ITALO’S STORY

JACK BE NIMBLE JACK BE QUICK

I hope this will be a look back at my 81 years of life. Most of which I can remember, the exception will be my first 10 ten years. I was born in Montreal in the year 1919 on the 24th of May. My parents Libero and Nicolina Sauro were immigrants from Italy. I was the third born son; the second one died in infancy. My father became interested in religion, became a Presbyterian and then wanted to become a minister. In order to get his training he was sent to Sault Ste Marie, a city with a fairly large Italian population.

We settled into this very northern city. My memories are rather sparse regarding this time considering I was three years old. I do remember a Christmas concert at the church where I had to sing a little song with my mother sitting in the first row. The one thing that I remember quite clearly has to do with the title I’ve chosen for this episode. We lived across the street from the elementary school. I was now four years old. After watching kids going to school I could not see why I should not go too. So I crossed the street and walked to the front of the school. I was met by a teacher who wanted to know what I wanted. I told her I wanted to go to school. I went into the kindergarten class. I remember this big room and all of us in a big circle and in the middle was a candle in a holder. While everyone recited “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick”, I jumped over the candlestick. I guess I’ve been doing that ever since.

Now I will try to relate what I know about my mother. She was the youngest of five girls. She became pregnant by my father when she was 14 years old. That was in 1916. She was married to my father at age 15 (shot gun style). From any of the few pictures I have seen she was quite beautiful.

I have no idea when the second son was born or died. It had to be between 1917 and 1918 because I appeared in 1919. We were the ones born in Montreal.

From what I’ve been told my mother was very unhappy about leaving her large family for this strange place called Sault Ste Marie. We settled in a house on Albert Street.

280 Albert Street Sault Ste Marie, 1921

The church my father was attached to was called All Peoples Mission. The minister was Rev. Fred Smith. It was a multinational church. It seems my mother had a fine singing voice. There are still people in the Sault who remember her; I have newspaper clippings of some of the places where she sang and they were all very favorable. She sang opera numbers as well as popular songs.

The family enjoyed a holiday in 1922 and 1923 at Hilton Beach on St. Joseph’s Island, Sault Ste Marie.

Libero, Nicolina, Italo, Henry

Nicolina with Olindo, Libero with Alberindo, Italo, Henry

Our father was busy training with Rev. Smith, but he got himself involved in the Sons Of Italy, a fraternal organization. He was very much involved in the Italian Community and evidently well respected. In the meantime, my mother was busy producing more children. Our older brother, Alberindo, was born in 1916, I was born in 1919, Enrico in 1920, Olindo, 1921. There was one more child born, which I will deal with shortly. This next period of time is one about which I really do not know. Just some vague events, but they deal with a very sad part; the early death of my mother. My mother evidently contracted tuberculosis, which at that time was considered fatal. I don’t know when it started because it’s hard to believe that it happened in that very dry atmosphere of the north country, in fact there was a facility in Gravenhurst, Ontario for the purpose of trying to cure it. My mother went to that sanitarium. How long she stayed I do not know. I imagine she would not stay because she missed her four sons. I would presume she came home to die. She became pregnant again and gave birth to a sixth son on July 2nd 1924 and according to newspaper files died on the 3rd of August 1924. The baby was called Livio. The funeral service was very large. Rev Smith gave the eulogy and then there was a tremendous parade. The Sons of Italy band led off, and crowds followed the hearse and a large number of cars. The parade was heading to the railway station for the trip to Montreal for her burial. All this is what I have gathered from word of mouth or newspaper clippings in the Sault Ste Marie Daily Star. I do remember being lifted up to my mother’s bed to kiss her goodbye. I also remember after the service in Montreal and prior to her burial, once again being lifted to the coffin to kiss the corpse. This horrible habit was customary in those days. This is my story of a mother I never really knew. My father never spoke of her to any of us during his lifetime. It would have been a big help to have known something about her. I really wonder at the fact that he must have impregnated her when she was dying in order for her to bear her sixth son a month before she died. My very young mother bore six sons between 1916 and 1924, from age 15 to 25.

After the funeral in Montreal, my maternal grandmother took over the three youngest brothers and my older brother and I returned to the Sault back to the house we lived in. My father looked after us. We were tested to see if there was any sign of my mother’s illness. It seems we were O.K. As to we five brothers, from here on I will refer to them by nicknames. It will simplify things. My older brother will be Al, I will be Ed. Next will be Hank, and then Lin, and Lee. My father was trying his best to look after us. We had to take caster oil every Saturday. He dressed us so well that we hated to walk down the street on Sunday because the other kids called us sissies.

Al and Ed 1926 in Sault Ste Marie

I am not aware how long we stayed in that house. We ended up living with the Smiths and my father went to live with other people. To Al and I this was like going to heaven. We loved Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They were so good to us. They had no children of their own. But it did not last long enough. My father decided that we should stay with him. This was the home of Earl MacLean. It was a large house. But Mrs. MacLean was very ill and she was quite a handful. We were quite unhappy being there.

Then things started to take a turn. A young lady showed up. Her name was Clementina Lanzillotta. She was a schoolteacher in a nearby town called Larchwood. And my father knew her from Montreal. Rumor had it my father had his eye on her at one time. Now there is something about me I have not mentioned. I was terribly shy. Whenever we had guests in the house I would face any corner I could find. So guess what happened. She became a supply teacher in the Sault, and one morning I went to school and there she was, my supply teacher in my class for the day. I took one of my books and put it in front of my face for the whole day. She would remind me of that many times for years.

There was one more move. We went to stay at the home of an Italian family named the Corvettis; this was on Queen St. one of the worst streets in town. It seems to me as if it was always muddy and right behind it was the large steel plant with its belching smokestacks. This was the city’s main industry. It was here that my father brought Hank back to the Sault. He was a wiry bundle of mischief and did not speak a word of English. He learned it amazingly in a few weeks. But all this was about to change. In order to become a qualified minister my father had to go to college for a year in Toronto. So we were all dispatched to Montreal to live with my grandmother, Leonilda Fasciano, a brave, wonderful woman. She lived in a small apartment on the second floor above two of her daughters and their families. Both daughters had large families so there was plenty of action there. But, my grandma’s apartment consisted of two bedrooms and a kitchen, and seven of us had to share it. Four of us shared one room with one bed. Two at one end and two at the other end. There were many foot fights. Lee, the baby, slept in a crib. Al and I were very unhappy with all this. As I mentioned, my grandmother was really a very special lady. She had already raised her own family and now she took on five very young boys with very limited resources to look after them. Of course, she had very strong support from her daughters who lived very close by.

She was a great picker of dandelions. She knew all the good spots around Montreal. Early in the morning she would get organized for an expedition. First, she would make a pizza. Not exactly what we would think of as pizza. This was a large round loaf of bread, on the top of which she would sprinkle some oil and some tomato sauce. This would be topped off with some hot crushed chilies. She loved hot stuff. Off we would go. First we would take a trolley to the outskirts of town where there were lots of open spaces. We would amuse ourselves while she picked away. At noon she would stop and break up the pizza and that would be lunch. If we were thirsty she thought nothing of knocking on any door nearby and asking for water. I guess people got to know her. This went on all day and when it was time to go home she had this large cloth that she laid on the ground, collected all the dandelions, and wrapped them in a big bundle and placed it on her head. We got back on the trolley and went home. This was not the end of her day. She would then clean and wash all the dandelions, go out in the Italian district where she had some customers who would buy her dandelions. As I said she was a remarkable woman.

I never really knew my grandfather. He was a quiet, kindly looking man. He would go to work every day. He died not long after we came to live with them. I remember the funeral because the custom was that all males walked behind the hearse. I guess raising five daughters kept him quiet.

One of my aunts was married to a very religious man who was very much a Pentecostal who lived at the back of the church. My grandma was quite religious. She would go to the Presbyterian Church in the morning on Sunday and to the Pentecostal one at night. I brought this up for a reason. I was not a healthy child compounded by the dislike of where we were living. I was not a happy child. We attended an English speaking school. My brother and I walked to school. We would pass this beautiful market every day. One day a young lady came running out of the store calling our names. What a surprise to find they were neighbors of ours from Sault Ste Marie. It was like a breath of fresh air to me plus the fact that she gave each of us a nice shiny red apple.

My grandmother decided that we would spend Christmas with my aunt in the church because they were the only Protestant family among all these relatives. This almost cost me my life. I became sick and had to be in bed. These people did not believe in doctors. Unattended, I became sicker. I remember a Sunday after the services they all came in the bedroom, surrounded the bed, and were praying me better. Of course it did not work and I got worse. My favorite aunt found out and came roaring in and took us back to the apartment. When we came in, we found the kitchen table loaded with Christmas gifts. But I was still sick. A doctor was called and I was diagnosed with diphtheria. I lay in bed having my throat cleared every few minutes. I got so bad that the doctor could do nothing more. An emergency call was made to my father in Toronto that I was going down. He came immediately and I remember seeing him come in the apartment and after that I started to come back to life. Once again a sign of my unhappiness. I gradually recovered but I could only talk in a whisper for quite a while.

But the big change was coming. My father finished college and was now an ordained minister. And he married Clementina and was coming to get us. Well, you should have heard the reaction from the relatives on my mother’s side. There were dire predictions that we were going to suffer terribly at the hands of my stepmother I was not too worried because I already knew her. My father had been assigned to a church at Niagara Falls Ontario. That’s where we were going. It was a long train trip. I got to sleep in a berth with my stepmother because I was still not fully recovered from my illness.

When we got to Niagara we stayed with a family who were church members. The D'Agostino family. And of course this upset me and back to the sickbed I went. My father finally found a house big enough for all of us and so we moved in and I finally settled down and recovered. The school was just around the corner and there was lots of open space to run and play. It was a great place to grow up in. My stepmother was doing her best and from now on I will refer to her as Ma. I dislike that word stepmother. She was the only one who communicated with us. My father became very silent and eventually a tyrant. Why, was a mystery to us but he seemed to have shut us out. But Ma did try and what she taught us never left me.

We were very musical kids, so she taught Al and I to sing a duet. It was a Spanish song called “La Paloma”. Of course we sang it in English. We went to a lot of church meetings singing this song. She had a very good soprano voice and did a lot of singing at events in Niagara. I remember a Christmas program at school and we did A Christmas Carol by Dickens. I played Tiny Tim and at the end I had to sing “God Rest You Merry Gentlemen”.

In the spring, Al and I decided that we would pick strawberries at one of the farms nearby. The farmer would pick us up every morning and we would pick all day. I believe we were paid two cents a box. Our aim was to save enough to go to the Canadian National Exhibition in August. Well we did save enough money to make the trip. We took a radial car to Port Dalhousie on lake Ontario and from there a boat took us across the lake. It was really exciting to do this on our own. We stayed at the home of our old friends the MacLeans. We stayed a few days and spent every day at the exhibition. We went back to Niagara Falls very satisfied.

It seems that the people who lived in our house before we did had raised chickens. My father was an avid gardener and this back yard was a fertile ground. He had an excellent variety of vegetables particularly cabbages. They were huge and they kept bursting open. The result was a daily diet of boiled cabbage. We were so sick of it. Strangely enough I like cabbage today. The street we lived on was called Temperance Street. Well, we had a Baptist church across the street. Next door was a blacksmith shop. This shop had a varied life. Horses were shod at the front but the back was a bootlegging business. The blacksmith was a short stocky Scotsman whom we called Scotty.

Now in Niagara we had a lot of tourists from the U.S.A. and liquor was hard to get. When tourists crossed the bridge into Canada, there were always tour taxis waiting to take you on a tour of the area and of course bootleggers were stops on the tour as well as other things. Scotty had a radio in his quarters and he allowed us to go in and listen to it. He had a young man who worked with him as well. But we kids just never understood why every so often, he would scoot us out of there and then a taxi would pull up and two women would go in. These guys were male prostitutes. Every once in a while the police would raid the place at night and cause a disturbance. All this went on with a church across the street and a minister next door. Scotty would always come over and tell my father how sorry he was. One other thing that happened in this house was the birth of another boy. He was named Silvio. This was 1929 and I was ten years old. I have tried to recall as much as I could in this period but from here on, it will be a lot easier to remember.

FROM 1929 TO 1939

We lived in that house for a few more months and then my father was offered a brand new house for the same rent. This was on Robinson Street, a much quieter area and at the end of the street there was a set of stairs leading to the park and of course the Falls. So, in a matter of minutes we could be down in that beautiful spot. Life was looking much brighter, finally. By now I was also in good health. The house was on a corner and on the opposite corner was a very big old house where the Smiths lived. They were descendants of slaves who managed to escape from slavery. One boy was just my age and we became very close friends as well as rivals. We were both good runners in track and field. The only problem was that I could never beat him. I loved to go to his house because his mother was always baking goodies and I always got some. By the way his name was Buddy Smith.

My father had the knack of finding rare neighbors. And our next door ones in this house were very interesting. This was the Hill family. The father was known as William Red Hill. He was the local daredevil. This was heavy depression time and as a result, suicides were very popular. This was done by jumping in the Niagara rapids and being swept over the Horseshoe Falls. The bodies eventually came to the surface of the lower river. Red Hill’s job was to swim out and haul them in. His other adventures were to attempt to go over the falls in a barrel. He never actually tried going over but he did try using a barrel to go down the lower rapids. In one of his ventures he got caught in the most dangerous part called the Whirlpool Rapids. He lay in his barrel just going in circles. His oldest son, William Junior saved him by tying a rope around himself and swimming the rapids to the barrel, and saving his father. These attempts were illegal but they always made big news. Red Hill did not try again but he had other plans. First he put up a big tent on his front yard. Then he hauled in a variety of barrels, some that he had used himself and some from daredevils who lost their lives going over the Falls. Red Hill also had access to a fleet of taxis that would offer tours of Niagara and of course Red Hill’s tent was on the tour. But there was more to it. This was the period of prohibition in the U.S. and bootlegging was very popular in border towns. Red Hill also rented the house next door and every time the tourists stopped to see the barrels they were introduced to the house next door. Selling liquor this way was also illegal in Canada. The police raided the place regularly, but Hill was always tipped off so that when the police arrived, all the liquor was packed into the taxis. We sure had fun watching all this.

At this time Ma thought that it was a good time for me to get into music. She knew a music teacher and arranged for me to go. The lessons cost 50 cents. I started to go once a week. Then my father started to notice the music on the piano and that I was playing it. When he found out what was going on he immediately cut it off and there went my chance to play the piano. As I said earlier, he seemed to be cutting out his children for what reason nobody knows. But unfortunately this was his pattern of treatment all our lives. Added to this was his punishment weapon, a nice long piece of rubber garden hose, which he proceeded to use with great relish. His system of government was, that if no one admitted to an indiscretion we were all lined up and given equal punishment.

At this time another blessed event was due. The second child of the second marriage. But just before that happened my maternal grandmother came all the way from Montreal to visit. This was a gutsy lady. I guess she was just anxious to see how her five grandsons were doing. But she was just in time to be the midwife of the first girl in the family. She was named Sylvia. And I just recently found out that our father was very angry over this, because I guess he wanted all boys. And that sister to this day feels that she was unwelcomed by her father. Who knows what this man wanted?

The church that my father was in charge of had a very small congregation, at most 50 people. Niagara Falls had many Italians so it was a great place to recruit new members. My father was a very likable man to any outsider but he was not a very good salesman. Therefore, the membership never increased. He was very prominent leader in the local Sons of Italy group. And it seems to me, looking back, that his interest was more in the lodge than his congregation. This was very strong as the years went by.

The church had two congregations, Italian and Hungarian; the Hungarian group was quite large. We also had a very active Sunday school. Mr. Dave Alair led this. He was just full of energy and the Sunday school group was quite large. The piano player was Miss Biggar an elderly spinster who lived with her brother in a very large old house on Lundy’s Lane. We kids loved to visit her because we thought it was very spooky. But she always had a treat for us.

We moved again to a larger house just around the corner. It had more bedrooms and for a change, no next door neighbors, just a nice open field with a lot of old apple trees. My father took advantage of the property by doing large-scale gardening. There was the usual vegetable garden, which we lived off all summer. Then he grew a lot of flowers and very successfully too. Every fall there was a big flower show in the park down by the Falls and he entered quite a few in this event.

And so life went on quietly in this beautiful little city I often wish we could have stayed there permanently but that was not meant to be. The main thing that happened there was another baby added to the flock. His name was Elvino. Another boy!

My father was called to take over the Italian congregation in Toronto. This was a much larger group involving two congregations in two different locations. We had to pack up for the change and it would be quite a change. The day we left Niagara it was pouring rain. Two members of the new congregation drove in their cars from Toronto in order to take us there. We were packed into the two cars and drove to Toronto. It rained all the way. The house in Toronto was provided by the church. We drove up to our new house. It was a three-storey place, with five bedrooms, which was plenty big enough for all of us.

But this was Toronto. It was a far cry from simple and friendly Niagara Falls. First of all, the house was in a very Anglo neighborhood and we were considered foreigners, and ten of us were a shock to that street. You see, at that time Italians were recognized as ditch diggers or storekeepers who dealt in selling fresh fruit and vegetables. Here we were, these country bumpkins in this civilized chiefly Anglo city. The first test was school. Fortunately there was an elementary school just up the street, but we high school students had to attend North Toronto Collegiate Institute with a rather upscale student body. My first day was rather embarrassing. By the time we finished registering, school was already in session. My first class was French. I walked into the room with everybody staring at this rather poorly dressed boy, but I made it through the first day. After that, I just minded my own business until I got acquainted with a few of the other students.

As to our neighbors, on one side we had the Stewarts. The father was a traveling salesman. The mother was a typical housewife and there were three sons, the youngest of whom was Murray, my age, who over the years became my best friend and eventually, my best man. On the other side lived an elderly woman with two older sons and a daughter, the Gates family. After a period of staying distant, they eventually became friendly when they realized we were as harmless as they. So life went on.

As to the church, the congregation was happy to see us. I can just imagine those Italian mothers with daughters looking over and seeing all these prospective husbands coming into their congregation. For we older members it meant spending every Sunday in church. But that was the way it was. In the depression days the church was a good gathering place for social occasions.

Life went on at the usual pace. There was of course, school every day and lots of church on Sunday. My father put together a church choir, made up of our young people. Of course it was not very hard to find singing voices among a group of Italians. From religious songs we went to Italian folk songs, and we went to quite a few church affairs in town and entertained the folks. I must say that these people were quite curious to see our group. We also appeared at the Toronto exhibition grounds in various folk festivals dressed according to our nationality. I was quite a lover of music. My father had quite a few classical and opera recordings that I got very familiar with. In fact I have a pair of wooden candlesticks with which I used to conduct music. It seems that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was my favourite. The love of classical music is still very strong to this day.

I was now well into my teens. I had found a part time job in the local fruit market. Italian of course. I would deliver people’s groceries on a bike with a large basket in front. It was quite a challenge, especially in winter when you had to ride through snow. I worked on Saturdays from seven in the morning until midnight for $1.50 a day. This was the depression scale that you were glad to get. I did not do well in school. I don’t know why. I managed to get through the first four years, but I was completely beaten in my fifth year. I was terrible in math. I just could not comprehend advanced geometry or algebra. However, I got into music. The school put on Gilbert and Sullivan operas. So I got involved. The first year I sang in the chorus but in the second year I had a lead part in the operetta, Trial by Jury. It was great fun. This was in the years 1937 and 1938. I was also attracted to a Presbyterian Church choir which I enjoyed. I also became a part in a double quartet and once a week we sang in a religious program on nationwide radio. Then I started having fun in another group. This was called the Defoe group and we went around entertaining in banquets in the local hotels. The prize of it all was a weekly hour long program on radio on stage at the Imperial Theatre, with a full orchestra and soloists. This was a sponsored program and we got paid for it.

THIS ENDS ITALO’S MEMOIRS

It is so unfortunate that Italo was unable to complete this memoir. From 1943 to 1945 he served with the Irish Regiment in the Italian campaign ending with the liberation of Holland. He was a signalman and as such, he went ahead of the troops to determine the safety of advancing. This was a very dangerous mission, never knowing if there were still German soldiers ready to kill him on sight. When he returned to his wife and family after the war, he couldn’t/wouldn’t speak of his experiences. He was an altered person, having suffered a mental breakdown. We now know that he probably suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder which affected him for the rest of his life. He was just beginning to talk about his wartime experiences before his death in 2002.

Next: Another Courtship