13. CHICAGO

ack in Chicago, Joe and Uncle John continued to live as boarders in the house owned by their cousin, Joe Musashe, who had been recently married. Big Joe's wife was named Theresa, better known as Zootza. The two brothers paid $2.50 a month rent, an arrangement that Zootza resented, because she had to cook for them, wash for them, and make their beds. Then in the evening, they would take her husband off somewhere. A favorite activity was playing cards with another Falconarese, Carmen Covoto.

     Zootza was related to the Toccis. Her grandfather was Domenic Tocci, brother of Chico, Rose's grandfather. Zootza's father Giacamo, or Jim, was among the first Falconarese to go to the United States. Jim Tocci farmed in Arkansas for two years, then went to Maine to build a dam before coming to Chicago. It was Zootza's father who in 1919 arranged for her to marry Big Joe, a man she had never even seen before, much less met.

     Zootza considered both John and Joe troublemakers. One night, John even brought home a "nigger" who worked with him. Zootza complained to her husband, but Joe Musashe sided with his relatives. "How would you

like it if your husband liked his family better than you?" she later told her friends.

     Zootza claimed that one time when she was pregnant John kicked her, then laughed about it. Later, she lost the child. She was happy when the Musacchio brothers eventually moved out and got their own apartment.

     My father worked for Pullman Railroad, the Chicago Surface Lines, also Ford Motor Company at 138th and Torrance. After a layoff, he went to work for Central Screw Company. He also worked for the Buda Company in south suburban Harvey, a manufacturer of steel parts. It was not that Pa disliked work, he just disliked working for other people. My sister Marion said, "One of his problems was he couldn't take orders. He wasn't disciplined like Uncle John. I don't think they ever fired him; he just quit."

     Both brothers learned how to drive. Among the family documents is a driver's license issued to "Jos. Musacchio," dated April 9, 1923. Joe, age 29, 5 feet 6 inches tall, 168 pounds, lived at 7821 Dobson. He paid a $5.00 fee to the department of police, and his license permitted him to operate motor vehicles powered with gasoline--but not electricity or steam.

     Years later, Pa would tell the story about being approached by a gangster who asked if he would like a job driving a truck for Al Capone, boss of the crime syndicate in Chicago. The gangster offered him $75 a week, a princely salary for a workingman during the twenties, much more than he earned from his various legitimate jobs. "That's just your starting salary," hinted the gangster. Much money could be made from the various gang activities, particularly sales of illegal alcohol.

      During prohibition, the syndicate made most of its money selling bootleg liquor. Not only was selling liquor illegal under the Volstead Act, beginning in 1919, but transporting it across the state line made the crime a federal offense. Considerable risk was involved for anyone who drove for Capone. If not captured by the police or FBI, you might be killed in the warfare between rival gangs. Syndicate recruiters looked for young men with broad backs and broad foreheads, since a certain amount of muscle was required, not only for lifting kegs of beer but for swinging clubs during periodic gang wars. The recruiters usually sought the poorer members of the Italian community, those with low paying jobs, or with no jobs at all, people with a certain desperation to their lives.

      Of course, a smart paisano who followed orders--and who survived the occupational hazards, such as machine-gun fire--could move upwards in the organization. The syndicate was definitely a growth industry during the roaring twenties. The money tempted my father, but he was far from being desperate. He told the gangster, "Not for me."

     "You're crazy," said the gangster. "We'll make you rich."

     "I'd rather be poor," Joe told him, "and alive."

      Some years later when we owned a house at the corner of 87th Street and St. Lawrence, Pa rented an apartment to a man who operated an illegal still, making moonshine in their basement. "It wasn't a big business," claims my sister Marion, "just for friends." Nevertheless, the presence of the still made everybody in the family nervous. They feared that if the moonshiner was discovered by the police, they too might be implicated and sent to jail. Eventually, Pa asked the man either to stop operating his still or leave. The man left.

     At the same time, my father made wine in the basement, going to the Italian markets to buy fresh, purple grapes every fall, then bringing them home to be squeezed in a press, finally placed in bottles to be allowed to ferment. Sometimes the wine was good; sometimes it was bad, having turned too early to vinegar. We drank the wine with our dinner, but this was within the law, the federal government not considering the imbibing of a glass or two of wine along with a plate of pasta, in the grand Italian tradition, too serious a breach of the civil code. Unlike the Irish, Italians were civilized drinkers, staggering out onto the streets drunk much less frequently. They even permitted their children a sip of well-diluted wine at the dinner table.

     Like most Chicagoans of Italian descent, my father Joseph Musacchio and other members of the family had little contact with Capone's gang, or various other Italian-dominated criminal organizations that went by names such as the syndicate, the organization, cosa nostra ("our thing"), or the

Mafia. Pa sometimes encountered Mafia members in various saloons where he went to have a drink, but he had no close friends who were gangsters. Most Mafia members were Sicilian. The Falconarese came from Calabria, the nearest province to Sicily on the tip of the Italian boot.

     The film of The Godfather suggests the contempt with which Sicilians held the Calabrese. In the opening scene of the movie, Marlon Brando as the Godfather entertains a supplicant whose daughter has been raped, but her ravisher spared by the American system of justice. The supplicant desires vengeance. "Are you Sicilian?" asks Brando. "No, Calabrese," is the response. The look on Brando's face suggests the Sicilian's contempt for the weak-willed Calabrese and their inability to extract their own vengeance. Of course, Brando, and possibly not even Mario Puzo, who wrote the book and film script of The Godfather, ever had heard of the Albanians of the mountain villages or Scanderbeg.

     Certainly another factor keeping Joe and members of his family away from the crime syndicate was that they were not only Calabrese, but Albanian speaking at that. The Mafia also was stronger in the west-side Italian neighborhoods, rather than on the south side. You were more likely to be aware of the Mafia around Taylor Street, where women in the Musacchio family later would go to buy Italian cheeses, sausages, and pasta.

     My father's brother John labored as a mechanic for the Chicago Transit Authority, referred to then as the Surface Lines. John worked at the Surface Line's shops at 79th and Wentworth. He could not have earned much money, but his expenses apparently were few and even while supporting his family back in Italy, John saved enough to purchase his own automobile. John became one of the first among the Italian immigrants living in Grand Crossing to own a car. His friends called him "Studebaker John."

     John did not operate the car often, spending as much time polishing the Studebaker as driving it. John did not easily throw money away on frivolities. He was shrewd. With his automobile, he could earn extra money as a chauffeur at funerals. George Thompson, owner of a mortuary by the same name, even asked John if he would like to become a partner in his funeral business. Dapper John was not above picking up some supplementary income driving at funerals, where people dressed well and

acted with manners, but he did not want to spend all his time around corpses. He turned Thompson down and kept his job repairing street cars.

     Later, my Uncle John purchased a grocery store at 1910 East 76th Street. Living above the store was his brother Gus. John hired two brothers to work at the store, one of them named Toto. When the first brother was away, Toto sometimes would sneak off to bed with his brother's wife. Someone in the neighborhood learned of this and informed the first brother: "Hey, your wife is fooling around with Toto."

     The news understandably enraged the first brother. Getting a revolver, he secreted it in a bread box. Later that day, Toto appeared in the grocery store. Standing beside the bread box, the first brother confronted him, "What are you doing with my wife?"

     Toto, realizing that he had been caught, could do little more than offer a typical Italian gesture of supplication. He raised his palms upward and shrugged.

     His brother snatched the revolver out of the breadbox and shot and killed Toto. Though arrested for the murder by the police, the first brother never did go to jail. The attitude of the prosecutors was that if the Italians wanted to kill themselves, that was their business.

     Most of the Falconarese working in Chicago, such as my father and Uncle John, went for years, sometimes decades, without seeing their wives, who remained in the old country. The wives, naturally, were expected to remain faithful, and, with a few notable exceptions already cited, most probably did. The village of Falconara was small, and there were eyes upon the women at all times. But Chicago was a big city, and there were fewer eyes to report indiscretions among the men, who certainly must have longed for female companionship. Determining how many of the Falconarese men working in Chicago might have strayed from the straight and narrow path of fidelity is not easy, even when the passage of years has healed the scars such indiscreet relationships might have caused to heal.

      Domenic Nesci, who would later work in the shoe repair store operated by my parents, arrived in the United States at the age of sixteen in 1928, however, and discovered that his father was sleeping with another woman. The woman, a widow named Palmer, lived near 93rd and Drexel and had four children, three from her previous marriage. The fourth, whom she named Frank, was the result of her liaison with Domenic's father. Domenic wrote home to Falconara, informing his mother of his father's infidelity and also confronted the widow Palmer who promised, "I won't let your father come here any more."

      Three years later, Domenic's mother arrived in the United States, but Domenic discovered that his father was still seeing the widow Palmer. She had moved to 63rd and Blackstone, conveniently near the University of Chicago where Domenic's father worked at that time as a janitor. He previously had worked for the Surface Lines, but a crane fell on him and he broke his leg in thirteen pieces.

      Domenic confronted the widow Palmer again, "You moved right across the street from where my old man works."

     "Don't worry," she said. "Your father won't stop here."

      Years later, after Domenic's father died, his half-brother Frank came to the wake. Domenic, finally more mellow about the relationship, offered to introduce Frank to other members of the Nesci family, but Frank told him, no. "I don't want to cause any trouble to the family," he said. "I merely came to pay my respects."

     Whether true or not, Domenic later would claim: "They all had two women."

     Life continued on the south side of Chicago. While he owned the grocery store, my Uncle John played the part of big businessman. In the evenings, he would put several dollars in his pocket and go to White City, the amusement area on 63rd Street. He hired others to mind the store. But during the depression, John went broke, eventually selling the store for $500 to Carmen Cavoto.

     John frequented a saloon belonging to Tony Nudo on Greenwood. One night there were some Italians who had come from San Lucido drinking in the saloon. John began to argue with them saying, "Those Lucitanos are not worth shit. They are pigs and thieves."

     "Go home, John," said one of the Lucitanos

     "Before I go home," snapped John, "I'll bust you in the nose."

     "John, stop causing trouble," said Tony Nudo, trying to avert what he sensed was a barroom brawl.

     Too late. Uncle John pushed one of the Lucitanos, who was not only younger but bigger than him. With one swing, the Lucitano knocked John to the floor.

     Mike and Joe, meanwhile, were sitting across the park in the grocery store now owned by Carmen Cavoto playing cards. Someone came to tell them about the fight. Mike and Joe went to the saloon, but by then everybody had left.

     The following week, Mike saw the person who had fought with John and asked him, "What business did you have knocking my cousin to the floor?"

     The Lucitano suggested to Mike that he talk to Tony Nudo about what happened. Nudo told Mike, "Listen, if it was me, I'd have killed your cousin. All the stuff he said."

     Mike went to John and told him, "The next time you drink, keep your mouth shut!"

     Back in Italy, Massimo Molinaro wanted to marry Uncle John's lone child, his daughter Marianna, my cousin. Massimo wrote to John requesting permission. John responded: "Before reading this letter, you didn't have a chair to sit on, nor a table at which you could eat. After reading this letter, you will now have my permission to enter my house and can marry Marianna. You will now find a chair to sit on and can eat at our table."

     Massimo and Marianna married on January 29, 1927. John made no attempt to return home for the wedding, nor apparently had he even begun to consider the possibility of bringing his wife, my Aunt Chiara, to the United States. Her duty lay back in the old country, caring for his mother, overseeing his steady accumulation of property. John, however, remained a man with two countries: one foot in one, one foot in the other. He had not yet committed himself to remaining in the United States, but he also had not severed his ties with Falconara. Perhaps he had not considered that one day he might have to choose between the two, or perhaps merely acknowledge that the choice already had been made by the increasing permanence of his presence on the south side of Chicago.

     The original purpose of the Falconarese who came to Chicago to work was to earn more money than they could in their home village, but they had not planned to abandon that village. In the back of their minds was the thought that eventually, when they had amassed enough capitol, they would return as signori, to sit in the cafe by the piazza and bask in the respect of their less fortunate neighbors. But as the Falconarese in America saw their roots settling into the sandy soil of  south-side Chicago, the desire to return faded. They were hardly wealthy by American standards. They were working men who possessed few of the creature comforts of ethnic Americans who had come to Chicago one or more generations before and who now had nice homes in the better south-side neighborhoods: Kenwood, Hyde Park, South Shore, Beverly Hills. But they led a comfortable life compared to their relatives back in Italy. For one, they had experienced central heating, steaming radiators that actually kept you warm without having to wear your overcoat in the house. The Falconarese of Chicago had begun to acquire goods and property in their new homes, and they had become spoiled by the American standard of living. Like many Italian-Americans, John did not want to turn his back on Italy, or face the fact that he would never again be part of the land where he had been born, but it was happening with or without his acquiescence.

     My father had less qualms about severing his connection with the old country. Whether prompted by his wife's loneliness and disaffection with her village, or from his own desire for companionship other than that of his male relatives, Pa began making arrangements for Ledda and Tony to join him. In bringing his wife and child to Chicago, Joe Musacchio cut the last tie between himself and Italy. My mother left Falconara with mixed feelings. She was happy to leave the stifling atmosphere of the village where everybody knew her business, but she was sad to leave her friends and family and the house on which she had labored so hard to make comfortable for her and her child. The next few years in a strange country with its language so strange to her would be very difficult for Ledda.

     According to documents in the National Archives, on August 13, 1927, Angela Tocci Musacchio, bearing visa number 322, issued at Messina five days earlier, sailed from Naples on the S.S. Roma, arriving in New York only nine days later, August 22, 1927. When she arrived in the United States Ledda was age thirty-three. She listed her occupation as a housewife. Her height was 5 feet 3 inches, her health good. She was going to join her husband Giuseppe, who then lived at 8203 Ellis in Chicago. The only information related to her son Antonio was that he was age six.

     My brother Tony later would remember his trip across the ocean: "I knew I was coming to America. I was going somewhere to see my father, whom I never had seen before. We had to go to Naples for some reason, probably for a health check and visas. That was the first time I had ever seen an

automobile, because they didn't have any in our village. We were in Naples overnight, and the next morning we boarded a ship.

     "On the ship, we came with some people who went to Detroit, the Carnevales. They had a little boy, same age as me. The older people, including my mother, were sick all the time. Us kids weren't bothered and we roamed all over the ship."

     After they docked in New York, Tony remembered his mother trying to sneak several bottles, some alcoholic drink, probably anisette, through customs. "The man found them in the suitcases and poured them out on the dock. My mother begged him not to do it. She explained she just brought it for my father. He spoke English, and my mother said, 'Talk Italian.'" Tony thought that the customs agent was a sour man.

     My mother had little money with her when she arrived. Pa had sent her money earlier, then requested the money back so he could buy a car. When

she arrived in the United States, she needed to borrow money from the Carnivales in order for her to get to Chicago. My father was not too good a businessman. During her life in America, my mother frequently would need to borrow money from friends and relatives to balance the family budget.

     "The next thing I knew I was on a train," recalls Tony. I remember a man coming in, all of a sudden, and it was my father. He must have met us in Gary, somewhere in Indiana. My first impression of my father was discipline. He tried to tell me not to do this, not to do that. My mother hadn't disciplined me, and all of a sudden here's this man, and I don't even know him, and he tells me what to do. It didn't agree with me.

     "We got off the train and into a taxi, and I couldn't believe all the cars and lights and street cars. We arrived at this house where we lived a couple of years. It was owned by the Bruno family, and we rented one of their apartments. It was a three-story house, and we lived on the second story."

     The apartment's address was 7526 Ellis in the largely Italian Grand Crossing neighborhood. The year after her arrival, my mother became pregnant again. On November 13, 1928 she gave birth at home, a midwife presiding, to a boy, named Frank, an Americanized version of her father's name, Francesco. The child, however, was deformed, his spine twisted. They took him after several weeks to St. Luke's Hospital. On December 20, Frank died of a broncho-pneumonial infection, actually a complication of his deformities. A blessing, everyone in the family agreed.

     "When I came, my father was working for the Surface Lines, but he quit," recalls Tony. "Not long after we came here, he had Uncle Angelo teach him to fix shoes. He thought he could do better in that." Angelo Tocci was my uncle, my mother's younger brother, who, as an apprentice to a shoe maker back in Italy, had learned how to make and repair shoes. Uncle Angelo was an artist among shoe repairmen. Shoes brought into him to have heels or soles repaired were returned to the customer looking better than they had when purchased.

     Uncle Angelo operated a shoe repair store around 63rd and Greenwood. Eventually he sold the store to another Falconarese, Jim Chiapetta, and returned to Italy. After staying several months, Angelo took a job with a New York company that franchised shoe repair sections in department stores. The company would send Angelo to different cities where he would establish the repair sections, work in them for six months, then move to another location. Angelo worked in that job through most of the thirties.

     My father worked for Angelo for several months and learned the craft, if not the art of fixing shoes. Big Joe owned a shoe repair shop on 82nd Street, which he sold to Joe complete with equipment. My father borrowed money from Uncle Mike for the purchase, taking several years to pay him back. The store included a shoeshine stand, complete with a Negro bootblack. Another individual blocked hats. Pa had problems with his first lease and moved several doors further west, taking the equipment with him. Several years after that, struggling during the depression, he moved across the street.

     Within a few years after the arrival of his wife and son, my father purchased a home located on the corner of 87th Street and St. Lawrence, outside the Grand Crossing neighborhood where most of the Italians lived. "It was the summer of 1929, just before the crash," recalls my brother Tony,

"and he paid more money than it would have cost when the depression was on." Although within a few decades other houses, apartments, banks, and shopping centers would crowd around it, the white-shingled and green-roofed single-story structure chosen by my father was a farmhouse, surrounded by fields in which crops were grown.

     My mother, who had not been consulted about the house, hated it. "It was dirty, filled with bugs and roaches," recalls my sister Marion. Ma had just completed several years reconditioning her home back in Falconara to make it livable, and now she had to begin again.

     Pa set to work swiftly improving the house, turning the upstairs into an apartment, eventually building an addition in the rear to make a second apartment. "I can remember the house on 87th," says my brother Tony, "fixing, digging, working every weekend to make it bigger, more livable. The second story didn't even have electric lights. Just gas lights. The only bath was upstairs. We had to go upstairs to go to the bathroom."

     My father's brother John moved into the back apartment; my parents rented the upstairs apartment to various other people. In the mid-thirties, Pa raised the house on stilts, constructing a basement where eventually he would relocate his shoe repair business. In the backyard, he built a swing. He planted fruit trees and flowers and, although the yard was small, a tiny plot of green grass which he manicured to perfection. My father had a huge garden in a lot next door, where years later he would construct a one-story structure that he could lease for stores. One half would house a saloon, the other half a barbecue store. "We always had vegetables," recalls Tony. "Every spring we turned the ground and planted: beans, corn, tomatoes. My mother would can a lot, bottle. We had a lot of hand-me-downs. Never had any toys; couldn't afford any. But I never felt deprived. I'd get envious sometimes if some of the neighboring kids had something I didn't, but I never thought we were bad off."

      During their first half dozen years in the new house, my mother gave birth to three more children, all girls. The first was born at Burnside Hospital on December 29, 1930. Unlike with the second child, Frank, who had died soon after his birth at home, my parents had gone to the hospital, hoping they might obtain better care. Ma and Pa named the first girl, my sister, Marion after her paternal grandmother, Marianna Musacchio. The next two children were born at home, in the house on St. Lawrence. I was born February 22, 1934, named Rosaria Lilia Augusta Musacchio after my maternal grandmother, Rosaria Tocci. When the third girl came, my mother had no more relatives for whom a child needed to be named, so she gave the girl the name Beatrice, the name of the woman doctor, who came to the house to deliver her. (The doctor was named Beatrice Tucker, M.D., later a well-known and respected Chicago pediatrician.) My sister Beatrice, more often known as Bea, was born August 9, 1935.

My sisters and I never would know our Uncle Gus, the oldest of the three Musacchio brothers who came to America. The year before Marion's birth, Gus was employed at a factory near 78th and Kimbark that manufactured Champion spark plugs. Working at the same factory were Uncle Mike and Big Joe.

      One day in December, 1929, Gus failed to appear for work. When Gus remained absent the second day, Mike stopped by the apartment where Gus lived with Zia Zin and their six children. Gus lay on a couch in the

living room, coughing, his face red. After arriving home, Mike asked his wife to call Uncle John. "You better go see your brother," Marietta told John. "He's pretty sick."

     Uncle Gus had pneumonia. People contract pneumonia for various reasons, but many in the family would blame Gus's illness on the fact that Zia Zin had embraced a religion that didn't believe in doctors. Instead of seeking medical care, Zia Zin supposedly thought her husband could be cured through prayer. Others among the Falconarese scoffed at her involvement with what they considered merely a store-front church, founded by some Sicilian barber, who thought he was the messiah.

     Uncle John and my father particularly disapproved of their brother's involvement with the church. They disliked any and all churches and people connected with them. Undoubtedly neither John nor Joe had set foot inside a church since their weddings. At the same time, they retained the strong-willed Italian belief that if you're going to go to church and make a fool of yourself, it better be Catholic! Anything else was an outrage. For Gus to become involved with some storefront church, they thought, was unforgivable.

     When Uncle John visited Gus, he realized how sick his brother was. Either on that visit or soon afterwards, John returned with a doctor who examined Gus. The doctor explained that Gus would need to be taken to the hospital.

     Whether because of her religious beliefs or because she felt the family could not afford the expense of a hospital stay, Zia Zin objected. This caused Uncle John to fly into a rage. "You're killing this man," shouted John. "He's my brother and I'm taking him to the hospital."

     They took Uncle Gus in an ambulance to Jackson Park Hospital on Stony Island Avenue. It was too late; the pneumonia had progressed too far. The doctor told John: "He'll be lucky to live until morning." At 3:00 A.M., Gus Musacchio died.

     At the death of his brother, Uncle John was as angry as he was sad. He turned to Zia Zin and, almost cruelly, told her, "You killed him! If you had called the doctor earlier, he'd be living today."

Zia Zin denied it was her fault.

     "I'm going to take care of his funeral," snapped John.

     "No you're not," said Zia Zin. "He's my husband and I'll do what I want."

     My father finally threw up his arms in disgust: "I don't care what you do with him now. He's dead. You can even pickle him if you want."

     The two brothers refused to attend the wake, or the funeral at the store-front church, but they rented a limousine to appear at the burial ceremony. Family legend has it that Uncle John was still so angry he arrived carrying a gun. He did not use it. Gus Musacchio was buried on Christmas eve. He was fifty-two years old and left six children, the oldest twenty, the youngest two.

     Uncle John's rage eventually subsided. He worried about his brother's children. Apparently because of being unable to divorce his first wife, Vincensina, Uncle Gus had not been able to marry Zia Zin. This may have caused her difficulty in obtaining public aid. Despite their anger, John and Joe paid for Gus's doctor's bills along with Uncle Mike and Big Joe.

     The two younger brothers approached Zia Zin and offered to help support Gus's children, but only under one condition: she had to abandon the store-front church. Too proud to agree, Zia Zin refused. After that, Uncle John and my father refused to have anything more to do with Zia Zin, just as the Musacchios earlier had ostracized Vincensina.

     Women, however, sometimes can be more forgiving than men. My mother felt sorry for Zia Zin, and particularly for the children. Ma would be among the few in the family who attempted to heal the breach. I recall as a young girl going with my mother and sisters to visit Zia Zin, bringing each time a small offering of food. But the scars would never heal fully, even though the children of Uncle Gus and the children of John and Joe occasionally would see each other at family gatherings, wakes and weddings. In researching this book, when Hal and I approached members of Uncle Gus's branch of the Musacchio family to see if we could gather any details about his life, we were informed that they preferred not to talk to us. Fifty-six years had passed since Gus's death, but we can understand why.

     Uncle John returned to Falconara in October, 1932. It was his first visit back to see his wife for nearly a decade. John now found it difficult to get along with his son-in-law, Massimo Molinaro. "He believed a good man comes from labor, not schooling," his grandson John, my cousin Johnny, would explain. "Grandfather's friends were workers and my father’s friends were school-educated." His daughter Marianna also had difficulty becoming reacquainted with a father whom she had known only for a few months while a girl.

     Italy was then under fascist rule, its leader the strutting dictator Benito Mussolini. Soon after John arrived back in Falconara, police knocked on the door. They suspected him of being a communist. They examined John's papers, and searched the house, according to Marianna, who at that time had two small children and was frightened. She remembers that Totoni Musacchio, the son of Uncle Gus, was there. Despite ostracizing Vincensina, Uncle John had continued to stay in touch with Gus's first son by mail over the years. Totoni comforted Marianna. "Don't worry, Zizi," he said. "Don't be frightened." The police found nothing and eventually left with a warning to Uncle John that he not cause any trouble while visiting his family. Asking Uncle John not to cause trouble, of course, was like asking him not to breathe.

     Actually, Uncle John did have communist leanings, and in the United States would subscribe to the Daily Worker. But he was not so much pro-communist as he was anti-fascist, anti-Mussolini, and anti-cleric. Years later, my cousin Johnny would discover copies of the Daily Worker and criticize Uncle John for being friends with the Russians. Uncle John never considered himself as pro-anything, much less pro-Russian. He soon let his subscription to the communist paper, and any pretensions to being part of that party, expire. Although he was a worker, and sympathized with the plight of workers throughout the world, he was too comfortable with his life in America to allow leftward leanings get in the way.

     He also appreciated too much the freedom he found in America. On one occasion, Uncle John visited the Italian embassy in Chicago to obtain a visa for one of his visits home. Uncle John, still wearing his hat, approached an official sitting at a desk. The official asked John to remove the hat. "You can't tell me to remove my hat," raged John. "This is America!"

     Because of passport restrictions, John could stay only six months in Falconara. In April, 1933, he returned to the United States, which then was in the midst of the depression. While in Falconara, he had talked to Zia Chiara, my aunt, about her eventually coming to the United States. In contrast to my mother, Chiara had no interests in leaving her village, even though she no longer had the obligation of caring for John's parents, now deceased. She did not want to leave her daughter Marianna, who already had given birth to two children, Domenica in 1928 and Giovanni (the grandson mentioned above) in 1932, and would soon give birth to three more: Franco, Roberto, and Antonio. "My family is here in Falconara, not in Chicago," my aunt Chiara told Uncle John. "Why don't you move back here, instead of me going there." But there was little chance that John would do that. Chiara might as easily have shoved the mountain across the valley into the sea as move her obstinate spouse.

     John departed Falconara, but after returning to Chicago, his letters to Chiara became increasingly accusatory. The letters usually started pleasantly, as he blessed everyone, then they became threatening, as Uncle John gave vent to his frustrations, his angers, his imagination about what was going on in Falconara behind his back, how the property he had been accumulating was being mismanaged. When Chiara received the letters, she would become so upset she would hit her head on the wall.

     Uncle John's source of information was his cousin Mike through his wife Marietta, who had a sister, Serafina Morelli, back in Falconara. Serafina would write to Marietta, who would show the letter to Mike, who would relay information to Uncle John, who then would complain in his letters to Chiara. Marianna Molinaro became angry about being spied on all the time and complained to her cousin Raffaele, Serafina's son. Raffaele finally told his mother to mind her own business and stop interfering.

     Finally in 1938, John brought his wife to the United States. My Aunt Chiara was then fifty-three years old. She had been married twenty-nine of those years, but in all that period had spent not more than a few dozen months with her husband. In moving to the United States, Chiara left her family and her closest friends behind. But she had no choice. The choice was up to her husband, who decreed that she join him.

     I was only four at the time, but I remember when my aunt, Zia Chiara, came to the United States. We went to the railroad station in downtown Chicago to meet her. She seemed so small, so foreign looking. That night I had to sleep in the dining room, because the beds had to be shifted to accommodate the new addition to the family.

     After Aunt Chiara moved to the United States, Uncle John wrote his daughter who by then had moved to Rome with her family. He tried to convince Marianna to move back to Falconara to watch their property. Marianna had little love for a father she barely knew and refused.

     Also living with the Musacchio family on 87th Street about that time was my mother’s brother, Angelo. In 1939, Uncle Angelo had quit his traveling position with the New York company and moved back to Chicago, again opening a shoe repair store near 63rd Street. He lived in a bedroom off the kitchen. I remember Uncle Angelo as a kind and soft-spoken man, who generously gave his brother's children some small coins each week as a form of allowance. Uncle Angelo had a light complexion, but was very hairy all over his body. One day my older sister Marion wandered into the

bathroom when Uncle Angelo, bare-chested, was shaving. "Oh, Uncle Angelo," she said. "You have so many feathers on your chest."

     Uncle Angelo would delight in telling that story for years afterwards. He remained a bachelor into his forties, when he met Edna, a woman who had been married twice before and had a daughter. The family disliked Edna. For her to have been married so many times was something the Italians did not do. Angelo eventually would move with Edna to Arizona.

     For a while after Chiara joined him, Uncle John continued to live in the back apartment of the house owned by my parents. My brother Tony, by then a teenager, would recall Uncle John: "He was a difficult person to get along with. He liked his own way."

     John got along better with his three nieces: my sisters Marion and Bea and I. We knew about what time he would return from work every evening. The three of us often would sit in the front room, looking out the window, stirring at the approach of each bright-painted, red and yellow street car headed east along 87th Street. When the right street car came and Uncle John descended from it, we would rush to meet him. The first one to reach Uncle John received the honor of carrying his lunchbox, the circular-topped, black, metal case that all working men in that era carried to and from work. Then we would unlace his high-top shoes. Finally Uncle John would permit the three of us to sip some of the coffee laced with whiskey from his thermos that he had saved for us. He treated his brother's three daughters more kindly than those in his own family.

     Soon, however, John purchased a building on 79th and Dobson that included a bar. He ran the bar until his employers, the Surface Lines, discovered his moonlighting job. They told him that he should either run the bar or work for them. John leased the bar to another tenant.

     On Saturday nights, the families often would gather at different persons' houses. The women would prepare a meal. My father liked to visit Big Joe and Zootza. He claimed that Zootza's melanzane (stuffed peppers) were better than those made by his wife. Zootza filled hers with meat, whereas my mother used the insides of the eggplant. The reason was because Pa gave his wife so little money to run the household, as little as five dollars a week from which she had to buy food to feed the family.

     After dinner, the men would play cards, often poker for small stakes. My sister Bea recalls that after our father lost a few hands, he would stand and walk around the table to change his luck. Sometimes Zootza would play poker with the men, but usually the women would putter about the kitchen and talk. The children eventually would tire and fall asleep on the beds, the floor, any place. Some of the talk was political. After war broke out in Europe, Mussolini sided with Hitler. One night everybody was at Jim Nacaratto's. Mike and John got into an argument about the war. Mike was saying how wonderful the Italians were. John argued it was better to be in America, and we're Americans.

   Mike said, "No, we're Italians."

   John told him, "If you like Italy so much, why don't you go back?"

   Mike hit John. They got into a brawl, bloody noses and everything. Jim Naccarato separated them. They didn't talk for a while.

     John was strongly opposed to Mussolini, and since the communists in Italy opposed Mussolini's fascist regimen, he continued to sympathize with their position. When he swore or blessed somebody, he always said, "May the Bolshevik bless you." He would never say God.

     After John moved to 79th and Dobson, he was painting the windows of his building one day. He wore overalls and looked as though he were a painter by trade. A man approached and announced that he represented the painter's union. "This is a commercial building," said the man. "Do you belong to the union?"

     John admitted that he did not.

     "You have to join the union or you can't paint this building."

     "Go to hell," Uncle John told him.

     The union man was persistent. "You join the union or you can't paint this building."

     John told the man to wait a minute and went inside. He returned carrying a .22-calibre pistol. "This is my union," he told the union representative who fled.

Chapter 14 >

Falconara: A Family Odyssey

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