIS truth and justice. Can you believe that? Is it not fantastic that God gifts us with the abitity to shed the skins of so many snakes? Yes, faith and perseverance achieves all!. Just maybe, a young man, a young woman, a mother or father, lonely in spirit, hungry of mind and thirsting to belong will be swept along this journey of truth and history and discover their power through HIM; Our Lord and Savior, Our spiritual Father Figure--Jesus Christ! For, only through faith is purpose revealed! So, with much joy and purpose in life, I Praise HIM. Thus, my fears, hungers, and pains have become but a few yellowed pages of my life....