"Neal Stephenson & Frederick George - Interface" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

had bypassed the large Italian communities on the East Coast and found work in a coal mine about thirty
miles southwest of Tuscola, where soil and coal were the same color. He and his son Guiseppe had gone into
the farming business, snapping up one of the last available parcels of high-quality land. In 1912, Guiseppe
and his wife had their first child, Giovanni (John) Cozzano, followed three and five years later by Thomas
and Peter. All of these events were recorded in photographs, which Cozzano would be more than happy to
explain to visitors if they made the mistake of expressing curiosity, even allowing their eyes to stray in that
direction. Most of the photos featured buildings, babies, or weddings.
John Cozzano (photo) lost his mother to influenza at the age of six and, from that point onward, lived his
life as if he had been shot from a cannon. During his high-school years in the vigorous 1920s he held down a
part-time job at the local grain elevator (photo). By the time economic disaster struck in the 1930s he had
worked his way up into the management of that business. With one foot in his father's farm and the other in
the grain elevator, John was able to get the family through the Depression in one piece.
In 1933, John fell in love with Francesca Domenici, a young Chicago woman. As evidence of his fitness
to be a husband, he decided to buy an enormous stucco Craftsman house on a tree-lined brick street on the
edge of Tuscola (photo). Even by the standards of Tuscola, which had an inordinate number of large and
magnificent houses, it was a beaut: three stories, six bedrooms, with a full basement and a garage the size of a
barn. All of the woodwork was black walnut, thick as railroad ties. He was going to buy the place for five
hundred dollars from a railway company man who had gone bankrupt. At this time, John had only three
hundred dollars in the bank, and so he was forced to borrow the remaining two hundred.
This quest eventually led him to Chicago, and to the doorstep of Sam Meyer (photo), formerly Shmuel
Meierowitz. Sam Meyer operated a number of coexisting businesses out of a single storefront on Maxwell
Street, on Chicago's near west side (photo). One thing he did was lend money. Sam's son was named David;
he was a lawyer.
Every Italian person John Cozzano had ever spoken to for more than about ten minutes had
spontaneously warned him of the danger of borrowing money from Jews. He had accepted these warnings
at face value until he overheard Anglo-Saxons in Tuscola warning each other, in exactly the same terms, of
the dangers of borrowing money from Italians. John borrowed the money and bought the house. As soon as
he had cleaned all the junk out of the basement and taken care of a dire flea infestation, he went back up to
Chicago and proposed to Francesca.
He bought a ring from Sam Meyer on credit and they were married in Chicago in June 1934. After a
short honeymoon at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island (photo), they moved into the big house in
Tuscola. Within eleven months, John had repaid all of his debts to Sam Meyer, and he discovered that,
contrary to legend, it was possible to carry on a financial transaction with a Jew without forfeiting your shirt,
or your immortal soul.
This planted a seed in his mind; he might be able to buy the grain elevator on credit and get rid of the
feeble old man and the incompetent drunk whom he had been working for. John spent the rest of the 1930s
buying the elevator and then trying to develop it into something bigger: a factory to convert corn into other
things. Francesca spent the same time trying to get pregnant. She had four miscarriages but kept trying
anyway.
As of the beginning of 1942, when America entered the war, John Cozzano, Mr. Domenici, Sam Meyer,
and David Meyer were partners in Corn Belt Agricultural Processors (CBAP), successful corn syrup
production facility in Tuscola, Illinois (photo). John and Francesca were the parents of a brand-new baby boy,
William A. Cozzano (photo), who by that time was the fourth grandchild of Guiseppe. He was, however, the
first grandson. Everyone who laid eyes on the new baby predicted that he would one day be President of the
United States.
Thomas joined the army, was sent in the direction of North Africa, but never got there; his transport
ship was sunk by U-boats in the North Atlantic. Peter found gainful employment as a Marine sniper in the
Pacific. In 1943 he was taken prisoner by the Japanese and spent the rest of the war starving in a camp. John
was both too old and, as a farmer, too strategically important to be sent off to war. He stayed home and tried to
keep the family enterprises afloat.