An American Success Story
May 31, 2007 04:36 PM
This is an immigrant tale. It is the personal story of my family and means everything to me. However, I recognize that this story has been repeated over and over again so many times so as to be comically stereotypical. Nevertheless, it bears repeating in light of the 21st Century wave of American immigrants.
My grandfather was born an uneducated peasant in Sicily. As a young man in the early 1920’s he needed to leave his homeland in search of work to avoid starvation. He wanted to come to America like many Sicilians before him, but in 1921, the United States had passed the first immigration quotas designed to prevent the changing of American culture. Quotas were given to each nation based upon the immigration levels of 1910 -- before the start of the massive wave of Italian and Southern European immigration in the teens. Consequently, Italy had a very small quota, and my grandfather had to go to Argentina for a few years before he could come through Ellis Island as a legal immigrant.
When he finally arrived, he could not speak English, he did not have an education and did not have a skill. America was the land of opportunity, but it was not a welfare state. There was no social security. There were no food stamps. There were no unemployment benefits. If you presented yourself, sick or injured, to a hospital without the ability to pay, you could be turned away. Nevertheless, there was opportunity. My grandfather found a job as a barber. Eventually, he opened his own barbershop on Bloomfield Avenue in New Jersey -- no doubt, somewhere between Satriele’s meat market and Melfi’s doctors office. (I was never fond of his haircuts, but I was impressed by his work ethic and consistency. The floor in his barbershop was made of some type of white manufactured tile product, and over the many years my grandfather had walked around his favorite chair so many times that he had literally worn a ring all the way through the white portion of the flooring tile around that chair. It looked like something out of a Road Runner cartoon.)
He married another immigrant girl from Italy and together they had eight sons and a daughter -- Dominic, Vito, Connie, Joey, Franky, Johnny, Mikey, Tommy, and Georgie. He and my grandmother eventually learned to speak broken English, studied American civics and became naturalized American citizens. When he passed away, half of North Jersey turned out to pay their respects.
My father was my grandfather’s first born. He was born in 1939. That means that my father was born to two foreign-language speaking immigrants, and was actually learning to speak at a time when the United States was fighting a war against my grandfather’s former homeland. In fact, when my father was just 3 years old, American GI’s were invading Sicily and fighting battles in and around my grandfather’s hometown. But you know what? My father never once spoke a word of Italian (or more accurately, the Sicilian dialect my grandfather spoke). The only language my father ever spoke was English. My grandfather laid down the law upon himself and his wife -- they were not allowed to talk to their own child in their mother tongue. They forced themselves to struggle with a foreign tongue so that their child would grow up speaking the language of their adopted nation.
My father graduated from high school, volunteered for the Marines, put him self through college, married an Irish girl, became a traveling shoe salesman, had four kids (including me), and eventually became the President of the Keds Corporation. When he passed, the footwear trade papers respectfully referred to him as the “Godfather” of the shoe industry. Even though he was an ex-Marine and as American as apple pie, they compared him, with a humorous wink and nod, to a mob boss -- he was Sicilian after all.
So, excuse me if I take exception to the current wave of immigration so massive that it dwarfs the wave of which my grandfather was a part. Excuse me if I point out that the combination of open boarders with a third world neighbor and a welfare state does not make sense. Excuse me if I am insulted by bilingual education for illegal immigrants unwilling to assimilate the language and culture of this great nation.
No one is telling them to give up salsa, tortillas and mariachi music. I still eat pasta, mortadella, and provolone and I still listen to Louis Prima. Nevertheless, I hit “1” when the language option comes up.
My grandfather was born an uneducated peasant in Sicily. As a young man in the early 1920’s he needed to leave his homeland in search of work to avoid starvation. He wanted to come to America like many Sicilians before him, but in 1921, the United States had passed the first immigration quotas designed to prevent the changing of American culture. Quotas were given to each nation based upon the immigration levels of 1910 -- before the start of the massive wave of Italian and Southern European immigration in the teens. Consequently, Italy had a very small quota, and my grandfather had to go to Argentina for a few years before he could come through Ellis Island as a legal immigrant.
When he finally arrived, he could not speak English, he did not have an education and did not have a skill. America was the land of opportunity, but it was not a welfare state. There was no social security. There were no food stamps. There were no unemployment benefits. If you presented yourself, sick or injured, to a hospital without the ability to pay, you could be turned away. Nevertheless, there was opportunity. My grandfather found a job as a barber. Eventually, he opened his own barbershop on Bloomfield Avenue in New Jersey -- no doubt, somewhere between Satriele’s meat market and Melfi’s doctors office. (I was never fond of his haircuts, but I was impressed by his work ethic and consistency. The floor in his barbershop was made of some type of white manufactured tile product, and over the many years my grandfather had walked around his favorite chair so many times that he had literally worn a ring all the way through the white portion of the flooring tile around that chair. It looked like something out of a Road Runner cartoon.)
He married another immigrant girl from Italy and together they had eight sons and a daughter -- Dominic, Vito, Connie, Joey, Franky, Johnny, Mikey, Tommy, and Georgie. He and my grandmother eventually learned to speak broken English, studied American civics and became naturalized American citizens. When he passed away, half of North Jersey turned out to pay their respects.
My father was my grandfather’s first born. He was born in 1939. That means that my father was born to two foreign-language speaking immigrants, and was actually learning to speak at a time when the United States was fighting a war against my grandfather’s former homeland. In fact, when my father was just 3 years old, American GI’s were invading Sicily and fighting battles in and around my grandfather’s hometown. But you know what? My father never once spoke a word of Italian (or more accurately, the Sicilian dialect my grandfather spoke). The only language my father ever spoke was English. My grandfather laid down the law upon himself and his wife -- they were not allowed to talk to their own child in their mother tongue. They forced themselves to struggle with a foreign tongue so that their child would grow up speaking the language of their adopted nation.
My father graduated from high school, volunteered for the Marines, put him self through college, married an Irish girl, became a traveling shoe salesman, had four kids (including me), and eventually became the President of the Keds Corporation. When he passed, the footwear trade papers respectfully referred to him as the “Godfather” of the shoe industry. Even though he was an ex-Marine and as American as apple pie, they compared him, with a humorous wink and nod, to a mob boss -- he was Sicilian after all.
So, excuse me if I take exception to the current wave of immigration so massive that it dwarfs the wave of which my grandfather was a part. Excuse me if I point out that the combination of open boarders with a third world neighbor and a welfare state does not make sense. Excuse me if I am insulted by bilingual education for illegal immigrants unwilling to assimilate the language and culture of this great nation.
No one is telling them to give up salsa, tortillas and mariachi music. I still eat pasta, mortadella, and provolone and I still listen to Louis Prima. Nevertheless, I hit “1” when the language option comes up.
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