© 2014 Anthony DiNardo
All rights reserved.
Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-937721-21-3
ISBN: 9781937721206
LCCN: 2014908077
Published by:
Peter E. Randall Publisher
Box 4726
Portsmouth, NH 03802
www.perpublisher.com
Design by Grace Peirce (nhmuse.com)
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part One: Beginnings
Part Two: America
Part Three: War
Part Four: Mindoro
Part Five: Home Again
Epilogue
About the Author
Preface
Dear Reader
I am a legal immigrant who has lived in the United States for almost ninety years. During that time, I have witnessed our country’s transformation from a debt-free, world-recognized success that was proudly supported by a loyal citizenry, to today’s irresolute debtor facing a multitude of problems. These include wars abroad, a depressed economy, and the enigma of dealing with millions of illegal immigrants crossing uncontrolled borders. As a result, more and more Americans are questioning the competence of our leadership, and significant numbers of them are shedding their burdens of self-responsibility and demanding that government provide for their personal needs, which they term “rights and entitlements.”
Four generations of Americans have existed over the past century. The so-called “Greatest Generation,” of which I am a part, grew up in the Great Depression of 1929 through World War II. In that era, the concerns of everyday life dealt mainly with survival, and all family members had to play an active part in meeting household requirements. As their day of graduation from high school approached, teenagers instinctively assumed responsibility for dealing with their own futures. Because the option of college was financially available only to a small percentage of them, the majority sought entry-level jobs in local shops, offices and industry. A relatively few married. But whether decisions were made by choice or chance, everyone understood that the consequences were theirs to bear.
After WWII, the accelerating accomplishments of science and technology were passed on from generation to generation, markedly improving living conditions along the way. At the same time, many changes came about in our human society. One was caused by the strong, persistent argument that young children were to be allowed to behave as they pleased and not as they should. There were also many complaints about the difficulty of public education, which resulted in our nation’s schools lowering grade requirements for subjects like reading, writing, arithmetic and history.
Along with the easing of burdens on students was a reduction in the amount of time required for them to cope with obligatory home responsibilities. They also found they had more time available for pursuing pleasurable activities. These factors combined to produce a current youthful generation of Americans that bears little resemblance to those of the Great Depression. The outcome is clearly reflected in questions raised daily by more and more Americans: Where is the nation we knew and loved. Why are today’s young people so different? What does the future hold for my children and grandchildren?
I have lived through the Great Depression, WWII and subsequent American conflicts. Yet I find myself astounded by the present condition of our beloved nation. Like so many others, I am very disturbed about our global, political and economic crises—and repulsed deeply at the thought of passing on to our children and grandchildren a debt of trillions of dollars. I am most amazed that an absolute improbability has taken place in only four generations: the changing and deterioration of our beloved and powerful America. Beyond that, I believe that yet another hazard exists—totally unobserved by most of us—that could bring about the loss our democratic form of government.
While I believe the issues we face deserve addressing in my memoirs, I also realize memoirs are at the mercy of selective memory. Our brain seeks and filters, and the finally written words are the end result of a subjective process. But I will endeavor to record my life honestly, from the viewpoint of both a practitioner and ringside witness.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I thank my wife and loving partner, Elly, who was at my side from the first germ of the idea. Without her constant support and inspiration, there would have been no book.
I thank my devoted and inexhaustible editor, Susan McCool, who gleaned the true meaning of my writings and applied insightful enhancement to every aspect of the book.
My everlasting gratitude to Jan and Joe McCarron and their family: Heather, Dave, and Mike, for their contributions to the characterization, plot and behavioral subtleties of the story.
Thanks to all my other family members for their encouragement: Donna and Kristin; Mark, Diane, Lauren and Rachele; Nan, Stephen, Kait, Steve and Tori; and our inimitable Mia.
Also, thanks to the many friends, too numerous to list, who inspired me with confidence.
Finally, but certainly not last, thanks to Dr. Percival Hunt, professor emeritus of English at the University of Pittsburgh, whose legacy to us post-WWII students was: “To strive to say, exactly right, something worth saying.”
Part One
Beginnings
Chapter 1
IT WAS A VERY HOT SUMMER when I first started typing these memoirs, and the news in America was filled with reports of the worst electrical blackout in United States history. Millions of people in the Northeast, Midwest and neighboring Canada suffered from heat and total blackness for nearly two days. Stifling weather was also an ongoing problem for our armed forces in Iraq, struggling to eradicate the last vestiges of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. But my thoughts were also with my second cousin, Isa; in Abruzzo, Italy; dealing with the hottest summer in recorded European history. Her emails told me she was seeking refuge with her young children, Alessia and Stefano, in the cooler mountain air of the Apennine village of Sant’Eufemia a Maiella. I was born in that village, at the center of the Maiella National Park, almost directly east of Rome. The Maiella, or Mother Mountain, as it is called by the people of the Abruzzo Region, is not a single mountain, but a massif—a huge, wild section of the 600-mile Apennine chain that runs the full length of the Italian Peninsula. The park covers 35,000 acres in three provinces: Chieti, Pescara and L’Aquila. It includes 60 peaks, 30 of which are over 6,000 feet in altitude. Its eastern slopes descend to the nearby Adriatic, while the western slopes devolve into a plain stretching almost one hundred miles to the Mediterranean coast. At an altitude of 2,700 feet, Sant’Eufemia is the highest village on the slope of the Maiella, near the juncture with a sister mountain, Morrone, to create the Passo San Leonardo.
The recorded history of my village goes back to ancient times: in 1064 it was the property of Count Berardo until he gave it to the Abbey of San Clemente a Casauria; in 1145 it passed to Bohemond, Count of Manoppello; in 1301 it went first to the Ughelli family, then on to Giacomo Arcucci, Count of Minervino. When he died, in 1389, the village passed to the D’Aquino family. Over the last thousand years it underwent several name changes: first Santa Femi, then as Sant Fumia. After the 1861 unification of Italy by Giuseppe Garibaldi, it was granted its present name by special decree of King Vittorio Emmanuel II in 1862.
I have always been in awe of the courage it must have taken for the first Sant’Eufemia pioneer, Francesco Di Giovine, to leave his village and journey for over twenty days to reach an America he knew little or nothing about. He was part of the exodus of eastern and southern Europeans who sought to work in America’s expanding steel mills, railroads and mines owned by such magnates as Andrew Carnegie. He and a few hardy villagers were the first to depart in the late 1870s, to be followed by others after World War I. It was during that “war to end wars” that many young and healthy village males were conscripted and ordered down the mountain to the city of Sulmona to board trains that took them off to military service. Those who came home from that war, after seeing the world that existed beyond their hamlet and reading letters from earlier pioneers about “gold-paved streets” in America, chose to strike out on their own. They broke the chain of family ties, a bond close to the heart of Italians, because there was no decent livelihood to be earned at home and, having had little schooling themselves, they felt obligated to provide their children with an education and thus a better chance in life.
World War II, during Italy’s alliance with Germany, brought difficult times to the village. It lies close to the 9,000-foot-high Mount Amaro where, on a clear day, there is an unobstructed view stretching from Pescara on the Adriatic coast across the entire Italian peninsula to Rome. In the fall of 1943, the village was occupied by German soldiers sent to establish an observation post atop Amaro. Every village male was examined, and all who were able to work were immediately conscripted and assigned to daily labor in the construction and maintenance of the post.
At the same time, American and British troops successfully invaded Sicily and began harassing the Germans as they fought their way northward up the Italian peninsula. For ten months, the occupation of the village was very restrictive, with troops constantly present, rationing, and nightly curfews. Many tales were handed down about the people’s suffering and military atrocities. One related the shooting of Nicola Mancini and the young woman who had sheltered him—and the dragging of their bodies through the streets. Some females were put to work in military hospitals in nearby towns. At the Amaro post, able-bodied men unloaded supply trucks filled with ammunition for the guns at the observation post. Some were sent to work on a German fortress at Monte Cassino. The times were such that, fearing drunken soldiers might force their way into homes with female inhabitants, villagers barred all doors and windows at night.
By June 1944, the American and British had progressed northward to the point where the German observation post was abandoned. At hurriedly called meetings, the townspeople were ordered to evacuate the town and move further north to continue working for German troops. The villagers took advantage of the turmoil and some fled up into the mountains to spend the last harsh winter of the war in old, long-abandoned farmhouses or natural caves in the massif.
Chapter 2
TODAY, SANT’EUFEMIA IS reached by turning off the Rome-Pescara Autostrada and driving up a paved, winding state road. In 1924, when I was born, it was a rough unpaved path chopped out of the Maiella’s convoluted slope, passing through a few hamlets until reaching the town of Caramanica. From there it rose less steeply for a few kilometers until finally leveling off at my village. While it was possible to continue beyond the village, the going was even more difficult. A dirt path meandered to the Passo San Leonardo, at the juncture of the Maiella and Mt. Morrone. There it descended a steep, zigzagging incline far down to the valley floor, finally winding through several kilometers of rolling countryside to the large city of Sulmona (birthplace of Ovid in 43 BC).
The Sant’Eufemia of my early days was a small village, set off by itself, with a renowned 644-year-old church and homes built along narrow, meandering pathways of hand-laid stones. It had no industries and no commercial jobs. People’s lives were concentrated on meeting basic needs. Home radios wouldn’t arrive for a decade (for those who could afford them). There were no phones, no oil or gas for cooking or heating homes, no plumbing systems, no doctors and no stores. I doubt if there was electricity (and undoubtedly there was no money to pay for it), because I remember only lanterns, waxy-smelling candles, and smoky fireplaces. Each household grew its own vegetables in odd-shaped garden plots handed down from generation to generation and marked off with stonewalls. Staples for eating; such as pasta, flour, coffee and olive oil; were bought on occasional trips to Caramanica’s few stores. Each family had its own assortment of cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens. There were no pets, unless they served some useful purpose such as catching mice.
Village men and boys did the heavier chores, using their backs or donkeys to gather firewood for daily cooking and heating. They walked their sheep to feed in high meadows and did the shearing, butchering, milking and cheese making. Fall was time for pressing grapes to make a barrel or two of wine and for canning and storing fruits and vegetables. Tomatoes and homemade sausages were preserved in sealed, oil-filled jars. A particular springtime delicacy was wine vinegar sprinkled on freshly picked dandelion salads. Meanwhile, each and every season, the women toiled at their never-ending tasks of cooking and house-and-child tending, somehow finding time to sew clothing and knit thick woolen sweaters to help fight off the chills of the long winters.
The stone church of San Bartolomeo Apostolo, with its distinctive campanile and famous fourteen-foot-high wood-and-silver tabernacle, is the central focus of the town. The church was built along one side of the town piazza, near a vertical stone slab that was the village’s fountain. A constant stream of fresh, cold water from rains and melting snows of the massif poured out of a pipe in the slab. In the summertime, after I had learned to walk, someone took me daily to fill jugs and pans, and would let me stick my face under the pipe to drink. On the corner across from the church stood my grandfather Fiorinto’s two-story house. It had a huge brick oven that took up most of the ground floor, where he baked bread for the entire village.
Chapter 3
MY MOTHER’S MAIDEN NAME, Pantalone, is a fairly common one in Italy and means “pants” in English. Other Italian family names have English meanings, such as DiGiovine (Young), DiVechio (Old) and Bevelaqua (Drinkwater). To my knowledge, DiNardo has no English translation. At one point, I thought it was associated only with our specific area of Italy, perhaps as an abbreviation of the last word of the Passo San Leonardo. But when computers came into being, I searched and found DiNardo listed in telephone White Pages of towns all over Italy. I did see one reference that suggested it may have been derived from Hapsburg tribe-invaders of Italy during the Middle Ages. The actual origin and possible meaning, if any, remain a mystery for me.
I never knew my grandfather on my father’s side, who died at the turn of the 20th century. He had four sons—Antonio, Lawrence, Alfonso, and my father Rocco, who was born in 1900. All four served in World War I and, after returning home, departed for America one after another. Antonio went to Watertown, Massachusetts, to take up work at the Hood Rubber Company plant. Lawrence, Alfonso and my father all located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and got jobs at the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation’s by-products plant in Hazelwood. Other immigrants from our village settled in the communities of McKees Rocks, Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, and Joliet, Illinois.
Quota restrictions caused even wider geographic dispersion with members of my mother’s family. Grandfather Fiorinto and his wife Anna Giaconda had five children, all of whom married. One by one, over the latter part of the 1920s and 30s, all but one departed from their roots. Peter, the only son, immigrated to Watertown, Massachusetts. Two daughters went to far-flung places around the globe: Mariuccia to Australia, and Annina to Argentina. My mother, Maria Camille, the third daughter, came to America with me five years after my father had emigrated. The youngest daughter, Antonietta, remained in Sant’Eufemia and married Antonio Timperio, the postmaster of the village. Their two children, Berardino and Maria, and grandchildren Lucio and Isa, have established email contact with me, as have the children of Mariuccia and Annina.
My father departed for America in 1923, four months before I was born on January 20, 1924. I was told that my birth was a long one, handled in the traditional fashion of the times by the village midwife. My mother’s close-knit family took loving care of me. I was terribly spoiled by doting aunts and adoring grandparents who, painfully aware that we would leave them in a few years, devoted as much time as possible to my mother and me.
In my later years, particularly the half-century following World War II, I came to appreciate more and more the solid foundation of “family” gifted to me during those first years of my life. I was constantly attended to and have no memories of stressful situations or illnesses. I was indeed blessed with a very safe and satisfying childhood.
I bear the physical proof of one memory of my early years—that of my grandfather giving me a haircut and accidentally clipping a small chip out of the rim of my left ear. I remember that he hugged and kissed me until I stopped crying, and I carry that nick to this day.
Another memory I have is of being bundled up on Aunt Antonietta’s lap on the floor in front of the big stone fireplace that heated our house. I recall her using a long poker to stir the burning logs, and the billowing showers of sparks that whirled up the chimney. She would roast chestnuts and break off tiny bits to push between my lips. I loved the warm, succulent flavor and, to this day, whenever I smell chestnuts roasting, the image of that scene flashes into my mind.
Yet another image I’ve retained, as seen through my young eyes, is of the huge town piazza at the church. Years later, when I first went back for a visit, I was amazed at how small it actually was. I also remember that I slept with my mother during those early years. I recall vividly the game she played with me night after night before I fell asleep. She would slip a hand under the blanket and scratch her fingernails back and forth across the sheet to make a sound like scurrying mice. Even after I learned that the noise was nothing to be afraid of, I’d always cry out as if frightened, and she’d pull me tight, protecting me from all the world’s harm.
Since I was about four, I have also recalled an uncommon thing she did, always acting as if she were afraid that someone would catch her doing it. It only happened when a close relative or family member was suffering with a painful, enduring headache and came to ask her to rid her of the “malocchio” (evil eye) that someone may have given them. My mother would pull down all the window shades and put a shallow dish and small cup side by side on the kitchen table. She’d fill half the dish with water and pour olive oil into the cup. Then she’d recite some incantation over and over while rubbing her right hand around the top of the victim’s head. Finally, she’d lower the hand to dip her thumb into the cup, stroke the sign of the cross on the victim’s forehead, and suspend her thumb above the dish so that drops of the oil fell into the water. Both of them would stare intently at the oil droplets floating on the surface—looking for what, I never knew.
These recollections are what I remember of my life in Sant’Eufemia from 1924 to the summer of 1929. For those five years my father had been sending us money to pay for our journey to America. I still feel a sense of wonder and astonishment when I think about what that journey called for from my mother. Knowing she would never see her loving family again, she left the safe haven of her village, took her first train ride and ship passage on a two-thousand-mile trip to a totally foreign world. Surrounded by strangers, unable to understand or speak a word of English, and constantly protecting a small son every day and night, she somehow did it all. What else could have driven her but the faith that somehow, someway, she and her Rocco could make a better future for their family in America?
Chapter 4
IASSUME MY MOTHER AND I went down to Sulmona by donkey. I don’t remember my first train ride from Sulmona to Naples, and little about the passenger ship, Conte Biancamano (Count Whitehand) that took us across the Atlantic to New York. My mother later described it as being longer than our village church. It had many levels, and we, along with other immigrants, were lodged down several sets of stairs in a big room with no windows and narrow sleeping areas. She related that the voyage was not smooth and she was seasick most of the time. But I don’t remember feeling queasy.
Among the other immigrants were Italian-speaking women also on the way to join husbands in America, and that provided a welcome relief for my mom. The food was undoubtedly adequate to sustain life, but must not have been very tasty, because after a day or two we found our way up the stairs to a deck where we could buy small strips of grilled meat-on-a-stick. I grew to love that treat, which cost only one small coin. After a few days, my mother came to believe there was no danger for me, so she would give me a coin and let me go up alone to buy a stick.
I have no idea how long the voyage took, but records I requested from Washington, DC, say we landed in New York on July 15, 1929. Ellis Island had closed down about five years before and I have no recollection of where we first set foot in America, but I can well imagine how it must have been: a cavernous room teeming with hundreds of confused immigrants crowded along serpentine lines, clouds of dust from constantly shuffling shoes, and dozens of uniformed people with waving arms and pointing fingers, shouting in a foreign tongue. Amidst all of this, medical examiners checking everyone for contagious illnesses, and other officials squinting at soiled tags pinned to our clothing, attempting to decipher names and destinations. I have always considered it a stroke of luck that the name DiNardo didn’t pose a problem for customs officers. History records tales of some immigrants acquiring new family names in official records because of translation difficulties at the point of entry. I don’t know if it’s true, but one version of the derivation of the offensive term “WOP” contends that immigrants who had lost their passports were tagged with slips displaying the letters WOP (With Out Passport).
The never-ending flood of immigrants passing through New York must have imposed a constant, heavy burden on municipal facilities. By then thoroughly exhausted and confused, we could never have found our way to boarding the train bound for Pittsburgh. Even then our ordeal was not over. It was only our second train ride and we huddled close, clanking across New Jersey and most of Pennsylvania, dozing and awakening only during the many stops along the way. Finally, long after midnight, the train stopped again, and someone in a uniform came to point the way for us to get off. The train was a long one and our car was far from the station, so we had to walk on the cinder track alongside the rails. At one point I stumbled, and my mother had to carry me. She walked faster when we reached the end of the cinders and could see the station up ahead. Finally, silhouetted against the bright lights of the building, we saw a man running toward us, yelling over and over: “Maria—Tonino!” He rushed up to us, grabbed my mother, kissed her, then bent to snatch me up and hugged me tight against his chest. Groggy from the past hectic days, bewildered by this stranger who was crushing me, frightened at seeing my mom in tears—that was my introduction to my father, Rocco.
Part Two
America
Chapter 5
ALMOST NINETY YEARS AGO, I arrived in a Pittsburgh that was totally unlike the metropolis it is today. It was then commonly referred to as the Smoky City, where two large rivers, the Allegheny and the Monongahela meet to create the mighty Ohio. Huge factories, mills and foundries lined the city’s riverbanks for miles. They produced, refined and shaped iron, steel, aluminum, glass, coke, railroad airbrakes, generators, transformers and hundreds of other products. In those days, heavy black smoke and steamy-white and yellowish fumes spewed from hundreds of stacks and chimneys, permeating and tainting the air with the darkness and odors of sulfur and burnt coal. Even on clear days, the sun was often a dull, orange blob in the sky. At night, the glare of blazing blast furnaces and Bessemer converters making iron and smelting steel lit the skies for miles, serving as homing beacons for commercial airplane pilots. The only times I recall roofs, porches, automobiles and streets not being covered with red iron oxide dust was during prolonged strikes by unions, when the mills and plants were shut down, and rains washed them clean.
We settled in Hazelwood, which was created by a great bend of the Monongahela four miles upstream from downtown Pittsburgh at the Golden Triangle—the meeting-point of the three rivers. The bend is bisected into two sections by the B&O Railroad and Second Avenue, which run parallel to each other. The section of Hazelwood farthest inland from the river was referred to as “above the tracks.” It consisted of a mile-long collection of a bank, two movie houses, retail shops, doctors and dentists’ offices, pharmacies, and a public grade school. Paved wide streets branched off Second Avenue, ascended uphill, and were lined with houses, churches, the Carnegie Public Library, Gladstone Junior High School, the Hazelwood Post Office, and Burgwin Park with its ball field and public swimming pool.
The section of Hazelwood where we lived from 1929 until 1938 was called “below the tracks.” It was almost level, sloping gently downhill almost a mile from the B&O and Second Avenue demarcation lines to end at the banks of the Monongahela. In the 19th century, industrialists found the section ideal for construction of plants and facilities along the riverbank—with unlimited access to water for mill operations and unquestioned disposal of waste products. The section also provided ample space for worker housing near the plants. By the early 1920s, most of Jones & Laughlin Steel’s massive plants and the Baltimore & Ohio’s extensive railroad maintenance shops were in full operation on Hazelwood’s Monongahela banks, separated by fencing from dirt-paved streets and alleyways lined with houses.
Across the river from Hazelwood, the western bank of the Monongahela affected Hazelwood in another manner. It was lined with steep bluffs that shot several hundred feet straight up. Thus, most of Hazelwood was in a valley with high terrain on both sides. Only a few hours of weak direct sunlight could fall into the valley after passing over the eastern hills in late morning, and that was blocked by smog. A few hours later, the sun passed out of sight behind the bluffs to the west. In the summer, whenever we wanted to get suntans, we climbed the hills to the east or rode bikes out of the valley. Growing up there as a youth, I didn’t particularly take notice of this. However, later in life, I always made a point of living in homes with as many unimpeded hours of direct sunlight as possible.
By 1930, J&L had become the tenth-largest steel company in America. It had iron ore mines in Michigan and furnaces and converters that stretched along the Monongahela in or near Hazelwood. One was a large by-product plant only a few hundred yards from where we lived, where my father and uncle worked. The plant operated day and night, producing coke by burning coal in the absence of air. The operation was fruitful because by-products, as they were called, were captured during the process and sold to perfume manufacturers. Another benefit was that the coke itself was shipped across the river to the South Side to be used as fuel in J&L blast furnaces to make pig iron. In turn, the pig iron went into company furnaces for smelting into steel. Hazelwood also had two long mills for shaping and forming the newly made steel: the sheet polishing mill on Lytle Street; and the eighteen-inch-rod making mill below Hazelwood Avenue. For maintaining product quality, the company had a coal, coke and metallurgical research laboratory not far from the Hazelwood police station. I had no idea that I was destined to work in the eighteen-inch mill before and after World War II, and at the research lab after college.
Chapter 6
O UR FAMILY’S FIRST DWELLING in Hazelwood was on Langhorn Street, just across from the fencing that surrounded J&L and B&O operations. There we shared Uncle Alfonso’s house with him, his wife Mary, and their three sons John, Manuel and Victor—all younger than I was. For a few months the eight of us lived together in four rooms with one toilet in the cellar and no bathtub. J&L’s eight-hour shifts rotated every week, starting at 8 a.m., 4 p.m. or midnight. My father was an oiler in the by-products plant, while Uncle Alfonso operated a pusher in that same plant—a huge machine that shoved hot coke out of the ovens into railcars. Since they worked different shifts, this meant that someone was always trying to sleep when we boys were up.
This made for some challenging logistics. My Aunt Mary, who had been born in America and spoke both English and Italian, did the food shopping. My mother helped her with everything else. They somehow coped with laundry, cooking, and caring for four young, very active children. There was a constant routine of packing lunches, changing diapers, or bathing children in a large galvanized tub in the cellar. How our fathers and mothers got enough sleep, I’ll never know. We boys were all young enough to share sleeping in beds or on the front room sofa. Five days each week, either my father or uncle would be upstairs during daylight hours, trying to sleep—and the mothers were constantly after us to keep our play noises down.
That wasn’t the worst part. A gigantic crane, taller than a three-story house, rolled back and forth on B&O rails no further than two hundred feet away from our house. It carried a thick electrified magnet that looked like a six-foot-wide pie plate. The crane would hover over a huge pile of rusted scrap metal on the ground and slowly lower the magnet onto the pile. Huge pieces of scrap would stick tightly to the magnet. The crane raised the load some twenty feet high and rolled its way above an empty freight car. A shrill safety horn would whistle and the scrap pieces would suddenly drop off the magnet. The clang of those metal chunks hitting the steel car floor was thunderous. From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., every day except Sunday and holidays, the crane went back and forth, creaking, whistling, and clanging. We kids loved it, and it quickly added to my vocabulary of colorful words in several languages, shouted out windows by neighbors trying to sleep after night shifts in the mill.
In the fall, knowing only a few words in English, I attended my first kindergarten class at the Hazelwood Grade School. My father was working, so Uncle Alfonso took me about eight blocks up Tecumseh Street and across the tracks. It was to be my first, horrendous exposure to English, and I remember it vividly.
That first morning, there were a handful of us from various immigrant families in the class who spoke little or no English. I suppose in order to help us feel comfortable, the teacher patiently maneuvered all the class members to sit on the floor in a large circle. She got a large rubber ball, sat down next to me and, gesturing and speaking slowly in English, she rolled the ball to a boy across from her. Somehow, she got him to understand that he was supposed to roll it to someone else around the circle, which he did. The process was fun and going smoothly, until someone rolled it so that it stopped exactly between my leg and the teacher’s. I boldly reached out, grabbed it, and rolled it to someone else—only to hear the teacher’s loud, authoritarian voice in my ear. I couldn’t understand a word as she waved her finger back and forth in front of my face, clear signs that I had done something terrible. She scowled around the circle of classmates, her head switching back and forth, talking on and on in English. The next thing I remember about that day is her handing me over to Uncle Alfonso at the steps of the school and saying something to him—I assume reporting whatever it was I had done. He kept moving his head up and down as she spoke, so she kept on for the longest time—not realizing that he didn’t understand a word she was saying. His English was very rudimentary, since he spoke little or none at home (and in fact it remained that way until his death at age ninety-three). My uncle took me home, and I never did learn what I had done to upset the teacher, or what it was that she tried to explain to my uncle. Nor did I ever find out what he reported to my mother, and what she passed on to my father when he got home from work. All I know is I got a spanking. In those days, teachers were held in revered esteem and could do no wrong. I believe that this emotional “kick-off” into a foreign world played a definite and positive part in motivating me to learn English as quickly as possible.
During our first year in Hazelwood, we moved twice in the same neighborhood, finally ending up at the corner of Tecumseh and Langhorn streets, only a few hundred feet from my uncle’s house. This meant I could continue playing with the boys of my age on our block. Age was a significant factor among groups of boys below the tracks. My only brother, Albert, was born a year after we came to America. I was six years older than Al, so we grew up and played with completely different sets of friends. Therefore, we never bonded as we might have if our ages had been closer.
Another example of my language problem occurred early in the first grade. One evening, I convinced my parents that my teacher had said to be sure to come to school the following day, which was Saturday. The next morning, my mom walked with me those long eight blocks in freezing weather, only to find the school closed. Somehow I had misinterpreted what the teacher said.
Fortunately for me, when I got into the third grade, I was blessed with a teacher who deserves much of the credit for sparking my love of English. We foreign-born youngsters in the class were tired of memorizing foreign words and twisting tongues and lips to form strange sounds and syllables—let alone trying to write words. But that teacher was like a U.S. Marine drill instructor—insisting we use only English in class and forcing us to repeat words and phrases over and over again. It was the “immersion” technique people nowadays pay to learn in foreign language courses. She gave us homework every day, and she checked and reviewed every homework assignment. She was a committed, uncompromising teacher, and she launched me on a life-long love of language. I will forever be indebted to her, though to this day, I regret that I can’t remember her name. Unfortunately, the one thing she couldn’t get me to improve was my indecipherable penmanship.
Chapter7
IWAS INTRODUCED TO OTHER aspects of life in America during those early, difficult years. At school, the students who lived above the tracks had metal lunch boxes covered with paintings of dolls and animals. The boxes were filled with cookies, ham, cheese or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in neat triangles of store-bought bread. We kids from below the tracks brought food wrapped in wax paper and old (some foreign) newspapers tied with string. Our sandwiches were made with thick slices of home-baked bread and filled the lunchroom with odors of sausage, salami, meatballs, garlic and tomato sauces. But some children brought very little to eat and, at one point, the city of Pittsburgh offered free, nutritious lunches for whoever wanted them. Some in my class took those lunches, but I can still picture my mother, completely contrary to her usual gentle nature, adamantly forbidding me to accept what to her was charity.
Like children everywhere we quickly joined together in games, and in the process came up with nicknames for each other. Mine logically became Tony. But some names related to family backgrounds or history and were more difficult to convert, so we invented our own. A neighbor of mine became Bill (Bela in Hungarian), and a pal who lived two blocks away became Rico (Americo in Italian, in honor of America). Two got unusual nicknames: a fellow Italian immigrant named Eugene became Iggy; and Theodore, a Ukrainian, became Wago (both for some long-forgotten reasons). My cousin John’s brothers were named after Victor Emmanuelle II, the last king of Italy, but they chose to be called Vic and Elmer.