Assimilation aside, things were not futile back then. We experienced customs curious and unique to our family and Italian heritage. There were a host of superstitions that impacted on my parents and intruded indiscriminately on our family life. What dictated our parents’ behavior dictated ours, as families were bonded units in the 1950s. The list of superstitions that concerned our parents seemed endless and unforgiving. We were forever admonished if we did not heed them for they would bring “bad luck” not only to us, but also to all family members, and perhaps to an entire generation of Italians. Family guilt was inherent and instilled early in our lives. Although we never really understood what all the fuss was about, we perceptively learned collective guilt.
You and your parents may have shared in some of the superstitions that consumed much of my parents’ waking hours and invaded ours:
• Never travel or visit a friend on a Friday
• Never visit a new place you have never been to before on a Friday
• Never place a hat or purse on the bed
• Never break a mirror unless 7 years of bad luck appeals to you
• Never open an umbrella in the house
• Never walk under a ladder
• Never let a jet-black cat cross your path
• Be careful about what you do on calendar days of the “13th”
• Be careful of places and events with the number “13” in them (do not live in a house with an address like 1310; if you have 13 people at a dinner party, set a 14th chair anyway at the table; if you were born on the 13th, dig your grave early)
• Never put on clothing backwards
• Never visit someone’s house after visiting a mortuary or attending a funeral for that brings bad luck to the person you visit
• Never send a card or gift to someone that bears crosses or birds—the cross thing was a tough one given our Catholic affiliation. For the birds, do you realize how few greeting cards exist without these feathered friends?
If superfluous superstitions were not sufficient, our parents were consumed with other events that were said to bring us bad luck:
• Spilling salt, milk, rice and especially olive oil brought sickness to the family
• Seeing a lady with a hump back (rather amusing and discriminatory since viewing a man with a hump back was said to bring you good luck)
• Seeing bound straw in a field or a flatbed truck carrying straw meant that news was heading your way, presumably awful news
• For the paranoid among you, people were said to be talking about you if you have two eggs in your hand and they break—break a dozen eggs and you experienced delusions of paranoia!
To be fair-minded, there were a few things, albeit a very few things, that supposedly brought you and your family good fortune:
• Seeing a man with a hump back (people who saw the Disney movie, Hunchback of Notre Dame, undoubtedly were infinitely blessed)
• Seeing a white horse, which was not often seen in the suburbs
• Seeing a man first on the first day of the year is said to bring you good luck all year round—don’t even want to think how to accomplish that feat
The Italian tellers of fortunes were apparently male dominated. Other good fortune came from a medal that was very popular in Italy as a good luck charm. It actually was two distinct medals made out of gold. The number 13 made up one of the medals and a small horn made up the other. Wearing these two medals together was presumed to bring you good luck all your life. I guess the horn cancelled out the ill luck of the number 13. A small price indeed to pay for eternal prosperity!
Is there more? Yes. There were a myriad of proverbs and sayings that were suppose to influence how Italians lived. These adages, in my mother’s tongue and dialect, included:
• Non puoi avere porcho e St. Antonio (You cannot have pork and St. Anthony—something similar to you cannot have your cake and eat it too)
• Ne di nartede, ne di venerdi, non si taglia e non si porte (Not on Tuesday and not on Friday, you can cut and you can travel)
• Paese voi usanza trovi (The town you go, the way you do it—whatever town you go to, you do things the way the people do them in that town)
• Sono gentile e son cortese ma pagatemi le spese (I am gentle and I am courteous, but I leave the check to you-typically a really bad tipper)
• Sono nato stanco percio vivo per riposarsni (I was born tired, so I live to relax—an aphorism I have very much taken to heart in my own life as my badge of honor)
• Se una donna per sbajlio mette il suo vestito al rovesceio, per quel georno tutto lva male (If a woman puts her dress on the wrong side, for that day everything goes wrong—I assume a man could wear a dress in any manner without ill effects—well, maybe)
• Si crede di prendere il prete perla barba (If you think that you can touch a priest by his beard—this loses much in the translation, but basically suggests that if you are waiting for something great to happen, do not; it is not going to happen or what happens will be small—sort of a precursor I think to the modern day lottery experience)
• Ne di Manzo ne di Maggione, none ti levare il pedizoine (In March or May, never take off your heavy underwear— linked to the crazy Italian weather in March and May)
• Tutte le pecore vanno alla chiesa a portare I soldi al prete (All sheep go to church and bring all the money to the priest—it is a ridicule in that people are called ‘sheep’)
Is there still more? Yes, there is more! If the superstitions and proverbs did not overshadow family living, then “folk”
remedies aimed to maintain our good health and ward off enemies of the family further stewed the pot:
• Rubbing garlic on your chest to cure a cold (and drive away your friends)
• Wearing garlic on a string around your neck (or many women pinned it to their bras) keeps you safe
• Curing a cold by warming up bricks in the fireplace and then placing them between two pieces of wool—these were placed upon your chest to keep you warn until the cold went away
• Picking flowers called Comomila (looked similar to dandelions) eased a sour stomach by placing them in a pot of water to brew and then drinking the hot juice
• The cure all of cure alls—a teaspoon of olive oil will cure just about anything, genuine or imagined.
The ultimate folk remedy for a sick person or to keep a person from becoming ill in an Italian family was the Evil Eye. When my grandmother determined that it was time to practice the ritual, she insisted that you drop immediately anything and everything that you were doing. This remedy involved placing a bowl of water on the unfortunate person’s head. She then placed three drops of oil in the water and a small prayer was spoken three times: “Rotta e finochio, Leva il malochio.” My grandmother continued the ritual while the oil in the water remained visible. If the oil drops dispersed, your sickness was thought caused by people wishing you bad luck. In essence, it was a method of determining whether your illness was caused by the ill wishes of others or by the common microorganisms of the day. It must have tarnished the friendships my parents fostered as they were in a state of wondering which friend or friends among them were wishing them ill will. On top of all that, imagine trying to explain to your playmates why you called time-out in the middle of a game. Having to pee was not only a better excuse, but a face-saver as well. Fortunately, my parents did not continue the practice and this gypsy ritual died with the death of our paternal grandmother in May 1971.
If all the home