My WASPy Mom

My Mom when she was a teen (in the plaid coat) off to go ice skating with friends

I've always thought of myself as an Italian-American even though, to be honest, I'm only half-Italian. My sister and brother are the same way-- not just in terms of being half-Italian, but also in thinking about themselves as being Italian. My father was full-blooded Italian. My Mom doesn't have a hint of Italian blood running through her veins. Her family is German and English.

I suppose my brother, sister, and I mostly identify with the Italian side of our family because, from a cultural point of view, it would have been impossible to resist: weekly Sunday dinners at my Italian grandparent's house, my Dad's family was larger (my paternal grandparents had 8 children, my maternal grandparents had 3), and they, my Dad's side of the family, all spoke Italian regularly.

I have to hand it to my Mom. When she married my Dad, she was suddenly thrust into (what must have been for her) a rather alien environment and a very different sort of family -- the food, the culture, the language, and more -- yet she managed to navigate those waters quite well.

Most everyone, the adults at least, all spoke Italian at those Sunday dinners at my grandparent's house (and at other events). My Mom wasn't alone in terms of being the only non-Italian at those gatherings. Two of my six aunts married men who weren't Italian. My uncle, my Dad's brother, also married a non-Italian.  My uncle's wife, my Aunt Edna, is a first-generation Polish-American. She speaks English and Polish and, after marrying my Uncle Sandy, she learned to speak Italian as well. Because of that, she seemed to fit in with the Italians much better than my Mom ever did. My Aunt Edna is 96 now and her daughter, my cousin Sandra, is her full-time caretaker.

I can still remember my Mom sitting there at those family gatherings with her expressions and body language plainly indicating she was not often sure what was going on around her or what people were saying. The other women, my grandmother and my aunts, didn't ever invite her to join in on the food preparations. She wasn't Italian after all. She was usually relegated to the clean-up crew. My Mom's name is Aileen. My grandmother, with her thick Italian accent, always called her what sounded like, Aye-lee-na.

As out of place as my Mom often felt -- and I know she often felt that way, like an outsider, because she's told me so -- I never heard her complain about it. She simply went with the flow. Coming from a WASPy background, that couldn't have been too easy for her. Her family was so much less loud. Less animated. Less emotional. Less in-your-face. My Dad's family could be overbearing at times, my Mom's family was not that way at all.  And that might also account for why I barely identify with the WASP side of my family. Sometimes, though, I think it was her family who gave me a better sense of cultural balance. And I appreciate that.

Italian-American Heroes!

My uncle, Santillo, during WW2

During WW2, one-half-million Italian-Americans served in the various branches of the U.S. military.  Some say the number was much higher-- up to 1.5 million. My Dad and my uncle (his brother) were amongst them.  This, in spite of the fact that, along with Germany and Japan, America was at war with Italy.

Most concerns regarding the loyalties of Italian-Americans were quickly dispelled by the incredible response from those who volunteered to join and fight. My guess is the vast majority of Italian-Americans who served in WW2 were first-generation Italian-Americans.  As such, many of them might end up fighting relatives.

In spite of this incredible display of loyalty, hundreds of Italian-Americans were viewed as a potential threats and were interned in detention camps. As many as 600,000 others who had not become citizens were required to carry identity cards identifying them as a "resident alien". Thousands more who resided on the West Coast of the US were required to move inland, often losing their homes and businesses in the process. 

My Dad, Luigi, during WW2

My Dad, Luigi, served in the US Army in Europe from D-Day to the occupation of Germany. (He later became a USMC combat veteran of Korea.) His brother, Santillo, also served in the Army, but he fought in North Africa and through the campaigns in Sicily and Italy. Like my father, my uncle was also an infantryman. He was also utilized as an Italian/English interpreter.

Thankfully, neither my father nor my uncle paid the ultimate price while serving, but they were ready and willing to do so just as so many other Italian-Americans were.  

Since WW2 (and including that war) 24 brave Italian-American servicemen have been awarded the Medal of Honor.

On this Memorial Day, we honor all those who sacrificed their lives fighting for this country. I don't know how many Italian-Americans are amongst them, i.e., those who paid the ultimate price, but there's no doubt many of them did.

Beer and Soda for Sunday Dinners

Growing up, most Sundays were spent at my grandparent's house for dinner. If you're Italian, you know what those Sunday dinners were like: big family gatherings with salads, bread, and all that great stuff that came out of the Sunday sauce/gravy pot. I'm talking meatballs, sausages, bracioles, big hunks of pork, all that great stuff was always in the pot. The sauce/gravy was served on pasta, of course. For our family, that pasta was usually spaghetti, rigatoni, shells, or sometimes ziti.

To help wash down the incredible food, there was plenty of beer for the adults and soda for the kids. (We called it "soda," not "pop.")  There was wine too. Home made red wine my grandfather made in his cellar. Wine served in those big one-gallon glass jugs like they put cider in.Oh yeah. There was also soda water, the kind that came in spritzer bottles like the ones the Three Stooges would have soda fights with.

The beer was always Ballantine beer. Ballantine was one of the biggest brewers in the US. They were founded in Newark, NJ, in 1840.  And the soda was always White Rock-- Orange White Rock soda. It was always orange soda and, to this day, whenever I'm eating an Italian Sunday-style dinner, I still want orange soda with it.

I live in California. We don't have White Rock here. Leastwise, not that I know of. If we did, that would be the brand I'd buy to go with those Italian meals when I have them. White Rock, by the way, began in the late 1800s  as a bottler of mineral water from the White Rock natural springs in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Sometime later, they began bottling not just soda water from the spring, but flavored sodas like White Rock orange.

Ballantine beer and White Rock soda came in quart-size glass bottles that were worth a nickel each when they were empty. My cousin and I always grabbed the empties and walked down to my grandmother's nephew's roadside stand -- where he sold and served sandwiches, beer, soda, and more to travelers heading up or coming back from Lake Sebago and other places of interest up Seven Lakes Drive in Rockland County, New York -- and we turned them in for the coinage. Course, we then bought candy with our profits so Bats, my grandmother's nephew, almost immediately got the money back he just gave us. My grandmother made the meatballs for Bats' meatball sandwiches so you know they were good!

Those were the days, my friends.

Here's a pic of what was once Bats' roadside stand. I snapped it when I went back home for a visit last November.  It's now a small restaurant and bar called Sterling Station.

Italy's Golden Apples: Pomodoro!

You say toe-mah-toe, I say toe-may-toe, but Italians say pomodoro!

The pomodoro is such an important part of Italian cuisine, you'd think tomatoes were indigenous to Italy. But they're not. They're not even indigenous to Europe. They're from the Americas and it wasn't until Spanish explorers brought back tomato seeds to Europe, Europeans (much less Italians) didn't have a clue what tomatoes were.

Ancient Aztec Tomato Calender. (J/K)

Next time you sit down for a Sunday sauce meal,  you have Mexicans to thank for the sauce. Make that you have the Aztecs to thank. They were, after all, the first Mexicans and they were the first to cultivate tomatoes, which were indigenous to their part of the world.  You might even have Aztecs to thank for your dessert, depending on what it might be. Those Aztec/Mexicans were also the first to cultivate the coco plant. You know, the plant that gives the world chocolate.

The word, "tomato," is derived from the Aztec word, tomatl, which became the Spanish word, tomate. So, how did tomatoes go from tomatl to tomate to pomodoro? More interestingly, how did Italians settle on pomodoro, which means "golden apple," for the Italian word for the juicy, red, fruit? Well, I'm going to tell you. (But you probably already figured that out.)

One theory is that the Spanish brought back tomatoes as well as tomatillos. Many varieties of tomatillos are yellow, not red. So, the theory states that people thought yellow tomatillos looked like golden apples and the name stuck.

Another theory says that, back in the 16th century, calling something "gold" or "golden" added power and value to it and that apples, golden apples, are associated with certain old myths that would make calling tomatoes, "golden apples," something more important in the world of naming fruits and vegetables.

Rigatoni Pomodoro! Yeah! That's what I'm talking about!

If you think Italians took to tomatoes like ducks to water you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. In fact, many Italians originally believed that eating tomatoes would kill them. That's because tomatoes are part of the nightshade family of poisonous plants. Belladonna, which means beautiful woman in Italian, is a famous poison that is part of the same family of plants tomatoes belong to.

Somewhere along the line, some Italian must have figured out that tomatoes weren't poisonous. Maybe he or she sliced one, drizzled some olive oil on it, sprinkled on a few spices like basil and oregano, and added a slice of mozzarella cheese?  (I only use that example because I eat tomatoes that way quite often.)

Regardless of how it happened, Italians soon embraced the pomodoro in big ways.  It became Italy's national vegetable-like fruit and found it's way into so many of the Italian dishes we all love. You know, like our  Sunday (non-Mexican) sauce or gravy. So next time you're eating some rigatoni or some other pasta with your Sunday-best sauce or gravy on it, you might not only want to say, "grazie,"  you might also want to say, "gracious" to those Spanish-speaking peoples who are responsible for bringing the tomato to our kitchens and tables.

If you'd like to watch Chef Pasquale Sciarappa make'a d'sauce from'a d'scratch, old school style, kick back and enjoy this video.  Chef Pasquale says, "If you wanna make'a d'sauce, you gotta sweat. No sweat, no sauce."

Pane!

Pane Rustico

Only two groups of people make bread worth eating: the French and the Italians. I know that sounds overly opinionated but that's how I am: overly opinionated. I should mention that the word "bread" covers a lot of territory. For instance, bagels are (technically) bread, and bagels are definitely worth eating and they don't need to be made by French or Italian bakers. In fact, they probably shouldn't be made by those bakers. But I'm not writing about every kind of bread. I'm writing about table breads. Sandwich breads. Dipping and mopping up your plates bread.  And for those kinds of breads,  Italian and French breads are supreme.

A Vietnamese street vendor selling French bread baguettes.

It's not often I give a nod of approval to foods of the French variety -- I'll take Italian food over French food  any day -- but with bread, I have to give credit where credit is due. The French, in spite of them eating frogs and snails and dipping their French Fries in mayo, make a damn good loaf of bread.

By the way, want to know where to get some pretty good loaves or baguettes of French bread?  In Vietnamese restaurants, believe it or not.  You see, the French occupied Viet Nam for quite a few years and, while they did, some clever Vietnamese bakers learned the ways of French bread making.  Many Vietnamese immigrated to America after the Viet Nam War and they brought their French bread making skills with them.

Back to pane.

There are numerous kinds of Italian bread or pane. Personally, for me, the more rustic the better. My Uncle Tony used to work for an Italian bakery and grocery store back in the day. He would deliver Italian food stuffs and bread to Italian families.  My grandmother was someone who was on his route. That's how Uncle Tony met my Aunt Rosie. When I was growing up, participating in all those Sunday dinners at my grandparent's house, the bread was always fantastic! And it was always delivered by my Uncle Tony and then kept in my grandmother's washing machine. Hey! Where else would you keep the bread but in a washing machine? With that rubber seal around the lid of the washer, it kept the bread fresh for days.

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Italian breads have many uses: from mopping the sauce off your plate, to making meatball, sausage-and-peppers, cold cuts, and other kinds of delicious sangwiches, to dipping in olive oil and red wine vinegar or scooping out bruschetta from a big bowl, Italian pane is the best!

My cyber goomba back home, Johnny Meatballs -- back home being the great state of New Jersey for me -- is a meatball impresario. He sells his mouth-watering meatballs on a big (and genuine) Italian roll to thousands of lucky Jersey peeps. Yeah. When it comes to meatball sangwiches, size does matter!

Bread making goes way back in Italy. Back as far as the Romans and that's a ways back. Because of that, Italians have had thousands of years to perfect their bread making skills and perfect it they have. Generally, Italian bread is simple as breads go. Certainly the table breads. But don't let that simplicity fool you. It's delicious in the extreme. Besides, anyone can make things complicated. Genius is making them simple. And Italian breads are pure genius in their simplicity.

Can you even imagine sitting down to a Sunday sauce Italian dinner without bread? I can't. Nor would I want to. The bread on the table is the cornerstone of a great Italian meal and should never be absent from those dinners. Capiche?

A Dark Time for Italian-Americans

My Dad, Luigi, WW2, somewhere in Europe

When Mussolini rose to power and Italy became a Fascist nation, it was a dark time for Italian-Americans. Bigotry and prejudice against Italian-Americans quickly increased. After Italy formally allied itself with Nazi Germany and the US officially entered a  war with those countries, the prejudice became worse for a time.

Instead of hiding their heritage -- Italians don't do that, not ever -- many young Italian-Americans enlisted in one of America's armed services. My Dad and his brother both did.  My Dad served in the US Army from D-Day to the Occupation of Germany.  (After WW2 ended, he joined a Marine reserve unit and later became a combat veteran of the Korean War.)

My Uncle Sandy (Santillo), my Dad's brother, served in North Africa during WW2 and later participated in the invasions of Sicily and Italy. Once allied forces landed in Sicily, they made my uncle an interpreter in addition to his duties as an infantryman.

I've heard many jokes in my life about Italians being cowards. They all stem from WW2. You may have heard some of them as well. Here's one: "WW2 Italian Army rifle for sale. Only dropped once."

My Uncle Sandy later in life. What a fashionable dresser!

I have one word for those jokes and the people who enjoy telling them: Bahfongool!   (Pardon my phonetic spelling.) Italians are descended from people, the Romans, who once conquered most of the known Western World. I seriously doubt that could have happened because their armies were comprised of cowards. Cowardice isn't in the Italian gene pool. Never has been and never will be.

There was more than a little concern amongst some Italian-Americans that the US government might round them up and force them into internment camps the way it shamefully did with Japanese-Americans. As Americans, we have much to be proud of. Putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps wasn't one of our prouder moments. Not even close.

Interestingly (but not surprisingly), there was never much concern amongst Americans of German descent that they might end up in internment camps. Historically, Germans represent the single largest group to immigrate to the US.  German-Americans weren't as willing to proudly announce their ancestry during WW2 the way Italians were still willing to do... and for obvious reasons, not the least of which being Germans didn't stand out as such in predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America during that time period or at nearly any time before.

Many Italian-American servicemen and women, the vast majority of them, served with honor and distinction during WW2... including those who ended up fighting Italian soldiers!  As far as Italian-Americans were concerned, they were Americans first, foremost, and in nearly every way. Yes, they were also Italians. But their Italian loyalties were focused on Italian culture, family, heritage, and more, and had nothing to do with Italian politics of the time.  If WW2 represented something truly important to them, it was that they were loyal and patriotic Americans in every way, not merely a group of people who survived a dark period where they may have represented, to some other Americans, the enemy.

For that and many more reasons, America should be incredibly grateful that so many Italians decided to immigrate to this country. The Italian-American community has been a a vibrant and incredible asset to this country's importance, its growth, and its prosperity. Italian pride-- Yes!  Italian-American pride-- Even more so!

The Great Italian Exodus

Leaving Italy in the 1890s for a better life.

Ever wonder why so many Italians said, Arrivederci! to their homeland and ventured off to the New World? Was it because many truly believed the streets of America were paved with gold? Please. that would mean Italy was a nation filled with gullible idiots... which it wasn't.

 Italians who left their country did so for a variety of personal reasons -- Okay. Maybe some of them did think the streets were paved with gold in America; every village has its idiot(s) -- with the most common reasons being poverty, disease (a major outbreak of cholera in Naples took place in the 1880s) and unfair land management practices. (Many who left were farmers and because of those practices couldn't earn a decent living off the land.)  If there was a single event, however, which prompted the exodus of so many Italians, it was the unification of Italy in 1861.

Before the unification of Italy, the country that is now Italy was composed of city states and small independent nations. It had been that way since the Middle Ages. Naples, for instance, was a city state, a powerful one, but when the country unified, Naples became just another city amongst many cities in one country.

Kentucky Pizza in Buenos Aires. Wait! What? Kentucky Pizza???

The Italian exodus is referred to as the "Italian Diaspora."  Diaspora comes from a Greek word which means scattering or dispersion. That's what many Italians did from the 1880s through about 1920: They dispersed and scattered.  Many, of course, dispersed to America. But America wasn't the only destination for Italians leaving the boot.

Quite a few Italians scattered to other parts of Europe. Some to North Africa. Still more dispersed to South America -- mostly to Argentina and Uruguay -- which means, I suppose, that you can get a decent pizza in Buenos Aires. The Italian Diaspora to America was, of course, the destination for millions of Italians. It was the #1 destination for those who participated in the great Italian exodus. My grandparents were amongst those who chose America as their destination. It's probably the same for many of you reading this.

The greatest numbers of Italians who left Italy for the New World came from the south of the country, especially from 1880 to 1920.  During that time, more than 9,000,000 Italians -- many, if not most, from places like Naples and the Campania region, Calabria, and Sicily -- headed across the Atlantic to the Americas. That's a lot of Italians!

If you're an Italian-American, you likely owe your status as such, directly or indirectly, to the unification of Italy in 1861. Unification sounds like a good thing, and in some ways, perhaps many ways, it probably was. But not in enough ways to keep millions of Italians from leaving home and dispersing and scattering to other places on the planet where many of them prospered.

Home Decor: Italian-American Style

Not my aunt but you get the idea. As in the photo, my aunt's drapes were also covered with clear vinyl.

If you grew up in an Italian family, you likely had a Mom, Nonna, or aunt who had all their upholstered furniture covered in clear vinyl. For those ladies, it was what the French call, de rigueur. (i.e., necessary if you want to be fashionable, popular, socially acceptable, etc.)

My Aunt Jean (RIP) was one of the many, dedicated, Italian, clear-vinyl fans common enough amongst Italian-American women. She lived in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ. She was married to my Uncle Carl (also RIP) whom everyone called "Duke" because his last name was La Duca.  My Uncle Carl was from the old country. Naples. He was one of the nicest, most generous and caring men I've ever had the privilege of knowing in my lifetime. Better yet, he was part of our family.

My Aunt Jean's house was a single story home in the Cape Cod style of residential architecture. Her downstairs basement had been remodeled into a big family room with a small bathroom and a large, full kitchen: A much larger kitchen than the kitchen that was upstairs, built when the house was originally constructed. Whenever we went to their home, which was often enough, we never used the front or back doors to enter. We always went in by the side door which was at the bottom of 5 or 6 concrete steps that led down to the basement on the side of their house. My aunt and uncle practically lived in that remodeled basement and many wonderful family gatherings took place there.

Back upstairs...

Fake fruit bowl, Italian style. They look real, no?

Yes, all my aunt's furniture upstairs was covered in clear vinyl. All of it. Everything. Even her living room drapes were covered with clear vinyl. She also had little blown-glass and porcelain nick-knacks everywhere. Most of them imported from Italy. She had bowls and bowls overflowing with fruit. Make that fake fruit. The kind they make out of some sort of hard, wax-like stuff. In one corner, she had her very own shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. For all I know, it was blessed by the pope. There were also many crosses and pictures of Jesus hanging on the walls. To match her fake fruit bowls, she had strands of electrified decor lights made into the shapes of fruit with fake leaves artfully hung around her kitchen windows.

It was always immaculate upstairs at my Aunt Jean's house. When I say immaculate, I don't simply mean it was clean and cleaned often. It was immaculate! You could safely eat off of any surface in any room upstairs, including the bathroom floor right around the toilet. (Not that you'd want to.) Her upstairs could be used by almost any high-tech computer manufacturing company as their clean room, you know, with technicians wearing all white gowns and head-gear with clear-vinyl face plates so they could see what they were doing. It was that clean. It took clean to new dimensions. It was exponentially clean.

Small table-top Virgin Mary shrine.

As kids, were weren't allowed to go upstairs into my aunt's clean rooms. Leastwise, not unless we were accompanied by an adult... an adult with special clearance issued by my aunt. I'm not sure if my Uncle Carl was even allowed up there on his own. It may be that he had to be escorted upstairs by my aunt.  We'd sneak up there anyway, of course, when no one was looking. I was always captivated by the fake fruit. It looked so real!  I even took a bite once, and then had to hide it at the bottom of the bowl under some of the other "fruit" because my teeth left an impression. My Aunt Jean was not one to mess with. Serious consequences could result. By consequences, I'm talking about physical kinds of consequences. The kind that smarts! The get-yourself-smacked-in-the-head kind. Smacked hard, I might add. I can only imagine the kind of right-hook my aunt probably had.

Why so many Italian women had those clear-vinyl obsessions I will never know, much less understand. It was what it was. I'm guessing many of them, to this day, still keep their furniture under the protective coatings of clear vinyl. Some things don't change. And I, for one, am often glad they don't.