“My father went all alone because his father was here already and his stepmother was here already, see. My grandfather got married twice. The first wife died and then he married a second time. So my grandfather got married again, he came to America. So my father came to America to make money, to send us, to send us the passport and everything so we could come in this country. Because, you know, they didn’t have no money in those days, you know. Okay. So I went to live with my aunt and uncle. They had four children. And, uh, after a year or two or three, I forgot, he sent a passport, sent the money for me and my mother and my brother Gino to come in this country. So my mother dressed me up, she dressed my brother up. Already, the second week she died, before we left, with pneumonia. She died. So, naturally, we were alone, so my aunt took us in, because she was my father’s sister. So we stayed up there, and then the war, the 1918, ’16 or ’18, the war started. First World War, I’m talking about. And because my uncle went to, to war in Italy, and my aunt ran the store and I used to help her to run the store, you know, just a little small grocery and, uh, she didn’t make bread then because they couldn’t get flour and things.”
The previous quote is from an interview with Victor Tartarini, beginning with a description of his journey to America and the factors which led his family to leave Italy, namely because his father had moved, found work and wanted to bring the rest of his family over. He then describes how he could not come due to his mother’s death, and a subsequent attack by the Fascist party on his Socialist-leaning town. Many people he knew opposed Fascism as a result of the lifestyle they lived, and because of this his father stayed in America and fought in WWII for the United States. Most of the interview then discusses how once he traveled to America to join his father, they moved around a significant amount because of his father’s work. He concludes the interview by refusing to sing a song due to the connotations with the Fascisti.
SCARANTINO: Oh, yes, very well. I was just there about nine years ago and visited my old. We have hundreds of cousins there. My parents all have relatives there. And from there then we went to Caltanissetta. That’s a province of Sicily.
HEID: Well, before we get there, do you remember when you were growing up there? What type of little town was it?
SCARANTINO: Well, it was a little town and I didn’t do no work then because I wasn’t old enough, but I was walking up and down the cobble streets. And when we went to church we took our chair with us to go to church because you don’t bring your chair. You had to pay a penny to sit down, and that wasn’t far from our home.
HEID: And what did your father do for a living?
SCARANTINO: My dad, he had a farm. He had a farm out there. That’s all it was. And then he worked in the sulphur mines too before, while he was there. That’s the mines that they have to go to work. They didn’t want to work.
HEID: What type of mine is it?
SCARANTINO: Sulphur, sulphur, like the coal. Instead of coal it’s sulphur. And when we used to go for water there’s a big pit in the middle of the town, like, and we used to go for the water, go down and bring it up with the pails.
HEID: What was your father’s name?
SCARANTINO: My dad’s name was, well, either Italian or English.
…
SCARANTINO: Well, I don’t know. But they, you know, they just, from my part they thought they were higher up than us, you know, the Italian people. And the Polish people, too. They thought, you hear guys that I know work in the mines, they used to work in the breaker, these Italian fellows, and breaker is where you take the rock out of the coal, you know, and the boss was either Irish or Welsh. And if they didn’t hurry they beat them, hit them. And this one guy that I worked, the fellow that I worked in the A&P he must have got, a couple of times he must have got beaten by the boss, you know. So one day he wasn’t looking, he did something to him and he, with an iron thing, and he hurt him, too. He says, (?). He told us. He says some of them come, he says, “I told him. I gave it to him.” We’re trying our best here but, like I say, in the old days the Welsh and the Irish controlled the mines. I guess maybe you don’t know about that, but they. So that’s the way, little by little it fades away because we live here now, it’s almost all Italians here now, almost, than Irish, see.
The previous interview details the journey of an Italian immigrant, Ross Scarantino, to America with his family in 1919. He begins by telling the tale of how his family had the idea to travel to America on the account of it being the land of opportunity, the experience of coming through Ellis Island, being inspected and having his legal name changes, and what happened during his first couple years in America. He discusses how his grandparents were the driving force for his family to come, and how they brought their trade of sulfur mining from Sicily to America. Later in the interview, he explains how discrimination against the Italians manifested itself in the workplace, with mine managers beating Italian workers and Irish and Welsh neighbors also beating the Italian children in the neighborhood.