A Pilgrim's Story

 It was a brutal Atlantic Ocean crossing; bad weather almost every day for two weeks it took for the crossing. Our ship was the Italian Cruise Liner, Saturnia.  The stormy sea was so bad that one day many of the dishes in the ship's kitchen were thrown down and broken.  We were all sea sick.  It was the first time we had seen the ocean and the first time on a ship.  By the time we arrived in New York Harbor, I could not remember getting off the ship.  We headed straight for the train station that would take us to Los Angeles; with a stop to change trains in Chicago.  The entire train trip to Los Angeles took three days.  The food they gave us on the train was unfamiliar to us so we ate sparsely.  We had never seen mustard, for instance.  In all, we were in transit for 18 days.

A typical overcast Southern California sky appeared as we approached Los Angeles;  I had never seen such a sky.  Where we were from in the north central mountains of  Sicily, it was either foggy or sunny.  Upon arriving at Union Station in Los Angeles on March 18, 1956, we were met by my father's sister, our sponsor,  and another Italian-American couple of whom my mother knew, since the woman had lived in my hometown of Geraci Siculo for part of her life, even though she was born in New York. We got into my aunt's 1946 DeSoto and headed to our rented duplex in the Leimert Park section of Los Angeles.

I knew not a word of English.  Although I was 12 years old, Angeles Mesa grammar school in Los Angeles where I enrolled, put me in the 5th Grade.  I was the only foreign student in the entire school.  My 5th grade teacher, Mr. Fox, was a wonderful man.  He just left me alone at the back of the class.  This was actually a brilliant move.  I learned how to speak English from listening and playing with my classmates.  They treated me wonderfully. Within six months I was speaking English fluently.  By the fall of the same year and the start of a new school year my parents enrolled me at  St. Brigid Catholic School,  which was near the corner of Western and Slauson in Los Angeles.  Soon after our arrival, my parents met some Italian Americans of the area.  They gave us instructions on how to be Americans.  Before I knew it I had an American name.  All of my siblings got a new name.  My sister Francesca became Frances, my brother Giacomo became Jack; my mother, Nunziata, became Nancy.

Los Angeles in the mid-fifties was a wonderful city to live in.  Good  and safe transportation, no crime to speak of; no gangs.  I would equate it with the Mayberry of the hit 1950s TV show, the Andy Griffith Show.  We had the Fili bus, an electric bus that was very efficient.  Unfortunately, in the early 1960s, they ended the Fili bus, in one of the most bizarre decisions that I could think of.  I quickly adopted to my new environment.  Within a short time after arriving, I got a job delivering the Los Angeles Mirror News, an afternoon paper of the day, one of four newspapers in Los Angeles. My first day delivering the paper as a 13-year old I had a tough time finding addresses.  A new challenge that had to be overcome, which I did.

Baseball was one of the first American sports that my brothers and I learned to love.  In 1958 the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.  I attended many games at the odd shaped baseball diamond of the Los Angeles Coliseum.  We acquired a transistor radio, which we used to listen to games.  Listening to the master baseball announcer, Vin Scully, was a delight.  Not only his mastery of painting word pictures with his descriptions but by listening to him I learned to master English.  Vin was not only a good baseball announcer, he was also a master storyteller.  I learned the history of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  I could not help but feel sad that they left Brooklyn.  They were so much a part of that city.  In 1959, the Los Angeles radio station, KFWB,  re-broadcast the famous 1951 playoff game between the Dodgers and the New York Giants which they lost in spectacular fashion with the walk-off, three-run home run by Bobby Thompson in the 9th inning.  Just last night I was watching the fine baseball documentary by Ken Burns called "Baseball." This game was highlighted as one of the greatest baseball games of all time.  In 1961 when Los Angeles was awarded a new American League team, the Angels, we attended games at the old Wrigley Field in Los Angeles.

Van Ness Park was within a couple of blocks of our house.  There I had my first Coca Cola out of the red Coca Cola vending machine. Drop a ten-cent coin in the machine and out thundered a cold glass bottle of Coke.  Along with my two brothers, we quickly made friends there.  One of our friends was the groundskeeper, who took us under his wing and looked after us.  We would go to the park daily.  It was where we had community with others there.  It was there where I learned how to play the board game of caroms.  Not only did we polish our English but we familiarized ourselves with our new culture and environment.  Those were nostalgic days.  

Our two-unit, one-bed duplex at 5151 Third Avenue in Los Angeles had a vacant lot next to it.  Since I had loved being a  sheep shepherd with my dad in Sicily, I had a  natural connection with animals.  Obviously we could not have sheep or goats so my brothers and I built a ramshackle pigeon cage adjacent to the vacant lot and raised pigeons.  No one complained, to my amazement.  We had tumblers, rollers and fan-tails.  I don't think this would fly anywhere today, but in those days this was not out of the question.  This activity introduced us to other people in the area who had pigeons; another way of connecting with people.  This was a very satisfying experience.

It did not take us children long to adjust to L.A. living.  We quickly made friends with people on our block and hung out with other children in their homes.  We would frequently ride our used bike that I don't recall how we got.  One day I personally drove my bike  on Western Avenue all the way to Griffith Park.  On the way back, I got hit by a car as the car was making a left turn into a market parking lot.  the angles were looking out for me, for I was not injured, as I fell to the ground and ended up within a couple of inches of the rear tire of the car that hit me.  A passing off-duty policeman noticed the accident and came to help.  He personally drove me back home with my wrecked bike.  I still remember the look on my mother's eyes as this policeman knocked on the door to deliver me home.

My parents, were not educated but were wise.  Their education was dealing with life and its challenges, hardships and overcoming them.  My dad was a shepherd with only two years of school, first and second grade.  The same with my mom.  Both of my parents started working immediately.  My dad at a cheese company in Compton,  and my mother as a seamstress at a women's clothing manufacturer in the Hyde Park section of Los Angeles.  Before going to work, mom had to feed her six children, the youngest being less than one year-old.  Two busses had to be taken to get to work.  She was never late. We had no financial help from anyone, not the government and not from any individuals.  My parents had survived the depression of the 1930s and World War II so they knew survival skills.   The American and allied invasion of Sicily came within five miles of our home town in Sicily.  My mother was pregnant with me in July 1943 when the entire town was evacuated as the powerful allied armies swept by this part of Sicily, chasing the retreating German forces.  The Allied armies consisted of the best American and British combat units, led by the best American Generals like George Patton, Lucien Truscott and Omar Bradley. The  British units were led by Generals Bernard Montgomery,  Harold Alexander, and Admiral Andrew Cunningham. A Canadian army also took part.  Many of the small towns in Sicily were leveled by allied bombing.  Since our town was not on the favored route to Palermo, it was spared destruction.  The roads, though, were heavily bombed.  In those days there was no welfare and no assistance from anyone.  Everyone was on their own.  I never heard of anyone ever going hungry, though.  "Sicily '43" by James Holland is a fine book detailing the allied invasion of Sicily.  Highly recommended reading.  I just finished it.