I found this photo recently at an antique/junk store. It reminded me of when I was a child and we would travel to the beach and stay in weathered hotels or musty smelling beach apartments for a few days.
I remember one time we had stayed at a beach apartment and my mother was pissed. She was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes. “This is no vacation for me!” she said. I think we ate out the rest of our trip. It seems there was one large living room where the kids slept on the floor and couches and one bedroom with a door my parents stayed in. We would usually leave home on a Sunday after church driving east on Rt. 50 to the ocean. We typically stayed only 4 nights. Coming home Thursday. I remember only one time when I was 12 when we stayed an entire week at Ocean City, Maryland. Probably my favorite vacation, but it was the last one we took as a family. I am not sure why. We were getting older and then my oldest sister got married and shortly after that my brother got married. Suddenly there were a lot fewer of us at home and our own lives did not center around family as much.
But this photo of the cars in the blaring sunlight at the shore brought me back to Ocean City, Maryland almost 60 years ago as we prepare to travel to the North Carolina coast to have another adventure at the sea shore.
A Chevy wagon on the left and a Ford on the right.
In June 1946 the war had been over for less than a year and my father had been out of the service, home from over three years in Australia, for about a year. It was at St. Joseph’s Catholic church that my mother and father committed their lives and love to each other. A life together that lasted for over 57 years until my father’s death. My mother lived another 15 years and I am sure missed my father every day. She talked to him in her prayers and saw him in the clouds and her dreams.
They were in their mid and late twenties when they got married. They had lived and survived the great depression and World War II. Their early lives filled with family and the typical discrimination all immigrants from all nations endured. But with hard work, much of it manual labor as well as sacrifice, both sets of their parents were able to start businesses and take care of their families.
In 1946, the newly married couple did not know that there would be children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren spread across the entire country in an ever expanding family. Their influence, stories, humor, and examples of how to live a full life inspiring all.
Seventy-six years ago today, the beginning of a new family.
71 years ago, in 1950 my grandmother started a new address book. I was not born yet and although living alone she was still in her house in Northeast Washington, DC with the very steep concrete stairs that brought you from the sidewalk to her front wooden porch. She lived across the street from an elementary school and watched the parade of children twice a day go to and from the school. She had a full life coming from Italy as a very young child and was widowed young. Her husband Nick worked on the railroads, mined coal, and even dug graves. Eventually he saved enough money to open a corner grocery store. My father always said that if his father, Nick, had lived he would have had a chain of grocery stores in DC. My grandmother worked the counter in the grocery store, keeping the books and adding the customers orders up in her head which always impressed my father.
My grandmother came from a large Italian family with a lot of sisters and one brother. She and her siblings were very close. Her baby brother lived with her in an upstairs bedroom for many years. In 1950 my grandmother had two married sons with small children and although she did not know it at the time there would be more grandchildren, and great grandchildren she would be able to add to her book.
My grandmother who we called Nanny, turned this grey composition notebook into an address book by cutting out slots along the edge of the pages, and printed A through Z letters on the exposed area to access her alphabetized addresses just like a store-bought address book. Maybe this was a common practice at the time but I have never seen another like it.
C through M – detail
The relatives and friends in Nanny’s address book certainly moved around a lot and with each move their old address was crossed out and a new one written it. Some entries were crossed out multiple times. Other pages have been cut out, I can only assume that all the addresses had been crossed out and she had to start a new page.
She used a fountain pen. Black ink, blue, and an occasional pencil. Once or twice, she would Americanize a name when she had originally written the name as it would appear in Italian.
One of her nephews was in the Navy and traveled to many countries and posts in the US. His address was in a stack of 3×5 notecards and return addresses in the back of the book creating a history of his travels and career.
There are occasional notes written in the margins, like who to notify in Italy when someone has passed or a date when an entry was added or updated due to a move. Sometimes when a page was full, she attached a loose piece of paper with a straight pin that has now left rust marks on the page.
The address book shows glimpses into my grandmother’s life in the last decades of her life.
In 1950 my grandmother was 54, younger than I am now and still would live another 24 years.
Today would have been my mother’s 100th birthday and she almost made it to that century mark.
Here she is when she graduated from high school at 18 just a couple of years before the start of WWII which would of course change everything for the country and lead to her marriage 7 years later.
She was a wonderful mother and beautiful person. A generous heart and sensitive soul.
When I look down at my hands
and my forearms
I see the hands and arms of my father.
I remember playing with his arm hairs that now
Live on my arms.
When I wipe the crumbs off the kitchen counter
And my wedding ring makes that scrapping noise
Or when my hands brush across the stove making a metallic sound
It reminds me of my mother and my mother’s hands.
My mother’s hands doing the same kitchen things
That I do.
Josephine, not quite 15 years old is on the right. She is the youngest of three beautiful sisters. Here she is at the wedding reception of the oldest of the three sisters and the first to get married.
Jo, as she liked to be called, is standing with her father and mother. Jo’s parents were born in Sicily at the end of the 19th century and came to America through Ellis Island.
Jo passed away today, June 22, 2021 at the age of 88 to join her parents and her other two sisters.
We will all miss her spirit and are sad, as a bright light has left the earth.
A Mother’s Day when world wide many mothers will not be able to be with their children, at least not to hug and pinch a cheek. It is sad, but we are lucky to be healthy and will enjoy the sunny day thinking of all of the mothers and wishing them well.
I have know many a mother over the years. All sizes, shapes, all different temperaments.
Images swirling around my head, memories, from recent and many many years ago.
These three sisters were captured in a favorite photo taken in March 1953. All mothers. Marietta, my grandmother we called Nanny, and Aunt Bombi, known as the Bomb by some.
Another mother, my grandmother in her backyard garden where I imagined I was in a jungle and would play on the brick pathway all the way to the gate which gave access to the mysterious alley we were forbidden to play in. Also in this backyard which you cannot see was my grandfather’s fig tree which he somehow miraculously kept alive over the winters in DC. The photo was probably taken around the same time as the photo of the three sisters.
Grandmother (my mother) and grand daughter (my daughter) both mothers in the family dining room in McLean, VA December 1986. My mother is gone and the house is sold, and now my daughter is the mother of two.
Wishing all of the mothers past and present, maternal and the ones who have stepped up to fill the role, a Happy Mother’s Day to all in the year of the Corona Virus.
124 years ago today, November 25, my grandfather, Paul (Paolo) Mandolia was born in Santa Nifa, Italy. Paul first came to the United States on December 28, 1911 at the age of 16. As a teen in Italy Paolo apprenticed as a shoe maker for 5 years.
During WWI (see photo) he joined the US Army on September 16, 1918 serving until March 17, 1919 where he put his shoe making and shoe repair skills to good use. He went back Sicily in 1920 and married Josephine Biondo also from Santa Nifa (photo below).
Paul filed for naturalization in 1920 before his trip back to Sicily to be married. Returning to the US he and his new bride lived with relatives at 704 E St. NE, DC, where his first child Genevieve was born. He opened a shoe repair shop on B Street in the shadow of the US Capitol building. His family lived in the back of the shop until he bought the house across the street where he and Josephine had two more daughters, Rose in 1923 and Josephine in 1932. Paul and Josephine lived on B Street now called Constitution Avenue until their 80s. Paul lived there until just about 6 months before his death.
Paul was a man of few words, but he worked hard, enjoyed a few puffs on his pipe, and seemed amused watching all of his grandchildren run about while he sat in his favorite chair.
Paul died in July 1981 and his bride died in 1985.
Kozmicdogz Breaks Loose 