Donato De Simone: a Portrait of Determination and Resilience

Prologue

I’ve been trying to write this piece for over a year and a half. It’s not easy to put into words the feelings I have for my father. To pay tribute to him is a complex task, because he was a complicated man. On the one hand, he was dynamic, affable, inspiring, and on the other, he could at times be stubbornly uncompromising, especially in his later years. When I would complain about this and try to get him to see another point of view, he would say, “Pia, I am a man of convictions”. I often chalked up his lack of “diplomacy” to the fact that he was brought up by his mother, who apparently was of similar character, and who raised him alone for over 14 years.


Single parenthood in 1930s Italy was perhaps even more complex than today. A mitigating factor might potentially have been the presence of his father or the influence of the extended family as he was growing up, but in his case, the extended family environment on his father’s side was hostile, while his dad lived thousands of miles away. This, the war, and his other early hardships seemed to have left him with a hunger to reclaim what he had lost, that served as a catalyst for his personal ambitions. In other words, hardship didn’t leave him crying over himself, it instead seemed to boost his confidence, but in some way, it changed his sensitivity. This may have been a survival tactic that served to bolster a frightened boy who probably felt overwhelmed by life at certain times.


As a young father, he tried to instill in us the solid values he’d grown up with, especially in terms of faith. He would stand in the hallway between the boys’ and girls’ bedrooms and we would say our prayers together every night. I still remember that when I was little, he used to give us our baths at night. He would put me in the washing tub in the laundry room, because it was more comfortable for him than the bathtub. Then he would wrap me in a big towel on top of the washing machine, and call me “Big chief Nincompoop”.

Music was another element at the basis of our family. And not just any music. Italian Opera was his passion and he exposed us to it from when we were tiny babes. We often went to concerts and operas at the Academy of Music and The Met, something that most other children did not do.

His other passion was all things Italian. His understanding and pride in Italian culture constituted his very Essence as a human being. He managed to mesh it in and make connections to it even in his American Literature classes. He instilled this deep love in each of his children.


It’s hard to accept when our parents start showing signs of aging. In his last few years, the aspect that stood out more than anything else was his loneliness, something that seemed as foreign to me as if he’d suddenly started going to discos. He would complain to me that he was lonely, but in reality, he seemed to want to be “with people” only on his own terms.

Amazingly, he learned to cook at age 80 after my mother died, and every weekend he gave my sister Rosanne a lot of cleaning up to do, at the expense of quality time. After a couple of incidents when he almost burned down his place, he finally accepted that someone else would have to prepare his meals. Even so, he ate very sparingly, and had cravings only for foods that reminded him of his childhood: pizza e foje (broccoli rabe with corn meal “pizza”) or baccalà, or some other complicated, out of season or impossible-to-get food. Then, when my brother, Francis would make it for him, he wouldn’t even eat it. Like many seniors, he seemed to be lost in the past, maybe because the present was too hard to accept. I wouldn’t call it dementia, though. His capacity to reason was as sharp as ever. About a year before he died, we were talking about some situation that sparked a lesson about the literary tool of irony. Needless to say, that conversation left me in awe and made me smile. But, still, it’s hard to accept the changes that age brings with it.


A few years ago, I read “Go, Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee just after it came out. I was looking forward to reading this new work by this great writer who was, and remains one of my favorites. “To Kill a Mockingbird”, and the relationship between Scout and Atticus Finch mirrored my feelings toward my dad and thus had a huge influence on my youth and early adulthood. Of course, having read Harper Lee’s masterpiece for my dad’s English class played a role in this connection. It seems that in much the same way, “ Go Set a Watchman” has left its mark on my older years; the adult protagonist casts away her rose-tinted glasses and is forced to look at her father under a more realistic light. I guess it’s something that comes with age.


In “Go Set a Watchman”, Scout’s realization that Atticus is not perfect causes a shift in her. However, it is a shift that she is able to recover from, because she realizes that, no matter what, he is still at the foundation of her sense of identity. Harper Lee sums it up like this: “She did not stand alone, but what stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life, was the love of her father. She never questioned it, never thought about it, never even realized that before she made any decision of importance, the reflex, ‘What would Atticus do?’ passed through her unconscious; she never realized what made her dig in her feet and stand firm whenever she did was her father; that whatever decent and of good report in her character was put there by her father; she did not know that she worshiped him.”


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WALKING IN STEP

When my dad was young, he used to walk to a different beat. I mean really; whenever he went anywhere on foot, he’d snap his fingers rhythmically, at times humming a tune, and fall into step naturally and decisively, as if he had places to go and things to do, which he did of course. And he was fast. Whenever we went anywhere with him, we’d be scurrying like ducklings trying to keep up with their mama. Except our mama always brought up the rear, and she’d complain that he needed to slow down. I believe that rhythmic, purposeful walk is the perfect metaphor for his life.


As Francis always says, it was as if he was driven; no matter what endeavor he undertook, and he continuously undertook endeavors, he was motivated by an unquenchable desire to learn, to be involved, to leave his mark. Otherwise, how could he possibly have worked 2 full time jobs for over 40 years? During his lifetime he had been a teacher, a lab technician at Merck, a cashier ringing up groceries at the Acme and Pantry Pride, a tour guide to Italy, an opera afficionado, a champion fighting for issues he felt strongly about. He did many of these things in the same time frame, while also earning three degrees. He couldn’t do anything practical as a “handyman”, but he had been a radio show host, an impromptu driving instructor for immigrant students, a tutor, a translator, and a writer, most especially of scathing letters denouncing pet peeves to the editor and readership of the Norristown Times Herald, and of course, of his book, “Suffer the Children: Growing up in Italy during World War II”. These were the things that I was certain about my father. But there is so much I didn’t know. Recently I’ve been given a fresh, surprising look into what his life as a teenaged immigrant to the US was like, from a packet of old letters that were sent to me by my brother after dad died. This is the most precious gift I have inherited from him. These letters have allowed me to become the proverbial fly on the wall, not only of his past, but my grandmother’s as well, because there are several letters that she’d written to her husband, detailing her trials and tribulations over the years.


With all of this material, plus the stories from my other, most important reference work, my dad’s book, I’ve been able to piece together my theory, that the source of my father’s drive was for the most part attributable to the influence of his mother, Maria Sorgini. Through thick and thin, she did her utmost to help him and his brother Philip not only survive the war, but thrive in its aftermath so they could have a chance at life. Therefore, to understand the man, I have had to take a step back to understand the woman who gave him life.


The most important goal for my grandmother was that her children had to get a well-rounded education. She wanted them to rise above the ignorance that surrounded them, principally in their own home, where they were quite often at the mercy of their petty, mean paternal grandparents. From her letters I learned how they systematically denied her and her children even the most basic of needs: a handful of flour to make pasta with or a safe haven in their country cottage when the first bombs started raining down on the town center, where they were living at the time. They had moved away from the DeSimone clan’s home a couple of years before, after the daily bickering with her father in law had distressed her one time too many.


The patriarchy that reigned in southern Italy had an unwritten set of rigid rules. The father figure was the dispenser of justice, discipline, and even basic necessities like food and clothing or a bed to sleep in. As a daughter in law in the absence of her husband, my grandmother had no rights. When she could no longer bear this situation, shortly before the war, she had taken courage and left with her two boys, returning to her family home in the center of town. That home was roomy and comfortable, and it was there that she set up shop as a seamstress and embroiderer. She was very skilled in both areas, very popular among the ladies in town. The house had been built by her father, Filippo Sorgini, with money earned in the United States. Nonno Filippo was in the States when the war broke out, and his plan to retire in Italy was thwarted by these circumstances. My paternal great grandmother, Concetta Sisti, was the rock that my grandmother, my dad, and my uncle counted on through those years and afterwards.


Nonna Maria was a very smart, independent-minded woman who had engaged an epic, unflinching battle with the patriarchal mentality of the time, which is just the way it was in most families back then. Alone, except for the steadfast help of her mother Concetta, she survived the war that had forced her and her loved ones to be marched through muddy, rubble-strewn villages and minefields in search of a safe haven, only to return to the complete annihilation of the town, and worst of all, the family home. From that moment, these women and children struggled with homelessness and strife until their application to join my grandfather in America was approved.


My paternal grandfather, Nicola De Simone, had emigrated to the US in 1920 with his father, who had first emigrated from Italy in 1898. Through their hard work, they had saved enough money to buy some choice property in the countryside below the hillside village of Fossacesia. In 1926, after one of his visits to his family, my great grandfather decided to stay, wishing to settle in and enjoy his property with his wife, two daughters, two daughters in law, and several grandchildren. After she and Nonno Nicola were married, my Nonna Maria accepted to live with her in-laws until my grandfather, who had returned to the US, could send for her.


During that time, Nonna Maria was often forced to remind her father in law how much his son had contributed to the well-being of the family. However, over the years, whenever she needed to ask her father in law for “her husband’s part of the harvest earnings” to buy new clothes and shoes for the children, the answer was always a sonorous no. She offered to work on the farm in his place to earn her part, but to no avail. The answer was always “When my son returns, I will give him his part of the earnings,” and “you can’t do this kind of work, you’re not used to it”. This had been going on since the moment her husband returned to the US, and after his subsequent two trips back home, the “fruits” of which were my father and his brother Philip.


Before the war started, the money sent through a wire service by my grandfather, my grandmother’s primary source of relative independence, together with her dress maker income, was sufficient, but when this service was suspended, Nonna Maria had to increasingly turn to her father in law for practically everything. Then, just after the allied front had liberated the area, she witnessed the demolition of her beloved home, that had seemed to miraculously escape damage, but it had tragically been marked by the British corps of engineers as uninhabitable, because two craters on the streets in front of and behind it had weakened its structure. It was blown up, together with all of Nonna Maria and Nonna Concetta’s linens and porcelain, as well as my dad and his brother Phil’s books.


Having nowhere to live, she begged her father in law to let them stay in her bedroom in the main residence of the DeSimone family in town. This building had come away with only slight damage, and the bedroom in question was the one she had shared with her husband when they were married and on his rare trips to Italy. He had set it up with beautiful furniture, and it was in that small, private space that their two sons had been conceived and were born. Nevertheless, that room was deemed by her father in law to be off limits when her husband wasn’t in Italy. It had to be preserved for the next time he came, an event which never happened. My grandfather hadn’t managed up to that point to get his family to the States, either, as he’d promised many times over the previous 15 years. So, the answer was no. Period. Never mind that my grandmother had practically saved the whole family during their displacement, with her sharp wits and common sense. She had guided the family’s defensive tactics when moving from one area to another for weeks while the front raged through.


At this point, having no other choice, Nonna Maria took her mother and sons to a cousin’s place for a few days until a friend offered her and abandoned shed that had formerly housed chickens and maybe the odd pig in peacetime. They cleaned it up, brought an extension of the power line to it so they could at least have light at night for the boys to study under, and moved in a short time later. They lived in this shack for a couple of years, without heat or running water (actually, no one had running water at that time).


A couple of years after the war, in June 1947, my dad, my uncle Phil, their mom, and grandmother finally left Italy with high hopes in a brighter future after years of torment. Tragically, their optimism was crushed just a year later, when Nonna Maria died, shortly after giving birth to my uncle Frank. The wounds caused by this devastating event had profound effects on everyone, but most especially on the young boys and the infant that had just come into the world. In the wake of this tragedy, great Grandma Concetta reached even greater heights of dedication and service to the family by helping to raise little Francesco until the day she died a while later.


Until then, my father seemed to have acclimatized himself well to life in the States. His letters tell me the story of a young boy who had an innate ability to adapt to his new circumstances, learn the language, and make friends. With the example those dynamic women had given to follow, my dad did his best to go on, despite the heartbreaking series of misfortunes he’d suffered. My father’s letters after his immigration are extremely interesting to read. His way of expressing himself is like a snapshot of the man I remember so well, the young Danny. After devouring these letters, I can sum things up by saying that throughout this life, my father always remained true to himself. His personality was very well forged even as a teen. Besides being a staunch, unwavering Catholic, (in my eyes, at times to a fault), he believed in his education just as much as his mother did. But he didn’t do it as an obligation: he truly enjoyed learning. He was brilliant and inquisitive. He studied hard and had no trouble adjusting to the American education system, so very different, and much easier to navigate than his classical studies in Italy. He effortlessly adapted to the American social life, enjoying roller skating, going to the shore, or to the movies. He embraced a rich social and cultural lifestyle by taking advantage of every opportunity America gave him.


Some of his other letters tell me about a kid who missed his friends and the life he led in Italy. He would tell them about his latest adventures and then ask them about the latest gossip, meaning “who liked whom?”.

The most revealing letter in the packet was the first one he sent to my mother and her sister three weeks after his mom died. “My thoughts are not firm”, he wrote. “They keep searching for something or someone. My heart is bleeding, my hand is shaking. I look around, but everything is dark. I’m missing that little light that led me out of nowhere to my adolescence, (the light) that would have propelled me towards my young adulthood, if fate hadn’t put an end to her boundless love…here I’m asking you for a word of comfort. Yes, I’m really asking you, because I know that only you can give it to me. You, who are my only friends…I also include a greeting, the very first, from little Franceschino”. There are no words to express the feelings this letter has awakened in me. I can’t help but think what an amazing man he was, to have gone through the war, displacement, homelessness, and finally immigration…and exactly a year later, to lose his mother.


Luckily, within a few years, things started taking a turn for the better. After graduation, he started working, and he finally went back to Italy to marry my mom. Then, as our family grew, he went to college, worked long and hard, and started teaching, which is where his vocation reached its full potential. I feel so fortunate and grateful that I had him in school. I recently went through my high school yearbook and had to laugh at what he wrote in it. “It’s been a pleasure to have you in class, Pia. Now that it’s over, take heed from your old man and never be afraid to take that initial bold step. It’s the one that leads to great things. Love, Dad”. And he signed it with our motto “PS, You’re funny”.


I did take heed, and my bold step took me very far away. My step isn’t as quick or rhythmic as his was, but I have found my own pace. But it has come at a steep price. Very simply put, the price of missing my family, with everything that entails. I don’t think he meant for me to make that bold of a move, to go back to the old country. The example of my mother and father, indirectly my grandmother and grandfather De Simone and my grandfather Fantini, as well as all my other forebears who crossed the Atlantic in waves, coming and going between these two great nations in search of a better life, are a sterling example of the resilience and steadfastness that have been instilled in me.

Nonna Maria with my uncle Phil (toddler) and my dad.

My grandmother’s house, which was demolished during the war. It was rebuilt by my uncle Nick Sorgini with funds from the Marshall plan.

Family Tragedy

The first heart wrenching lines of a letter written by my teenaged father to his friends in Italy just 3 weeks after his beloved mother died giving birth, one year after their arrival in the US.

This is my father’s first letter to his friends 3 weeks after his mother died. He, his brother Phil and his mother Maria, had finally reached the US in May 1947, to be reunited with my grandfather. They were supposed to have gone many years before, but World War II put a damper on their plans. My grandmother became pregnant with her third son shortly after arriving, and unfortunately, something went terribly wrong, and she died just a couple of days after giving birth to my uncle Frank. My father often told us about what happened and how hard it was, while never letting his emotions show. But this letter…oh my!😥

June 25, 1948
My dear friends
I should have responded individually to your messages of sympathy but I can’t, and I’m sure you well understand why. My thoughts are not firm, they keep searching for something or someone. My heart is bleeding, my hand is shaking. I look around but everything is dark. I’m missing that little lamp that led me from nowhere to adolescence, and that would have propelled me towards my youth if fate had not put an end to her boundless love.

Who can I ask for comfort? Who can I turn to in this moment of darkness? To passionate love? To friends? Oh no! I have no friends here who can console me, and so I turn to the altar. There is nothing more consoling than prayer. I have turned to it, I have approached the Blessed Sacrament with faith, and I discovered that one does not die in prayer but rather, that is when true life begins. But when I came back to the reality of the world, the pain returned to my soul. My heart is screaming again mamma, Mamma! But my cries go unanswered, like a voice seeking help in the wilderness.

And so here I am asking you for a word of comfort. Yes, I’m really asking you because I know that only you can give it to me. You, who are my only friends. I’m sending you many greetings from my grandmother, uncle, father and Filippo. Your friend. Donato
I also enclose a greeting, the very first, from little Franceschino.

A Legacy of Abruzzese Heirloom Treasures

I’ve told elsewhere about my mother’s family story, but in recent exchanges on Life in Abruzzo Group, the subject of embroidery and dowries has come up a few times, so I am taking part of the previously written texts and will elaborate on them for the sake of context.

My mother was born into a family of artisans, starting with her grandfather Giovanni, who was a blacksmith. Not only did he make horseshoes, he also fabricated ornate railings for balconies, light fixtures and furniture, as well as decorative and religious items. Abruzzo is very well known for its blacksmiths and copper smiths, a cultural legacy dating back to the Bourbons that creates a link between places like much of Southern Italy, Spain, France…and even New Orleans. Have you ever seen pictures or footage of Bourbon Street with its ornate railings and balconies? They are very similar to several of the streets in Lanciano!

Giovanni and his wife, Nicoletta, had eight children: Giuseppe, the first born male, and seven other daughters. As was customary at the time, a male son was the dream of every household, so his parents were both heartbroken when he emigrated to the United States at the turn of the last century, where Giuseppe (Uncle Joe) became a successful blacksmith. Needless to say, he had inherited his father’s artistic flair. He lived in a cape cod style home in a lovely neighborhood in Fort Lee, New Jersey with his wife, Mary, who was a seamstress specialized in making fur coats.

Their house was an oasis of happiness for me and my siblings. We used to go there for weekends and vacations, because they were the only relatives my mom had within a 2 hour drive from Norristown Pa. Their home was small, as cape cods usually are, but in my memories it was a mansion. The house was full of neat things, like Uncle Joe’s wrought iron sculptures, decorations, and even furniture. The archway between the dining room and the entranceway was decorated with an intricately fashioned cascade of flowers and grapevines. The front gate on the avenue was a wonder of swirls and flowers, immortalized in this epic photograph that my uncle took of my dad ushering my mother to the property on the day she arrived from Italy in May of 1957. As you can see, Uncle Joe was an artist of photography, as well as a master of moulding and shaping iron according to his will.

My mother sitting in Uncle Joe’s dining room, surrounded by his intricate castiron art work.

Dad ushering mom into her new life through the gate made by Uncle Joe

Christmas in Fossacesia

(This post was written in 2019, just before the Covid outbreak. Although the food was the same this year, the spirit was dampened by the awareness of so much suffering in the world. Our family was lucky to be together in any case, except for my niece who was not able to come home due to the lockdown.)

Just as in every other country in the Western world, Christmas in Italy, and more specifically in Fossacesia, is a time to enjoy the serenity of family and friends. The Christmas season starts on December 7th, the eve of the feast of the Immaculate Conception. On this night, known as the “vigilia della Concezione”, throughout the hills, mountains, and valleys of Abruzzo, local communities organize huge bonfires to symbolically light Mary’s way on her journey to Bethlehem. These bonfires have two other symbolic meanings: fire purifies and grants protection against bad luck, disasters, and disease, and it is propitiatory to good health, fertility, love, and bounty.

This was once a solemn day of fasting in this Catholic country, but it is no longer. Nonetheless, because of the fasting in the past, many communities or neighborhoods began organizing barbecues during the bonfire, when the fasting ended. This tradition continues to this day, where they serve bacon, sausages, and arrosticini (a sort of shishkebab made of mutton). They also serve crispelle, a kind of fried dough which can be prepared with or without raisins and “ciabbuttille”, another type of fried dough stuffed with baccalà. The stands are also replete with our typical sweets such as “cellipieni” (filled with grape jam), “caggiunitt” a type of fried dumpling with chestnut or chick pea filling, and “bocconotti”, one of my favorites, made with almonds and chocolate. There is music and loads of fun as people stand around the bonfire to keep warm while they enjoy the food.

December 8th is the official date for lighting up Christmas trees and outdoor displays, although some people get a head start on this a couple of weeks before. Christmas trees were not part of our tradition until about 40-45 years ago, but they have now become an important part of the seasonal decorations in this global age. Some people prefer to buy real trees, roots and all, so that they can plant them in their back yards, but they don’t usually take hold. Besides that, the natural trees that are available are quite skimpy and small, so nowadays artificial trees have become increasingly popular. My first year in Italy, we bought an artificial tree that was very small and I wasn’t very happy with it. Within a few years, we remedied that, and bought a “big” tree (6 ft maybe?) at a pretty price, but it was worth it. We still have that tree and I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world, even though some boughs are starting to come loose.

Several years before I left for Italy, my family started the tradition of special Christmas decorations for each year. I’ve collected many such baubles with time: First Christmas together, 1982, baby’s first Christmas, 1986, etc. One of the most meaningful is the Noah’s ark from Hallmark, dated 1996. That was the year my brother Mario died, and for our family, it was if we’d truly survived the biblical flood. Other favorites are my hand-made items: a quilled tin soldier and Christmas package, and a few hand-sewn felt decorations. Our tree is different from other people’s trees precisely because of the special, meaningful pieces and collector’s items. Surprisingly, I have no quilled snowflake on my tree, because I give away all of the ones I make as Christmas gifts to friends and family, leaving none for myself. As they say in Fossacesia, “A la cas de lu murator, li pinge rutte” (a brick layer’s house often has broken roof tiles)

A Quilled Christmas decoration.

Italy, the summer of ’68 (part 1 of 10)

Rosanne and I in matching travel attire, with Sherrie

June 1968, when the adventure began…

We said our goodbyes to our neighbors, the Riegels, in our tiny back yard, while Dad parked the car in the alley and started loading it up with our suitcases. Rosanne and I were dressed like twins in the matching outfits mom made for us: white with multi-colored, mod polka dots, and the boys wore shorts and tops. We were all thrilled to be finally leaving for our long-anticipated trip to Italy. It was a hot, muggy day in Norristown, the kind of day where the tarmac goes soft and bubbly and the sun is so bright it makes you squint. We started the long drive to JF Kennedy airport in our usual fashion: parents stressed out and kids complaining; “mommy, he’s looking at me!”, “no I’m not, she’s pinching me!” and the like. Mom and dad, after several feeble attempts to try reign us in, finally resorted to their traditional way of calming us down and grabbed their rosaries, although I don’t know if they were praying that we’d behave, or for God to give them the strength to keep their patience. While we didn’t appreciate it much at the time, looking back I must say that the “road trip rosaries” were among my most serene childhood memories. Whenever a trip lasted more than an hour, we would pray, and I don’t believe it was only to keep us under control. It was an integral part of the faith values that my parents passed on to us. Much eye rolling went on in the back seat, and of course, our ‘calm’ was only apparent…Mario would always do something to make us laugh, and as much as we tried to hold it in, somebody would always end up getting slapped upside the head from the front seat.

Mario and I, ready for our first trip to Italy!

I don’t remember much about the airport or boarding the plane, but I do recall quite a few things once inside the cabin. The plane smelled acidy, the food was served on real china, they gave us water in a tin can, similar to a can of tuna, and it tasted strange (it was probably mineral water). Rosanne, who was only three, was cranky and ultimately threw a temper tantrum and finally fell asleep. I vaguely recall my mom not being well…I think she had a very bad headache and that seems logical considering she was travelling alone with four children. We were quite entertained by the cool knobs and gadgets on the plane. I think we must have turned the air and the lights on and off about fifty times (times four), so it must have looked like a Christmas tree to the other passengers. There were game packets for each of us, with Flintstones decals and other pastimes. I think the boys got to meet the pilots (I know they were given wing pins) and the girls…got nothing. That was foretelling of what my summer was going to be like on so many levels. I recall that the plane wasn’t crowded because we each were able to lie down across the seats, and it seems to me we were in first class, because I have a clear image of a curtain that separated us from other passengers. It was night by the time we settled down and were content to just gape out the windows; we were fascinated by the city lights below and the moon and the stars that seemed to be following us. As I settled down to sleep, it was frightening to see my white sweater light up with static electricity whenever I moved.

The next morning, as we landed in Ciampino airport in Rome, we were so excited to see the tiny cars whizzing below us. Once we landed, we realized the cars were truly as cute as they were petite; the old style Fiat 500 and especially the Ape cars, miniscule motorized tricycle pick-ups beeping away, reminded me of the tv show “To Rome with Love”. Besides the palm trees all over the place, my biggest surprise was the sight of machine gun- wielding soldiers on the terrace roof of the low building where the baggage claim was. They looked like they meant business, although it wasn’t excessively menacing a scene: the machine guns, too, were minute. In my subsequent life-long experience with Italian engineering and style, I would grow to appreciate the combination of small + practical + elegant.

A 1968 Apecar

The baggage claim area was located in a room below ground level, but with windows up high where we could see the people waiting outside. At one point we heard repeated knocking on the window nearby and saw a group of people frantically waving at us. Mom was so emotional to see that they were her aunt Antonietta, her cousin Rocco and his wife Enrica. Rocco was a familiar face because he’d been to visit us in Norristown a few months earlier. He was a witty guy who sported black horn rimmed eyeglasses and I remember his visit most of all because one day we had to walk with him to a camera shop on Main Street from our house on Tyler Street. We must have walked a mile and a half! Zia Antonietta, with her wrinkly face, looked like an old woman, but now that I think about it, she was only about 55 years old at the time. Enrica, an elegant and statuesque blue eyed, home-town version of Sofia Loren, was very friendly and seemed to really enjoy Mario’s hilarious attempts at speaking Italian. Once out of the terminal, we went to the parking lot, to Rocco’s classic Fiat 500 and Enrica’s 128. We had to split up because we couldn’t all fit in one car, so Francis, Mario and I rode with Enrica, and Mom and Rosanne with Rocco and Zia Antonietta. Thus the caravan was on its way after our driver had stuffed the suitcases into the trunks, (which on the 500 was under the hood) on the roofs, and even in between the seats of both cars.

A classic Fiat 500

A 1968 Fiat 124

After a last pitstop to the bathroom, we were finally on our way to Abruzzo! The autostrada didn’t exist yet, so we took the Tiburtina Valeria, a road originally built by the Romans (one of the many “all roads lead to Rome”) that headed due East from the Eternal City. It took us over 6 hours to drive across the dramatic Appenines to the turquoise Adriatic coast, which was purple hued by the time we approached Pescara at dusk. For some unknown reason, we decided to stop in a town called Francavilla, where my mother’s aunt Ernesta lived. I found out years later that the pit stop, which to us children seemed impromptu, had actually been planned ahead of time by Zia Ernesta, and had almost caused a family feud that was never forgotten or forgiven. In fact, we were only about 30 minutes from Fossacesia, where my grandparents and the rest of the family were waiting impatiently, with dinner ready for hours. They hadn’t seen their daughter in eleven years! During our sojourn, which was supposed to be brief, but ended up lasting a couple of hours, we had a little snack. I seem to recall cookies and the best orange soda (San Pellegrino) I’d ever tasted, as well as another clear, bubbly soft drink called gassosa – sort of like 7up, but much gassier and not as sweet. Since there was no bathroom in that house, we also had our first experience with an out-house. That was very unpleasant! The stench was stifling and there were huge, meaty spiders that were probably meaty precisely because of that unhealthy environment!

When we finally made it to my grandparents’ house, we were totally wiped out. It was midnight and we’d been on the road since early morning, or rather, more than 24 hours and a few time-zones earlier. What took place from that moment was like a surreal hallucination. We walked hesitantly into the house, down a long corridor to the kitchen, where what looked like a gaggle of toothless, mustachioed, black-clad witches was waiting for us. They grabbed us, cackling stridently, smacking us with wet, slobbery kisses. Eeewww! And Eeeeek! We all retreated towards mom, one hanging on her leg, the others hugging her at the waist until we felt a bit more at ease and were presented to each of the ancient women (our great aunts) and our grandparents. We had some dinner (I remember there was a delicious chicken soup) and then we children were taken straight to bed, where one by one we started crying, lamenting that there were big daddy long legs in the corners of the ceiling, and that reminded us that we missed daddy and wanted to go home.

Rosanne’s bed was an old crib that had been made by Zio Nino when our cousin Joe was born. They had emigrated a number of years before, when he was a toddler, so the crib was just right for a three year old. Francis and I slept in the big bed with mom and Mario had a single cot to himself. Besides all these beds, the huge room contained a hope chest, an armoire, a large dresser and two night tables. We were so tired, we didn’t take long to fall asleep, although it took a bit of time to get used to the church bell tower chiming the hour every fifteen minutes. Finally our long day had come to an end, and the house was hushed and peaceful after the exhausting trip.

The next morning we were awakened by the sporadic rumble of cars and motorbikes, children shouting, birds chirping, bells ringing: the picturesque sounds I suppose one would imagine to hear in a small Italian village. In the distance I could hear a cock crowing and the muffled bleating of what I presumed was a sheep, as I’d never seen a real one before. Those barnyard noises came from the neighbor’s courtyard behind nonna’s house (the neighbor whose son one day I would marry). They had a sort of in-town farm with some sheep, chickens and roosters, and the odd rabbit. This was before zoning laws decreed that court animals could no longer be raised in the center of town, which is where we were in reality: on the edge of the center of town, near the “fosso”, a deep, lush valley that ran from the sea, which was just three kilometers away eastward, towards the west and Rome. One of the main thoroughfares, with busy shops and a church was about 100 yards from us, so we were in a very fortunate position, where the beauty of nature was as close as the fulcrum of human activity.

The De Simones at the beach in Fossacesia

Besides the barnyard scene and my grandmother’s amazing, prickly cactus plant, which was as tall as the second floor window I was looking out of, my eyes were enraptured by the image that made me fall eternally in love with Italy: the majestic, snow-capped, gently sloping Mt. Maiella. I’d never seen a mountain before and I was speechless at its beauty. I had no idea how many amazing discoveries I’d make that summer and during three other vacations in this magical country, which ultimately I would choose to be my forever home, but I was anxious to experience them all: the white, pebble-beached seaside, the serene Abbey of San Giovanni in Venere – “the sentinel of the Adriatic”, the sunny, lush vineyards and olive groves and the colorful farmyards amassed with tobacco-drying racks and old rickety tractors, the myriad stray cats and dogs, the slow-moving flies that hover in the center of the room, the slithery lizards and snakes, and menacing scorpions and spiders. The fashionable sandals and handbags, silky scarves and dresses. And gelato. Ah, yes, gelato…that was the most amazing discovery of all. And cappuccino….and….Read part 2 here

 

The Summer of ’68: Freedom! Sort of…(part 2 of 10)

The summer of ’68 was a revelation for us. Until then, our lives had unfolded in a limited geographical area, or so it seemed to us: school, a few relatives’ homes and a couple of blocks around our neighborhood. Well, that’s not really true, we had two aunts in Canada, and Uncle Joe and Aunt Mary near New York, and we visited them as well. But that didn’t count! In Italy, we found ourselves at the gateway to a whole new world made of history, family, nature, architecture, work, play, the sun, the sea, music, and most of all, freedom, albeit with some limitations for the female species attributable to the die-hard misogynistic mentality of rural Italy. It took us a few days to get used to this new lifestyle. Every day we’d meet someone new or do something we’d never tried before. The biggest difference with respect to our neighborhood in America was that we didn’t have to worry about cars passing and we were quite free to explore the surroundings. However, didn’t take long for me to realize that, more often than not, there was a distinction between what boys and girls were allowed to do. My brothers were often away from home on road trips with our cousin Gianluigi and his dad. Mario and Gianluigi went on lots of adventures. Mom preferred to stay home with her mother and the boys were first choice for going on these rides because there were no other girls, so I was often left at home. Rosanne was a toddler, so she was content to play with her dolls and her ‘cucinare set’, a little play kitchen with mini pots and pans that had been left by another cousin who’d moved to Canada. Luckily, I had made friends with a little girl, Velia, who taught me games and played with me often. She spent that summer keeping her grandmother company and I was glad to have a playmate. I never saw her again after that summer, even after I moved here and I always wondered where she was and what she was doing. **Update: I was at my neice’s wedding last month and Giannino called me over to a table where he was talking to two women. He said you’ll never guess who this is…she used to come to her grandmother’s house in the summer…Velia!!! We were so happy to see each other again and she told me she had never forgotten me either. Who could have known she was my new nephew’s aunt? What an amazing coincidence!***

I was often sent one block up the street to Zia Antonietta’s house, where she and her sisters tried to teach me embroidery and crochet, activities which were deemed more appropriate for a girl, and although I did give them both a try, I hated them for that very reason. As I’ve told elsewhere, my aunts used to teach crafts to young girls: sewing, knitting and embroidery. Their students, by that time, had grown to be accomplished experts, but they would often stop by in the afternoons, after the obligatory siesta, toting their projects with them to ask for some advice or just for the pleasure of working together. These pastimes were commonplace at my grandmother’s house, where there used to be a sort of crochet circle outside the front door, where women would sit on straight backed chairs facing the stoop which served as a footstool, with a couple of children sitting at their feet eating their merenda, a slice of fresh, crusty bread topped with tomatoes and olive oil. Cars didn’t pass very often in those days, so it was enjoyable to just sit, work and tell stories…or spread gossip!

Crochet circle, traffic guards, friends, relatives, and babysitters

• Our grandparents owned a TV. Nothing new for us, but that was a big thing at the time in Fossacesia, because many people didn’t have one. Italy was in the middle of an economic boom at the time, so people were beginning to purchase such amenities, but it was a slow process, and with time, Fossacesians would get an in-house phone or bathroom, and eventually even the roads would be paved. Watching tv at my grandparents had become a neighborhood ritual. On warm evenings, one by one, some neighbors would turn up at our place to watch a show together, the doors and windows wide open in a continuous invitation for passersby. The black and white television was just a big box on a stand, with a smaller box underneath it. The lesser device was an automatic voltage regulator which had to be activated before turning on the TV, or God-only-knew-what-would-have-happened, its purpose being to stabilize the voltage. The contraption was turned on only at 1 o’clock , just after lunch, to catch up on the news after the main meal of the day, and at 8pm, for the same reason, and then to watch a variety show. Some news items I recall were the student protests in France and Italy, and the conclusion of the Prague Spring invasion of the former Czechoslovakia which ended on August 21st. The images connected to these events were forever impressed in my mind, because I noticed that everyone was quite unnerved by them. The memory of the ravages of World War II were still fresh in the minds of many of our neighbors and friends, and news of violent events inevitably caused a tangible wave of anxiety.

An old style tv, with a transformer at the base, which was used to stabilize the signal.

Just after the evening news, at exactly 8:50 everybody watched “Carosello” a ten minute show that in reality was a unique advertising format. The show was made up of 5 short comedy sketches about different topics, which ended with a punch line that introduced the product that sponsored each episode. Tradition was that kids were supposed to go to bed immediately afterwards, but this rule was not valid in summer. During vacation, children were out in the streets until at least 11, playing games like “nascondino” (hide and seek with different rules than ours), and “un-due-tre-stella” (my favorite, the Italian version of “red light-green light”, where the leader turned his back and yelled out “un-due-tre-stella!” and then turned around suddenly. The other kids, who were lined up about 10 feet away, were supposed to try to reach him as quickly as possible during the time needed to say the words, but they had to freeze when he turned around. Anyone caught moving a muscle was “out”.

Celebrating my 9th birthday (I am in green and my future husband is next to me in red)

In the morning, we’d get up early, awakened by the chiming church bells when we’d had enough sleep. Every morning we were anxious to start our day. We usually went to the beach with Enrica and her children, and some days there were seven or eight of us squashed into the 500, and what a motley crew we were! We’d always stop to get pizza slices for mid-morning snacks. The beach club we’d go to had ice cream and different types of soda and potato chips available to munch on, but the best thing was listening to the latest summer hits on the jukebox while playing on the soccer machines, called “biliardino”. The beach in Fossacesia is made of bright-white, rounded stones and pebbles, which are very hard to walk on, but we got used to it after a while. Oddly enough, other beaches in the area are sandy, and I discovered later that pebble beaches commonly develop near river deltas, so our vicinity to the Sangro river is the reason for this geological phenomenon. It’s not as comfortable as sand, but it’s so much cleaner! Although I enjoyed playing in the water, a few days into our vacation, I had a traumatic experience with a type of poisonous fish that hides under the sand and stings unsuspecting bathers with its venomous barb. It was extremely painful and from that moment on, I never went into the water without some form of protection on my feet, and this is true to this day. Fortunately, my mom bought me a pair of plastic fishermen’s sandals so I was able to again enjoy the sea.

The fab four at the beach! Take note that I had flip flops on….I never really got used to walking on those stones!

My grandpop owned a little cottage on the hillside overlooking the Fossacesia train station, which at that time was located along the coast, but has recently been transferred inland when the railroads modernized the line. The house was composed of a couple of rooms without running water, or a bathroom, for that matter. I recall that there was a well and a trellis with grapevines in the front yard and a path that led down to the beach through a tunnel under the train tracks. My mother loved this little jewel, recalling that some of her best childhood memories unfolded there, although she did once see a snake there, and that was not a good memory!

Something that she could not have remembered was that she’d almost been born there. Years ago, my grandmother’s sister, Zia Ernesta, told me how my grandmother had slid down the hill on her way to the house when she was almost at term with her second child, my mom. She had to slowly go back up the hill and walk home, three kilometers away, and labor ensued. Maybe that’s why mom felt such a strong connection with that house and the sea. Not to mention the fact that she was born on the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, the Patroness of Fossacesia Marina. It is more simply called “la fesct a la marine”, the seaside feast, which is still celebrated today with great food and music, spectacular lighting and fireworks in and over the water. I don’t recall if this tradition was in use back in ’68, but nowadays, if the sea is calm on July 16th, there is a boat procession from the southern end of the coastline northwards, with multi-colored vessels following the lead boat with the statue of Our Lady. If the sea is too rough, the procession is held only along the main street.

Fireworks over the sea to end the festivities of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel feast day.

Another prominent feature of the Fossacesia coast was the Abbey of San Giovanni in Venere, an 11th century monastery overlooking the Golfo di Venere. This monumental structure was built on the remains of a Roman temple to Venere Conciliatrice- Venus, in her lesser known attribute of pacifier of the family. Besides troubled families, young pilgrims visited the temple to pray before their wedding, and young mothers would drink from the spring below the temple as a fertility ritual. When the monastery was built, some of these traditions were maintained and adapted in the light of Christianity, and until recently, many young couples would get engaged at the Abbey on June 23rd, the eve of the feast of St. John the Baptist. This holy place was also a rest stop along the pilgrimage route to the Holy Land and during the Crusades. There are many legends about it; some say it may even have housed the Holy Grail at one point. The Abbey rises on a cliffside overlooking the Adriatic and is visible from the seaside, and at night it looks like a jewel from the beach. Mario was especially intrigued by this architectural and historical wonder. With his insatiable curiosity, and with the help of the friends he made during this first and his subsequent trips to Italy, he thoroughly investigated the Abbey and the ‘fosso’, with its caves where young boys and older men, including my grandfather and father in law, went into hiding during the German occupation in World War II. I, on the other hand, had no idea at the time that I one day would be married in this church…

The Abbey of San Giovanni in Venere

Detail of the front portal of the Abbey. The Visitation.

As we familiarized ourselves with the beauty of the Abruzzese coast that summer, we noticed that the Adriatic sea was constantly changing color. One day it was bright blue, the next turquoise or green, depending on the cloud coverage. If the wind was blowing from the north or east, it was wavy and a greenish grey, but on calm days, the water was so flat and transparent, it was like a deep blue swimming pool. Those were the best times to be at the beach, especially in the late afternoon, when at sundown the sea assumed a pink and then purple hue, the fishermen would leisurely steer their boats back to shore, and the day would wind down to the murmur of lazy waves stirring the pebbles along the shoreline.

Read part 3 here

Il Golfo di Venere at Sunset

Summer of ‘68: Getting to know Nonna (part 3 of 10)

 

Rosaria Santeusanio Fantini

Many other sweet recollections of our first childhood trip to Italy come and go in a whirlwind, mostly my impressions of some of the people that we first met that summer, among whom, my grandparents. Because we didn’t know them at all, relations were a bit awkward at times. On the whole, they were a benevolent, albeit reserved presence: that’s what happens when children grow up far away from their grandparents, although I think Mario, with his innate curiosity and sociability, developed a stronger connection with them. In my particular case, my Nonna Rosaria and I never really warmed up to each other. I have a feeling we were both intimidated by the real or supposed difficulty in communication. I understood everything she said, but I was reticent to speak Italian. She, on the other hand, was simply a quiet person, so let’s just say we avoided getting into each other’s way that summer.

As typical grandmothers of that era go, she looked feeble and much older than her 67 years. She was bit curved when she walked, as if she had a bad back, and her hair was very long, thin and snow white. She braided it every morning and wrapped and pinned it in a low bun, using tortoise shell combs to keep it in place. Her skin had a worn look about it, as if she’d spent years in the sun, but her pallor indicated that she hadn’t really spent much time outdoors. To be honest I don’t remember ever seeing her outside, except to water her plants on the terrace and feed the chickens in the coop across the alley. She never went shopping or to Mass in the nearby church; she never visited friends or took a walk to the piazza.

Taking a walk (fare una passeggiata) was a national pastime in 1960’s Italy, especially on summer evenings, but she never did that. She was not ill, but I believe she just preferred the intimacy of her home. However, she was far from isolated – I noticed that people tended to gravitate towards her, visiting practically every day, either in late morning or after the siesta. Women would often sit out around the front stoop with their embroidery or knitting, others would just go right to the kitchen to have a chat and vent their problems. She was a gracious host and she was beloved because she was the one person that everyone, male or female, entrusted with their difficulties, knowing she would take their secrets with her to the tomb. She was a point of reference for many, a good charitable neighbor. To this day, some of her protégés make it a point to visit her grave often and leave a flower in gratitude for her friendship and discretion.

People in Fossacesia say that in the old days, there was much more charity and social cohesion. I suppose it’s true that people were more generous back in the day when everything was scarce, so what little was available was shared. My first experience of this type of scenario took place on a hot August day in that long-ago summer. A frail old man came begging on the feast day of the patron saint of Fossacesia, San Donato. My grandmother explained that it was common practice to share a meal with mendicants on feast days. There was no fanfare; humble was the hand that gave, humble the one that received. Another testimony to her capacity to love was my father in law, Nicola. He was my grandparents’ next door neighbor, and he was practically raised by nonna Rosaria. His mother died when he was only nine years old. When she was on her death bed, she called for my grandmother, asking her to watch over her children. Nonna took Nicola and his two brothers in for some time until their father regained his bearings and made arrangements for them. A short time later he remarried, because in those hard times, a man couldn’t care for three children on his own while having to work the fields. My grandmother helped the family even after he remarried, preparing home- made pasta so his new wife, Fiora, would find dinner started when she returned from the countryside. These two families always respected each other through the decades, even more so since I married into the Natale family. These stories about the past make me think alot about what life was like back then, in particular for women.

Fossacesia was mainly inhabited by farmers, merchants and artisans; of the three categories, life was especially difficult for farmers. Normally the men worked the land, travelling from town to field by mule and cart, while the women transported food for the mid-day repast, heading down to the valley on foot. Like many others, Fiora would get up before dawn to prepare the meal and then walk two or three miles down to the olive grove, or open field, or vineyard where the menfolk were toiling, with a large basket on her head. She’d prepare a towel wrapped in such a way as to form a flat, circular buffer that would protect her scalp and help her keep the basket balanced, without needing to hold onto it. Actually, women used their heads to transport all kinds of things, including the traditional abruzzese, two-handled copper vessels containing water or other liquids. When they would take meals to their menfolk, they had to pack everything into the basket: a large tureen of pasta, dishes, glasses, a tablecloth, fruit, flasks of wine, water and whatnot, all on top of their heads! Then they’d rush home with the same load minus the food, to do the dishes and prepare the evening meal, while the men took their time riding back in the mule-drawn cart.

A young woman with a ‘conca’ of water drawn from the fountain in Fossacesia

Another tough task for women was laundry. Before the advent of washing machines, women washed their clothes at the community wash house and watering hole, a commodity that every town or village made available to the public. This was at times a covered construction located just outside the village walls, situated downstream from a creek with a piping system that conveyed the water first to a vat, where farm animals could be quenched, and then to an area where women would do their wash. In Fossacesia, the watering hole was called “Lu Vallone”. The ladies would carry a basket filled with dirty laundry in the usual fashion, taking care to get there very early in the morning to get a good spot. This is because, the further downstream she was positioned, the worse off she was, having to wash or rinse her clothes in other people’s soapy, filthy residue, not to mention the germs from the animals! First they would soak and soap up the laundry at home. They used home-made soap prepared with olive oil and sodium hydroxide, or made with water and ashes from their wood burning stoves. Both types of soap required repeated boiling of the concoction to refine it. Who could ever imagine that ashes or olive oil, or even animal fat could be used to wash clothes! Water from the nearby public fountain was brought into the house using the previously mentioned copper vessels (or if they were lucky they drew water from their personal well) and then the clothing was boiled in a cauldron with the soap for a time, then left to cool down. After the first step at home, when the laundry was cool enough, it was taken to the Vallone to rinse. Not only did one have to be careful to time her rinsing to avoid other people’s residual suds, but she also had to be on the ball enough to circumvent accidental or purposeful loss of property.

Lu Vallone, the public wash house with piazzetta and benches on top.

Watering hole for animals

My father in law told me that one day, when Nonna Fiora got home from doing her laundry, she realized one of her sheets was missing, and she knew exactly who did it! It was a woman named Minga (short for Domenica), who was working nearby and who’d apparently taken advantage of Fiora’s distraction to furtively purloin the precious linen she had already rinsed. When she got home and realized what had transpired, Fiora ran right to Minga’s house and called her out. Minga, of course, denied the accusation, but Fiora, determined to get her property back, ran into her kitchen and found the ‘misplaced’ goods cunningly hidden underneath Minga’s other laundry. Fiora was by no means an aggressive person, but losing a sheet would have been a disaster because she didn’t have the money to buy a new one, and besides, she had personally embroidered her linens, a task which requires a great deal of time and patience. Luckily, the missing linen was retrieved without further consequences (Fiora could have been accused of invasion of property, or worse), and instead of acquiring a beautiful, new sheet, Minga procured herself a stern warning to keep her hands to herself.

Luckily, Nonna Rosaria didn’t have this kind of issue to worry about when I met her in 68, and I don’t know if she’d ever had to do it in the past, either. I know that her childhood home had a well, so procuring water had not been an issue while she was growing up. By the sixties, my grandfather had installed indoor plumbing and bought a washing machine, so whatever Nonna Rosaria didn’t wash in the machine, was hand washed in the privacy of her own home and not out in public, so she could calmly go about her business and not have to worry about losing anything! She did not, however, have a bathtub or a boiler, just a toilet under the stairwell. In fact, our baths that summer were taken in a big tin tub in the kitchen, with water heated on the gas stove.

Speaking of the stove, like all Italian women, Nonna Rosaria was a great cook. She would get up early in the morning to make her tomato sauce for pranzo, the noontime meal. She’d start with a small casserole in which she’d place some garlic or onion, extra virgin olive oil, a piece of chicken or other type of meat, fresh tomatoes, part of which would be strained and part diced. She’d add some parsley and basil and she’d let it simmer for hours. In my opinion, the best kind of pasta to cook with this sugo was gnocconi (proper name, mezzi tufoli), which are shaped like half rigatoni, but with a smooth surface. This is what she prepared for us every time we went back to Italy through the years, and it’s one of those flavors I’d give anything to taste again, but as any person of Italian origin knows, it’s one of those unwritten laws of nature: no two cooks’ tomato sauces have the same exact flavor. It’s a mystery…and a fact of life.

Read on to part 4

Nonno Ernesto: “Papà Cardell, pokes, and pangs” (part 4)

My grandfather Francesco Ernesto Fantini

Although Nonno Ernesto, too, was a bit bashful, we were amazed to discover that he spoke English. Little did we know that, like many Italians at the turn of the last century, he had been part of the wave of humanity that spanned the oceans in search of a better life and then, after a number of years, had returned to Italy to enjoy the fruits of his labors with a simple, frugal lifestyle. What sketchy information he gave us about that part of his life has been relatively corroborated by The Liberty Ellis Foundation. I have discovered that my grandfather, Francesco Ernesto Fantini, aka “Papà Cardell”, arrived on Ellis Island for the first time on April 15th, 1913 aboard the S.S. America. I have a second record where he is registered as returning to the US on November 1, 1922, after a period in Italy under the name Ernesto Fantini. At this point he had become a naturalized American citizen on 01/16/1919, in St. Louis IL and lived in Washington Park, an East St. Louis neighborhood.

This fits with the limited information we have: that he worked for the railroad as a blacksmith, riding out into the wilderness to repair locomotives, and that he had settled in St. Louis. A third document tells me he again returned to Italy sometime between 1926 and 28 (his US passport was issued in Washington DC on 05/06/1926), and went back to the States on the S.S. Saturnia, arriving in NYC on May 1st 1928. However, this time the ship manifest gives me a different naturalization date: 02/15/20, papers issued in St. Louis IL, (the Illinois side of St. Louis). Although I can’t be sure the person registered on this third voyage is my grandfather, the age on all three documents corresponds to what his age would have been each time. I don’t have another way of corroborating these details, so I’ll take them all for good, even because this interpretation coincides with bits of information gathered from my father in law, Nicola, who lived next door to him. He has filled in some interesting details for me, in particular about his life after returning to Italy.

Towards the end of World War I, my nonno served in the US Army, where his commanding officer was none other than F. Scott Fitzgerald. Apparently, having shared the name Francis, the two had become friends. I found Fitzgerald’s name in the records at Ft. Leavenworth, KS, which could be where this encounter took place. I have yet to find concrete data placing my grandfather in that same camp, but I find this tidbit very intriguing.
When we first met him, nonno was 77 years old and very distinctive and gentlemanly. With his elegant ways, he gave the impression of having worked as a tailor rather than as a blacksmith. I don’t believe he ever did a day’s hard labor again after returning to Italy. He chose to pursue less strenuous endeavors: for a time, he ran the local cinema, helping to bring this new form of entertainment to the Fossacesians; he worked for a number of years for the Mayers, a well to do bourgeois family originating from Germany or Austria (?), who were very influential in Fossacesia. Nonno would ride out to the countryside on his bike, checking on the work done by the sharecroppers toiling under Don Ernesto Mayer’s payroll. He would keep tabs on the crops and then at harvest time, he’d make sure everything was correctly divided and would pay accordingly. He once took my father in law with him as a helper in calculating the figures against the consigned produce, in this case, wheat. I don’t know if nonno received a salary for his work or if he was paid in ‘nature’ with abundant olive oil, vegetables, chickens, eggs and whatnot – all the necessary staples to feed his family- but either way, he was respected by both the croppers and the landowner.

Nonno Ernesto as a young man (incredibly similar to my son Lorenzo), as a soldier and with an army buddy who my brother believes is F. Scott Fitzgerald . Could it really be him?

Nonno Ernesto used his savings from his years in the United States to purchase some land in our area, mainly vineyards and olive groves. His compare, a good friend who toiled the land for him as a share cropper, also provided the family with produce at regular intervals. People tell me my nonno produced excellent wine and that my grandmother had a mean recipe for Vino cotto, a liqueur produced by crushing fresh, red grapes, boiling the liquid in a cauldron over a log fire and then transferring it to oak barrels to ferment. After fermentation, the liqueur is added to the vino cotto from the previous year to continue ageing. My grandmother’s recipe is still jealously preserved by several neighbors and friends who continued producing it until recently. Now they are all over 90 years old, and I don’t think they’ve passed the secret on to anyone, unfortunately.

During his years of working out in the wilderness of the Midwest, Papà Cardell had learned to hunt fowl and game. This was a passion he preserved even after returning to Italy. He used to keep hunting dogs and would occasionally bring home a pheasant or a hare, which were then meticulously prepared by my grandma (a very involved process). One of his dogs, Bricco, became my mom’s beloved pet. At the beginning of the war, during the evacuation of the women and children of the town (the men were in hiding in the caves nearby) just before the battle of the Sangro River, Bricco was shot right in front of her by a couple of German soldiers in search of cruel entertainment to relieve their boredom. Her aunts and mother, terrified that the soldiers would turn their weapon on them all, had to drag her away from her beloved, mortally wounded friend, a scene she would never forget as long as she lived.

Apart from these portraits of my grandparents, so many of the memories of our daily lives during that summer have blended into the generic description of “wonderful”, but a few highlights do stand out. One of them was having to to talk to our dad at the post office, where the only public phone was located. The scene was like something out of a De Sica movie: first, dad would call to let them know that he was going to phone back in an hour. Then the postman would send the municipal guard to our house to fetch us. We were hurriedly pulled away from our playtime and told to get changed (you simply did not go to the piazza without changing into something decent). One day, Francis insisted on donning the new cowboy suit dad had sent him for his birthday: pistols, hat, stirrups and all. Then we were herded down the street towards the town hall, mother hen followed by her chicks and a couple of old auntie chickens bringing up the rear. Just thinking about it makes me chuckle.

I was very thin as a child (oh to be young again!), so my relatives, worried about my health, (because the mangia mangia mystique to this day is still alive and well), suggested that my mom should take me to a pediatrician. So one day, we went down to an apartment at the beach, where the local pediatrician was vacationing. She examined me and suggested a ‘reconstituting cure’. The next day, my mom informed me that the cure consisted of getting needles every day for the rest of the summer (it was the beginning of July and we were leaving Italy in mid September!!) Naturally, I bolted for the door and ran for my life! Apparently the whole neighborhood knew about it, because our neighbor, Zia Cristina, called me over and told me she’d hide me. She had a very big, echoey house, and until then I didn’t realize that the rooms were all interconnected. So she shut me in one of them and told me to be really quiet, which I did. Just when I was beginning to feel safe, both doors were opened and I was cornered by the infamous overzealous, black-clad, mustachioed widows and spinsters, and dragged, screaming and kicking, to my fate. The instrument of torture was being sterilized on the gas stove in a self-contained steel kit with a mobile handle. The syringe was made of tempered glass and the needle was not disposable. In other words, in hindsight, there was a high risk of contracting hepatitis!

 

My terror…

My mom was nowhere to be seen. I was informed that she was in bed with a bad headache, so I begged them to let me get it done there. The execution party (nonna Rosaria and the woman who would one day become my mother in law) and I solemnly proceeded up to the second floor, and I ran next to the bed and grabbed onto my mom’s hand for dear life. The ordeal lasted just a few seconds, during which my high pitched scream could be heard to the next block. The first shot out of sixty was in the books, but my prospects of an enjoyable summer went down the tubes. The results? I didn’t put on one ounce or eat more than before, so it was a bunch of hogwash and pain for nothing!

Notwithstanding this unpleasant turn of events, our first summer in Italy was a life changing event. To spend a long time in another country is an experience that most people don’t get to have. Before 1968, we had travelled to Toronto, where my mother’s sisters lived; to Montreal, where my dad’s cousins had settled; to New York now and then to visit Aunt Mary and Uncle Joe. Having grown up in a seaside town, my mom loved going to the Jersey shore. We sometimes took day trips down, but never stayed overnight. As usual for travelling, Mom would make meatball or frittata sandwiches. We’d leave early in the morning and come home late at night, red as lobsters. We never went to Disney World or amusement parks, in other words, we never really went on vacation like other kids our age and neither did we have a pool. But then we went to Italy and I just can’t simply call it a vacation. When you go on vacation to a foreign country, you travel, visit museums and monuments for a couple of weeks, and you come home with souvenirs and memories. We didn’t just go on vacation, we went on a voyage, and this voyage changed the course of our lives. Nothing would ever be the same afterwards.

How could anyone not fall in love with this place?

We were overcome by the beauty of this country; a clear blue sky in Norristown would never equal the vast cerulean horizon that opened up before us at the belvedere near the Abbey, where the sky bowed down to the sea, and sometimes you could hardly tell where one ended and the other began. And then there was the fertile patchwork farmland of the Sangro Valley spreading out under the watchful eye of the ancient abbey on one end, and the majestic Mt. Maiella on the other; between the two, a million shades of green, from the emerald vineyards to the more silvery hues of the olive trees, contrasting with the deep russet of freshly plowed fields and the amber wheat swaying in the breeze. We experienced the culture and traditions of this magical country in a way that very few of our friends had ever done, and from that moment on, any time Italy was mentioned in any context, we were overcome with the pang of nostalgia. (Next up: L’Amore)

Summer Love: The Night the Stars Shone Brighter (part 5)

In 1973, when I was 13, my parents decided to go back to Italy for another long summer. Five years had gone by since our first visit, and this time Dad was booked on a flight about a month after us, because he couldn’t take more than a couple of weeks off from work. It was to be his first time back since 1956, the year he and mom got married. On this trip we would have a car available, so we could do some traveling. Besides the usual activities of going to the beach, and having huge meals with friends and relatives, we were planning to do a tour of the country in August, so great expectations were in the air. What no one expected was that I was about to embark on an adventure that would present many obstacles and risks, but which, with time, would reveal my destiny. I was going to fall in love, and this love was ultimately going to overcome all odds and span four decades so far.

After preparing for weeks, the departure date was finally upon us, and we were electrified! To us, just being in an airport with all the pilots and cabin crews dashing by on the way to their posts, made us feel so worldly and sophisticated. This is when my dream of having a career involved with languages began to take form in my mind. In hindsight, I must say it’s been a career that’s had nothing to do with airlines per sé, but it has given me a chance to travel throughout Europe and even as far as Brazil and Turkey. Even now, I feel that same sense of anticipation whenever I travel.

Fast-forward to summer 1975 and big changes (part 6)

Winding down from the thrill of young love in the most romantic country in the world to the humdrum of life at home made me feel like a flower wilting after a spectacular blossoming or a balloon slowly deflating. True, I was going to start high school in a few days, and that had me on tenterhooks, but psychologically, I felt like I was stuck in a dichotomy that could be described in any of the following ways: my dream world vs reality, fulfilment vs emptiness, Italy vs America.

Pensive about the future at the High School graduation Mass that was held at
Visitation BVM parish that year

Academically, I was not a bad student, although I lacked in consistency, with a B+ average. I enjoyed my language classes and English the most. One day in my freshman year, my geography teacher, a nun, asked us to write an essay about what career we’d like to pursue, so I naturally wrote that I wanted to work in the language field, maybe for an airline or as a bilingual secretary, or if I was really good, as a UN interpreter. She did not agree; she told me I didn’t have what it would take to do something like that, based on the quality of my effort in her class (I loved geography but I couldn’t stand her!). This, with time galvanized my intentions even more, a classic case of proving the teacher wrong. Which I did!

During my sophomore year, I began a period of awakening, stimulated by the work we were doing, especially in English class. My dad taught me American Literature and to this day I have to say he was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, because he didn’t only limit himself to teaching the subject material. His classical European education gave him a wealth of knowledge to tap from, and he had the amazing ability to make connections between the American and European cultures. This was very different from the teaching style of most of my educators. That year, in his class, we read To Kill a Mockingbird, one of my favorite books of all time. I felt a kindred spirit with just about all the characters, and most of all, I noticed significant links between that small town in the deep south and my parent’s hometown in Italy (families have “streaks” here, too, hypocrisy runs rampant, and lately, a vein of racism has emerged following the influx of African refugees.)

Reading quickly became my favorite pastime and I felt that with each book I completed, I took a new step towards awareness and growth. I especially liked to delve in historical fiction with political themes, such as the novels of Taylor Caldwell and Helen McInnes. I also developed a certain propensity for writing and felt encouraged when one of my teachers complimented me on an essay I’d written. Can you guess what the subject was? Yes, Italy. Throughout those first two years of high school, I concentrated as much as possible on my studies and extracurricular activities, although it wasn’t easy, because in the meantime I was busy keeping the flame of love alive by daydreaming 24 hours a day, a pastime that had basically transformed me into a typical teen: brooding and irritable. I was bored by everything, but every so often, something exceptional would break the spell and give me some enthusiasm.

One day our English lit teacher organized a trip to see the matinee of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. The moment I saw Leonard Whiting appear in his first scene, my jaw dropped and I felt like I would swoon. Except for the blue eyes, to me he was the incarnation of Giannino; the same hair and physique, the same smile! I came home from that movie so excited, but with such a painful longing in my heart, I almost wished I hadn’t seen it…well, not really, but my desire to go back to Italy increased day by day!

With Vince, Lucy, Francis and Mario, our photographer, atop the bell tower of Our Lady of the Rosary in Fossacesia

Francis and Giannino playing with Roberto and Walter, Giannino’s cousins.

The next night, we met at our usual rendez-vous spot beyond the piazza, but this time we weren’t alone. We started off on our walk together with Rossella and her boyfriend and, instead of heading down the Abbey lane, we went to the new park, where, besides the usual complicit cypress trees, a row of hedges and a couple of benches offered more comfortable seclusion and discretion. We felt free, but we were well aware that someone in the houses along the way was most probably watching those two young couples from behind their curtains, trying to figure out who we were, prepared to make a full report to some relative of ours. We just didn’t care!

We chose a bench at the far end of the park, while Rossella and her boyfriend chose one closer to the entrance. In all of the impetuous daydreams I’d conjured up in the previous two years, I hadn’t really thought of improving my capacity to speak Italian. Like many first generation children in isolated pockets of immigration in the US, I understood almost everything, but I had a psychological block to speaking it, for fear of making mistakes. So what little conversation we had was mainly composed of questions he asked, to which I responded in monosyllables. I didn’t care: I just wanted to be with him and never part. This time, our encounter was more animated and impulsive than that momentous first kiss, but we were nonetheless quite chaste. It still was, after all, young love. We spent the next precious hour in romantic bliss. Unfortunately it was to be our only encounter alone, although in the following days I took every opportunity to go out with my friends and watch him play soccer (he was a very good player, a town champion!), or meet him at the beach. A few days later, August, tomato harvest time, was upon us. There was always so much to do on the farm and he was a precious help to his parents. I knew well that with the tomato harvest, came the bottling ritual, so I volunteered to help his family make these precious preserves again. I had brought a radio/tape recorder with me from the States, so I could ‘steal’ music from the radio instead of buying records. I brought it to his garage with me and we listened to the music I’d taped while we worked. Occasionally I recorded some of the banter between him and his uncle Mario, interrupting the songs I’d so painstakingly recorded from the radio.

The hits that summer seemed as if they’d been written with our love story in mind, like“Tornerò” (I’ll be back) and “SabatoPomeriggio” (Saturday Afternoon). These songs spoke of separation and promises of eternal love, and they became our theme songs, even though we never got to dance to them. Luckily none of the interruptions ruined my recording of these two hits. That tape was destined to be worn down to nothing with time, but it would be a source of solace and daydreaming for the next two years.

Soon, it was time to leave again, and I realized we would again be separated for who knows how long. I don’t know why I obeyed my mother’s admonition to never contact him (“don’t you dare write to Giannino!”-–I think she had a frightening intuition), but I did while pining away. However, desperate to let him know how I felt, I decided I had to do something, so the night before we left, I asked my friend Rossella to help me write him a note. I wrote it out nice and clearly using my best penmanship, which he probably had a hard time deciphering, because Italian calligraphy is very different from ours. I hadn’t contemplated that I probably would never get a message back, because there was no time. Of course she delivered it for me, too, and no, I didn’t get a written reply, but little did I know that that was not the last I would see of that note. The morning we left, as we drove away I turned around to hold his gaze through the rear car window. He gave me a meaningful look and a nod that I will never forget. I felt a surge of hope, and at that point it seemed to me that my destiny was to just dream my life away.  

September rolled around and I went back to school. I generally avoided my male classmates, or rather they avoided me, except for a couple of guys I considered friends. No one ever asked me out in high school: no prom, no double dates. I don’t know if there was some kind of invisible sign over me saying “stay away” or if the reason for my lack of boyfriends was that my dad taught at my school, so maybe they felt intimidated by him. But I really didn’t care much because I knew that no one could make me feel like Giannino did. I learned to accept that, even because, to my mind, American boys didn’t seem to have the maturity and self awareness of the Italians I’d met. I remember listening in awe to Giannino and his friends talking about politics and social issues, topics an American college student might have delved into perhaps, but a sixteen year old at home didn’t normally share this kind of interest, which to me seemed so worldly.

During those last two years of high school, I started feeling anxious and maybe even a little depressed. Graduation would soon be approaching and I didn’t feel ready for my future. Emotionally, I knew that my attitude towards life had to change. I was so introverted, I felt like I’d probably go into a panic at the first bump in the road, so during my Senior year, I decided it was time to gather my wits about me and start making some important decisions. I made up my mind to pursue my interest in foreign languages at Chestnut Hill College, despite what Sister so-and-so said. The college was just half an hour away from home, but I took a dorm room because I wanted the full college experience. I also continued working part time at the supermarket I’d been employed at since my sophomore year of high school. And finally, tired of being miserable, just before leaving for college, I made the conscious decision to get Giannino out of my mind and stop dreaming. I desperately needed to live, breathe, and experience reality!

I loved CHC. It was the perfect place for me. It was an all-female college, where I felt safe and nurtured both intellectually and spiritually. I tried the whole gamut of experiences, from learning to swim, to playing sports (Badminton is a sport, isn’t it?). I was awful at them both. But I did well academically and socially. There were no guys, so there was no pressure, and besides, there were plenty of opportunities for socializing at the other colleges and universities that the Philadelphia area is particularly replete with. Academically I felt right at home with the calm pace of lessons and study time, and I truly enjoyed learning the French language, literature and culture, as well as Spanish, Italian (about time, right?), and Russian. 

Having made my momentous decision to stop dreaming about a guy that lived on the other side of the ocean, I thought I would be meeting guys here and there, and wasn’t planning on much else. I didn’t want to “play the field”, and neither did I intend to get too close to anyone just yet, but that’s exactly what happened. A few weeks after starting school, I met a guy at my absolute first outing with my friends – fraternity party (groan)…right around the time that Animal House came out.  No, Tim did not make me feel like Giannino, but I had resigned myself to the fact that no one ever would. I gave him my phone number and we started dating and with time, things got more serious.  We dated for three years and I believe that relationship was a growing experience for both of us, but deep down I knew it was destined to end. We went on day trips to the mountains and I stayed with him and his family down the shore a few times during the summers. We eventually got into a bit of a rut, mainly because we had absolutely nothing in common and we’d exhausted all of the possibilities for mutual growth. Each of us had given everything we had to share: He introduced me to Dan Fogelberg and Neil Young’s music, while I shared my experience with art and classical music. At one point, we decided to start seeing other people because we were just not getting along very well. We were on and off that whole third year, and in the meantime I went out with a couple of other guys I had known for years. But I was restless, and I was ready for a change. 

That spring of 1980, I decided to go back to Italy with my mom and sister, five years after my last visit. Mom wanted to see her parents again, as they were getting up there in years and were starting to have health issues. I’d been quite depressed all year; I was unsatisfied with just about everything in my life. I felt very lonely deep down inside, to the point of deciding that I’d be commuting to university instead of rooming in during my Senior year.

The college was quite close to my home, and with my steady part- time job at Genuardi’s supermarket, I could afford gas (gas was affordable, then…). Tim had just graduated from Villanova University and had gone to Barbados to celebrate with his friends. Apparently he had met someone there- the classic ‘one night stand’- the one he absolutely had to tell me about when he got home…We had a huge argument and broke up.

Next chapter