vfvi

via Scarangella  –  Toritto, Italy

My paternal grandfather Francesco came to America in January 1906 with three children and a new wife.  His wife Antonia had died in Italy and Francesco, now in his early 30s, needing a new wife, began courting my grandmother Laura.

Francesco wanted to go to America.  There was no future for him or his children in the “new Italy’ of the early 20th century.  Would young Laura be interested in marrying a man some 12 years old than her, with three children and leaving her family, her language  and her country for a life of adventure and uncertainty in America?  I have no idea how she made her decision or indeed if the decision was hers.

My grandmother Laura – circa early 1960s beside our house.

All I know is that Francesco and Laura married on September 30, 1905 . He arrived at Ellis Island with his oldest son on the steamer “Princess Irene” from Naples on January 25, 1906. Laura followed with the two younger step-children, arriving May 4 on the “Barbarossa”.  The last letter of our family name was changed from an “a” to an “o” by the bureaucracy.

Why did they leave?  Why did millions feel the new Italian Kingdom had nothing to offer them?

Southern Italy, il mezzogiorno, unlike the industrial north was feudal in nature in 1900.  The peoples of the south were for the most part desperately poor with virtually everything of value owned by absentee landlords.  The attitudes of the industrial north toward the south was vividly illustrated after the Messina earthquake and can be read about two posts back on this blog.

Toritto, where our family lived for centuries (and where many of our extended family still do, much better off today) was a dusty backwater in 1900, plagued by poverty, malaria and feudalism.

The peasants worked in fields they could never hope to own, lived in trulli,  conical shaped houses own by the landlords with never a hope of an education or economic  advancement.  They were essentially serfs.

And the major fields that they toiled in were populated by trees – Almond trees.

An 18th century trullo surrounded by almond trees.

Today Toritto’s almonds are some of the most prized in the world.

The almond trees today

“The word “almond” comes from “amygdalus”, probably of Semitic origin.  It was also the name of a Phrygian deity,  the “great mother”. According to the myth, the almond was  born from the blood of the Great Mother and it is the first fruit to wake up, announcing the spring. Native to Asia, the almond was traded for the first time by Phoenicians in Greece and then in Sicily and Magna Graecia.””

Symbol of fertility and rebirth, the almond is also a symbol of Apulia, land of different varieties from the High Murgia hills to Salento.   Toritto’s sub-varieties are still called with the names of some ancient citizens of Toritto, like “Genco”, “Antonio De Vito” (my grandmother was a DeVito but she didn’t own anything back then)  and “Filippo Cea.”  The mother plant of “Filippo Cea” is still located in the Matine district of Toritto  and this sub-variety constitutes about the 70% of the annual harvest.

“The almond of Toritto is used in Apulian cuisine to prepare sweets like the “Pasta Reale” and drinks like the traditional “Almond milk”.   In 1792, records in Naples  give us an idea of how this land had excellent almond orchards. Still even today  there are more or less 40 varieties including the “Sepp d’amic” the “Zia Pasqua”, the “Sciacallo”, the “Spappacarnale” and “Mingunna.”

How hard were times back then?  One can learn from the food the old grandmothers cooked in America.  In those bleak times in Puglia, they had survived by eating the wild weeds that grew in the fields where they had toiled.

Cicoria (dandelion weeds) made into a somewhat bitter soup.  The weeds were the only thing they could freely take from the fields they worked.  Many an Apulian grandmother would look out her apartment in Brooklyn at an empty lot filled with weeds and smile.  “There is always something to eat!”

Many nights the main course was home made pasta and beans – Pasta e ceci, a dish of the poor.   Other nights it was cime di rapa (broccoli rabe)—which the emigrants grew in their gardens or occasionally managed to find in Italian markets.  A week night dinner at grandma’s apartment was eating the food of the poor as memory.  It has been a very long time since this kid watched his grandmother and great aunt making their own pasta, rolling out the dough, nimble fingers quickly turning it into “little hats.”

There is a street in the old city center in Torrito named after our family.  I have no idea why.  If it commemorates one of us specifically it is nice to know at least one of us was prominent enough to have a street named after him.

So you see, while others may casually pop almonds into their mouths, it is different for me.  I come from a family that tended the trees.

We left our home in novecento;
padrone and prominenti
‘Ndrangheta and the priests
the almond trees for golden streets.

I wasn’t born with dreams like yours;

tending trees I would never own;
almond butter, a crust of bread
before an empty hungry bed

I dreamed of eating my share
culling the seeds for the future
to be planted and tended with care

so that you could dream such things
I never knew could be dreamed;
writing poetry, words to make a man
remember the trees

Is this not what all men want?
A small house, happy children
a comfortable old age?

Our ancient house is empty.

And now they come to mezzogiorno
 leaving their country
in rickety boats to cross the sea
the almond trees still standing there;

Saying goodbye, perhaps for good
for our ancient house, happy children
for the dream.

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