Aunt Josie (continued)
in their youth she was the fashionable flapper ; he was the debonair Italian dude. As the oldest child in the family, Aunt Jo felt it her duty to set standards in dress, home furnishings, style and decorum and to let her husband and siblings know when they did not meet her expectations. Before anyone else in the family she bobbed her hair, shortened her skirts and danced the Peabody. She did her best to pick dresses, shoes, cosmetics, and husbands for her sisters. Unlike Johnny, they did not appreciate her attempts to order their lives.
In the tradition of our Italian family, months, sometimes years passed in silence after one of her forays into the lives of her sisters. She identified decorating flaws, rearranged the furniture, seasoned the tomato sauce, gave unsolicited directions in diaper washing, furniture polishing, child rearing and marital harmony. “That looks cheap”. “This does not fit you”. “It’s not done that way”. Perhaps because she could not have children, perhaps because she had a highly defined and personal trust in her own style, she tried to control the lives of those she loved. And she did love them in her fashion. Maybe she was just imitating my grandmother whose place it was to interfere in her children’s lives. Aunt Josie was born into a family where Italian was language, culture, and heritage and her Sicilian legacy mandated distrust of anything new or outside the family. After the courtship, the marriage, the dancing and the ice cream store they moved back to Poughkeepsie so Josie could be nearer her mother and help direct the family.
Johnny found a job at Schatz Federal Bearings as an apprentice machinist and worked there until he retired. In the thirty five years he worked at Shatz Federal Bearings he appropriated enough machinists metal working tools to recreate a union workshop in his attic. He even had parts of a Consolidated Steam Lathe. Bringing these past plant security, home and up to the garret was a game he played. As far as I know, no one ever saw him or helped him, nor was he ever accused of any indiscretion. It was his collection and he was a collector of tools. Beyond this irregularity he lived a sober and measured life. Up at six-thirty and off to work with a lunch pail packed by Aunt Josie the night before, he labored just eight hours and sat down to dinner with Josie in the kitchen at four thirty. They lived first on Grub Street and then Worrall Avenue in the upstairs flat of the two family home my grandfather purchased.
When Nana and Pop died she, Johnny and Uncle Tato, who lived with Nana and Pop, bought the house and continued to live there. From the first days of their marriage, Josie and Johnny lived as well as they could. They did not smoke, drink, or gamble or participate in any high expense public vice, nor did they have any secret vices that prohibited them from eating well, dressing in fashionable clothing, driving a newer model car, or going on vacations. They drove to Florida, flew to California, visited Canada and the Jersey Shore, and they always looked good. Johnny bought a new car every four years. There were photographs to document their blessings. Johnny waving from the surf at Coney Island, Aunt Josie and her favorite niece at the New York World Fair in Flushing Meadow, the Electra-Glide 1954 Chrysler in the driveway at Twenty Five Worrall Avenue.
At their fiftieth wedding anniversary party which they threw for themselves and invited the family, they dressed in formal attire, still the flapper and her dude. Aunt Jo’s home had the most fashionable and expensive furnishings in the family, Italian Rococo and plastic slip covers. She had custom made couches and chairs, rounded arches on the doorways, mirrored walls, mahogany sideboards and chests. No children dared leave a fingerprint on the walls. On special occasions, she and Johnny made her specialties, home pizza or homemade raviolis. Johnny was the ravioli helper. He made the dough and rolled it out. In the attic workshop he made a ravioli cutter for such occasions. Aunt Josie’s ironing board was the platform where the filling of Ricotta and eggs was placed between the sheets of pasta, cut with the roller and allowed to set under moist towels. They worked together on the pizza. The dough was mixed, allowed to rise, beaten down, again, allowed to rise near the floor heating vent in the kitchen, again beaten down, and then spread in the pan with olive oil, splashed with sauce and cheese and baked.
Every New Years we would gather at her apartment for pizza with anchovies, and beer for the aunts and uncles and pizza with mozzarella, and soda for the kids. We played Bingo and welcomed in the new year wearing funny hats and whizzing noise makers and throwing streamers. Once in wild celebration Josie had two beers and smoked a cigarette and Johnny had palpitations. Josie was not the orthodox Italian cook that my Grandmother was. She was a trend setter. She cooked chop suey, chow mien, introduced the family to mayonnaise and Wonder Bread. Our family did not do brunch but her soft boiled eggs on toast were often served at midday. These were daring culinary explorations and only Aunt Jo could guide us through.
Josie and Johnny were careful with money. She kept a book with all family income and expenditures. She kept a book with a description and price of every Christmas, birthday, graduation present she gave or received and the value of incoming and outgoing gifts had to reach fiscal equilibrium. She believed firmly in the law of reciprocity in giving and receiving. She earned extra dollars making dresses and doing alterations for the Worrall Avenue neighbors and when Misses Leaner, a Jewish lady on the block recommended her to her friends, Aunt Josie’s reputation was made and she had broken out of the Italian customer pool to the larger world. Johnny bought her an industrial sewing machine and the spare room at the back of the flat became the sewing room. If there was any way he could have secured the parts at Schatz Federal he would have built but this was not to be. She was proud of her skill. Aunt Jo also kept a journal with extensive notes describing every pain, sickness, ailment, condition she experienced. Included were remarks about every doctor visit, treatment or medication she had endured. Charts of blood pressure, heart and pulse rate, medication dosage and counter indication and even crude diagrams and drawings foot noted her data. In her living room next to the TV Guide was a copy of “Dr, Shutter’s Guide to Foot Problems and Over All Body Health”. She consulted this tome daily. If she had a philosophy throughout her life it was that life was always better if she was wearing high heels.
One day in the Fall of Nineteen Fifty Nine I came home from school and found her crying in our living room. My mother had wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and Johnny was sitting at the end of the couch looking unwell and nervous. She cried for a month and nobody could understand the tears. She was tired and confused and sad and nobody could help her. She stopped cooking and cleaning and interfering in the lives of her sisters. Nothing seemed to matter to her. She did not write in any of her journals. The doctors prescribed vitamins and laxatives and tranquilizers and electric shocks. Nothing worked. It seems like she cried for a year and then she one day she stopped. She got back to cooking and cleaning and making pizza and she smiled and laughed and some times said things to her sisters that were way out of line. Actually she was slower and nicer or maybe we just treated her nicer because we knew she had been so troubled.
In the tradition of our Italian family, months, sometimes years passed in silence after one of her forays into the lives of her sisters. She identified decorating flaws, rearranged the furniture, seasoned the tomato sauce, gave unsolicited directions in diaper washing, furniture polishing, child rearing and marital harmony. “That looks cheap”. “This does not fit you”. “It’s not done that way”. Perhaps because she could not have children, perhaps because she had a highly defined and personal trust in her own style, she tried to control the lives of those she loved. And she did love them in her fashion. Maybe she was just imitating my grandmother whose place it was to interfere in her children’s lives. Aunt Josie was born into a family where Italian was language, culture, and heritage and her Sicilian legacy mandated distrust of anything new or outside the family. After the courtship, the marriage, the dancing and the ice cream store they moved back to Poughkeepsie so Josie could be nearer her mother and help direct the family.
Johnny found a job at Schatz Federal Bearings as an apprentice machinist and worked there until he retired. In the thirty five years he worked at Shatz Federal Bearings he appropriated enough machinists metal working tools to recreate a union workshop in his attic. He even had parts of a Consolidated Steam Lathe. Bringing these past plant security, home and up to the garret was a game he played. As far as I know, no one ever saw him or helped him, nor was he ever accused of any indiscretion. It was his collection and he was a collector of tools. Beyond this irregularity he lived a sober and measured life. Up at six-thirty and off to work with a lunch pail packed by Aunt Josie the night before, he labored just eight hours and sat down to dinner with Josie in the kitchen at four thirty. They lived first on Grub Street and then Worrall Avenue in the upstairs flat of the two family home my grandfather purchased.
When Nana and Pop died she, Johnny and Uncle Tato, who lived with Nana and Pop, bought the house and continued to live there. From the first days of their marriage, Josie and Johnny lived as well as they could. They did not smoke, drink, or gamble or participate in any high expense public vice, nor did they have any secret vices that prohibited them from eating well, dressing in fashionable clothing, driving a newer model car, or going on vacations. They drove to Florida, flew to California, visited Canada and the Jersey Shore, and they always looked good. Johnny bought a new car every four years. There were photographs to document their blessings. Johnny waving from the surf at Coney Island, Aunt Josie and her favorite niece at the New York World Fair in Flushing Meadow, the Electra-Glide 1954 Chrysler in the driveway at Twenty Five Worrall Avenue.
At their fiftieth wedding anniversary party which they threw for themselves and invited the family, they dressed in formal attire, still the flapper and her dude. Aunt Jo’s home had the most fashionable and expensive furnishings in the family, Italian Rococo and plastic slip covers. She had custom made couches and chairs, rounded arches on the doorways, mirrored walls, mahogany sideboards and chests. No children dared leave a fingerprint on the walls. On special occasions, she and Johnny made her specialties, home pizza or homemade raviolis. Johnny was the ravioli helper. He made the dough and rolled it out. In the attic workshop he made a ravioli cutter for such occasions. Aunt Josie’s ironing board was the platform where the filling of Ricotta and eggs was placed between the sheets of pasta, cut with the roller and allowed to set under moist towels. They worked together on the pizza. The dough was mixed, allowed to rise, beaten down, again, allowed to rise near the floor heating vent in the kitchen, again beaten down, and then spread in the pan with olive oil, splashed with sauce and cheese and baked.
Every New Years we would gather at her apartment for pizza with anchovies, and beer for the aunts and uncles and pizza with mozzarella, and soda for the kids. We played Bingo and welcomed in the new year wearing funny hats and whizzing noise makers and throwing streamers. Once in wild celebration Josie had two beers and smoked a cigarette and Johnny had palpitations. Josie was not the orthodox Italian cook that my Grandmother was. She was a trend setter. She cooked chop suey, chow mien, introduced the family to mayonnaise and Wonder Bread. Our family did not do brunch but her soft boiled eggs on toast were often served at midday. These were daring culinary explorations and only Aunt Jo could guide us through.
Josie and Johnny were careful with money. She kept a book with all family income and expenditures. She kept a book with a description and price of every Christmas, birthday, graduation present she gave or received and the value of incoming and outgoing gifts had to reach fiscal equilibrium. She believed firmly in the law of reciprocity in giving and receiving. She earned extra dollars making dresses and doing alterations for the Worrall Avenue neighbors and when Misses Leaner, a Jewish lady on the block recommended her to her friends, Aunt Josie’s reputation was made and she had broken out of the Italian customer pool to the larger world. Johnny bought her an industrial sewing machine and the spare room at the back of the flat became the sewing room. If there was any way he could have secured the parts at Schatz Federal he would have built but this was not to be. She was proud of her skill. Aunt Jo also kept a journal with extensive notes describing every pain, sickness, ailment, condition she experienced. Included were remarks about every doctor visit, treatment or medication she had endured. Charts of blood pressure, heart and pulse rate, medication dosage and counter indication and even crude diagrams and drawings foot noted her data. In her living room next to the TV Guide was a copy of “Dr, Shutter’s Guide to Foot Problems and Over All Body Health”. She consulted this tome daily. If she had a philosophy throughout her life it was that life was always better if she was wearing high heels.
One day in the Fall of Nineteen Fifty Nine I came home from school and found her crying in our living room. My mother had wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and Johnny was sitting at the end of the couch looking unwell and nervous. She cried for a month and nobody could understand the tears. She was tired and confused and sad and nobody could help her. She stopped cooking and cleaning and interfering in the lives of her sisters. Nothing seemed to matter to her. She did not write in any of her journals. The doctors prescribed vitamins and laxatives and tranquilizers and electric shocks. Nothing worked. It seems like she cried for a year and then she one day she stopped. She got back to cooking and cleaning and making pizza and she smiled and laughed and some times said things to her sisters that were way out of line. Actually she was slower and nicer or maybe we just treated her nicer because we knew she had been so troubled.
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