["Clap Click Tickle" by Miles Dylan and Harry Spencer]
- My name is Rob Rigano.
- Phil Rigano: What's your relationship to me?
- Rob: We're brothers, unfortunately, yes.
[both laughing]
- Phil: My brother, Robbie, loved coming here.
And our family had had an Airstream trailer,
so taking Robbie to StoryCorps was a natural fit.
What's your earliest memory, Rob?
- Rob: I rolled my Uncle Charlie's Dodge
into the street light. - Phil: Wait, what happened?
- Rob: Went down the driveway,
I jumped out of the car, and it went down the driveway.
- Phil: Into a telephone pole? - Rob: Yes. [laughing]
- Phil: Robbie is what they call developmentally disabled.
He knew he had limits,
but he had a way of just melting your heart.
Do you remember one time in Mom's station wagon...
- Rob: Yeah, I fell out. - Phil: Yeah?
And what were you doing,
playing with the doors while the car was driving?
- Rob: No, the locks were defected.
- Phil: So you weren't playing with the door handle?
- Rob: No, I think they had trouble with the locks
on that particular model car...
- Phil: I know you had trouble with the locks.
- Rob: And then another time, I bit a horse.
- Phil: No, you didn't bite a horse, Rob.
- Rob: I thought I did? [Phil laughing]
- Phil: The story was, you wanted to go up
and pet the horse, and the man said,
"Oh, that's okay, he can pet it, the horse won't bite."
And Mom said,
"I'm not afraid of the horse biting my son.
I'm afraid of what my son might do to the horse."
[Rob laughing]
Besides these shenanigans,
he ended up working at the Department of Public Works
for 30 years.
Where he got to walk around the streets
picking up litter, cleaning, sweeping.
And he got to know nearly every resident.
He was often referred to as "the real mayor"
by the people.
In fact, he would go around our neighborhood
to look in on our older neighbors.
And he would say,
"Well, who else is gonna do it?"
He just has that sense of what's right.
What's your happiest memory?
- Rob: Well, my happiest memory is when Dad took me
to learn how to swim.
But my dad's a little excitable. [Phil laughing]
- Phil: And why do you think that is, Rob?
- Rob: I think that's his nature.
- Phil: Yeah, not your nature, maybe, you know, doing things?
- Rob: No, that's his nature. - Phil: Rolling cars into trees?
- Rob: I don't do that anymore. - Phil: Oh, okay.
I was listening to this recording with my wife,
and she said, "Isn't it great to hear Robbie
being Robbie again?"
Because he came down with COVID more than once,
and his illness has really taken a toll
on his sense of humor.
He is not as effervescent as he used to be.
We miss those things because he was always a glue
that bound the family together.
He is a gem of a guy, and we all helped polish him.
Anything else, Rob?
- Rob: I think that's about it.
- Phil: That's all? - Rob: Yeah.
And next year, we could have stories about you.
["Paloma" by Fabian Almzan & Linda Oh]