PROUD AMERICAN

Many years ago on a Saturday morning when I was about 12 years old, my Dad said to me: “I have to take your Mother to the dentist. I expect Zio Felice to come with Grandma and your Aunt to see our house for the first time. If they come while I’m away, show them around.”

This left me a little unsettled and I didn’t relish the idea of entertaining 3 old people who were very important to Dad. Not only that, Dad was getting suspicious of my mental capacity as I started liking Rock and Roll music. I had no respect for Caruso, let alone Sinatra! In Dad’s later years he became a big fan of Elvis!

He stood at 4’ 7” tall, weighed about 120 pounds, and sported a long handlebar mustache and went by the name of Zio Felice or in English, Uncle Felix. His big handlebar mustache and fedora was his trademark, with eyes that seemed to be merrily twinkling as he spoke.

During the Great Depression as well as World War II or “Il Seconda Guerra Mondiale” as he called it, Zio Felice worked as a gang foreman on a construction crew, building large multi-storied complexes out of brick and concrete. He fed a family of 19 children and they all stood at attention when he came home, all towering over him. Standing at the dinner table they waited for Poppa to sit first, then when he gave them the OK they could sit. 19 Children required an iron hand, strict discipline and a strong need to find a hobby.

Sure enough, the entourage arrives with a flourish, as the little giant steps from the car and I greet him on this particularly bright and sunny morning. Greeting my Grandmother who grabs my cheeks as she smooches away she leads me to Zio Felice. We shake hands and I study his eyes wondering if I am doing OK and what he will tell my father. I immediately escort him and those that follow into the house. Throughout all the rooms my grandmother and Zio Felice converse in Italian and finally, take them back outside to the front of the house at his request.

“Tella me, awhata you doer over here?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He points to a spot off the center of the lawn, about halfway toward the street, and says to me:

“Wella over here a you puta the brickza inna a nizer bigger circle anda inna the middle a here you puta the flagga pole. Onna the bottom offa the flaga pole you puta the flowersa, ander with a nizer colors.

“Then I put a niza picture offa Garibaldi!” I whispered under my breath.

“You gottem un a flagger pole? You runner upper the nizer beautiful flagger, no?”

After I was married I got word that he had passed away, living in Babylon with one of his children. My Irish wife and I went to the wake and paid our respects to a large family that filled the capacity of the room where he lay to the hallway outside of it.

He died in the early 1970s at the tender age of 93 it might have been the DiNapoli Cigars that did it!

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