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Carmela’s Story........enjoy reading the 1st 3 Chapters.
To read the rest of the book please add it to the Shopping Cart and purchase this marvelous story. Gratzi. Price: $25.00 Get your Autographed copy now! CARMELA MARIA LEONE FAVORITO
A PALLAS PRESS PUBLICATION 2006 Published by Pallas Press, Quincy MA. Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. Editor: Emilio N. Favorito Transcription by: Roberta Fair Ellis Graphic Design and Layout by: Lynne Facella Editor’s Preface Author’s Forward PART I 1. EARTHQUAKE AND TRAGEDY 2. MUSSOLINI’S PROMISE 3. BIRTH AND ALMOST DEATH 4. GROWING UP YOUNG IN A WORLD FAR, FAR AWAY 5. HEARTACHE AND DETERMINATION 6. THE PAST RECOVERED AND RE-LOST 7. ITALIAN ECONOMICS 101 8. BANDITS & BITTER MILK 9. MICHAEL MICHAEL & MORE TRAGEDY 10. THE BLACK WIDOWER 11. LOVE TRIUMPHANT 12. THE FIRST WAVE 13. THE AMERICAN SUITOR 14. WHAT AM I DOING? 15. PROPOSAL 16. ENVY, INVESTIGATION & INSULT 17. ANTICIPATION, ANXIETY & CHAOS 18. THE LONGEST NIGHT; THE EVEN LONGER NEXT DAY 19. BUZZ & TIGHT SECURITY PART II 26. JOURNEY TO THE FUTURE 27. TO BE AN AMERICAN 28. MOTHER-IN-LAW 29. RHINESTONE BUTTONS AND BABY JOHN 30. 188 BENNINGTON 31. AND BABIES MAKES SIX 32. AND FAMILY MAKES NINE (PLUS ONE GIANT) 33. THE GALL OF IT ALL; UTOPIA LOST 34. GALLANTRY, INSULT AND THE CONSEQUENCES THEREOF PART III 35. WHEN WORLD VIEWS COLLIDE 36. THE “COUNTRY” 37. AN EXPANDING UNIVERSE 38. OPPORTUNITIES LOST AND FOUND 39. BIG SISTERHOOD 40. THE TIME OF TROUBLES – I 41. IN TIMES OF CRISIS 42. THE TIME OF TROUBLES – II; MORE FLAMES 43. ENLIGHTENMENT 44. THE MANY FACES OF DENIAL 45. JERRY/ THE FINAL SAGA EPILOGUE 46. A CHANGE OF HEART 47. CAPACHIONE 48. ASSUNTA’S BUS & THE ROAD BACK 49. THE RETURN - PART I 50. THE RETURN - PART II 51. RECONCILIATION APPENDIX THE FAMILY FAVORITO EDITOR’S PREFACE In editing this work, I felt it was particularly important to allow the reader to “hear” the voice of the author. As a result, editing for grammar and syntax were kept to a minimum. Despite a very limited formal education, the author’s ability to paint verbal vignettes is quite remarkable. This is a very raw, heartfelt piece of writing. I may not be a completely unbiased observer, but some of the story lines have twists that could not have been imagined if they had not actually taken place. In reading the manuscript I could not escape the feeling that I was reading about things that took place a long, long time ago …. in a place far, far away. How different it was is incomprehensible to most Americans living today. I had more reason than most to think that I had some idea of what it was like. The author, after all, is my mother. How little did I know. Because the author spells phonetically, it is possible that the names of some of the individuals who appear in the text may be misspelled. For this, the author and the editor both apologize. The text had no divisions when I received it. The chapters in most cases broke out quite naturally. The chapter titles are another matter entirely. They are entirely the creations of the editor. For them, the author bears no responsibility (except, perhaps, for having borne the editor). Emilio N. Favorito July 2006 Part I
EARTHQUAKE AND TRAGEDY My name is Carmela Maria Leone Favorito. I was born in
Italy in 1931 in a town about 100 kilometers east of Naples called San Nicola Baronia. About 900 people lived in San Nicola, which is in the Province of Avellino. In America, people from this area are known as “Avellinese”. My mother was Maria Filomena Sciaraffa Leone. My father was Giovanni Antonio Leone. My parents had eight children. I was the third child. Nicola was the frstborn son. The second also was a boy. His name was Carmino, but he passed away the year before I was born. That was 1930. That year there was a real bad earthquake. Most of the town got knocked down and a lot of people died. The earthquake struck on July 23, 1930. According to reports, there were three severe shocks. The biggest was a 6.5. The offcial death count was 1,430 people. San Nicola was very close to the epicenter of the quake which was known as the Ariano earthquake. My parents lost everything in the earthquake. It was night when the earthquake struck. My two little brothers were asleep in bed with my mother. Nicola was fve years old at the time. Carmino was two. In another corner of the room my grandmother was asleep in her bed. It was a very old and primitive house. The people lived on the upper level. The animals lived on the ground foor. The earthquake destroyed the house. My grandmother’s bed – with her in it - fell right through the foor. She was buried in rubble and pinned beneath a beam. Miraculously, although the foor around my mother’s bed collapsed all around her, the bed did not fall through. It stood suspended in air on a beam that – for the time being at least – did not fall through to the foor below. The ceiling above them had come crashing down. My mother managed to dig herself and my two little brothers out. But there was no way to get downstairs. So one at a time, my mother crawled to the window along the beam that had survived the collapse. Outside of the window there was a tree. She crawled out the window and down the tree with one of my little brothers on her back. She put him down and climbed up the tree again and brought the second boy down. My grandmother was trapped, buried in the rubble. My mother was screaming for help. Some people heard her, but she told them she couldn’t come out because she was naked. Someone threw her something to cover herself with. My mother scrambled though the rubble. But to get her two little boys out, she had to throw them over a wall to people on the other side who caught them. She went to try to help my grandmother but it was impossible. The whole town was in uproar. There were people crying everywhere. Most of the people had lost everything. Many people died. It was total chaos. My mother would tell the story many times. She would still get tears in her eyes. In those days it was hard to get help. There was no phone. There were no cars and no transportation. It was impossible. The roads were all blocked. Those days it wasn’t like today. We had no airplanes, helicopters or trains. It took days before help came. It was a small town in the middle of nowhere. My father was out of town. My father traveled a lot. He went from town to town transporting things like chestnuts, vegetables, melons - whatever was in season – everything and anything, on the back of his animal. For a while he had a horse; later he had a jackass (editor’s note: not entirely sure in either case whether the pack animal was a horse, burro, donkey, jackass, etc). The animal was loaded down with whatever my father was selling. My father walked along side. He did a lot of walking. In Italy it was very common for men especially to be known by their nicknames. For many miles around my father was known simply as “jackase” – the guy with the jackass. My father was out of town when the earthquake hit because he had gone to buy fgs. There was a religious festival coming up in the neighboring town of Castel. He had gone off to get fgs to sell at the coming festival in Castel. He had to go to a town more than 20 miles away to get the fgs. Running and walking alongside of the loaded pack animal, my father rushed back as fast as he could. The closer he got to San Nicola the more stories he heard of the terrible damage that the earthquake had caused. He didn’t know if his family was alive or not. It took many hours to get back to San Nicola. Many hours of not knowing what he might fnd. It was a long, agonizing walk. When he arrived he has overjoyed to fnd his wife and children alive. But all around there were tears and despair. People had lost everything, including loved-ones. He unloaded all the fgs he had and put them on the ground. He told the people to help themselves. Needless to say, my mother yelled at my father “What are you doing? We have lost everything. This is all we have left.” “No,” my father said, “We are alive. We have everything.” “Where is my mother?” he asked. My mother told him she was still trapped in the house. Immediately, he gathered some people to help dig. But she was not easy to get to. It was the next day before they were able to get her out. But she was okay. Within a few days, help began to arrive from the Mussolini government. Soon after, Mussolini himself visited the area. When he reached my town, he heard of my mother’s heroic efforts to save her two little boys. He asked to meet her, congratulated her, and thanked her for saving two future soldiers. My mother did not appreciate that. He told the local authorities that he was going to provide government housing to help rebuild the town. He ordered that the frst house built was to be for my parents. Although things like powdered milk, blankets, tents and food began to arrive it wasn’t enough. Most of the town was homeless. People took shelter where they could. My parents took shelter in a cave. For almost a year that cave was my family’s home. My father was a very resilient and enterprising man. His family never went hungry. The promised government housing was going up. Both my parents were working at the construction site. My grandmother watched Nicola and Carmino while they did. Things began to look up. Then real tragedy struck. Carmino complained of having a headache and an earache. Within 24 hours he was dead. Two years old. Dead. Morte. Finito. 2 MUSSOLINI’S PROMISE My parents were devastated. But they had to pull themselves together and get back to work. They worked very hard at the government housing construction site. When the frst house was ready, my parents moved in - just as Benito Mussolini had promised. They were the envy of the town. Mind you, this was not modern housing. There were just two rooms, both at ground level, with no doors in between. There was no electricity, no running water, no heat and no bathroom facilities Just four walls with a front door and a back door. One of the rooms was used as a bedroom and one as a kitchen. The kitchen had a small freplace built into one wall. They also had a small back yard with a small shed. It wasn’t much. But after living in a cave for a year, to my parents this was a palace. They managed to make a real home out of it. My father was a good handy-man. He built shelves on the walls and above the freplace to put all the kitchen paraphernalia, because there were no cabinets or a pantry. He also built shelves in the bedroom for clothes, and a drop-down ceiling to use as storage. The bedroom was occupied by my parents and my brother Nicola. The bed was built by my father out of 2 by 4s and planks of wood. The kitchen was something else. The small freplace was used both for cooking and for keeping warm. Sometimes even for drying clothes. Most of the time, however, their clothes were dried outside over fences and bushes. In one corner of the kitchen there was a small bed for my grandmother, my father’s mother, Maria. After a while though, she got her own place. In the winter, if it got real cold – which was not too often – my parents had to bring the pack horse into the kitchen. It was normally kept out in the back yard, because there was no room to build a barn. If you can imagine, this animal was smart enough to stand and sleep in the corner where my parents would put a blanket down on the concrete foor. They took good care of it because that animal was my parents’ bread winner. Winter and summer it carried the items that my father bought, transported and sold. The chickens were another matter. They had a place of their own in the shed out back. They also were very valuable because of the eggs that they laid. We did not eat the eggs. The eggs were sold for money. Money was very scarce. Most of the money from the eggs was spent for things like salt, olive oil, paying the cobbler and many other essentials. I don’t think anyone who didn’t live in that era can really understand what it was like. I really want my family to realize how lucky they are to be American. My mother had about 15 or 20 chickens. She would feed them in the morning. During the rest of the day they would wander off on their own all over the neighborhood among the neighbors’ chickens. The houses were all connected to each other like army barracks, maybe 10 or 15 in a row. There were no partitions between yards, and most of these people had chickens. The amazing thing to me, even today, was that these chickens all knew where they lived. At sundown they would all come home. If not she would call them by calling “cuta, cuta” and they would run home. They knew her voice. Of course, my mother would count to make sure they were all home in the shed. If they were not all there she would walk around the neighborhood calling “cuta, cuta” and they would go to her. “Cuta, cuta” was for grown chickens. For the little chicks they would call “titi, titi”. I always found it fascinating how intelligent these animals were. Soon after my parents moved in, I was born. 3 BIRTH AND ALMOST DEATH September 1931. My birth was no picnic. So I was told. I was born at home. My mother was in labor for a long time. I was a big baby and there were lots of problems. The doctor told my father it looked real bad. The nearest hospital was 100 miles away. No transportation. No money. So they prayed a lot. Present at the birth was the doctor, a nurse, my mother’s best friend, and my grandmother (my father’s mother), Marianna (Grela) Leone. When I fnally arrived, my grandmother saw that I was a female baby. She walked out. She preferred boys. Until she died she made no secret to how she felt about me. When she got older and sick, I had to watch her. I did not like it. I told my parents she likes boys better. “Why don’t they watch her?” I said. But of course I had no choice in the matter. When my grandmother walked out on my birth, everybody was upset. My mother was crying. My father tried to comfort her. He told her that I was their lucky charm because I came was born with a veil on my face and that meant good luck. But it obviously was not enough luck since both mother and daughter almost died. And then, when I was a month old, I got whooping cough. It was so bad that when I coughed I would pass out and be unconscious for a day, sometimes two days, or sometimes only a few hours. The doctor told my parents that either I would die or if I lived I would be crippled or brain dead. My parents took turns sleeping and watching. My father had to go to work at a construction site. That was not easy to do with not much sleep. Every day my mother had things to do like making bread, doing the laundry, and going out to the farm to get wood for the fre. She had to carry the wood on her head. She had to carry everything on her head - bread, wood, laundry, water. Even though it was newly built, there was no heat in the house, no running water, no electricity. The bread was baked in the town ovens. The whole town had only three big ovens. People took turns baking their bread. The laundry was done down at the creek. And they still had my six-year-old brother Nicky to care for. Soon my parents were having a really bad time dealing with a sick child everyday. Neighbors and friends took turns watching me. My parents told me about one particular neighbor. She was in a wheelchair. She babysat most of the time. My mother would wrap me in a blanket and put me in a small basket and bring me over to this lady’s house. Her name was Raffaela. She became a life-long friend, to my good fortune. Later we both came to this country. She lived two miles away. She was a wonderful person. Even though she was in a wheelchair, there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do. She lived with her daughter and family. She had three granddaughters and one grandson. They loved her very much. She was a great cook. Their house became my home away from home. Later, her daughter Carmela and her son-in-law Domenic became my son John’s godparents. To this day, I still keep in touch with her grandchildren. As I said above, the doctor told my parents to expect the worst. Month after month passed. Fall turned to winter. And my convulsions continued. October. November. December. January 1932. February. March. The doctors were baffed, but gave my parents no hope. They told my parents they should be prepared for a funeral at any time. Being such a small town they kept no caskets or burial clothes on hand. There was also no such thing as embalming the body. So when someone died, they had to be buried within 24 hours. When someone was critically ill, the family had to prepare ahead of time. For six months my parents prepared, and waited. Needless to say, this agonizing ordeal was taking its toll on my parents. In less than two years they had suffered through an earthquake in which they lost all their worldly possessions; they had lost their 2-year old son; and now they were about to lose another child. I don’t know where they got the strength to get through it all. My parents were very religious people. In this part of Italy almost every town and village had its own saint or saints, whose feast days were the biggest events of the year. My family’s patron saint was San Rocco. My mother was becoming very tired and worn out. She was crying all the time. One night while my father was watching me he noticed my mother crying and praying in her sleep. Although he tried to wake her he couldn’t. She was stiff as a board. My father became very scared. She was praying to the Madonna Della Libera. The Madonna Della Libera means the Madonna who delivers people from danger. There was a very old and famous sanctuary of the Madonna Della Libera in the neighboring town of Trevico. Trevico is located on the top of a mountain and is the highest town in Southern Italy. She made a vow to the Madonna. She was saying, “Please let her live and let her live the way she was born - healthy and beautiful - and I will dress her just like you for one year. If she is going to be crippled or retarded, please let her die.” When my mother woke up she told my father that she had a vision in her sleep of San Rocco in a cave, and he told her that her baby was going to be just fne. While this was happening I woke up crying. I had been unconscious the entire prior day. From that point on, however, I never coughed again. This is the way my parents told me, so help me God. My mother kept the promise she made to the Madonna. She went over to a seamstress and she explained what she wanted her to make. The seamstress said that my mother had lost her mind. My mother replied, “Just do it.” And so she did. Then my parents packed the dress and me and off they went to the shrine of the Madonna in Trevico. To get there, they traveled on foot over hills and up the mountain. When they got there, they dressed me in front of the statue of the Madonna. Then off they went back home. One year later, in the spring of 1933, back they went to undress me in front of the statue. The dress was placed in a curio cabinet along with many other different types of offerings that had been given over the years. In 1951 when I left Italy for America the dress was still there on display. 4 GROWING UP YOUNG IN A WORLD FAR, FAR AWAY After me, there were five more children - four boys and one girl. My parents had a child every three years. Faithfully, my mother would have a baby, breastfeed for two years and bingo, she would get pregnant again. The reason being that back then, they did not have any means of birth control. My mother was 45 years of age when she had her last child. I was three when she had my brother Ubaldo. Then came my brother Benito. After Benito, there was another child, a female, who was named Regina. I was so happy to fnally have a sister. When my mother was pregnant I used to pray for a sister. I was nine years old when Regina was born. Little did I know that I was to become that baby girl’s second mother. It was 1940 and things were tough. My parents were hard working people. We never went without food. But there was hardly ever any money. People did not have jobs that produced a paycheck at the end of the week so it was diffcult to buy things like clothes, shoes, and to pay the doctor – all things that families need. As a matter of fact, the town doctor never got much money from big families like ours. But what he would get was things like the frst cut of fresh meat on those rare occasions when we slaughtered a pig. When we would harvest vegetables, we would bring him everything. We would bring him fresh cheese and eggs. And at Christmas time, ...... **NOTE: Thank you for your interest in ‘Carmela’s Story’, written by Carmela Favorito. Carmela completed her book after a trip to Italy in 2005, her first return after 53 years. In 2006, at age 75 she had it published with the support of her family. To read the rest of the book please add it to the Shopping Cart
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