A GENERATION GAP

Growing up in Brooklyn during the 1950’s, there are many things that I can remember vividly. In my small section of neighborhood, life was presented to me as matter-of-fact. I knew no social distinctions, knew no one who was poor, and yet lived near a poverty level! Irony to this day still rules my memory.

If anyone was poor, he had no family, no place to go, and lived on the curb. Dad didn’t make a lot of money: his paycheck was it. That was all we had, his paycheck, and as it dwindled during the week, the poorer we became as a family, until the next Friday!

In all our silent and invisible poverty, my parents made sure I went to a good school, which they paid for. They made sure my shoes were polished and my hair combed, and my clothes were always neat, clean and ironed. Mom made sure I ate and ate well, and Dad tried to get me anything I wanted.

We never asked for anything, because in those days, we realized that you just didn’t do that. At Christmas time was the only time I could verbally wish for something, in the hopes that Santa heard it.

Outside of a school uniform of a white shirt and blue tie, weekends had only one set of clothes, usually a polo shirt, old pants and sneakers, and were worn on Saturdays. The pants were worn and thread bare in the knees and mom would have to sew them.

With that silent poverty was a very innocent assessment of the world, which was a small radius of a couple of miles. Being how the older folks spoke Italian, and the culture settled around that fact, anyone who wasn’t Italian was identified as American! My parents, being born here were the first generation Italian-Americans, and viewed things with some wish to be American, to break the mold of the Italian influence to be accepted by the “American” kids. That urge was passed on to their children, who took it further, until today, where our kids don’t even recognize it.

It troubles me that life was such a contradiction that allowed us to live in our conclave, be proud of who we are and where we came from, yet strive so hard and mightily to deny it in the face of American culture, and our need to assimilate.

English was mandatory in the house. Speaking a foreign language was to our minds wrong. Yet we embraced the culture in foods and song, and many expressions. These things still survive, and it seems that they may be making a comeback!

Is it a cycle, or just an evolution of culture, mixing with both American and other cultures? Back in the ‘50s, we identified any stranger in the neighborhood as either: Black, Puerto Rican or Irish, and struggled to admit our own identity at times. Today, I am questioned because I mentioned someone was Hispanic, black or something other than white. Why do I have to say that my sons will ask? Why? Because that is what I learned to do it was done as a conditioned reflex, it was done as an identifier, and it was done, not to be prejudicial, and without any rancor.

Catholicism was not a favorite religion in this country, and neither were Italian immigrants welcomed. We as children sensed that, would fight you if you said something disparaging, yet we tried to hide it! If a major college was successful and Catholic, we rooted for it in a sense of pride, because we were accomplishing some things as a Catholic. If an Italian boy, or Italian extraction, went on to college, we all looked up to him. We were claiming our place in American Society, and no longer considering ourselves immigrants or interlopers, but contributing Americans, achieving something with great pride.

There was a young man who lived on the first floor of my apartment. He was a handsome quiet guy, who went to college. He quickly became my hero. My uncle: fought in World War II, under General Patton, again, my hero.

So my sons don’t realize what his old man went through growing up. He doesn’t understand that the effects of seeking acceptance still linger in my soul, and make me who I am to day. By today’s standards, he only knows what he thinks should be, but can’t taste what was, that bitterness that was. Do I fault them? No, I can’t. It does frustrate me though, to the point that I can’t understand it. Yet, I know it is the conditions that my generation set forth, and the outgrowth of my parents conditons.

Fortunately, most Italian Americans now have inter-married, raising families, just like I did. I discovered that Irish are the Italians, just spelled Irish! I realized I love my kids whole, not just the Italian in them. They are real Americans in a real world, which will be judged just as harshly in 20 years, for sure.