Marie Taylor, Ink

I never knew my father’s parents although I saw pictures of them and heard a few stories.  They and their three sons had immigrated to America from Italy around the time of the First World War. When they arrived at our hometown, there were other Italian families waiting for them. That was the way it people immigrated: someone goes, gets settled, and sends for his family; and then another and another and before you knew it, half the population of a small Italian village had all moved to the same place.   

Many of the families moved into the wooden factory houses that lined High Street next to the foundry; others lived above the stores along the main street. My father’s family settled in the lower end of town down by the River and along the railroad tracks that led straight through the Iron Works.  Today it might be called a barrio, but back then it was just the wrong side of the tracks.  

The Depression hit in 1929, a few months after my mom and dad got married and from what I heard the times were tough. Not many people even had a radio and those that did were considered well-off. There were a lot of parties at home where Uncle Louie would play the accordion, somebody would bring their home-made wine, and the ladies would make spaghetti.  

There is a picture of Grandma and Grandpa from those days that looked straight out of an old black and white movie.  Grandma was a sturdy woman and wore a long black skirt, white blouse, big apron and laced up shoes. She had wide shoulders and don’t-mess-with-me eyes.    But the crowning touch was the knife scar that ran down one cheek from her eyes to the corner of her mouth. She looked like she could birth a baby in the fields, bite off the umbilical cord and finish the harvest without blinking an eye.

By contrast, Grandpa was a small man wearing dark pants, a white shirt with no collar and working boots.  He looked frail and his cocked head showed a diffidence to life. But he must have had some kind of backbone because sometime during the early 1930’s, Grandpa decided he’d had enough of this new country and went back to Italy. He went alone because Grandma wasn’t ready to leave her three sons and young grandchildren and wanted to stay a little longer.

She had a big trunk in her bedroom and stored away brand-new shirts, work pants, and wool socks – all the things she planned to take back to Italy when she rejoined her husband. The months turned into years, until it was 1939.  When Europe came to a boil, Grandma decided she’d better go home, too.  She bid a reluctant farewell to her family who drove her from Pennsylvania to New York City, where she boarded the very last boat to leave America before War was declared and all travel restricted.

There was little communication during the war. Grandma and Grandpa lived in a little village in the mountains outside of Rome and had German soldiers billeted in their house for the duration. Grandma wrote that they were just young schoolboys and they call her Mama. 

Of course, it was not Grandma herself who wrote, one of the neighbors could read and write and it was they who wrote down what was dictated. Written with a fountain pen on the thinnest light blue onion skin paper, the letter was put into an airmail envelope with stripes along its sides to show it was special mail.

Grandma never saw any of her children or grandchildren again. Mom and Dad sent her pictures of me and in return, she sent a tiny pair of gold hoop earrings suitable for a child and a small doll dressed in native costume.  The earrings I gave to my granddaughter, the doll I put under the Christmas tree.

In the mid-50’s, one of my cousins was stationed in Europe and looked up Grandpa in his small mountain town.  There’s a photo of a handsome young soldier with his arm around a little wizen man standing in front of a tiny house made of field stones with wild grasses growing in the cracks.