Monday, August 25, 2008

Joseph and his father, Salvatore Guccione in the 1920's


Never would they have had luxuries such as this in Sicily.
This indeed was the land of opportunity.

Yes, We're Coming To America ...




This account is based on some research of the State and Federal naturalization archives and the Ellis Island Foundation archives but, mainly it is based on stories as they were told to me by my father and mother.

At the age of 29, my grandfather, Salvatore, left Alia, Sicily and headed for America and for prosperity. The little village of Alia is perched on the hills of the Palermo province in Sicily. According to immigration records, on August 28th 1905, Salvatore Guccione landed on the historic Ellis Island, the icon for liberty to most immigrants during that era, and he traveled west and settled in St. Louis where other extended family members were already living. He set about doing what he knew best, selling produce, which later would grow into a grocery store called Guccione’s Market. Around 1908, his wife and two children, Guiseppe and Francesca joined Salvatore in St. Louis. Although I can’t pin-point their exact date of immigration, (Guccione’s from Sicily are like Smiths in the U. S.) I believe this time-line is accurate. Within a year of immigration both children Guiseppa and Francesca died; Guiseppe of the flu and Francesca tragically by a streetcar.

On April 24th, 1910, my father was born, the first son born in America. He was now the eldest living child of Salvatore and Angelina and they registered his name as Joseph Bernard the English derivative of Guiseppe Bernardo after his deceased brother, although my grandmother always called him Guiseppe. Later they would have a daughter, Frances, who they named after her deceased sister, Francesca, and then two more sons, Antonino and Leonardo.

It does seem kind of like the 'Cinderella Syndrome' that my father, Joseph, being a son of immigrant parents was able to go to college and get his medical degree long before pell grants, work/study programs, grants to minority ethnic groups and the such were offered. But as the story goes Medical School was made possible because my grandmother’s tenacity toward saving money. Around 1918, my grandfather, Salvatore, took his eldest son, Joe, who was then about 7 or 8 years old and headed west to California (pictured above). He purchased some fertile ground for a vineyard and orchard. Salvatore was able to send his wife money from the profits and was able to borrow against the land to purchase more and more fertile California valley ground.

Back in St. Louis, Angelina, used the money her husband sent home to pay off their home, which housed their meager store downstairs. The rest she stuffed in her mattress. Was that a tenacity and prudence to save money? Personally, I think the fact that she spoke very broken English and was totally illiterate and remained so until her death in 1975 was the key factor in her not dealing with a bank. Remember Sicilians had a tendency to be suspicious of outsiders. So as any Sicilian peasant would do, she socked the hard cash away in the house.

When prohibition came along in 1920 that did not dampen the California business as my grandfather turned the wine business into a wholesale produce business, growing and selling. By this time he was making trips back and forth to California where he had employed extended family members to operate Guccione’s Wholesale Produce. Prosperity did seem to be heading for the Sal Guccione’s until 1929. It was the stock market crash and ensuing “Great Depression. The bank called in Sal’s notes on the California land and he was able to keep very little of this fertile ground.

But while so many lost their jobs, homes and became destitute, Salvatore and Angelina maintained. They owned their house, they owned their store and had a little extra income yet from California property and by such they sustained a meager cash flow and rode the waves of the Great Depression …all the while sleeping on hard cash stuffed in their mattress and god knows where else in their house.

Next will be - Joseph Bernard Guccione

Sigh...

The 2008 election consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

In Reviewing A Legacy - Part I

I grew up in St. Louis and from its beginning the city has been known as a cultural hub. It was once one of the greatest interior ports on the Mississippi River. Long before it became politically correct, this city was saturated with cultural diversity. Then between 1870 and 1913 occurred the biggest influx of immigrants to the United States. Czechs, Polish, Italians, Sicilians, Greeks and Irish were the bulk of people immigrating. Records show that forty million Europeans emigrated overseas during that period with nearly two-thirds of that number coming to the United States. Most of them were seeking a mythical fortune to be found in America. Many of these hopeful immigrants made their way to St. Louis known for its wealth as an large trade center and opportunities for enterprise. Each of these ethnic groups brought with them the essence of their homelands and settled in little neighborhoods developing ethnic communities within this great city and when growing up these area neighborhoods were still known for their ethnic influences.

The Boring but Necessary Exposition

But lets talk heritage. My Sicilian heritage… Through out much of its history, Sicily has been considered a ripe location mostly because of its Mediterranean trade routes. It was throughout history a cultural crossroads. Sicily’s culture was influenced by many different cultures - Iberia, Tunisia, Northern Africa, Italy, and of course Greece. Although Sicily is a region of Italy today, until the Italian Unification after World War I, it was its own country known as the Kingdom of Sicily with the capital being in Palermo. The kingdom originally ruled over the island itself, some of southern Italy, and also Malta. To this day Sicilian people tend to most closely associate themselves not with the Italian but with the other cultures with which they share the most common history especially Greece since the centuries of Greek influence during the Greek colonization.

By the 1850’s Sicily had fallen to complete disorder and by the time of the Italian Unification, Sicily suffered one revolt after another causing the collapse of its economy that was followed by an unprecedented wave of emigration. There are many reasons why people decide to leave their homelands. Historically these reasons have been political, persecution, overcrowding, and/or poverty. In my estimation, the last reason, the collapse of the economy and subsequent widespread poverty, are no doubt the main reasons for the great "Italian diaspora”.

Needless to say, Sicily must have been a harsh place to live in the late 1800s and early 1900's. As with many hardships and prevalence of poverty, it seems there always comes alternative solutions for survival. And so, the Sicilian Mafia "Mafioso" evolved and served as a power structure made up of familial groups active not only in several illegal fields, but also tending to exercise sovereignty functions over specific jurisdictions that normally belonged to public authorities. The Mafioso became very much a part of Sicily’s economy and way of life.

Sicily was strongly Catholic, but in a strongly tribal sense rather than in an intellectual or theological sense, and many viewed the new Italian government, the Pope and papacy with suspicion. The friction between the Sicilian Catholics and the new Italian State of Unification gave peasants and townspeople reason to believe that cooperating with this new way was an anti-Catholic activity. Largely, Sicilians did not regard the Mafioso families as criminals but as role models and protectors, given that the government was suspect, the Pope issued mandates that were not traditional with their sense of Catholicism and neither the Pope or the new state of government appeared to offer grace or protection for the poor and weak. And like it or not, this attitude and value system came along with the Sicilians as they came to America.

Whether it was or is a prejudice or whether it was a barrier caused by language, even as late as the 1960's when I grew up in St. Louis, the northern Italians did not commingle with the Sicilians. The Sicilians, proud of their heritage, preferred to be referred to as Sicilianos and settled in the north part of St. Louis.

Although most Sicilians in Sicily now speak Italian as well as Sicilian, at the time of the great emigration to America most Sicilians spoke only Sicilian which is and still is an entirely separate language. While Sicilian is considered a romance language, contrary to what one might think it is not derived from Italian but rather a language developed by way of the many cultural influences Sicily experienced. It is comprised of Greek, Latin, Catalan, Spanish and Arabic. The Greek language influence remains strongly visible while the others less noticible. Please note the distinct differences in the language:

English – My heart is the victim, my breast is the altar
Italian – Il mio cuore è la vittima, il mio seno è l’altara
French - Mon coeur est la victime mon sein est l'autel
Sicilian - sacrifiziu lu cori, ara stu pettu.

(sourced directly from Arba Sicula Volume II, 1980)

Next will be The Gucciones come to America

Saturday, August 23, 2008

The Fish Story


The house was larger than most, I think you might have termed it a manor. The living room alone sported three full sized couches, with matching marble end and coffee tables. There was a cozy sitting area with wing-backed armchairs in front of the double fireplace. Given all this furniture, there was still ample space left in the room for guests to mill about and chit-chat with cocktail in hand or dance if the mood for the soiree was right. Above one sofa hung a mammoth ornate gold-filigreed mirror with two grotesquely chubby golden cherubs peering down. It was rather ‘over-the-top’ in my estimation and kind of creepy but most probably that came from the fact that this room had been strictly ‘verboten’ for most of my 16 years.

I walked into the house and threw the lights on in the equally spacious kitchen … it was well before my curfew and must have been around 11:30 p.m. or so. The house seemed quiet, only the humming of the matching copper toned refrigerator and freezer standing on the far wall could be heard. I assumed my parents had retired, but that was a guess as their room was all the way at the other end of the house. My mind drifted as I glanced about the room… I remembered the time I had tried to lunge our Dalmatian, Huckleberry, on a 8 foot leash in the center of this room, “Faster, faster you stupid bastard”, I ordered as he obligingly circled around me. I must have been 4 or 5 years old and my mother who was standing at the stove cooking was quite surprised at the epithet rolling off my tongue with such accuracy and force. I smiled; most of my early life and sense of being had developed in this room.

I had been gone all day with my boyfriend of the time. Setting my purse down, I noticed my neon barb fish darting round and round murky water in their small tank. “I should have cleaned it yesterday”, I thought. But, you know a teenager’s life on the weekend is consumed with a sort of a mental mantra, “people to see, places to go….” With a sense of responsibility toward the care of living creatures, I seized the moment and set about the task of cleaning the fish tank.

Now there was a method. I got out the industrial sized gallon pickle jar and set it on the counter next to the sink. I would have to spoon just enough of the murky fish tank water into it so that the fishies could be temporarily housed while I cleaned the tank. The metal ladle made a happy tinging sound on the mouth of the jar every time I added a ladleful of water to it. About ten ladlefuls later, the jar was three quarters full. Then came the delicate step of transferring the barbs from the tank to the jar. Oh they never wanted to be caught and netting them was quite the challenge even in the small tank. “Come here you…”, I coaxed as if they could hear me. One, two, three…done.

Next, I had to pour the water from the tank through a strainer so the gravel would not go down the disposal and busily I sprayed the gravel and tank with hot water full blast in the sink to loosen the algae and debris. I could hear the enormous hot water tank in the basement clinking away replenishing itself. I set the clean tank back on the counter and was about to put the gravel back in when all three barbs one after another, as if performing some rehearsed number, jumped out of the pickle jar landing in the sink. I stood shocked staring at my flip-flopping friends flip and flop right down the disposal drain. I reached down the drain, and each time I felt one flip-flop against my hand, I would jerk my hand out, shudder and the tiniest of screams would escape my mouth. Stereotypical of girls, I couldn’t seem to overcome the dread of handling fish out of water. This went on for about four or five more attempts to retrieve the poor dears. Suddenly the door to the kitchen opened and in came my dad clad in his traditional sleeping attire, striped pajama pants and a white-strapped tee shirt. “My hero”, my thoughts instantly relaxed. You see, there wasn’t anything my dad couldn’t do.

“What’s going on?” he asked calmly as he walked over to the sink and peered into it.

“I am cleaning the tank and my fish jumped out of the jar and they are in the disposal – can you help me?”

“Yeah, I’ll help you”, he matter-of-factly replied.

And with that, he calmly reached passed me, flipped on the disposal switch and in an instant the disposal spun to life erating the lives within. So shocked was I that I felt my hair stand on end. The charged energy in the air formed a silent but powerful scream, which flew into my mouth and landed hard in my stomach.

“There. You’re done. Now, go to bed”, was all that he said to me and he turned and left the kitchen. We never spoke of the incident; somehow I knew it would have been a futile endeavor.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Day Number 13

I haven't plucked my eyebrows in a week. When Terry does get home, I'll look like Charlton Heston. Or worse, I envision my arms becoming 6 inches longer and ambling through the timber smeared with mud to keep the ticks and chiggers at bay… in search of primal sustenance.

Once, my hopes and dreams were my sustenance … I would nurture them and grow them and they would bring forth fruit…they fed me, they hydrated me. I have entered another barren time in my life's journey… the soil for my dreams is sallow … the environment harsh drying hopes to dust. My only sense of connection is my husband. And now, I sit alone for even he is gone…I have been alone for 18,720 minutes, but who's counting. (me) If I remain sane, there'll be a shift ... the key is to remain sane.

But, I think I've gone past my limit of being alone. I can see why a recluse goes mad...I'm feeling that madness slip into my brain...a spiraling madness that comes from such a vacuous existence … my sense of purpose seems to be growing dim or I wonder, did I ever have a purpose. Surely I did ... my memories are vague, though. It seems I used to find joy in helping people find something new and exciting in themselves ... I think that is my essence ... God, it's like ."...where have all the flowers gone..." ?

My task today was to take out the garbage…now it’s done…what is there to the rest of the day? I watch the second hand make its way around the face of the clock … time is an interesting concept in infinity … I am aware of each present moment … they fade one by one like marching soldiers … leaving ghostlike footprints … little illusions that used to be the present… the past is merely a reflective void … nothing, nothing, nothing ... like the rhythm of the second hand…. 5,976 minutes until there is someone to share life with … nothing, nothing, nothing … except for the overuse of the ellipsis ...there's nothing, nothing, nothing ...

Thursday, August 21, 2008

God's Country







The Incongruency of Loneliness

Loneliness behaves oddly. It longs for a sense of connectedness with other humans and yet...



When it gets a good hold of me ... It's causes great difficulty to leave the house, days go by and I don't leave this cabin on the hill ...I must push myself to go out and just walk among others...to shop, go to the post office or bank ...



I'm there, out, amongst ... And it feels so good to speak and use my language out loud ... To converse, to smile, to see others...



Then I find myself back home, this cabin on the hill, feeling lonely...

But oddly, not wanting to leave again.

Hello Again, Hello


whimsicality
noun
1.
the trait of acting unpredictably and more from whim or caprice than from reason or judgment; "I despair at the flightiness and whimsicality of my thinking"