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.