Pencil tip has been hand sharpened. Shape is round, painted and then lacquered. Lettering runs around the pencil. The eraser is attached to the pencil with a metal band. Pencil used by John Losasso at the Denargo Market.
From the book Italy in Colorado by Alisa DiGiacomo:
John Losasso
John Losasso, one of eleven children born to Paschal J. and Elizabeth (Figliolino) Losasso, was born in Denver in 1912. His father was born in New York (his mother went into labor as the ship entered U.S. waters) in 1875 to Gerardo and Filomena Losasso who settled in Denver in 1878. John’s mother was born in Naples, Italy in 1879 and came to the United States with her parents Andrew and Mary (Romellino) Figliolino in the 1890s.
The son of a produce grower and peddler, John helped his father deliver orders from Paschal’s horse-drawn wagon. He would ride behind his father, hop down at a stop, collect the order and then carry it into the house for the customer. Produce sold from the wagon was grown by John’s parents on a one-acre plot next to their home at Thirty-fifth and Pecos. Recalling his mother and the garden, John said, “I thought her day would never end. She cooked all day and helped dad in the garden. She’d pick stuff and help him wash it.”
At the age of thirteen, John left school to work in the produce business full-time. He worked for his brothers at State Fruit and Vegetable Company and for other produce sellers, loading trucks and delivering the produce to grocery stores. In the late 1930s, he started his own business, and in 1939 opened American Fruit and Produce at the Denargo Market. The business, referred to as a “Jobber store,” primarily sold produce to local grocery stores in Denver.
At the Denargo, sellers specialized in different kinds of produce. One of John’s specialties was watermelons. Known as the “watermelon king,” he dealt in large shipments of the fruit that others avoided because of the difficulty in packing, shipping and unloading the item, especially in large quantities. John and his crew would unload the watermelons one by one, shipped in bulk by the boxcar, sort them and then wheel them into his Denargo store.
While serving in World War II, John married Mildred Haas in 1945 and together the couple had two children: LaVel and Linda. After the war, John returned to the produce business, which during the 1950s began to change as neighborhood grocery stores were being replaced by supermarket chains that relied less and less on wholesale produce brokers, opting instead to purchase produce in other states, then ship it by truck and air to their store. Ultimately, these changes led to John’s retirement, when in 1978, after nearly seventy years in the produce business, he sold American Fruit and Produce.