7770. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 153)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 153)

The Italian aspect of things was always funny to me.

In Avenel there seemed a fair share of Italian last

names, and I always wondered if they faced some

or all of the same weird conflicts I did with that

lineage. Perhaps everyone did : each nationality

providing its own tray of problems for snacks

and fodder. For instance, representing whatever 

ideal 'Italian' was supposed to be, my father took 

giant steps, constantly. He'd judge others by their 

use or non-use of 'tradition'. He'd call out other

nationalities for their supposed 'traits' but never

do anything but somehow overlook his own great

Hippodrome of guilty and dumb pleasures. He'd

get angry and hostile about other 'Italians' who'd,

according to him, 'betrayed' their station. A good for

instance was the next-door neighbor, Ralph Miranda.

There were numerous on and off conflicts with Ralph.

Mostly it always turned out OK after time, but here and

there it got pretty horrid too. The one time, among others,

that I remember well was the day my father came home

and saw that Ralph Miranda had planted a 'Nixon For

President' official campaign sign on his lawn. (It 

actually said 'Nixon-Lodge', which was the team 

running : Richard Nixon for President, and Henry Cabot 

Lodge for Vice-President, on the Republican ticket, 1960,

against Kennedy and Johnson on the Democrat ticket).

This drove my father absolutely blue-in-the-face crazy.

He swore it was a betrayal of every small-man, 

lift-the-poor, New Deal Rooseveltian principle, and 

he held it against Ralph Miranda  -  the Italian guy 

from Brooklyn  -  for betraying that innate Italian 

pride and trust. It was funny, because really it meant 

nothing. Ralph didn't see it in the same terms as my

father did. Henry Cabot Lodge, in fact, was old-line

American royalty, as far as names went : the Cabots

and the Lodges were long-established and elite American

names. Might as well go with that, if you can. I always

liked it anyway, because it sounded like a 'place', 

somewhere to go  -  'Nixon Lodge'. Fun for me.

I don't know how anyone else voted, or what they

thought about any of this, whatever nationality. No 

one, to my knowledge, ever really talked about this stuff.

My father's idea was always that if you were a poor, decent

and striving American, you voted as a Democrat, no matter 

what. To his eyes, they 'took care of the working man,' while

Republicans always cared only about business and the rich.

Go figure.

-

Another endlessly funny and annoying thing was, of course,

the food. Pasta, the word, was unused then. It was Macaroni

or it was Spaghetti. The other stuff was luxury  -  raviolis,

lasagnas, and all that. I never cared. There was always a 

quarrel too over nomenclature. I forget how it went, but the

red, tomato stuff  -  cooked and lorded over for hours  -  was

either 'sauce' or 'gravy' Like I said, I forget how it went, but

a 'real' Italian said one thing and a not-real Italian said another.

'Pass the sauce', or 'Pass the gravy', or something like that.

It's still a quarrel, because I've heard others, to this day, going

on about it. My father used to have these crazy rituals about

food, especially on Sundays, every Sunday, and on big holidays

too. The eating on Sunday was ritualized  -  to the minute, a

mid-afternoon sit-down, with bowls of spaghetti, or whatever,

the just-right Italian bakery-bread, a country-red Italian cheap

wine, salad, olives, garlic bread, the whole thing, Endlessly, 

over and over, and you simply had to attend. There was 

no getting out of unless it was some momentous or horrid 

reason. I got so tired of the whole thing that I still, to this

day, hate eating. My father would preside over the Sunday

table. It was so funny. He'd still have his church clothes on, 

a tie about two-feet wide with some shiny, glossy pattern,

a white shirt, and all. By that time of afternoon he'd have the

sleeves rolled up anyway. In about an hour, there'd be sure

to be a red stain of some sort on either the shirt or the tie.

Whatever the sequence is, salad first or last, my father had

it backwards, to my knowledge. I think salad is first, like to

awaken your taste buds or appetite or something, but my

father's dictate was that the salad be eaten last. Which we

always did. I don't know what that was about, or what 

importance it had anyway, but that's how it was. My

mother's role in this was always pretty much as the silent 

one, the cook, and the server. Little else is remembered, 

except for the fact (perhaps gross) that my father sealed off

every meal with a burp. He was a big burper. Another weird

habit -  perhaps a typical peasant-class Italo-Euro thing. 

I don't know. I do know that, in sixth grade, Mr. Ziccardi

taught us, in one of those ancient-history/culture subject

things, that  -  as he put it  -  in ancient Greece people

would loudly burp after a meal, as a guest, to show their

appreciation and satisfaction of the meal, for the host.

Oh well, sure made me feel better about it  -  ancient 

history and a legacy of good burping too!

-

The whole Italian thing got pretty stupid. Popes and

food, cars and church-ritual stuff. There was some form

of smug self-satisfaction about it all. But, when pressed,

you could never really admit to it. The whole 'melting pot'

theory of America just couldn't allow for those discriminatory

tactics about other white races. To their face anyway. It was

okay to grumble on about blacks and Puerto Ricans, on the

other hand, because that's just the way it went. My father was

the grandest example I'd ever seen of that. And we won't even

mention the Jews! Sounds bizarre now, yeah, but for me it

was reality, Parts One, Two, and Three as well.

-

Another thing was my father's sense of 'pride'. About 

achieving things. Like that white picket fence I mentioned in 

the initial chapters :  it was pretty beautiful, and he did it 

all himself : wooden posts and slats, each post capped with 

a three-sectioned topper. A large double gate, for the car at the 

driveway, and a single gate twelve feet or so away, for individual 

entry. Like a manor house or some grand ranch or estate. It was 

for many years my father's pride  -  something out front that 

others could see. I often thought that, if he could have, my 

father would have much preferred that the extension which 

he built at the rear of the house would have been built at the 

front. With pride, and a pride for what 'others' could see. 

Funny stuff, I'd think.

-

My father used to classify trees too. he never wanted, nor 

did he ever like, what he called 'dirty trees'  -  the sort of 

trees dropped fruit or seed-berries or any of that. The 

sycamores and birches that split bark and left slices of old 

bark on the ground. The big, flowering Magnolias and such 

that grandly flowered in May, and then left a mess of dead 

flower petals all over the street or lawn below. Those were

 'dirty trees', and he abhorred them. He mostly did like 

hedges, and rimmed the large backyard with them; 

azalea bushes, which bloomed for 'Mother's Day' and 

disappeared, and an occasional (surprisingly) Dogwood

tree. He'd bought and planted two or three of them

in the rear yard. Whites ones, flowering. He'd mutter 

something about the religiosity of the white blooms, some 

gospel-story significance that I never got to understand. He 

had, as well, somehow in place a large weeping willow tree, 

at the center  of the rear yard, which tree he did wind up 

hating because the roots eventually grew too large and 

protruded from the ground, interfering with his 

lawn-mowing.
-
He'd always make a sense of place from the things in his
surroundings. Everything was usually large, for the biggest
size symbolized 'the best'. So, I guess then atomic bomb
was far better than a hand grenade in that estimation of things,
forget about what today is called 'collateral damage.' That would 
have been us, the 'Collaterals.' Should have been maybe our
family name  - except it doesn't really sound that Italian.
Whatever. Hey, while we're at it, pass me the gravysauce. 
Thanks.