Monday,
May 14, 2007
It Took a Tough Woman To
Make a Tender Home -by Cookie Curci -from
"Italians R Us"
The
ANNOTICO Report
From
"Italians R Us" published by Anthony Parente
at www.italiansrus.com
It
Took a Tough Woman To Make a Tender Home
by Cookie Curci
Our
But long before
the computer companies began to grow, the
My grandmother
Maria Carmela came to this area from the town of
Days after
arriving on these shores, she stepped off the train at the Southern Pacific
depot in
A prearranged
marriage awaited her. Although she and her intended
husband, Antonio Curci, had never before laid eyes on
one another, when they finally did meet it was love at first sight. The
newlyweds settled into the poorer section of town, in a roomy wood-frame house
that struck Maria as a palace. So many wonderful rooms--she and Antonio could
fill them with children!
The few years
after their marriage passed quickly--two children arrived and Maria and Antonio
both proudly received their American citizenship papers. But their happiness
together was not meant to last. While working on the railroad lines, Antonio
contracted pneumonia. Only 32 years old, the strapping young man couldn't
believe that a mere chest cold could have such dire consequences.
When he died, Maria
sat in shock next to his coffin in their living room, her belly swollen with
their third child. Well-meaning friends and relatives sat down next to her,
anxious to help her in her grief. Each one had the same suggestion: "Why
don't you give Rosie and Rocco to me for a while? Just until
your life settles down."
Or,
more frightening still: "Maria, you can't manage with all of these
children and no money. You will have to send the two older children to an
orphanage."
But without
Antonio, her children were all she had left. She had no money, no insurance, no
job and a large pile of bills. But she had the children she'd so longed for and
wanted, and one more on the way. She would survive.
The
All over the
valley, men were working double shifts to support large families. It was only
natural, in the thinking of the time, that they received preferential treatment
over women. Wherever Maria went, the answer was always the same for a woman:
"No work available."
With her savings
depleted, her children suffering from influenza and the loan officer from the
bank due to evict her any day, she made one last attempt to find work at a
canning plant near her home. She'd been turned away dozens of times before, but
on this day she knew that it was her last chance to save her children, her last
chance to keep them all together as a family.
Carefully closing
the door of her beloved American house behind her, she set out down the road to
the Del Monte cannery with a new resolve, a prayer in her heart and her rosary
beads in her hand.
That day, a
brand-new foreman was on the job. Maria told him of her plight and he took
sympathy. Antonio Dinapoli saw the bright spark of
determination in her eyes, and he found her a place in his line of cannery
workers.
Cannery work was
laborious and tiring. In the winter, an icy chill crept in through the cracks
and crevices of the old brick building. In the summer, workers sweltered from
the noisy machinery's steam and heat. But Maria worked on. She earned five
cents for every bucket of tomatoes she peeled, but it was enough to pay her
debts, feed her three children and keep her family together.
The new foreman,
a widower with six children, was moved by Maria's determination and motherly
loyalty. In time their friendship grew into love and they married. More
children arrived, bringing the total between them to 11. Tony and Maria
purchased a fruit orchard in Almaden, and raised
their big family and grew prolific crops of prunes in the rich soil of the
valley.
Throughout her
life, Grandma Maria Carmela Curci-Dinapoli held on
tightly to the dream she'd sought as a young girl arriving in
To this day, the
imprint made by my immigrant ancestors continues to anchor me to this beautiful
Cookie Curci was born during W.W.II and most of the articles she
writes about are from in and around that time frame. For 15 years she wrote a
popular nostalgia column for her community newspaper The Willow Glen
Resident (The Silicon Valley Metro Newspapers...
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