Nick Bello is a writer and photographer based in Park Slope. He loves to capture local scenery as well as research local history. Follow him on Instagram @nbello8 or on substack at:
Atop the glass patio table before me, in the backyard of artist Bettina Magi’s Red Hook home on Coffey Street, are a bowl of cherries, a bowl of nuts and two cannon balls from the Revolutionary War. Magi points to the fig tree at the back of her yard. It grew from a clipping from her father’s childhood home in Italy that he brought here in 1914, sneaking it under his coat as his boat made its way past the Statue of Liberty toward Ellis Island. Magi says the cannon balls were found under that fig tree by her son Paul under unfortunate circumstances.
Years ago when Paul was young, he had a bunny named Barrington who died and was buried under the fig tree. Barrington was named after Great Barrington, the town in Massachusetts where they got him. To bury Barrington, who was a rather large bunny, Paul dug a two-foot hole beneath the fig tree under the watchful eye of his mother. In the process of digging the hole, Paul unearthed the two cannon balls, stunning Bettina.
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