perhaps part of the night.
During this period there was considerable marital stress because a majority of Italy’s pioneering migratory workers were not yet able or willing to transfer their families to America. Despite the money earned there, the workmen during the 1880s and 1890s usually lived in teeming boardinghouses or in railway boxcars or in the grim barracks of cold and remote company towns where, instead of rising each morning to such soothing village sounds as the ringing of church bells or the crowing of roosters, they were aroused at dawn by harsh factory whistles that summoned them into coal mines, steelyards, stone quarries, or gravel pits, from which they emerged exhausted at twilight, covered with dust and dirt and sweat, and infected with a foul temper.
So most of these men wisely kept their wives and children in the familiar surroundings of the village, convinced that the sunny poverty of Italy was much more habitable and healthful than the polluted prosperity of America. While the men were often made aware through letters of their wives’ loneliness and feelings of abandonment, they assumed the women knew that these years of separation would cease as soon as enough money had been earned and saved to achieve economic solvency in southern Italy.
Most of the men sent expressions of affection and reassurance through the mail, along with money, American-made dresses and shoes, and toys for the children. Sometimes, on impulse, the men themselves sailed across the sea, arriving at the Maida station to pay a surprise visit to their families on the occasion of a wedding anniversary, or a birthday, or to attend the annual festival of Saint Francis of Paola, which throughout southern Italy was regarded as a joyful day of spiritual solidarity.
My maternal grandfather, Rosso, was often the first person to greet these arriving men at the station, and during the forty-minute ride uphill in his wagon, laden with luggage and parcels containing gifts, he would inform the men of the latest local happenings and hear their tales of overseas adventures and experience vicariously their pleasure in returning home.
One morning at the terminal, however, Rosso was approached by aman who stepped off the train without luggage. Seeming sullen and impatient, he asked that Rosso immediately transport him to the inn located at the crossroads near the Norman wall that bordered the western edge of Maida. Rosso had never before seen this man, who was neatly dressed in what Rosso assumed to be an American-made suit; while the man said little during the ride, he did confide that a recent family quarrel had forced his return to Italy. But, he added, he was sure that he could solve the problem within a day’s time, and he asked that Rosso pick him up at the crossroads on the following morning so that he could board the noon train back to Naples.
Rosso was there the next day, as requested, and during the ride back to the station the man sat quietly on the bench, gazing pensively at the countryside and at times touching his eyes with his fingers as if wiping away tears.
Upon arrival at the terminal Rosso received his payment, and, after nodding in thanks, he watched the man board the dust-covered train that slowly edged forward to the sound of hissing steam and the clanging of bells. Rosso then returned to the village, where later that evening he was approached by the police and questioned about the man he had taken to the train.
Two people in Maida had been fatally shot with pistol bullets during the night, the police told Rosso. One was a woman who had been married to a worker in America. The other victim was a man who resided in Maida and was presumed to be her lover. Rosso told the police the little that he knew, and the desk clerk at the inn could add nothing of significance because the man had entered the inn only for a drink at the bar, then had left without registering to spend the night.
The police did not appear irritated or
During this period there was considerable marital stress because a majority of Italy’s pioneering migratory workers were not yet able or willing to transfer their families to America. Despite the money earned there, the workmen during the 1880s and 1890s usually lived in teeming boardinghouses or in railway boxcars or in the grim barracks of cold and remote company towns where, instead of rising each morning to such soothing village sounds as the ringing of church bells or the crowing of roosters, they were aroused at dawn by harsh factory whistles that summoned them into coal mines, steelyards, stone quarries, or gravel pits, from which they emerged exhausted at twilight, covered with dust and dirt and sweat, and infected with a foul temper.
So most of these men wisely kept their wives and children in the familiar surroundings of the village, convinced that the sunny poverty of Italy was much more habitable and healthful than the polluted prosperity of America. While the men were often made aware through letters of their wives’ loneliness and feelings of abandonment, they assumed the women knew that these years of separation would cease as soon as enough money had been earned and saved to achieve economic solvency in southern Italy.
Most of the men sent expressions of affection and reassurance through the mail, along with money, American-made dresses and shoes, and toys for the children. Sometimes, on impulse, the men themselves sailed across the sea, arriving at the Maida station to pay a surprise visit to their families on the occasion of a wedding anniversary, or a birthday, or to attend the annual festival of Saint Francis of Paola, which throughout southern Italy was regarded as a joyful day of spiritual solidarity.
My maternal grandfather, Rosso, was often the first person to greet these arriving men at the station, and during the forty-minute ride uphill in his wagon, laden with luggage and parcels containing gifts, he would inform the men of the latest local happenings and hear their tales of overseas adventures and experience vicariously their pleasure in returning home.
One morning at the terminal, however, Rosso was approached by aman who stepped off the train without luggage. Seeming sullen and impatient, he asked that Rosso immediately transport him to the inn located at the crossroads near the Norman wall that bordered the western edge of Maida. Rosso had never before seen this man, who was neatly dressed in what Rosso assumed to be an American-made suit; while the man said little during the ride, he did confide that a recent family quarrel had forced his return to Italy. But, he added, he was sure that he could solve the problem within a day’s time, and he asked that Rosso pick him up at the crossroads on the following morning so that he could board the noon train back to Naples.
Rosso was there the next day, as requested, and during the ride back to the station the man sat quietly on the bench, gazing pensively at the countryside and at times touching his eyes with his fingers as if wiping away tears.
Upon arrival at the terminal Rosso received his payment, and, after nodding in thanks, he watched the man board the dust-covered train that slowly edged forward to the sound of hissing steam and the clanging of bells. Rosso then returned to the village, where later that evening he was approached by the police and questioned about the man he had taken to the train.
Two people in Maida had been fatally shot with pistol bullets during the night, the police told Rosso. One was a woman who had been married to a worker in America. The other victim was a man who resided in Maida and was presumed to be her lover. Rosso told the police the little that he knew, and the desk clerk at the inn could add nothing of significance because the man had entered the inn only for a drink at the bar, then had left without registering to spend the night.
The police did not appear irritated or
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