Somehow time passed and my mother always managed to survive until lunch, a meal that she always prepared for us before leaving home. Mom did her best to skimp, save and cut corners in those days. She was better than my father at applied home economics. The family income was low even by the standards of the 1950s. Money indeed must have been the root of all evil because our family did its best to stay away from it! Whatever could be stretched was stretched. Our family seldom used condiments. We grew skeptical of everything in liquid form, as the staple was apt to be diluted by half or more with water. Although my mother does not receive patent monies, I am sure that she invented skimmed milk. Until I was an adult, I did not realize that products such as milk, ketchup, tomato sauce and shampoo were so rich in color, taste, and texture! Mother economized where she could. Anything that could be branded as a staple in our every day family life that was not nailed down became fair game. Mom “borrowed” just about everything she could from local department stores, restaurants and restrooms, sometimes even toilet paper. Mother was also very practical and sensible. Although I did not appreciate it at the time—um, this would be an understatement—my mother exchanged a birthday gift from my aunt, a stamp album, for something that every little boy would be overjoyed about—a pair of pants. My mother was a shrewd businesswoman who did not need a degree in economics to be savvy. For my part, I licked those pants for several months every time I put them on just out of childhood spite!
Then there were those special times of the year that going downtown captured the young and those young at heart. Christmas is a time of awe, miracles, and imagination for children. In the heart of downtown, a 284-foot limestone monument dedicated in 1902 to soldiers in the armed forces who died in the Civil War, was transformed magically into the world’s tallest Christmas tree. The strands of Christmas lights boasted nearly 5000 multicolored lights.
One prominent corner store had its beginnings in the late 1800s. A clock with eight foot illuminated dials faced in all four directions. Each holiday season, a cherub miraculously appeared on the top of this clock. The store dressed up its ordinary window fashions with seasonal scenes, most of which were animated and enchanted us beyond expression. Watching Santa laying gifts underneath the tree, carolers holding hymnals and singing, and reindeer pulling the sleigh captivated us and captured our hearts, as we pressed our noses to the glassed enclosures. In the basement of the store was Santa’s Toyland equipped with a small train that transported wide-eyed children throughout the land of magical toys.
Our family participated in any form of entertainment in which little or no funds were expended. We usually visited the cemetery after church on Sundays. Dead people neither charged for visitors nor seemed to mind their presence. Had we been older, this would have been a rather morbid experience. My grandparents were laid to rest in the cemetery’s above ground mausoleum and my parents purchased their own vaults beside them many years ago. One of the most fiscally appropriate judgments made by my father who paid $300.00 a plot. In making pre-planning arrangements I was informed by a credible source that it will cost $500.00 to open each vault by unscrewing 4 screws and applying leverage with a pry bar. Upon hearing this, I believe I was hit over the head by the latter and only one screw was involved.
This particular mausoleum hosted row upon row of marbled compartments stacked a half dozen high. I remember trying to peer between the bordered cracks of my grandparents’ vaults only to see what I thought was an eye staring back. This always spooked my brother, sister and me, as did a showing of The Wizard of Oz, especially the part where the stripped stocking feet of the wicked witch of the east curled and were sucked under the house that fell upon her—be gone before somebody drops a house on you! After our family paid their respects to the departed, we fed the ducks in the cemetery’s pond. The ducks always seemed happy to have contact with living people even the three of us with stale bread. It was generally a pleasant experience for such a morose edifice. Besides telling our friends, the only other drawback was that swans occasionally chased us around the lake. They were apparently unimpressed and impatient at how fast our little hands could dispense stale old bread. How rude!
As adults, we paid increasingly more respect at the cemetery as our paternal grandmother Antonetta and our beloved uncle and aunt, Joseph and Edna, were laid to rest. Grandma died in 1971. Aunt Edna lost her battle with cancer and slipped away at the age of 71. Uncle Joe died at the age of 80. Our father was lovingly taken care of at home by our mother and passed away at the age of 89.
On many Sundays, we had the double treat of not only visiting the cemetery, but also appraising new model homes. The suburbs were growing immeasurably at the time. The boundaries of natural woods, a ready free source for landscaping dirt and soil according to my father, were in constant flux and being driven away long before environmentalists complained of manmade erosion. Local and television personalities were often hired to help market the homes. I particularly remember meeting Leo Carillo one Sunday at one of the model home openings. He was best known for his role as Pancho, partner of the Cisco Kid from the 1950’s television western action series, The Cisco Kid. Pancho sat on his horse, gun drawn, smiling and waving to the crowd. We children were very pleased.
As a family, we also more or less went to see drive-in movies. Father parked the family green Plymouth off the shoulder of the road that was perpendicular to the movie screen. The three of us were huddled in the backseat with little room to spare. We would squint our eyes and did our best to peer at the distant screen. Drive-in theater owners of the time did not see a need to build tall walls to conceal the screen from view. We watched the movie in silence, as for some inexplicable reason theater owners also did not see the need to run speakers beyond the drive-in’s fenced boundaries. We followed the movie dialogue as best we could, which left much to our emerging imaginations. If nothing else, the three of us became visual learners and developed the art of lip reading at a very early age. This will serve us well in our old age as our hearing declines. Best of all, our trips to—well, near the drive-in— always included the iniquitous sharing of one nickel ice cream cone from a local and original Dairy Queen, and one bag of popcorn recently homemade by our mother, who stood by the stove and shook the kernels in a pan until their tiny bits of water exploded into popcorn. Family togetherness has never been the same!
During our downtown trips, we sometimes consumed lunch at this particular department store that had a restaurant-like dining area for paying customers on the second floor. A balcony and railing provided an engaging view of the main floor below. The decor was excessively white: white tables, white chairs, a white floor and a white railing. As our mother sat at the table, we were often kneeling on the floor peering through the white railing. The railing kept us from falling on unsuspected shoppers below, although not necessarily our food. We often amused ourselves by making less than flattering remarks about people who innocently milled below us. Bald men and balding men in particular were vulnerable targets of our unflattering critiques and giggles. We were young children after all and easily amused… and it was free!
Time passed and depending on how much effort in parenting we three young-uns forced out of our mother, we either went home earlier than planned via the public transportation system (bus) or we waited until early evening for our father to pick up his then tired and cranky family for the return trip home to suburbia.
Growing up second-generation Italian in America was often a challenge. We were all part of the great “melting pot” at mid-century except somebody forgot to tell those of us who were not the main ingredients that assimilation had its price. There were choices to be made as American and Italian cultures often clashed and clashed unrepentantly. Such differences in cultural experiences created mild discord between parents and children. Mom and dad strived to maintain what they knew: TRA-DI-TION! (Kind of feel a musical coming on...) We children on the other hand wanted to be like our contemporary peers in dress, speech and behavior. In