Most everybody in the town where I grew up was in the same boat; which is to say, that their parents had also come to America recently in a boat or on a plane in search of the American dream and had settled for a three-bedroom bungalow. I grew up thinking that everyone spoke another language at home than they did at school and so I was no different than anyone else. It was just that my friend might speak Lithuanian or Polish to their mom and dad, while I spoke Italian to mine. We were all “first generation” kids. That means that our parents were immigrants and we kids, having been born on US soil, were the first generation that would unequivocally be considered "Americans". The town I grew up in was very diverse by my exceptionally limited definition of diversity at that time. There were Italian kids, Bohemian kids, German kids, Lithuanian kids, and Polish kids. Like I said… diverse! Unlike kids of the other ethnicities, though, a lot of the Italian kids loved to show off the fact that they were Italian. They were conspicuously consuming large gauge gold chains and white satin jackets with red, white, and green stripes encircling the wrist cuffs and neck collars. Many of these jackets had the word “Greasers” printed on the back in green letters. I am fairly certain that I owned one of these jackets and actually wore it around. It didn’t have “Greasers” on the back, but it did have my name on the front. And, for a time, I was pretty proud to be an Italian. Perhaps you were unaware that the movie musical “Grease” was based on my home town and that Danny Zuko was Italian. Oh, sure, they used a leather jacket instead of a white satin one, and they made him speak with more of a New Jersey accent than an Italian one (which is interesting because it’s supposed to be set in California), but I knew that that movie was based on Berwyn!
If you pay any attention at all to popular culture media you, of course, already have a well-ingrained, pre-conceived notion of what all Italians are like. According to movies and the many other sources of cultural information like the internet and TV, the stereotype suggests that Italian moms cook all day long, every day (which mine did), and that we have gigantic family dinners for anything we can possibly call a special occasion (which we did). Our enormous celebrations included, but were not limited to: birthdays, getting out of the hospital, graduations, awards from any institution, and, of course, religious ceremonies. But we also co-opted all the American holidays, all the quasi-ethnic holidays like St. Patrick’s day (even Casimir Pulaski day in the Chicago area), and, of course, any day that either represented a saint’s day or an historic Italian figure like Columbus Day. And, finally, if we hadn’t seen each other in over a month, someone would make up a reason to celebrate and we’d all show up. And when I say all, I mean ALL of us. Our family celebrations often included relatives that we called “Zia” and “Zio” (auntie and uncle) but were, in fact, my mother’s second cousins, once removed. And before you go trying to figure out exactly which twig on the family tree a second-cousin-once-removed is, suffice it to say that no cousin is too distant by blood to be left behind for a meal. Family gatherings would also include people whom we called cugini (cousins) who were really only related through marriage to distant actual cousins or who became “family” because one of their ancient relatives helped one of our ancient relatives out of some financial crisis. I am not kidding when I say that my Auntie Norma would pull together four banquet tables end-to-end to seat everybody, and, still, eight of the youngest cousins got relegated to the kids’ table in the kitchen. I am also not kidding when I say that it was not unusual for the heads of the table on the very far ends to strike up a very loud conversation. This, even as other conversations took place crosswise at all distances from each other at many other points along this arrangement. The cacophony would instantly deafen any non-Italian. An Aerosmith rock concert might maybe be comparable in decibel level.
We ate until our stomachs were distended, laughed until our sides hurt, drank hard liquors until someone fell asleep at the table, debated ridiculous things like whether Sophia Loren was more beautiful than Gina Lollobrigida, and poked fun at Americans for thinking pasta and salad was a meal. We all got together in huge numbers all the time. In today’s overly-suspicious world we would have been accused of some conspiracy. And, if eating every meat, fish, vegetable, fruit, and nut known to man at a single sitting could be considered a conspiracy, we would easily have been convicted. But not a one of us was in the mafia or even knew anyone who was. At least not too well. It turns out that my mom was friends with Mrs. Giancana. My mom tailored her furs. And that’s all I have to say about that. So, yes, your preconceived notion of Italian-Americans is actually fairly accurate as far as my family is concerned. Just tone it down a notch or two.
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