The article below was published many years ago (I’d reckon at least twenty) in a glossy Pittsburgh magazine. Growing up, my family lived in an neighborhood in the east end of the city, surrounded by my mother’s family. The entire neighborhood was at one time owned by my great grandfather, but over the years, he parceled the land and sold it away. Still, most of his immediate family still lived in the neighborhood, congregated in houses along The Drive. That’s where I grew up. The article was written as a tribute to my great grandfather. The author was a neighbor, Chuck Husak — an outsider, as it were — who found some inspiration in the life of Anthony Yacaboni.

My neighbor Mitch is raking leaves in his backyard looking like someone laced his Maxwell House with amphetamines. What’s stranger, it’s Sunday afternoon, the time of the week he can’t be budged from his football games. He explains by nodding toward an upstairs window in the big red house next door. “The eyes are upon me,” he says, the words of a beaten man.

Instantly, I understand. Mitch is doomed to rake until he gets his lawn pooltable perfect. The eyes, of course, belong to Grandpaps.

Anthony Yacaboni is ninety-one now, getting stronger every day. He’s Johnny Appleseed, Picasso, Buckmeister Fuller, and Will Geer. He’s a prime mover and a motivator. A man who, with his bare hands, designed and built an entire neighborhood from scratch. A man who uses hedge clippers the way a neurosurgeon uses hemostats. A man who looks at an old stump, and envisions a table, and presents you with an extraordinary piece of hand-hewn furniture two days later. A man who could tell Marlin Perkins a few things about wild birds. And Ewell Gibbons a few things about wild hickory nuts.

To full experience the scope of this man, it’s first necessary to experience The Drive — a plot of land tucked away in a corner of East Liberty, bearing little resemblence to the rest of that concrete community. The Drive is a five acre, wooded fairyland, complete with flowers, manicured hedges, goldfish ponds, stone statues, vegetable gardens, flagstone paths, pheasants, raccoons, and six rather unusual homes, all connected by a winding lane known as, if you’re catching on, The Drive.

The Drive takes on different aspects in different seasons. IN the fall, you’re reminded of a postcard from Vermont. In winter, the scenario from Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening. Springtime, a set from Babes in Toyland. In the summer, The Drive is nothing less than a giant, spectacular miniature golf course. This is the domain of Grandpaps.

A landscaper in his working days, Grandpaps bought this piece of land when it was just a field around 1921. With his shovel, wheelbarrow and back, he transformed it into the kind of showplace that never fails to drop people’s jaws the first time they see it. Drive residents have heard the comments before. “How’d you ever find this place, man?” “I thought Disneyland was in Florida.” Or just “I don’t believe it.”

As his family grew, Grandpaps and his sons built homes to accomodate the Yacaboni clan. One son, and architect, built an experimental dome house that looks like something out of Close Encounters. Another house has a 50-foot tulip tree coming up through the living room floor, out through a skylight in the ceiling. Today, four generations of Yacaboni descendants inhabit The Drive. And a handful of “outsiders” like myself.

Grandpaps comes down for a visit. He walks you around the grounds, pointing at towering trees. “I planted 57 years ago,” he says with a thick Italian accent that keeps you listening closely. He stops at a little alcove with stone benches designed so ingeniously they look like a natural formation. “I carried each rock, one at a time.” Suddenly, it dawns on you that most people don’t know what hard work really is.

It’s commonplace when the weather’s not too rude to come home at night and find all your leaves raked into a gigantic pile. Or all your bushes trimmed, the clippings stacked neatly, ready for disposal. Grandpaps, helping out.

He points outs various projects you may want to consider. “Build wood floor, put garbage cans on top, move over here so no one sees.” Moments later, after he leaves, you find yourself looking around for two-by-fours, your plans for the day postponed.

Grandpaps in his toolshed. A rickety shack, decked out his antique hoes, saws, and shovels, old burlap sacks, push lawnmowers, flower pots, and handyman bric-a-brac, the feeling inside is almost religious. As if you’re in a chapel, surrounded by holy, ancient artifacts. The handles on the tools are worn smooth from his hands. Each tool broke years ago, was mended in earnest, broke again years later and was again fixed. These are honest-to-goodness tools, the real McCoy, Harley-Davidson heavy duty, forged in cast iron. Absolutely nothing in common with the plastic rake I bought at Sears for $3.99, then hid so Grandpaps wouldn’t find it and think I was some kind of jerk for buying. When he found it, he tactfully ignored it. Next day, he brought down his personal, pre-World War II indestructo-rake and demonstrated how to use it, remarked that I needed it more than he, turned and hiked back up The Drive. Anthony Yacaboni knows when he’s made his point.

This is the summertime Grandpaps, whipping The Drive into shape, doing the outdoor things he values highest. In many ways, his winter itinerary is even more remarkable. That’s when he takes his show inside the big red house he shares with his daughter and son-in-law.

Grandpaps leads you through the hallways, pausing to chuckle softly at the various knick-knacks he’s fashioned, as if he fondly recalls a special story behind each piece. He catches me admiring an old pastel-tinted photo of a heroic military figure on a charging stallion. “Italian cavalry, nineteen-fifteen,” he says with pride and affection. It’s Grandpaps himself in the picture, looking like Errol Flynn.

Down in his basement, Grandpaps works quietly, deliberately. Most everyone on The Drive has one of his hand-made bread baskets. Solid, intricate, proverbial old-world craftsmanship. His matching wicker wine bottle decanters are just as perfect. But Grandpaps is just tinkering.

He takes his stonework a litte more seriously. Tiny mantlepiece miniatures, oversize garden totems. Each with the unmistakable lines that are distinctively Grandpaps.

His work is priceless. Not because art collectors open bidding wars for his pieces. They well might, but Grandpaps’ work simply isn’t for sale. He’ll give you one, if you’re the mailman, the water meter reader, or just a neighbor. One day he’ll walk down, present you with his latest creation, wave off your thanks and wave so long. He know you’re grateful, and that’s enough.

So what’s his secret? Where does it say a 91-year old man should be able to pull weeds all afternoon, shoulder-to-shoulder with people one-third his age and end up with a bigger pile to show for it?

Well, he has several cousins close to his age, so longevity is a Yacaboni family trait. But he hasn’t smoked or had a drink in 60 years, either. And ever since an ulcer that came and went in (Teddy) Roosevelt’s term, he’s been a rather bland diet that never varies: fruit, some eggs, lots of cream and butter, home-grown vegetables, cottage cheese, creamy soup, occasional fish and poultry. Out are all spices, all sweets, tomato sauce, and all meat. It works.

If there’s a common feeling among all who meets Grandpaps, it’s best described as humble. He’s simply an overwhelming presence. More than anything, you want to do something for him. Show him something he’ll approve of — something you built or painted, some little invention you thought of first. But you may as well try to outperfrom Bruce Springsteen.

What he really likes, and it’s really all the rest of us can offer, is when we get up, get outside and dig, pull, chop and trim, doing our part to keep his Drive the only way he’ll tolerate it. Perfect.

To Mitch and me, it looks like the lawn is about finished. But on The Drive, final approval on such matters comes from a higher authority. So Mitch, the eyes upon him, keeps raking.

Posted on 30 October 2005