DREAMS REALIZED AND FULFILLMENT

Dreamers

It came in the mail, a long letter from Grandma’s sister Magdalena, that their brother Felice was coming to America with his wife and young children to settling in Brooklyn. Felice was the oldest brother and since their poppa had died, Felice was the titular head of the family. There are many legends about Felice and some lore. Felice had to eat macaroni every night be it in Italy, America, or deep in the forests of Africa. While he stood at the rails of the ship taking him to America, someone told him there was NO macaroni in America. Felice became so overcome with despair he headed to the rails to jump from the ship and swim back to Italy while they had to restrain him from jumping overboard!

Uncle or ‘Zio’ Felice was about 4’ 7” tall with a big fat handlebar mustache that legend holds he was born with. He had the strength of a bull and the determination to match. Grandma hooked him up with a friend in the bricklayers union and he went to work, slowly becoming the gang foreman. The day he died he left behind 18 children and one deceased hero who died on the beaches if Anzio during World War II. It seems his son wished to become a priest and Zio Felice would not hear of it and so his son joined the U.S. Army where God took his son away from him.

It was a matter of fact that Zio Felice ruled with an iron hand. With 19 children, everyone was required to stand at the kitchen table until he sat and was served first, then the rest of the family sat. What did they eat? Macaroni, with meat, vegetables,  or any concoction his wife made.

Through the years my Uncle Joe, my dad’s younger brother got a job working for him. Being he was my uncle’s nephew, he showed him no favoritism and assigned him to the wheel barrel carry bricks up a long wooden plank to the various floors of the apartments and office buildings they were constructing. By the time lunch came around, Uncle Joe’s hands were raw, calloused and bleeding and he went to Zio Felice and said he couldn’t do it anymore. Taking him aside Zio Felice said in Italian: Piss on your hands, it will make them hardened and go back to work! He did, and my uncle would brag about that story as did my dad confirm it for years.

In 1930 Grandma turned the fruit and vegetable store into a great profit maker in spite of the Great Depression and decided to buy another building and in its storefront open a restaurant. Her restaurant fed the local Italian population and during the week did a great business especially at lunchtime. Weekends saw her restaurant serving meals that they might make at home to not only the immigrants who could afford to dine outside their own kitchen but other locals. Irish, German, and ‘Medicanos’ (Americans) who came to eat ‘Eyetalian’ food and her reputation grew. She employed her teenage son, my Dad who delivered pizzas and other foods for dinners and lunch to the locals.

My Pop! 28 years ago today he passed.

Then the worst thing that could happen to an Italian American indeed happened. The mob moved in upstairs! At first, it was an accommodation of them paying their rent on time at a reduced rate and Grandma keeping her mouth shut. Then one day on a Friday afternoon, Dad answered the phone and call was from upstairs asking for a pizza. The pie was made and Dad brought it upstairs and knocked on the door. Entering the apartment there stood three or four men gathered around an individual seated, his hands behind his back. Suddenly one of the standing gentlemen picked up a thick glass ketchup bottle and slammed it over the seated man’s head, shattering it all over! Dad dropped the pizza on the table and didn’t wait to be paid while being admonished that he didn’t see anything! Grandma immediately sold the building and moved out.

As the depression wore on her kids were the only ones who had money and grandma would get all my dad’s friends and treat them to the movies with enough for candy. As they all grew, Pearl Harbor occurred and they entered the army to fight. With her generosity, she became Zia Francesca to the whole neighborhood. In the years to come, many of these adults came to formally pay respects to her and visit her on a Sunday or holiday.

There is a story about a woman that came to America under the sponsorship of Grandma. Grandma housed her and helped her get on her feet in her new country. Carmela needed to go to Manhattan for some reason and couldn’t speak English. What to do? Her trip on the A train was about 15 stops or so grandma took her aside and gave her 15 pennies. Every time the subway train stopped, she was to take one penny and put it in her coat pocket. When she put the last penny in her pocket she was to leave the train, go up onto the street and find a cop or someone she felt she could trust and hand a note to the person asking for where a certain building was.

This penny plan would have been a great idea… maybe, except for the one thing Grandma didn’t think about: rush hour! After a few stops, the train lurched into a station and the crowd stampeded out the door all at once knocking the pennies from Carmela’s hands all over the car. It was the police who returned her late that day to Grandma, Carmela in tears. Carmela learned quickly that America was NOT paved streets of gold and certainly NOT a small hick town outside of Naples.

Grandma continued her dream. She was the matriarch of her family as her children married and scattered over Brooklyn within walking distance from East New York, Brownsville, Bushwick, and Bed-Sty. Grandma decided that with the money she made from all her enterprises she would expand her interest and bought a duplex in Patchogue, Long Island, New York where she rented it to two of her children, Joe and Angie