Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century (4 page)

“
Still got your eye on Maria, eh?”

Serafino turned toward the voice and smiled at his buddies, who looked at him with knowing grins. Dirt smudged their faces. The men smelled of sun, soil, and sweat. They leaned on their hoes for a pause from the weariness of tending to their chores.

“
She’s the prettiest girl on the hill,” Serafino replied, turning back to gaze upon Maria as she left a shallow trench in the dirt where a row of potatoes had once been. When she finished with one row, she stood and walked back to check over her work before starting the next. “Lean, tall body with a long, beautiful neck.”

Maria gathered her harvest and strode through the fields with a 25-pound sack of potatoes on her head, balancing the sack atop a towel rolled into the shape of a doughnut.

“
Look at her!” one of the men gaped in awe. “She walks tall and proud.”

“
Like a judge!” another man added. “Potatoes or no potatoes.”

Serafino nodded in agreement.

“
Maria comes from a great family,” a fourth man warned Serafino with a wave of the index finger. “She’ll never marry a cross-eyed smart mouth like you!”

All the guys laughed.

Even Serafino chuckled at the jibe. They’d been calling him names like that for as long as he could remember. This time, though, he raised his lazy eyebrow to the challenge: “We’ll see about that!”

The men groaned in amusement and went back to their chores, leaving their feisty friend alone with his hoe.

Serafino Di Gregorio wasn’t sure if he was worthy of the 16-year-old girl named Maria Baccanale. After all, the Di Gregorios were mere “newcomers” to Farindola, having arrived just a few generations before and living at the edge of the village near a vineyard. The Baccanales, in contrast, were known to be “truly” from Farindola. They had purportedly settled into the mountain hideaway during the Middle Ages. Despite their festive last name, which translates to mean a “celebration,” the Baccanales were famous for their work in having built the town, just as Maria herself had spent months hoisting heavy stones and pushing them into place to build a footbridge over a creek that coursed through the town. Befitting their status, the Baccanales lived in a home on a grassy plateau high up among the wheat fields, looking east toward the azure Adriatic. Higher still, the Baccanale men herded sheep and goats in the surrounding hills and valleys, sustaining themselves for days at a time with their bread, wine, and cheese.

Serafino could think of only one way that a guy like him might impress a girl like Maria and maybe gain her affection. He couldn’t tell if his method had been working, but he was determined to keep trying.

Maria returned to the potato patch to unearth a few more rows. As the late morning sun beat down, her body began to ache from the strain. She imagined how refreshing it would be to dangle her feet from the footbridge and to soak them in the cool mountain water of the creek. But she chided herself for such idle thoughts. “There’s work to be done,” she told herself. “And it isn’t about to start doing it itself.”

When she straightened up to stretch her back, she heard a deep male voice coming from about 50 yards behind her. The other girls working near her glanced at one another and started to giggle. Maria rolled her eyes and huffed in irritation as the voice began to sing an old Neapolitan folk song in her honor. She didn’t need to turn around to see who it was. It was Serafino once again, crooning to her once more:

She tried to ignore him, but the other girls kept pointing at Serafino and laughing. A stern glance from Maria sent them mutely back to work. She then bent down and plowed the ground, monitoring the girls out of the corner of her eye. When they were safely away and distracted, she stole a glimpse of the man brazenly serenading her.

He stood on an old tree stump at the edge of the field, singing without a whit of inhibition. His moustache topped an easy smile. His arms filled the sleeves of his shirt.

She enjoyed the attention but was not about to admit her enjoyment to Serafino or anybody else. She pretended to pay him no mind as she resumed her rhythmic task.

He continued singing in her direction, exposing his private passion in public and announcing to all the world his shameless devotion. Now and then, she turned her neck and looked up at him, bemused. Once, she inadvertently flashed a slight smile.

His heart fluttered. He caught his breath and skipped directly to the third verse, singing louder than ever:

The other girls stopped working completely and laughed louder than ever.

Maria stood up and put her hands on her hips, once again silencing the girls with a look.

The only voice that anyone could then hear was that of the emboldened Serafino.

Two years of courtship passed. The people of Farindola had known that the merry songster could be serious when he put his mind to something. The people also now noticed that the self-disciplined young woman apparently had one weakness.

But everyone knew that Serafino was the lighthearted one in the relationship. At 25, he was the swarthy young swain with the chiseled cleft chin and the monumental handlebar moustache so full and thick that it was never worth the trouble shaving it. His lazy right eye often drifted outward, softening his fiercely masculine looks. He found it difficult to look people straight in the eye, and they found it difficult to look him straight in the eye. He couldn’t take himself or others too seriously. He was popular.

Everyone knew that Maria was the stabilizing force. She was built nearly as solidly as Serafino and stood about an inch taller. She was the type of woman who might be called both beautiful and handsome. Her pursed lips and rounded cheeks were framed by a formidable forehead. Her gray eyes were soft and gentle, but her eyelids seemed permanently saddled with responsibility. Even when she smiled, her eyebrows refused to rise along with the sides of her mouth. Even in moments of joy, she remained attentive to dangers and tended to the work that needed to be done. She was known for taking care of business and for being mature beyond her 18 years. She was admired.

As a couple, Serafino and Maria embodied the hopes of Farindola. He was the oldest son in a family of seven children. She was the oldest of ten children. When they wed in the village church in September 1911 in front of their surviving parents, his six siblings, her nine siblings, and nearly the entire populace of Farindola, Serafino and Maria knew that the future of the village rested on their shoulders.

But Serafino had also kept in touch with his former traveling companions, most of whom remained in Philadelphia. They sent him letters saying they had found “good jobs” in America. “Thanks for bringing us here,” wrote one of the guys. “We’ll help you find work if you want it,” promised another.

Serafino weighed his options. He was ready to start a family. He asked himself if he wanted to commit his children to a life of drudgery in the fields, knowing that all they’d do day in and day out, year after year for the rest of their lives, would be to toil in the fields for the sole purpose of eating, drinking, and maybe having children, who could then toil in the fields for the sole purpose of eating, drinking, and maybe having children, if they were lucky. “There has to be more to life than this!” he sighed. If he were ever to leave for America, now would be the time. He knew he was in for the fight of his life.

“
Would you have any interest in going to America?” he delicately posed the question to Maria soon after their wedding.

“
No!” she shook her formidable forehead. “No!” She had several compelling reasons. “What about your mother? What about my mother and father? What about your six brothers and sisters?” she raised six fingers. “What about my nine brothers and sisters?” she raised nine. “Each of them depends on us. How could we abandon them?”

“
I could send them money for an electric flour mill,” he proposed. “Then they wouldn’t have to grind the flour by hand and foot.”

“
They need us here more than they need us there,” she responded flatly, sweeping the floor around him as he sat in his chair. She reminded him of everything they had worked for. “What about your grapevines? What about my bridge?”

The reminders backfired. “We kill ourselves here just to grow enough to eat,” he protested. “We survive here only by working ourselves to death!”

“
And America would be any better,” she scoffed. “The only thing America ever gave you was a dead father!” As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew she had hurt him. She halted her sweeping momentarily and looked down at the ground, uncertain of what to do next.

“
Do you want our children to live the same life that we live?” Serafino asked her, his voice eerily calm as he began to speak, as if channeling the voice of his father from a childhood memory. But then, increasingly animated as he reverted back to his old self, Serafino recounted for Maria the details of the painstaking months that she had spent growing flax, then separating the stalks into threadlike fibers on a spinning wheel, then threading the fibers into fabric on a loom, and then meticulously cutting, stitching, and embroidering intricate designs all around the edges of the fabric. “All for the sake of making sheets!” he railed.

“
Those sheets were for my dowry,” she reminded him, reclaiming her territory. “Have you forgotten already? Don’t you appreciate what you have?”

“
Of course, I do,” he lowered his voice apologetically. “But you work too hard. Our children don’t have to live like this. We could bring our families to America. Anyone who wants to come could come. It would be their choice. Wouldn’t it be beautiful for them to have a choice?” he pressed his hands together in supplication.

“
It’s beautiful
here
,” she stood by her ancestral home.

“
But our children could become anything they want
there
.”

“
Those are all promises,” she dismissed him with a vigorous sweep. “Those are all dreams.”

“
They’re not just dreams!” he asserted. “I’ve seen it. I’ll prove it to you.” He studied her reaction. “I’ll find good work there. And then I’ll come back for you.”

She stopped in mid-sweep. She turned and shot him a look of astonishment.

He stood up from his chair and approached her. He reached for the broom and set it against a wall. He knelt down on one knee before her and held her right hand in both of his, as if clinging for dear life. “Just give me one chance!” he strained his neck to look up into her face.

She looked down into his dark eyes, so deferential yet unyielding, and exhaled. She knew that she couldn’t deny him the chance to at least try. She shuddered at the thought of ever leaving her home and family. But more frightening still, she knew how easy it would be to lose
him
. As she plumbed the depth of determination in his eyes, hers began to well with tears, causing her voice to crack: “How do I know the same thing won’t happen to you as happened to your father?”

He leapt to embrace her. He felt the warm tears from her cheeks anoint his brow. Holding her, he rolled his head gently onto her shoulder and spoke softly into her ear: “Maybe we could make his dreams come true.”

Serafino boarded the SS.
Taormina
at Naples in March 1912. He arrived in New York City 16 days later and took the train south to Philadelphia. He was 26.

His old friends heard that a company in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was recruiting workers. “Lehigh Portland Cement Company,” one friend mentioned to Serafino. “About 70 miles north of here. Up near the bend of the Lehigh River.”

“
Lehigh River!” Serafino kept silent but raised his eyebrows, his mind drifting into space as he recalled the end of his search of years ago. “Could it possibly be?”

“
They’re hiring immigrants,” another friend shook Serafino by the shoulder, “because Americans won’t do the work. Let’s go!”

“
We need men to work in a quarry in a faraway place called Mason City, Iowa,” the hiring supervisor informed Serafino. The site had been chosen because of its large deposits of limestone, glacial till, and blue clay. “We need men to extract the raw materials for producing gray cement. We offer housing as well as jobs.”

It sounded too good to be true. Serafino thought he must have misinterpreted the supervisor’s English. “You say both house and job?” Serafino asked.

“
Yes,” the supervisor confirmed. “Both house and job.” There was just one hitch: “We need men to start work immediately. Otherwise, no deal.”

Serafino voiced just one hesitation: “When could I return to Italy for my wife?”

“
You do good work for six months,” the supervisor grumbled. “Then you can get your wife.”