St Michael, The Terror of Children

This is St. Michael, The Archangel, the patron of our little family town in Foggia, Italy. Obviously, you get the connection since everyone in our family is named Michael, spelled in one form or another. When they went through Italian and French, they started on Spanish! There are no end to the pet names: Michaline, Michaela, Scappyannmickarotti (my Grandfather Brown's contribution and a sort of protest of these foreign monikers).

Why "The Terror?" My Grandparents lived in a long narrow row house in Cleveland. This statue stood in a dark corner next to the attic door in the upstairs bedroom. The stair case opened directly into this room and there was no way to avoid his eyes as you darted pellmell into the front bedroom and slammed the door. St. Michael stood at least five feet tall on his pedestal and the tilted, black face of the devil with his red lolling tongue was exactly at the face level of people who were four feet tall; or there abouts! Every child in the family was afraid the devil would win or St. Michael would get down and lay about with that vicious sword. You never knew when your sins were going to catch up with you. To make matters worse, our grandfather took each of us up to look at St. Michael, so he could tell us in his Italian accent about this fine saint who saved our town and how the town made his armor for him as a gift. Then he would tell us how he and my father created the statue to always honor the family patron.
To this day, St. Michael reigns in my Aunt Lucy's house, just as tall, but less frightening because he is in a brightly lighted place. But there are still plenty of little people who refuse to go in the room. There were teenagers who would not sleep in a room with St. Michael. I know, because I was one of them! The current betting is on who will get St. Michael in the next generation. Who wants St. Michael sitting in a dark corner? Jim or Mike, or Sam, or Me? A Halloween treat year round!