Sal Lapio is taking it easy now, heading to work at 7 a.m. and heading home midafternoon, a sharp contrast to when he was running a gas station that was open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. six days a week. Two things justify the new routine. He’s 79. And, as the founder of Sal Lapio Homes, he’s the boss.

Yet, he still goes to work five days a week and doesn’t want to hang around his four-bedroom contemporary, which, of course, he built. “No way I can stay here,” he said. “It feels like jail.” Lapio embodies the classic immigrant story. He moved to the US in 1967 from Paternapoli, a small town east of Naples, “where there was not too much work, and the family had no money.”