Marie Taylor, Ink

All of the Italians in my home town knew each other. They had mostly come over on “the boat” around 1910-1920.  They would send out a young son or brother or husband who would set up camp, work like a son of a bitch at the mills and somehow save enough money for another brother to come, who would then work, etc. 

In those days, nobody like the Italians. They were peasants. None of them had finished grade school, they smelled like garlic, got drunk on the weekends, had shiny, slicked back hair and were Catholic to boot whom everyone knew were just waiting to take over the world through population if not by the Mafia.  How could you ever trust any group who could sin one day and be absolved the next. 

The Italians all lived together on the wrong side of town.  In fact, they all lived right by the iron foundries where they worked.  The men walked to work in the mornings with their thermos bottles and lunch buckets and came home at night covered with smoke and dirt and burns from the furnace.

In 1950 my father worked as a bartender at The Italian Home on Main Street. Located  right across the street from Shenango Iron Works, the Italian Home was a big building, especially to four-year old eyes.  It was not as tall as St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church and it was not as big as the McDowell Bank, but it was certainly an imposing structure.  There was a small flight of stairs leading to the main double doors and once in the vestibule you could continue up into the meeting hall which was the place for weddings, large parties and club meetings. Or, you could descend from the vestibule to the ground floor, go through a buzzer-controlled door and into the bar.

The downstairs bar area was like a small nightclub.  It had a kitchen in the rear, a long, curving L-shaped mahogany bar with a row of high stools in front and stacks of glistening bottles behind it, leatherette booths lining two walls and tables scattered in between at which sweating men would be playing cards for money and drinks.

Our family lived a few block away and sometimes on a Friday or Saturday night, my mom and I would go down to the Club to visit my dad at work.  We never went at any other time as it would not be decent. 

On the weekends, there would be a live band that would play everything from O Sole Mio to the hits of the 40’s and 50’s.  When you walked in on a Saturday night, the air had a blue layer of cigarette and cigar smoke from old Italian stogies to the best Cuban cigars that the men with the diamond pinky rings smoked.   The tinkle of glassware and thunk of heavy shot glasses could be heard at the bar. From the kitchen emanated the smell of spaghetti sauce and fried steaks that mixed with the smell of beer. Everybody was talking at once and the band was playing in the background. 

This was a private club and the place where all of the Italians in our small town socialized. It was not unusual for whole families to come on the weekend.  In those days the women all wore tight girdles and seamed stockings with high heels.  The dresses were mid-knee and had shoulder pads. Hair was tightly permed and curled. Make-up varied; the fast women wore it, the decent women didn’t.  The men had to be dressed in shirts, ties and jackets. 

When I was four years old I had platinum blond hair and every night my mother would wrap it up in rubber curlers. She had visions of Shirley Temple while I had dreams of Hopalong Cassidy. I always had on a dress, the frillier the better.  In fact, I never had a pair of jeans until I was in the fourth grade because nobody wanted to have a tom boy for a daughter.  I had big, blue, nearsighted eyes so when anyone talked to me, I looked completely entranced by their conversation.

When Mom and I would go down to the Club on a Saturday night, we would be all dressed up and stand at one end of the bar. Dad would come over to talk to us in between customers.  Since I was his daughter, all the regulars came over to give me a pinch on the cheek, tell me I was pretty, and often give me a dollar – a custom with all small children.

There was one guy, though, named Dutch, who was very large and smelled of beer. I didn’t like him because he was a secret patter. Kids don’t know if something is right or wrong but they do have an instinct, and I knew that Dutch made me squirm.  One night he starts his pat, pat, pat and I tried to hide my face in my mother shoulder, who not understanding, and said “Don’t be so shy.”  And Dutch is smiling and patting.  Then he pulls out a dollar bill and gives it to me saying, “A pretty, little girl like you deserves a dollar.”

When I wouldn’t take it, he insisted, and then my mother insisted.  So I took it, looked him in the eye and tore it in half.  My Dad came along then and said, “What’s going on?”  I answered, “I don’t like him touching me.”  My father looked at him and Dutch turned a funny color and left.  My Mom put scotch tape on the dollar and Dad gave me a coke.