DelBloggolo: THE PARSLEY LADY

Thursday, January 22, 2015

THE PARSLEY LADY

There are three construction workers on top of a building having lunch. One Italian, one Polish, and one Asian. The Italian has a meatball hero, the Asianl has noodles, and the Pole has kielbasa. The Italian and the Asian are tired of having the same lunches everyday. The Italian says that if he gets a meatball hero the next day that he will throw it off the building. The Asian says that if he gets noodles tomorrow he will also throw it off the building. The Pole says that if he gets kielbasa tomorrow he will throw it off the building. Sure enough the Italian and Asian workers open their lunch-boxes and they find that they have a meatball hero and noodles respectively. They both throw their lunches off the building. The Pole then throws his sandwich off the building. The other guys ask him how he knew that it was kielbasa again without even looking. He responded by saying: "Because I pack my own lunch."

My apologies to my Polish readers, this can be turned around you know. Tell it at an Italian funeral in New Jersey, or a Chinese New Year party in Manhattan.

Years ago while a youngster in Brooklyn, on a Sunday morning in most families in our Italian enclave, as you walked the streets, you could smell people making sauce. Every building seemed to have at least one Italian family in it and they all did the same thing, make the sauce for the Sunday meal and maybe for two more macaroni meals during the week.

Mom was no different and part of the custom with Mom like other mothers was to make meatballs and sausages and a thing called braciola, made from both beef and pork. It was delicious and I loved the pork one.

But to make these things you needed parsley, chopped and along with other things like pine nuts it helped season the inside roll, and Mom never had enough. So every Sunday, Mom would wait for me to come home from 9:00 am Mass and send me to the parsley lady, a dear woman who came from my Grandmother’s hometown in Italy. She was known as ‘A Gumada’. A Gumada was the point lady for parsley: they couldn't ship in parsley to our part of Brooklyn unless they gave half of it to her.

“JOOOOSEPH!”

“What Ma?”

“Go to A Gumada and ask her for some parsley!”

This was one of my favorite chores, because this lady we called A Gumada, was a beautiful wonderful and kind woman, who liked me for some reason.

Every Italian Bride has some in her wedding bouquet!

I would ring her doorbell and she would look down from her second floor apartment and see me. “”My mother said can she have some parsley?”

“Come uppa stairs”

Once in the apartment, I entered her huge kitchen and she would get some parsley, wrap it in a damp paper napkin and make me sit, have a piece of cake and give me some candy for my pocket.

The parsley lady: may she rest in peace.