The basement saga continues. Today I was finding old stories and essays from grade school. One was written on little scraps of paper and there were obviously scraps missing. A pity, too, as the main character was named Eshtine. It appeared to be the beginning of a spy novel: "Code Name: Cheetah." (!)
I must have begun this other story when I was about ten, as I had called it "Ladyhawk" after the movie. The bit I found was only a hundred or so words long, but as an independent piece it made me laugh. (It'll have to stay an independent piece; I don't remember now the story I was trying to write.) The setup: two girls are walking to school. They are approached by an old man who tells them, "Give me a dime and good shall come to you."
The skeptical girls ask "What kind of good?"
The old man says he'll tell them, walks a bit away, the girls follow. Before they know it they are in an unfamiliar park. One of them cries in alarm, "Where are we?"
The vagabond answers, "YOU didn't give me a dime," and leaves.
I also found this essay I had written for a contest about family stories. Again, judging from the handwriting (much, much better than my current cursive) I'd say I was ten or so when I wrote it. It's based on an interview with my grandfather, conducted by my brother, transcribed by my sister.
My grandfatherís father took nine trips across the ocean. His name was Francesco Pancella. While Francesco was traipsing back and forth from Italy to America to find a better life for his family and himself, my grandfather, Vincent, was at home helping his mother, Rosa.
Home was a small village named Rapino in the mountains on the eastern side of Italy. Vincentís house had four rooms, a basement, a garden, and the only oven in town. People often came with bread for Rosa to bake. Part of the pay for doing this was some of the bread. If the bread was too much to eat, Rosa sold it in her store.
Even though Francesco sent back a little money, it was necessary for the family to find new was of getting more money. One way was raising silkworms. When the mulberry leaves were growing on the nearby mulberry trees, a man came with some tiny silkworms. They put the silkworms on shelves and gathered mulberry leaves. The silkworms ate by day and by night until they were about seventy times their starting size. In the four or five week period, the worms shed their skins four times. While the worms were growing bigger, the children spread them farther apart from each other. When the silkworms were about three inches long, the children gathered branches. The worms climbed them and wound themselves into their cocoons. Then they took the cocoons to the silk factory and sold them.
Another way they supported themselves was by Mother Rosaís Cantina. When there was a feast day of the Church, like St. Lawrence, the patron saint of the town, they had processions with visiting musicians. Afterwards Rosa would bring up wine from her basement and everyone would buy food and drink and have a big party. The boys and girls would help by gathering firewood and making frequent trips to the town pump for water. The trip took about ten minutes each way.
Rosa had five children. Their names were Theresa, Vincent, Anthony, Elsie and Adela. When they were six years old, they went to the town school. Vincent left school when he was eleven years old. His father, who was a tailor, arranged for Vincent to be apprenticed to a tailor. For two years the boy worked with the tailor learning the trade. He learned to cut material, sew pants or jackets, make button holes, and other things a tailor should know how to do.
The mountainous eastern side of Italy was very subject to earthquakes. One thing that Vincent remembers in his life in Italy was an earthquake that totally destroyed another town. Everyone in Rapino had felt the shock, but luckily there was no damage except for the town of Alzano. People talked about this disaster for many weeks.
The other event that Vincent remembers was the day that they turned on electrical lights in Rapino. First, the people in charge wired up houses and put up poles. Then, with a flick of a switch, they turned on the lights in the small town. The old people thought to themselves, ìWhat sort of foolishness is this? We donít need this crazy invention when we have our kerosene lamps!î But very quickly they got used to turning the lights on with a simple push of a button, and then they were happy.
In 1918, Francesco took his last trips across the ocean with his oldest daughter Teresa. He had an apartment and a job waiting for her. Two years later, after World War I, he sent for Rosa and the rest of the family. They packed up everything they could carry and went by bus to the nearest railroad station. The train took them across the mountains to the port city of Naples. There they boarded the ship Canopy. The trip to America took fifteen days, including a stop at Gibraltar. On March 4, 1920, the Canopy landed in Boston. From there, the family traveled to Brooklyn, New York, and lived with Teresa and Francesco. It was the end of an old life and the beginning of a new for my grandfather, Vincent Pancella.
So THAT'S how Theresa got her name--(your neice)..cool!!!;)
Posted by: sharon-nicole at September 2, 2002 10:29 PMIsn't it interesting on how LITTLE people had, yet they overcame anyway? Reading the recollection, it strikes me that in its own way, life was just as complicated, then......
Posted by: kitgefallen at September 4, 2002 10:30 PMMy grandmother, Bambina Amoroso, was born in Rapino in 1904. She was married to Ernest Amoroso (from another Amoroso family). The family was heavily involved in the local ceramics business and in the wrought iron works....I believe they made a great many iron gates, fences and chandeliers. Ernest and Bambina moved to Richmond Hill, New York in 1935 and eventually settled in Atlantic Beach (Long Island).
I hope to one day visit my ancestral homeland where I may possibly find many distant relatives.
It's my understanding that both the Amoroso and the Bontempo families are still involved in ceramics to this day. Thanks for putting up this website!
Sincerely,
Jeffery Haas
Dallas, Texas
Jeffrey: I knew your grandmother well. I was born in Rapino and our family emigrated to Kew Gardens/Richmond Hill in 1961 when I was a baby. Down the road from her (in Atlantic Beach)lived the Mascioli family whom we visited often. Do you happen to be Millie and Frank's son?
Posted by: Raffaella Marciari at January 29, 2004 09:48 PMJeffrey: I knew your grandmother well. I was born in Rapino and our family emigrated to Kew Gardens/Richmond Hill in 1961 when I was a baby. Down the road from her (in Atlantic Beach)lived the Mascioli family whom we visited often. Do you happen to be Millie and Frank's son?
Posted by: Raffaella Marciari at January 29, 2004 09:49 PMJeffery Haas replies (a YEAR and a half LATER!):
Gee whiz, I am so sorry about the long wait between replies!
I only found your reply again because I ran across the website through GOOGLE while looking for something else.
I had completely forgotten about my post there!
I am not one of Millie and Frank's sons...I am the son of Albina (Amoroso) and Peter Haas, Bambina's other daughter, the one who lived in Washington DC.
I was the peculiar child who came down in the summertime and talked constantly about electronics and my only other favorite subject was Motown music.
I was the same age as my cousins John and Frank, whom you're referring to, and we probably caused more than our share of "trouble" or harum scarum on Flamingo Street.
My favorite memories include sneaking into Silver Point and Catalina, nosing around Sid's Golden Dome and getting chased by the wiseguys who frequented the place in its heyday, bumming rides from Peter Angelilli in his Corvette which he could not refuse even though I was just a punk kid ten years his junior, fishing off the bay next to the old Coast Guard station at the foot of Flamingo, going out on my Uncle Oscar's fishing boat "The Marlin", sipping wine coolers (under age!) in the back yard while Grandpa Ernest played cards and smoked cigars with the neighbors and a couple of Nassau County cops...and harassing poor old Abe at his little deli across from the VAB Amoco while we bought his incredibly delicious egg-cream sodas.
I think that we do know each other, and the Mascioli family are very near and dear to my heart. I have a lot of fond childhood memories of the elder Mrs. Mascioli visiting Bambina at her house on Flamingo Street in Atlantic Beach, just a few houses down. Mrs. Mascioli quickly found the direct route to my childlike heart....with "Mrs. Mascioli Cake" and pizzefrite, which her and Bambina used to make while chatting in the kitchen.
I dont think I have ever run across two ladies with a better sense of humor than Bambina and Mrs. Mascioli, except perhaps my own mother, who inherited Bambina's quick wit and easy laugh.
Just a very quick story related to me by Grandmother Bambina about some of her early days in America..........
Ernest and Bambina had recently purchased a television set, and one night as they watched a commercial came on the air that featured a chicken.
Through special effects, they had dubbed a voice and the chicken was trying to sell itself as the best tasting chicken you could buy.
Its beak moved and the voice prattled on about what a fresh chicken it was.
Bambina picked up the phone and called Mrs. Mascioli because she knew that the Masciolis were probably watching the same program.
In an excited voice Bambina said (in Italian) "Hey....did you know that in America the chickens talk?"
Bambina instilled an honesty and a work ethic in me that I try to carry today. She believed in speaking her mind regardless of what others would think of her, and it earned her respect. As a rather strange kid I found it refreshing instead of my usual habit of cow-towing to the popular kids and I learned more important life lessons from our occasional trips to see Bambina than I can count. I have a very few but precious memories of Grandfather Ernest, as he passed away far too soon and I was still a very small child. I remember a very imposing man of great strength, seemingly sullen to my childhood eyes and yet to my surprise he was not sullen at all, but instead very sweet and gentle, and yet he had the firm hand.
Above all, Ernest Amoroso, Sr. had the same quick wit and mischievous sense of humor as his wife, and he often played practical jokes on the youngsters that frightened and at the same time delighted us. We never quite knew for sure when he was "kidding".
He was the "Great Papa", and not to be second-guessed!
I also frequented Millie and Frank's old house on Hillside Avenue in Richmond Hill...
I grew up in a "sanitized" suburb of Washington and houses like those simply did not exist where I was from. The Gallagher House on Hillside Avenue was just around the corner from Ozone Park, home of Phil Rizzuto and a certain "plumbing supply salesman" who gained later fame for his other exploits. It was believed he was "made of Teflon" if my memory serves me right??
The old house on Hillside Avenue had everything my house didn't have.....ancient carved stairways with filligreed bannisters, crystal jeweled doorknobs, real brass fixtures on the sinks, marbled inlay pushbuttons on the light switches, marble mosaic tiles on the floors in a honeycomb pattern, stained glass casement windows in the hallway, a great oak door that must have weighed in excess of three hundred and fifty pounds, and Egyptian style moldings on the ceilings. There was even a "cellar" with real stone walls so ancient looking that I used to think it was "haunted"!
Later I spent many happy hours in that cellar with my Gallagher cousins, playing everything from Motown and "The British Invasion" groups that we could get our hands on. John became quite the skilled drummer and I was taking classical piano lessons, but when I was in Richmond Hill it was time for rock and roll!
The house I grew up in by comparison was one of hundreds of thousands of identical square boxes on identical streets with identical fixtures....very boring indeed.
When I came away from my precious summer visits to Richmond Hill and Atlantic Beach I came away with a profound sense of belonging to something far greater, I was filled with rich sensory experiences and infused with a sense of family and cultural significance that simply was not available in the "safe" suburbs of Bethesda, Maryland.
I felt more "ITALIAN"!
It's really great to have memories like these...I wonder about all the poor folks who dont have as many and I believe that I am truly lucky.
For a look at what I've been doing lately, click here:
I believe that Atlantic Beach is probably the best kept secret in all of New York...it's been years since I've been back but I can't wait to take my wife and children there someday soon.
Cheers!
Jeffery Haas
Dallas, Texas