THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY!

It was a Saturday morning in the early fall of 1970 and I was on top of the world. Having graduated from college, joining a prestigious advertising agency in Manhattan for my first professional job, and the new owner of a 1971 Chevy Camaro, there was no stopping me. I had a different date every Saturday and I was riding high!

Dad decided that it was time to visit my grandmother to thank her for her generous gift for my graduation and so phoned her for my imminent visit. Grandma Frances was now living with my aunt and uncle in Brooklyn as she sold her house. After Grandpa Ralph passed away in 1956, she was tired of living alone and my aunt graciously took her in. Despite it all, she was still lonely and somewhat unhappy as she had given up most of her charity work and seemed to slow down somewhat. She was organizing trips to Italy for a church group that sponsored Italian war orphans and from her efforts, an orphanage was named after her near Naples.

Grandma, being grandma, was excited to have her grandson come to visit her and made certain plans in her Brooklyn home for my unsuspecting arrival. Being I was her only grandson to graduate from college, she had special plans in the works. Having attended my college graduation, she looked like she had a ‘mission accomplished‘ look of pride and happiness of an Italian immigrant, something to this day I am proud of.

Her planning for that Saturday involved precision timing and coordination of her accomplices out in the field, something that would rival the CIA in covertness and secrecy. The plan focused on me, and I didn’t know it.

So, out to Brooklyn I drove from Long Island and found a parking space in front of grandma’s home. As I approached the door, I could smell the aroma of something good cooking on the stove and knew I would not have any room for dinner that night after lunch with my grandmother.

As the door opened, there stood this little old lady with a smile from The Verrazano Bridge to Highland Park in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and made me feel like I found a $20 bill on the street!

“Jojo! A where’sa your
father?”

“He had to work today, Grandma.”

She smiles and reaches for my cheeks (the ones on my face, thank you) and squeezes them. Chuckling, she leads me past a dish of cheese and a loaf of Italian bread with a pot simmering on her stove into the living room. The room is decorated in the Italian Renaissance with a bust of Julius Caesar overlooking everything.

We sit for a while when suddenly there is a knock on the front door.

I get up and answer the door. As I open it, there stands a little Italian lady and her daughter, who looked like she was mimicking her mother.

“Francesca! Como va?” The lady shouts out to grandma.

The two ladies walk past me, the old one squaring off with me, her eyes scrutinizing this skinny guy and her daughter, her head down avoiding any contact with me. I look back at the old girl and a funny sensation comes over me as I see my car parked in front with an urge to jump in and drive it off to Mexico.

My weak mind is processing the information as rapidly as my fears would allow me to and I totaled up the situation… this is a setup!

Grandma directs the seating and the old girl is offered a chair and the daughter a seat on the couch next to me! She is striking or should I say strikingly like her mother, bun and all. The only thing missing is the gold tooth.

For the first time in my life, I want to strangle grandma’s neck. I mean, she’s seen Sofia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, hasn’t she?

I am introduced to Carmelina, a sweet girl, shy and demure, who looks like her mother, maybe a little older looking. I could imagine the honeymoon being conducted over the phone, and so grandma finishes me off with an introduction to Carmelina’s mother. She has a round face, a little growth under her chin coming out of a birthmark, and I want my mommy.

Grandma takes the initiative and tells the ladies who I am, (as if they didn’t know) and that I “graduate froma col-ledgea”. 

Francesca, the mastermind who of course arranges the seating with Carmelina next to me, directs us to the kitchen. Grandma starts pouring out her chicken soup with tiny chicken meatballs, the cheese waiting for me along with some black pepper. Suddenly all goes away and I slip into the ecstasy that I have long recalled.

Somehow the day ended, and I got away with my bachelorhood intact, and my virginity never questioned, but it was the longest day of my life with my grandmother.