Italianamerican (1974) - full transcript

- I'm putting my -
- Not yet, not yet.

- Not yet, not yet.
- He's rolling, baby.

- We should slate it, don't you think?
- I yeah.

Rolling? Yeah.

- Okay, was that the light?
- Where are you sitting? Down there? Why?

- Why is he down there?
- Let him do what he wants.

- Why are you so far from me?
- Okay. All right, so -

get closer.

- Come over here.
- No, you come here.

That's it. That's more like it.

Lovey-dovey, sort of, you know.



They say as you get older,
your love grows stronger.

So for some reason, it is getting
a little stronger, you know.

Right, daddy?

- He's bashful.
- Yeah, I know.

Well, I wanted to start - I wanted to -

you were gonna show us
how to do the sauce.

Well, what should I say?

Well, you're gonna get up
and show it to us.

But I wanted to know who -
you know, how did you learn it?

- Well, what are you asking me?
- About the sauce.

- How did you learn how to make sauce?
- I'm supposed to be talking to you?

You can talk to me, them,
it doesn't matter. I'll be over here.

- I'll be over here.
- Should I mention your name?

Doesn't matter.



- Yeah, mention my name. Yeah.
- What should I say?

Do you want me to tell you
how I learned to make sauce?

Why don't you ask me the question?
Don't you hear that, then?

No.

I mean, if you were to ask me a question,
I would answer.

I'm gonna say it now. I want to know
how you learned how to make sauce -

who taught it to you,

how many years you've been doing it,
and I want to see you do it.

Well, you know,
when you first get married,

you're really not much of a cook.

I watched my mother make sauce.

I watched my mother-in-law.

I got a lot from my mother-in-law,
a lot from the family.

She got more from my mother
than her mother though.

See? There he goes,
putting his mother in again.

- Let's go inside, and let's see -
- So now if you want me to show you,

I'll come and show you
how I make the sauce.

They were two different cooks anyway,
to begin with, you know.

- How am I doing so far?
- Terrific.

All right, now. To begin with -

What were you saying
about nine children?

- Her mother had nine children.
- Nine children?

- Yeah.
- How did that affect the cooking?

Well, some kids didn't like
certain things,

and she used to satisfy them
in different ways.

She became a better cook because of that?

No, no, no.
Well, my mother was always a good cook,

but the thing is is that she -

she couldn't cook the way she wanted, see?

Beginning with her husband,
my father-in-law.

He used to cook for himself, so he's
given a better example right there.

See?

You'll notice
the towel doesn't leave my hands,

because I keep wiping all the time.

But as far as cooking, it was a big job
to cook for seven people.

Eight. Nine, with my father.

My father used to work nights a lot,

and she had to satisfy him in the daytime,

and he used to go to sleep,

and she used to cook for him
and then cook for the children.

You mean separate shifts?

And then I go here -
this is what my mother-in-law taught me.

Take a few spoonfuls of tomato
and throw them in here,

because your meatballs remain very soft.

Not like some of the meatballs
you eat sometimes.

- If you're invited somewhere...
- Yeah?

You eat a meatball,
and it's as hard as can be.

You throw it at the wall,
the wall will crack.

I really shouldn't say that,
because I have a lot of friends,

and I'll be getting
a lot of telephone calls.

As a kid, sure, I worked in a -

- after school, I used to deliver vests.
- What?

Vests. I used to make vests. At the time,
there was a big thing for vests.

And I used to deliver the vests.
I used to tell my -

my cousin, he used to be a boss.
I used to work for him.

I used to tell him -
at the time, car fare was a nickel.

I'd tell him, "give me 35, 40 cents."
"Why? Where you gonna go?"

"You don't want to give me 35, 40 cents,
go yourself."

But I always kept that money in my pocket,
because I used to hitchhike on horses.

On the back of the horse and wagon.
I used to go around.

On Saturdays -
what did you do on Saturdays?

On Saturdays,
I used to go to Delancey street.

There used to be a time
that the Jewish people don't -

didn't light up their own stoves,
you know.

- Why?
- The gas. They wouldn't light no matches.

- On Saturday?
- Saturday was a sabbath day.

I used to go there for a nickel,
used to light their gas.

Well, my mother-in-law used to teach us
a lot of it, you know.

My mother taught me one way,

and my mother-in-law
had a different slant to cooking.

- She was a very good cook.
- Why did you wind up cooking that way?

Because - to please him more.

Naturally. That's the truth.

- How did you amuse yourself?
- Mostly - always eating.

Going to different restaurants,
from one restaurant to another.

Back then it was cheap.

We'd go on Houston street
for knishes and a cup of coffee.

For a dime. A dime.

Where? Yonah schimmel's. Yeah.

- What was the name of the place?
- Yonah schimmel's. The original.

I used to go there.

What did they do with the original one?

The original, uh, potato knishes.

- Oh.
- They had the original potato knishes.

They're still there.
There wasn't anything to do anyway.

You had no radio. You had no television.

And every now and then,
you used to get a paper.

A guy used to come around,
"extra, extra, extra."

You'd buy the paper,
there was nothing in the paper.

The guy used to go, "extra."
There was nothing in the paper.

Yeah. People used to come down and buy
the paper. There was nothing in it.

Then we got a little, uh, atwater Kent.

I'll never forget it.
The first radio we had.

A little atwater Kent
that was in the shape of a church.

You know? It was in the shape of a church.

And, boy, with seven of us in the house,

we used to fight
what program we used to put on.

I get it from my sisters.

The have a garden which they grow it in.

They give me enough of it so I can make
myself a nice jar to last me all year.

And as you see,
that's about the end of it.

- See? That's it. Leave the cover open.
- She's tryin' to put on. I don't know why.

She should talk natural,
the way she does now.

When she puts on tellin' you
about the sauce and all...

- My husband is so jealous of me. Why?
- She's tryin' to, uh, put on.

She should talk natural.
She'd be better off.

I don't know what you mean, Charlie.

Talk the way you're talking to me now.
That's what I mean.

Well, she told me she wanted
to know how I make the sauce.

Yeah, but the thing is, you're -
talk natural.

Don't try to put on -
you're not an actress.

I'm not putting on any airs.
You looking for a fight or something?

Talk the way you talk to me
when you talk to your son.

- You looking for a fight or something?
- No.

See, Marty, every time I sit close to him,
he moves away.

I don't know why.

It's either - I don't know. Maybe
he's getting a little older now, you know.

- Changing the subject.
- Right?

She's changing the subject now.

What did you want me to say?
Your mother taught me how to cook?

No, no, no, no.

And every time you come in the kitchen,
we fight?

- No, no.
- Because you butt in my cooking? Huh?

Sometimes a man -

it's been known a man is a better cook
than a woman anytime.

Who said so? I know that.

- Who said so?
- It's been said in books.

Well, why aren't you doing
the cooking then?

Not supposed to. It's not my line.

My line - - what's your line?

I always told you,
when I come home from work, that's it.

That's right. You sit on that chair.
Soon as he gets through with dinner...

- That's it.
- He comes in here, sits on that chair.

You're really, really running it down,
wearing it down.

That's all right.
That's what I bought it for.

And there's times we sit in here,
and I says,

"Charlie, are we mad at each other?
Why don't we speak?"

He says,
"what do you want me to tell you?"

Gee whiz. I've been home all day.
At least talk to me.

What can you tell a person
after you're with them for 40 years?

And after, uh, 39 years of being married,

we decided to take our...

Belated honeymoon, which we never got.

So we decided to take a trip to Italy.

Yeah, why didn't you ever get it?
Because people spoke to you,

and they told you about the train
goin' fast, and you were afraid to -

you were afraid to go to Niagara Falls.
I was ready to go.

He never took me on my honeymoon. Anyway -

- but they scared her.
- Anyway, we took a trip to Italy.

We toured for two weeks.

I'll show you some of the pictures
that we took.

This was Milan.

That's Milan? Yeah.

First dinner we had.
First night we went out.

This was venice.

The food was delicious.

This was, um - uh -

this was in palermo. This is my aunt here.

She's 80 years old. Here I am, standing.

This is her niece,
her granddaughter, right,

and we had a few friends with us.

This is also in palermo.

- What is that?
- This is cows.

They were in the street,
right in front of the house.

We took a picture of them.
We thought it was very nice.

And this was in, um, palermo.

They called it piazza della vvergogna.
The piazza of shame.

Why was it called piazza della vvergogna?

Well, because there were
all these naked statues,

and I thought they were just great.

Oh. You thought they were great.

And, uh, the statues were beautiful,
and really -

this was at the, uh, leaning, uh -

- where is that?
- Leaning Peter of pasa - pisa.

- Don't tell me. Gonna guess.
- This was -

- leaning tower of pisa. Pisa.
“What is that?

This was a monk.

Naturally, it was dead a long time,
so we took a picture of it.

- Anything we saw, we took a picture.
- What did you think of that?

I mean, you had the whole -
what is that? A body in a -

it was an impression,
the way his teeth were.

And this was the gondolier.

Isn't that beautiful? In venice.

The land is so beautiful,
if you could go see it.

But there's no work over there.
The people -

they have no work over there.
There are no industries.

That's why they came to America.
There was -

they had better here than there.

You speak to these little children,
eight, nine years old.

Their first words out of their mouth is,

"as soon as I become 18,
I'm coming to America.”

- That's right.
- There's your answer.

- Yeah, in the little towns now -
- Little towns.

- In the big towns, it's like over here.
- One little boy -

we had a little waiter there
that kept chasing me.

- He was 16 years old -
- That was in Naples.

In Naples. He kept chasing me. He says,
"please, take me to America with you.

I'll work, I'll do anything.
But take me to America."

He says to me, "get away from him,
because he really means it."

I felt so sorry for him.
I really would have put him on the boat -

on the plane with me, but -

I felt so sorry for him,
because there's nothing over there.

Put him on a plane with you,
then you're responsible for him.

I would have taken him.
What's the difference?

- Ah!
- Maybe he did mean -

maybe he was Sincere
about the whole thing. I don't know.

But the way it sounded, they would have
taken anybody to come here.

I think they would have came with anybody.

- Italy in itself -
- There's your answer.

I lived across the street for 20 years.

And naturally,
when they fixed up these buildings,

we wanted to better ourselves -

new furniture, and also my wife said,
"let's move across the street."

I was against it.

But then, you know how it is.

You always give in.

When the first -
the Italian people came here,

as I said before, first it was all Irish.

Then the Italian people came in.

Then the Italian people came in.

And there was a lot
of Jewish businesses around here.

There was a little five-and-ten-cent
store, there was a shoe store.

- All Jewish businesses around here.
- Mostly Jewish trade.

A dry-goods store.

Stands with -
like orchard street would be today.

- Yeah.
- There was pushcarts.

- As crowded as orchard street?
- Oh, yeah.

It wasn't as crowded
as orchard street, but -

- it was crowded.
- Yeah, but naturally,

the neighborhood people
would come down to shop.

I'll never forget,
the pushcarts in the morning

were on this side
because there was no sun.

In the afternoon,
when the sun came on this side,

the pushcarts shifted over
to the other side.

There was no sun.
But there was a great business over here.

- You couldn't get a store over here then.
- Oh, it was beautiful.

Stores were -
there wasn't a store empty.

Every store on the block was taken.

Every store, every basement was taken.

Of course, you had lemon dealers.

At the time,
we used to get lemons from Europe.

Imported lemons.
And you don't get 'em today anymore.

And they used to have lemon, oranges.
All kinds of fruit.

They used to have -
there was one, two, three,

four different places
with all that stuff around here, imported.

And I don't know what happened.

They-they faded away.

They got sort of a depression like,
you know?

And people started to move out.

They started to move.
You know, businesses started to close.

But as far as the neighborhood here

and Delancey street and orchard street,
it was all together -

Jewish and Italians,
they all worked together.

And as far as actually stealing,
kids all used to steal.

- Kids - you know, petty.
- Petty stuff, you know.

Just for fun sometimes,
they'd take something on the pushcart,

make the guy chase 'em,
and the rest of the kids used to go

and pick stuff from the cart.

What do you mean?
“Went from hand to hand.

While he was chasin' one guy,
the others would take a few pieces and go.

And that's it.
The poor man is chasing him.

- Kid stuff. That's all it was.
- Kid stuff. You know.

But, uh, kid stuff or no kid stuff,

sometimes it was that, uh,
you needed that stuff.

You know, it isn't like today.

It's like, uh, your mother and father
couldn't afford to get you anything.

You used to -

a kid used to grab something
and, uh, use it.

You know, fruit, fresh, whatever it was.

Or a piece of crockery
or something like that.

I remember
my brother Charlie getting older.

He got a job. He was 14 years old.

And, as I says, we had to go out to work,

and he got a job working for j.P. Morgan,
I think it was, as a messenger boy.

Fourteen dollars a week,
something like that.

And of course, we started to -
you know, little by little,

one brother started to work,
and the other brother started to work,

and the sisters,
and we started to accumulate some money.

And I remember one Christmas,

my brother finally told my mother
that they wanted to put up a tree.

And we were thrilled.

So they bought the tree,
and they put the - whatever it was.

Candles. I think
they used to use candles at the time.

We didn't have no electricity.

And, uh, we put up a tree.

But there was no such thing before that.
I mean, we never had a tree.

We only had, uh -

christmastime -
like, for instance, one night,

they wanted to play a joke on the kids.

The kids hung up their stockings.
They were kids.

They hung up their stockings.

We had a real fireplace,
but it was never used.

So they hung up their socks
on the fireplace,

you know, thinking they'd find something
from Santa claus the next day.

And just to play a joke on them -
we were a little older -

we stuffed them up with lemons
and pieces of wood

and, uh -
and, uh, lots of things we found.

Then after, we felt bad,
because it was really terrible.

When the kids woke up
and they looked at those socks,

honest, they cried, honest.

It was really terrible.
We shouldn't have done that.

Now when I think of it, I say,
"that was terrible, what we did to them."

But as I says, as we went along,
you know, it was different.

I never remember
a Christmas tree in my mother's house.

- I don't remember it.
- You never had one.

I never remember a Christmas tree
in my mother's house.

- We had a Christmas tree.
- Why?

Well, as I said,
they didn't go for it, the old folks.

They didn't go for it.

What they believed in was that
at 12:00 at night they went to church,

they celebrated mass,

and after that, they came home.

We had some sausage
and things like that at the church,

and then next day,
we had a big dinner with the family.

Our fathers and mothers,
they were from a different world.

They were different. The brought us up.

As long as we ate and we were healthy,
that's all that counted.

They couldn't afford to send us to school.
They didn't have that kind of money.

They had all they could do to survive.

And, uh, thank god that, uh,

my mother and father,
they reached to see us all get married

and all settle up nice, families,
and that's it.

- My mother used to wash clothes by hand...
- Cold water.

With the, uh - with the, uh, washboard.

Scrubbed them.
And then we had no stoves, no gas stove.

We had a coal stove
which she used to heat up,

put this big pot on top of it
with the clorox, whatever you had,

put it in there and boil your clothes
and let them come white.

You could just imagine nine children,
with all these diapers

and clothes and things like that,
our poor mothers worked.

The bathroom was in the hallways.
You know.

In those tenements, that's the way it was.
We were lucky to have it in the hallway.

Some tenements had them in the backyards,

and you had to get the key
and go down to the backyard.

- You can imagine.
- Were they backhouses?

Backhouses.

- Describe those tenements in the back.
- No, no, no.

They were regular backhouses built up.

There were bathrooms there. You know.

What was the Italian word for it?
Remember the Italian word that -

bacaus.

As far as anybody that talks bad
about this neighborhood, forget it.

Were the Chinese here
when you first came here?

Chinatown was confined
on the other side of canal street.

That was Chinatown. Strictly Chinatown.

- In fact, Marty, Chinatown -
- Now -

excuse me. Chinatown,
people were afraid to walk through it.

You used to hear so many stories about it,
but it wasn't true!

- It wasn't true.
- No, no, that was true.

They had a tong war there.
Yeah, I remember as a kid.

It was true? You had-you had -

you had detectives, two on each corner.

In other words, it was dangerous.

Not to - not to - not to us.

- Amongst themselves.
- Oh, amongst themselves.

Well, naturally.
You always get these people that feud.

You got 'em in features too.

The same thing the Irish did
when they -

right.

- Everybody resented us. You see?
- They resented us.

What do you mean, the irishmen?

Well, when the Italian people came here,
they resented it too,

because they didn't want to be thrown out
of their own neighborhood.

You know how many bars you had
over here when my father came here?

How many bars out here?
You had about six, seven bars over here.

All Irish bars.
And there was only one guy -

there was only one guy that remained here
till they took the building out.

Don't say - - no.

Till they tore the buildings down.
And, uh -

it's not like it was years ago,

that the people used to leave
their doors open, and -

it was like all one big house,
the whole apartment.

You're going from - "hello."
The doors were open,

and you would go into one house
and to another.

And me, if I didn't like
what my mother used to cook,

I used to go downstairs and eat.

I used to go upstairs:
"What are you cookin', mom?"

I didn't like it - downstairs.

We used to be like all one family.
It was altogether different.

It's really the -

- yeah? You were saying?
- I want to stir the sauce.

- You wanna what?
- Stir the sauce.

What do you think he was saying when
you were talking before about the Irish?

- What was that?
- When he says there's a lot of bars?

There were a lot of bars?

Well, naturally,
every corner had mostly bars.

And you had a lot of stores and things.
You know.

But, uh, from what I gather -

but you were saying something,
though, about him, what he said.

- I didn't want him to say that.
- Why not?

- Because.
- You didn't want him to say what?

About Irish people. I mean, after all,

we really did come in here and live here,
you know what I mean?

And then, of course,
it's just like everything else, you know.

They were here first. Naturally.

It's just like kids
when they find something,

and they find it, and they have it,

and then somebody comes along
and wants it, and they say,

- "no, I found it first," right?
- Mm-hmm.

So that's why I guess they resent it,
you know.

But then, as he says,
it sort of started to get -

you know, everybody got together,
and then they made one happy family.

That's all.

You know, it wasn't too bad after a while.
They sort of got used to the idea.

But in the beginning,
it was a little tough.

But it's just like everything else.

Now my meatballs are in. I shall put
my cover on and forget about it.

Okay.

That's it.

Your father, what he was doing,

where he came from, what the town was,
and all that.

My father came from polizzi in sicily.

It's a little town in sicily. And he -

when he was a little boy,
about six or seven years old,

his mother had died
and his father remarried.

And somehow or another,
I don't know what happened,

but he didn't want to stay there,
and some man took him in.

He had a farm.
He had goats and things like that.

He would work for this man.
As he grew up, he would work for this man.

At 19 years old,
he was coming to this country.

This man didn't want him
to come over here.

This man wanted him to marry
one of his daughters.

This man had three daughters, no sons.

And he says he would give him
anything he wanted.

But my father says,
"no, I'm off to America."

He came over here
when he was about 19 years old.

- And, uh -
- About what year was that around?

Well, I would say 1901,
something like that.

He started to work as a laborer.

When he was 21 years old,
he decided he wanted to get married,

and he went to my mother,
and he married her.

And he got married right here
in the old St. Patrick's church.

- The old cathedral.
- Uh-huh.

During world war I,
he went to work on ships.

- Yeah.
- And when they had him down the hull -

they were workin' on the ships way down -

half of the times they wouldn't even
let him come up because they figured

if these people come up,
they would go away,

because they wouldn't want to work
under those conditions.

They kept them there for a week or so.

They used to give them food
and everything else, but they -

after a week or so, they used to
make them come up and go out.

And he finally went to work
for the New York steam.

And as he worked for New York steam,
without an education,

he had a hundred people workin' for him.

What was New York steam?

New York steam consists of con Edison
today. They took it over.

- I see.
- Con Edison.

Did he go into business or anything?

I'd say about eight, nine or ten
businesses, all in fruit and vegetables,

and every one of them he put up,
he lost money on.

He always - didn't make out.

But he kept trying. Kept trying.

One day he comes up, he says,
"I bought the grocery store downstairs."

We were all furious.

We didn't want him to get into business.
But he got into business.

And the New York steam people
came over to him.

They wanted him back again.
He wouldn't go back.

He says, "I got my own business,
and that's it."

My father was the type of man,
he wanted to be in business.

He always told me,
"anytime you're in business,

you can owe all the money in the world,

but you always got money in your pocket
when you're in business."

'Cause you can always support a family.
You got money.

The bills,
you paid 'em as they came along.

Finally, after so many years,
he lost that too.

And he lost it just at the time
when the second world war started.

As far as my mother goes,

well, she was a strong woman.

My father would never get into arguments
with anybody.

She would face them.

My father would always -

she would push my father
always on the side.

She was a very strong woman.

Even with us, with the children.

And if she had to say something,
she told you, and that was it.

And you couldn't answer her.
She was tough.

When did she come over?
On what kind of -

what kind of boat trip? I mean, you know.
Could you tell us a little about that?

When she came over.

When she came over,
she says she almost died on that trip.

The boats were small.
They were very small.

It took her a month and a half -
over a month to get over here by boat.

Like her mother, the same thing.
They came over here, the boats were -

the waves - they thought they'd never
make it when they came over here.

Her mother then came over here years ago,
but I don't remember her.

She died, you know, and all that.

But my mother was a - she was a real whip.

'Cause I remember as a little boy,

we used to have, in 241,
we had two boarders.

- We had, you know, with the room -
- Two what?

Two boarders. Boarders.
I mean, people that lived with us.

- Yeah, I know.
- In the kitchen.

Where you see the kitchen,
it used to be a bedroom.

- But they used to pay?
- Oh, yeah.

My mother used to cook for them, wash
their clothes and they used to pay her.

- How many people were all in the rooms?
- There was two boarders.

Me, my father - I was born.

There was Rosie, mo, me, Mikey.

Mikey, Joey and Fanny.
We were seven. And two was nine.

How many rooms?

Oh, there's, with the kitchen,
four rooms there were.

That's all. Four small rooms.

There was no such thing
as, uh, elaborate rooms.

You know what there was?
You had no furniture then. You had beds.

In the daytime, you'd pick 'em up,
and you had the room.

In the nighttime, you fold 'em down,
and then you go to sleep.

What do you think it was?

That's all we had. Table and chairs.

And my mother - I remember my mother

scrubbing them floors, wooden floors,
on her knees.

- No carpet.
- No carpets.

Wooden floors with a brush, an iron brush
in the hallway and in the house.

Used to make those floors sparkle.
Wooden floors.

Today they got it so soft.
They got a washing machine.

They got this, they got that.

So jealous.

And there was, uh -
and they never - they never cried,

you know, or say they were tired.

There was no such thing as being tired.

And besides that, she used to sew pants.

My father was always a scaffold maker.

A scaffold.

The board that's outside of the buildings.
That they stand on.

When they put scaffolds for men to go
around to put up bricks and things.

- He was always a scaffold maker.
- Scaffold man.

So, of course,
it was hard to get work here.

So wherever they could get work,
they would go out to.

And I remember him going
to Springfield, New Jersey.

- And that was like going from here to -
- Monday morning -

he would leave on a Monday morning -

Springfield, New Jersey -
he would go there to go to work.

Yeah. He would go away Monday morning
and come back Friday night

for $45 a week.

- Now, supporting nine children -
- That was big money.

Now, so one night -
my father had handlebars.

So one night on a Friday night,

there was a knock at the door, so -

we were children.

We opened the door,
and all of a sudden,

we ran back
and were pulling onto my mother.

"What's the matter?" She says.
I says, "there's a man at the door.”

It was my father.
He shaved off his handlebars.

And we were - we didn't recognize him,
and we were crying.

My father pulled the same thing.

He used to get a big charge out of it.
He loved to do that.

He used to get a big charge
out of things like that.

Years ago,
they didn't have such things as a cellar.

We used to take the - buy these grapes

and squeeze the juice up in the room there

and put the-the barrels

in one of the bedrooms,
in a part of the bedroom

and make the wine ferment.

- You mean they used to make wine where?
- In the house.

In the rooms with the boarders and all,
we used to make the wine.

- Put two, three barrels, make it ferment.
- You can just imagine.

And we used to get some wine out of it.
Very good.

And at times - at times we used to -

uh -

the smell of that wine
used to get us at nighttime.

You know how wine is.
When it smells, it starts to ferment.

A lot of people used to do that.

They used to make their own wine.
It was cheaper to them.

They couldn't go and buy wine or -

at that time, they didn't have gallons
of wine like they got today

from California and things like that.

So they used to make their own wine.
And it was pretty good wine too.

The only thing was that

they didn't have the facilities
for cleaning it up the way they should've.

- Go ahead.
- My father made it too.

But we were a little ritzier than you.
We put ours down the cellar.

What about when your father
made the wine for my father?

I'm not gonna say how many barrels.

But he made the wine for my father,
and your father got paid...

This is getting dirty now.

And then he says to him,

"all right, pick one of your own barrels
for yourself."

The whole thing was vinegar.
Every barrel. Everything was vinegar.

Are you insinuating
my father didn't know how to make wine?

It wasn't that your father didn't know.
It was something with the grape.

- It was kind of wet.
- That's different. But don't insinuate.

Marty, what did you do with your tooth?
You broke it?

- What tooth? This?
- You're not supposed to talk.

- What?
- He's putting that in too.

What'd you do to your tooth?
It's shorter. It's short. How come?

- I don't know.
- The other side. That, right there.

- This one?
- Yeah.

- I don't know. I don't know.
- It's short.

You'd better get it fixed up.

Isn't that something?
He brings in the tooth.

- It looks like hell.
- What do you mean? That's it, the tooth.

It's not long enough.
It's much shorter than the others.

- Get it fixed.
- I think the beard did that.

Yeah. It brings it out.

But with the vinegar in itself,
they got money,

because good vinegar
was much more profitable than wine.

- Mm-hmm.
- Good vinegar.

So you can just imagine
what it looked like, you know -

in the kitchen,
all these boxes of grapes piled up.

Then, of course, he used to pick it out,
take it, bring it downstairs,

and he used to put it in this barrel
that was sawed in half,

put on a pair of black boots,
and start mashing it,

you know, walking around in the grape.

And then, of course,
when it was mashed very, very good,

he would take it out and put it in this -
in Italian we say a stringiatura -

to strain it real tight.

Okay, you're wrong.

If he did it with his feet,
they didn't have to use the machine.

- The only time -
- How are you gonna get the juice out?

The only time they used -

the only time they used their feet
is when they didn't have the machine.

- We got mixed up.
- No. I'm telling you.

- Now we got mixed up.
- No, that's the way it is.

The only time they used their feet, when
they didn't have the machine to grind it.

I'm not talking about
the grinding machine.

I'm talking about the machine
that squeezes it.

That's the grinding machine.
That's the stringiatura.

Now they have it.
Don't tell me, because I made wine too.

- And in Europe -
- Well, anyway, my father had good wine.

Well, my father was in Italy.

He was in the - in the -
no, my father was in the -

start with his mother and the whole thing.
Start on that.

- I can't say all that.
- Well, say he was, uh -

well, he was from - his mother -
he-he didn't -

he didn't know who his mother was.

He had been on his own,
so he went in to live with some family.

- Yeah.
- And these people took him in.

Of course, then he went away to be a -

when he became of age,
he went away to be a soldier.

- In the cavalry? Yeah.
- Mm-hmm.

And he stayed there.

- And of course -
- What town was this in? Where?

- Uh, baucina.
- In sicily.

- In sicily. Baucina.
- In sicily too.

See,
he was a different nationality from us.

- The town was one right after the other.
- Don't mean nothin'.

This day, they were coming through
the town, through my mother's town.

Of course,
everybody comes out on the balconies

to look at the soldiers going by.

They're in uniform. They're beautiful.

He wore a, uh, blue uniform

with a hat with a big, white plume on it,
and he was on horseback.

And of course,
my mother was on the balcony,

and, uh, when he passed through...

He looked at her and she looked at him,
and it was sort of love at first sight.

So he brought out an instance
that he said the balcony was so low

that if she just put her hand down,

- she could touch him.
- That's the truth. We saw it.

Now, when I went to Italy,
I asked my aunt

to take me over to my mother's house,
where she lived.

They brought me over to the house,
and that was true.

I took a picture of it,

and the balcony was really that low
that you could have touched him, see?

- We lost all the film.
- Well, anyway -

- you lost all the film?
- Sure,

on account of somebody touched
the camera, and that was it.

Big-hearted herb.

He's gotta make everybody
fiddle around with the camera.

You know. Touch this and touch that,
and I lost my mother's picture.

But I'm gonna take another one of it.

Well, anyway, then, of course,
they fell in love.

So they courted for about 22 days,
and then they got married.

So my sister was about six months old,

and he kept calling her
to come to America.

But my mother didn't want to come.
She was afraid of the boat.

And every time he would call,
"come to America.

It's nice over here.
It'll be different living."

Well, anyway, to make a long story short,

he got so mad,
he says to her in the next letter,

"if you don't come to America,
I'm gonna leave you."

So she got on the next boat and came over.

- Yeah, but you said that -
- She didn't want to get on the boat.

Every time she got on the boat,
she turned back.

They tricked her into getting on the boat.

Her brother tricked her
that he was going to America with her.

He says to her,
"I'm going to America, too, with you."

So he put her on the boat,
and as she turned around for a second,

- he just faded out of sight.
- Got off the boat, and that's it.

- Who's that? Her brother?
- My uncle.

She became frantic.
Naturally, it was too late.

The boat had started out. But it took her
about 30 days to come to America.

- Very bad trip.
- Very bad trip.

But, of course,
they looked like peasants, you know.

My little sister with her little kerchief
on and her - they really looked -

well, anyway, they came to America,

and they went and lived, I think,
on third street.

Then they lived across the street.

- Mm-hmm.
- Then eventually, my aunt came.

So naturally, there's no place to live.

- "So you come and board with us."
- Mm-hmm.

So they took my aunt in, my uncle
and her son.

So that's three plus nine children.
You figure it.

- Three plus nine children?
- Right. Plus my mother and father.

Eleven. And three... is 14.

So my aunt occupied the bedroom,

the kitchen was in the middle,

and my mother, father and the children
were in the living room.

Three rooms.
Worse than us. Three rooms.

And don't forget, they used to have
their babies at home too.

- There was no such thing as -
- They used to call the midwife,

and the midwife would come in.

- So you were born here?
- The twins were born at home.

- The twins are who?
- Me and my brother Charles.

And of course there was such a big row
that time over the twins.

Somebody wanted the girl,
the other one wanted the boy.

- What do you mean?
- They wanted to take 'em.

Because they got excited. Two kids.
How are you gonna feed all these kids?

So one woman says,
"don't get excited. I'll take the girl."

What do you think this is?

What do you think this is,
a bargain basement?

"I'll take the boy"? What is this?

You had it wrong.

- Charlie, I was right.
- What were you right about?

My father used to smash the grapes
with his feet.

- But not with the -
- And then put it in the thing.

No, they can't. You mash it once -
oh, my god.

Your father didn't have the machine
my father had.

Your father had machines, all right.

- Oh, you're joking.
- You don't know him, Marty.

What kind of work did he do, exactly,
besides scaffolding?

Where did he work, what things happened
to him, was it dangerous -

my father? There was a lot of things.

Another time he came home,
he hurt his arm,

and he was out of work so long.

And when the master of the house
wasn't working, it was hard on us.

My mother used to sew pants
to keep the family going.

My mother was a very fine hand sewer.

You can't remember,

but the older people will remember
when I mention his name.

My mother made pants for daddy Browning...

A millionaire.

- He married, uh -
- He married a young girl.

Her name was peaches.

Right. This is - I'm serious.

And my mother was such a fine sewer
that he used to go here

to arnheim on ninth street
to have his clothes made,

and they used to give the pants to my
mother because her sewing was beautiful.

- With nine children?
- Yeah.

And my mother used to take the clothes -
listen to me -

take the pants,

sew them,
and she used to teach us how to sew.

We had to sit by her
and do the seams up too,

and the children - who was running around,

who was wet, who was hungry,

who we had to give a bottle to,
that's how we were raised.

My mother used to finish the pants,
fold them all up nicely, make a bundle

and carry them back to ninth street.

They would give her another batch,
and she'd come back.

- You had to bring them and deliver them.
- Homework.

Homework. Nobody would come
to the house and pick 'em up.

- My mother did the same thing.
- And actually, we had a - she taught us.

She taught us how to sew,
she taught us how to knit,

how to crochet, how to embroider,
everything.

We did everything.
We watched her, and we learned.

But it was tough.
And she had to help out too.

So my mother - my sister lived with -

my mother, rather, lived with her mother.

Mm-hmm.

Wait a minute. In the hallway. Be careful.
Who's in the hallway?

- What's happening?
- Somebody's going up and down.

Just be careful.

No, you never know.

So my mother -
my mother used to live with her mother,

you know, after -

or wherever it was.
She lived in somebody's house anyway.

So she says that this -

talking about things
that used to happen in Italy.

There were strange things.
They used to tell us these stories.

If you want to believe it, you believe it.

But, you know, the way it was,
I'm sure my mother wouldn't lie to us.

She said that this night,
she was sleeping, and the baby woke up.

And of course,
the women used to nurse the children.

There was no such thing with the bottle.

So she got up
and started to nurse this child.

As she nursed this child,
she's sitting up in the bed.

Now, at the foot of the bed...

She saw this man appear to her.

He was all in silver.

And he says to her in Italian -
I'll say it in english -

"if you hit me with something,
I'll make you rich."

So she got scared.

So she took the little baby
and pressed it closer to her chest.

So the man repeated it:

"If you hit me with something,
I will make you rich."

So with that, she got scared,
and he disappeared.

Now, they claimed
that after they sold the house,

these people started to dig -
they were fixing the house -

and they dug and dug and dug,
and you'd be surprised,

they found all these silver coins
under the ground.

Now, I'm sure my mother wasn't lying.
These were stories that she said -

and this happened when she was alone.

- She was alone then.
- And where was the father?

My father was in America at the time.
So then I guess -

well, you see, let me put it this way.

Years ago,
they all were great storytellers.

Because, as I said before,
you had no television, no radio, nothing.

You used to get, actually, people,

they used to come to the house
and tell stories to kids and everybody,

and say stories for hours and hours,

real stories that you don't know
whether you had to believe them or not.

But they say stories that, uh -

either to keep us quiet or what it was,
some fantastic stories.

- Fantastic stories.
- Some fantastic stories.

Did she tell her husband that story?
And what did she -

oh, no. That she told -
no. Wait a minute. That's right.

Then she told - when she -

in the morning,
she told the people she was living with -

I don't know if it was her mother -
so the man says to her,

"you stupid thing, you.

You could've hit him with a baby's diaper,
anything you had in your hand.

You would've became rich."

Then who knows. You know. Who knows.

So one time, we had -
as we got older, we got more -

not civilized. You know.

The children got older, got boyfriends,
you brought them up to the house.

You wanted the apartment to look nice.

So we painted the apartment,

and he had this great, big picture of him
hanging on the wall,

in uniform, which was beautiful,

and it was about, oh, this big.

A big picture.

So when we painted, we figured, you know,

the boyfriends come up, you don't want
those things hanging up there anymore.

You know, you want to better yourself.

So we didn't put the picture up.

Well, anyway, he didn't notice it.

I guess for some reason - I imagine
he figured the house was just painted.

They didn't get a chance to put it up yet.

Well, one day, a neighbor of ours came up,

and she says -

well, my father's name was Martin,
but a lot of people called him Philip.

I don't know why. Don't ask me why.

But they called him filippo.

- Mr. filippo.
- I don't understand.

I don't know why either. Don't ask me why.

I have a brother, his name is Salvatore.
They call him Charlie.

Same thing with me. My name: Luciano.

His name is Luciano.
They call him Charlie. Why?

- Anyway -
- My name was Catherine.

They called me "Katy." I don't know why.

Anyway, what happened?
So this woman came in?

Anyway, so this woman came in,
and she started to -

she started to tease him, and she says,

"Mr. filippo, I don't see your picture
hanging up anymore."

Well, that's all he had to hear.

He figured now for sure -
"I don't see my picture up anymore."

Well, he turned to my mother.
There was an awful row that night.

That woman was very embarrassed. She says,

"if I knew you were gonna take it up like
that, I would have never mentioned it.

He says to my mother, "I want that picture
tonight, because I'm gonna break it."

So she says - well, you know,
they started to make excuses.

But he was fit to be tied. He was furious.

And that woman felt very, very bad.

Till this day, may he rest in peace,

we never gave him that picture.

My brother has it.

- And another thing -
- That's a beautiful picture.

- You didn't give it to him?
- No.

How do you think we made
the other pictures?

- Because he would have broken it.
- He would've broke it to bits.

And this is funny. After the man dies,

they had the picture made,
and everyone got one apiece.

No, no, no.

- No, don't say that.
- Come on. That's the truth.

No, Charlie, don't say that.
The big picture remained the way it was.

My brother has it. But the small pictures,
we all wanted one each,

because it is - you had one.

It is a beautiful picture of him.
It really is beautiful.

How long was it before
he became a citizen, though?

I want to get some idea
of what these people were doing.

I don't know.
My sister Mary knows that, see?

Anyway, what happened
with the immigration thing?

Well, when we went to -
you know, he wanted to be a citizen -

he had to take my sister along with him

because she had to be the interpreter.

- Right.
- Couldn't speak english.

No, he couldn't speak english.

He said a few words, but not in sentences.
You know.

So of course she went up to the girl there
and she says to him,

"you want to become a citizen?"
He didn't understand her.

She says, "you got an interpreter?"
So he called my sister: "Come in."

So she says to my sister Mary,
she says, um,

"your father doesn't understand
or speak english?" She says, "no."

She says, "how long is he in America?"

She says, uh, "oh, 30 years."

She says, "why, that's terrible.
And he can't speak a word of english?

I think that's terrible."

- So he says to -
- No, he said to Mary.

So he says to Mary, "what did she say?”

So my sister Mary says,
"she says that it's" -

"Oh, yeah?" He says.

"Go" -

he told her something in english?

So he told her something in english,
a dirty word.

"Go and... yourself."

So she says, "oh, that's terrible!
Get him out of here!"

So he never became a citizen?

Oh, he was a citizen, yeah.
He became a citizen.

How many times did he have to go?

I don't know if they have to
renew it then, you know?

God.

But that was funny. "I'll show you if
I know how to talk english,” he told her.

He knew the right words.

Bad words, they always learned.

When did he move to staten island?

My father moved to staten island,
we were kids.

- I think Andrew was about two years old.
- They bought lots.

We bought the lots.
Well, you know, we didn't have anything.

So this man came,
and he was a friend of my father's.

He says, "I have a lot of lots
out in staten island.

I'll give 'em to you real cheap.
You don't have to pay me all at once.

Whenever you have the money, you pay me."

So he gave him one lot for $200.

That was something.

So of course,
there was a little bungalow on it.

But really, we couldn't afford it.
But just for the -

like cooking his own meal?
Oh, he loved that.

He had to have certain gravy.
Certain tomato paste.

My mother had to make it in the summer,
preserve it.

Because he wouldn't want to eat this.
He wanted his own.

And he would make,
and it would come out so dark

because it was really dry, you know?

And he loved it. And what would happen,
he would make the macaroni,

and he'd call everybody in to eat.

"Come and taste it. Come and taste it."

"How are we gonna eat
if we taste yours, pop?"

- You had to taste it.
- You had to taste it.

He used to save 'em for us. Save 'em.

That was the truth, boy. That was amazing.

And now that he's gone,
they destroyed everything.

They just made it plain grass and trees.
That's all.

- Where?
- In staten island.

- There's nobody to take care of it.
- Nobody to take care of it.

- There's nobody to garden it.
- Only my sister-in-law, her sister.

And nobody could take care of it.
She had it all cleaned up.

And of course the money
to clean it up took -

had some beautiful stuff there,
and it's all gone.

Goes to show you, when they build it up -
when the father and mother build it up,

and then nobody else
wants to take care of it.

Eh - - okay, that's good.

I remember one time we had a fig tree.

I used to love fig trees,
and my mother couldn't stand them.

Yeah?

In the wintertime,
you had to cover them very, very well.

Otherwise they froze.

One winter, when he did climb up -
he was getting old -

he fell off the ladder, and he got hurt.

And my mother was so angry.

She says to him,
"I hope those fig trees die.

I hope they never bloom again."

And then, of course, my mother became ill,

and the next winter she passed away,

and the trees never bloomed anymore.

It was just like she took -

she took them with her, and that was that.

Now, that's enough for today, Marty.

Okay, that's it.

That's good.

I hope my sisters don't get after me,

because I have five sisters,
and they're gonna kill me.

"Katy," they're gonna say -

is that all for today? Now, listen,
could I put my furniture back?

- What furniture?
- The things in here.

Could I set up? These things
are gonna be upset tomorrow again?

No, I mean, it can't stay this way.

I have to vacuum the rug,
wash my dishes.

- Right? When you leave. Not now.
- Huh?

What are you laughing at?
Are you thinking of pop or grandpa?

- Yeah.
- Oh, but the way he told her.

And he stands there with his hands
behind his back, and he says, "go -"

you know, he emphasized it.

My sister Mary says, "I will never
take him out with me anymore.

He embarrassed me."

- That was at the, uh, unemployment -
- In the office.

He says it was at the unemployment.
I don't remember.

Of course,
you always had to take an interpreter,

because he didn't speak english.

Mary says, "as far as me,
I'm not taking him anyplace anymore."

And that's a shame,
making me say things like that.

Is he still taking this?

I'll murder you.
You won't get out of this house alive.