Grandma's reaction to the new world she encountered back in the Old World sounds pretty typical for a child of six: "I didn't like the food," she said. And that's not all she objected to.
"I was used to drinking coffee and milk." But in Italy, there wasn't any coffee to be had! From our modern vantage point, especially living in the bountiful USA, it's hard to believe there was no coffee in Italy in those days. But the more I learn about my ancestor Pasquale Orzo's life in Calabria, the more I realize people had nothing much at all to eat.
If people drank warm beverages at all in the morning, it was most likely chicory, derived from chicory root, which was roasted, ground and brewed. Ironically, the other possibility is that my Orzo ancestors may have drunk orzo, otherwise known as barley wheat. Called caffe d'orzo, the grain was, like chicory, roasted and ground before it was brewed.
These and other interesting details emerged during a conversation I had on August 29, 2024 with my Aunt Bette (nee Ricci) Foeller, who was the youngest of my grandmother's five children (my Dad was Aunt Bette's older brother.)
For as long as I can remember, Aunt Bette made her home in Illinois, near Normal, where her now-deceased husband, George Foeller, had a long and very distinguished career at Illinois State University as Director of Bands and Trombone instructor, and also, the originator of the Big Red Marching band at the University. He will be inducted into the Marching Band Hall of Fame on Saturday, October 19, 2024 at Illinois State, where he retired in 1990 after 30 years with the University.
My conversation with Aunt Bette (which I recorded) focused on information I wrote down nearly 45 years ago on seven small pieces of paper. It was sometime in 1980 when Grandma Albina sat me down in her kitchen one afternoon and poured her heart out. At the time Grandma and I spoke, I was only 28 years old, and even though I didn't grasp the significance of what she was telling me, I saved all the notes -- which I'd written in red magic marker pen -- in my orange "Pasquale Orzo" file.
Grandma basically described to me the horrendous year or so she spent living in southern Italy with her family. At six years old, my grandmother, who was the oldest of her siblings, traveled back to Italy to the seaside town of Paola,
But things didn't go well for her father. After ten months in Paola, Grandma said her father abandoned the idea of becoming a farmer because he couldn't acquire land. I am convinced that people in Paola were been deeply prejudiced against Pasquale because he had been born to a woman who was unmarried, a situation that shamed him and his family for their entire lives.
His mother's name was Filomena Scrivano, and she gave birth to him on November 3, 1870.
Speaking to me in 1980, Grandma never admitted that her father was illegitimate; she and her sisters were so deeply ashamed of their father's status they managed to keep it secret their whole lives. But Grandma hinted at what was going on: on the first page of my notes, off to the left side, I wrote down very clearly that her father had been fed by a "wet nurse."
Once he gave up on being a farmer, Pasquale returned to the states, leaving behind his wife, Caterina, and his four daughters. They moved in with Caterina's father, Giuseppe, who was remarried to a woman named Madelena. (His first wife, Alvira, apparently had died.)
It must have been difficult for Madelena to welcome her husband's daughter, particularly when she had four children under the age of seven. Referring to Madelena, Grandma told me, "She didn't treat me well!" To make matters worse for Grandma, her mother, Caterina, blamed Grandma for not getting along with the stepmother.
There were other problems. Grandma told me that "We four kids got measles, mumps and all the childhood diseases."
Eventually, Caterina and the children had to leave her father's house; it wasn't easy to find another place to live: "We got an apartment because my mother had a friend who knew of a place." It wasn't much, though: "It was one big room for four children and our mother. It was stucco."
As the oldest child, Grandma was expected to help care for the younger children, and sometimes that meant scrambling to help find them food.
Speaking about her mother, Grandma said Caterina was extremely mild-mannered, in contrast to Pasquale, who had a notorious temper. As the wife of our great grandpa, Grandma said her mother was bashful, she was mortified. Specifically, Grandma said her mother was only 16 when she married and wasn't prepared to have sex with her 28-year old husband.
When her mother had her first baby -- her labor lasted an exhausting three days and three nights. The child, Adelina, apparently was born with some kind of congenital defect. She passed away at the age of five, her death a source of great heartbreak for her parents.
In Bristol, Pasquale built the masonry steeple of the Lutheran church in town. He also built the family home at 295 Park Street in Bristol; eventually that home was passed down to the next generation.
Back in Bristol, Gaetano went to work in a factory called New Departure, while Pasquale worked as a mason and carpenter. Soon, though, Grandma recalled, Gaetano's wife back in Italy wrote to ask her husband to return to Italy to get her. Once there, however, Gaetano's wife convinced him to go to Brazil rather than the US. Eventually, a very sad Caterina got a letter from her brother telling her that he had settled in Rio de Janeiro, and was working as a fruit seller.
Caterina, Grandma recalled, was broken-hearted. She missed her brother terribly.
Now I understand why Grandma and her sisters traveled (by prop plane) in the 1950s and 60s to visit our relatives in Rio de Janeiro. Apparently, one of those relatives edited a magazine in Rio!
Caterina was 69 when she died; Grandma's sister Lizetta quit her job to take care of her mother after Caterina was diagnosed with a heart condition. In those days, there wasn't much to be done about a heart problem.
It was during this period that Aunt Bette, Grandma's youngest child, used to visit her grandmother, Nonna Caterina. Bette, born in 1934, attended Saint Anthony's School, the elementary school attached to Grandma Albina's parish. I went to this school too, from kindergarten until third grade, when my Dad and Mom made the bold decision to move us out of the Ricci family orbit in Bristol "far away" to Poughkeepsie, New York, so Dad could take advantage of a wonderful career opportunity, a job with IBM, where he flourished.
Back to Aunt Bette's tale: "After school, I was about eight years old then, I would go to Nonna Caterina's house on Upson Street and wait for my parents, who were working at Ingraham's, the clock factory in Bristol."
"I got to know Great Grandma Caterina very well. She was a very sweet and affectionate woman, and she was very lovely, with long flowing brown hair."
"It was very very nice for me to be with Nonna. One thing I remember very clearly is Nonna combing her hair in front of the window. Then she would braid her hair and use those amber pins to secure the bun. Then she would be sure to have the window open and she would pick basil from the windowbox and stick the twig of basil into her hair. When I think of Nonna, I always think of the fragrance of sweet basil. She was a very, very lovely person."
I asked Aunt Bette if she was aware that Nonna Caterina was sick.
"Well, when I was with her, she wasn't sick sick. She would putter around, but I never saw her do anything too strenuous or physically taxing."
Curiously, Aunt Bette has no memory of when Caterina died in 1951, about a year before I was born in November of 1952.
"In those days," Aunt Bette recalled, "adults protected children from death or any mention or discussion of it."
"Do you remember her being in bed?"
"I wasn't allowed to be in her company when she was sick. And I was old enough by that time, so I didn't have to go to Nonna Caterina's house anymore after school. I went to the Girls Club, so I missed seeing her. But I learned how to do so many things, one of the things I learned how to do was sew."
"Oh Aunt Bette, I remember going to the Girls Club too!"
Aunt Bette was born in 1934, I was born in 1952, so she was 18 years old when I was born. I tell her that was a huge age difference in those days; but today, she is 90 and I am 71, and I feel like I am closer to her in age and experience than I am to family members younger than me.
"I certainly feel closer to you in experinence than I do my children. I've entered into the ancestor range...actually I tell people that I feel like I am 'an ancestor in training.' I don't mind it, either."
My dad used to say this to me a lot as he got to that age, say his mid-80s. I'd say "Dad, I can't deal with you and Mom dying..." And I tell Aunt Bette that as a child I found it very very difficult to think about death. It was especially a problem during summer vacations when I had a lot of time on my hands to ponder, and to worry.
"I'd wait for Dad to come home from work during those long summer days and I'd go into Mom and Dad's bedroom and start crying, and carrying on. I'd say 'I don't want you to ever die.'"
And Mom and Dad would try to soothe me, saying "Oh honey, now don't be worrying about that honey. We are going to live a long, long time."
Ah but then when Dad was well into his eighties, I was in my early 60s, and I would say once again I was struggling with the idea of he and Mom dying. "I don't know how to let you go Dad. You or Mom!" And what I didn't say, but didn't have to say, was I had trouble thinking about my own mortality.
Dad could be a bear displaying outbursts of what we called fondly the "Orzo" temper, but in this case, he was instead very very sweet with me. "Oh, Sparky (his favorite nickname for me was Sparky, or Spargegela in Italian) when you get there you'll be ready."
I told this to Aunt Bette: "Dad was amazing..I really appreciate now what an incredible dad he was. And my mom, she was so amazing too."
At that very moment, I had to stop the interview!
"Oh my god there are two Baltimore orioles here Aunt Bette oh my, excuse me Aunt Bette, I just have to take a photo. Oh here I just took one, now I have to go closer..." Could that be? Were those two Baltimore Orioles my mom and dad visiting me?
Aunt Bette asks: "Do you feed the orioles grape jelly?"
"Oh yes yes, we do, and we even found a bottle of Welch's that is made of plastic, and you can squirt it right into the orange Oriole feeder."
I pause to send her the photos and the phone connection disappears. And then we are back:
"You know Aunt Bette, my sister Holly and I have talked about the fact that Grandma had a rough time of it growing up. She had a father who was enraged over his circumstances. And she was very bright. She had great unrealized potential.
Ironically, though, she didn't want my brilliant Dad to go to college because she said, "your dad has worked at Ingraham's all his life, if it was good enough for him, why isn't it good enough for you?"
At the end of the conversation, I tell Aunt Bette that all in all, while Grandma certainly had her shortcomings, "I've become more forgiving toward her, after doing more research."
Aunt Bette laughs, that husky laugh of hers. I recall now that Aunt Bette as a young woman used to smoke. Naturally though she gave up the habit when it became so clear that cigarettes are extremely dangerous to one's health.
"Let's talk again," I say, and I tell her how much I've enjoyed sharing information with her while writing "Finding Filomena."
"Oh yes," she agrees. "It's been so much fun for me too!"
"Well, so, that's it for today Aunt Bette. I'm so glad that we had this chance to talk. I really wanted you to know what it is Grandma told me so long ago."
Indeed, I have "known" for more than four decades all kinds of things about my grandmother and her family. But it isn't until August of 2024, as I am finishing writing "Finding Filomena," that I finally bring forth the stories from the seven red markered pages in the orange file.
No comments:
Post a Comment