Two Stories about my Grandmother

©2015 by John LaTorre

I didn’t know my grandmother well, sad to say. We never really communicated, because she preferred to speak to my brother and me in Italian, and seemed upset that we didn’t understand that language. I don’t ever recall her asking us what we were interested in, or what we’d been doing lately, or what we wanted to be when we were older. That may have been because all her other grandchildren grew up in Syracuse, and she was involved in their lives to a far greater degree than we were. But we moved away from Syracuse when I was four years old, and I only saw her intermittently after that … perhaps two or three times a year when we were in the States, and never when we were overseas, except for a few weeks every two years or so. We were strangers to her, and she to us.

There’s a picture of my grandmother surrounded by some of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. My brother is behind her, and I’m in the front, lying in the grass and trying to ignore the camera. In a strange way, it seems to symbolize our relationship to her, my brother out of her line of sight and I apparently wishing I was somewhere else.

But there’s no question in my mind that she loved my father, and he loved her. I would see the letters she wrote in a spindly script, beginning with “Caro figlio.” Dear son. The letters were in Italian. So were the letters he wrote back, beginning with “Cara Mama.” We’d get at least one letter a month when we were overseas. In those years when we were living in the United States, Dad would telephone her every week, if not more often.

Grandma was born Palma Mammella in Monopoli, Italy, in 1880, according to the family history my father left us. Monopoli was (and still is) an Adriatic seaport in the province of Bari. Her formal education lasted six months, but she taught herself to read and write. “She went to dressmakers school until she was fifteen years old,” Dad noted. “The teacher gave her extra work to take home so she could make a little money.” She became a professional seamstress. I have always found it ironic that, to my best knowledge, the only other person in our family who sewed for a living was myself; I was a professional sail maker and tent maker for twenty years. I wonder what she would have made of that. She taught my father to sew, and over the years he’d re-seam some of his cloths to suit himself, sometimes adding pockets or zippers. I do that, too.

Palma married Raimondo LaTorre, my grandfather, in “about 1903” as my Dad stated, although elsewhere in the history he had the date as 1904. Raimondo was a country policeman, who was raised on a farm and also worked at whatever jobs he could find. Palma gave birth to two girls (and a boy, who survived only five months) before the family left Italy in 1912. In the New World, five more children were added to their brood. Her husband worked at various jobs all his life, including two unsuccessful years as a farmer. (The farm no longer exists; its acreage is now buried beneath one of the southern runways of Hancock Airport.) I have no memory of Raimondo, since he died in 1949, when I was a baby. After his death, according to my father, “...my mother was determined to get her U.S. citizenship and went to school to get the necessary education to pass the exam. Which she did with great success. She ended up knowing more about American government and history than many native born Americans.”

I have only a few memories of Grandma, mostly playing cards with a skill and ruthlessness that separated me quickly from my pennies and gave me a lifelong aversion to gambling. She died in 1971, at the age of ninety-one. My parents and little sister were overseas, and my older brother Joe was doing graduate studies at the University of California. Since I was living in Maryland at the time, it was up to me to represent my father at her funeral, and I was one of her pallbearers.

Despite her supposed proficiency with the language, her lack of fluency sometimes caused some confusion. A classic example was when my father was enrolled at Syracuse University after World War II. One morning, the phone rang in my grandmother’s house, and she picked it up.

“Good morning, Mrs. LaTorre,” said the voice at the other end of the line. “I am the Dean of Students at Syracuse University, and I’m calling to tell you that your son Joseph has made the Dean’s List this semester.”

“I don’t care,” my grandmother replied. “He’s a good boy.”

I love that story, because it demonstrates her suspicion that boys, even good boys, will be up to mischief once in a while. But it also showed her fierce determination to love and protect her own, not matter what they may have done.

That protectiveness also shows up in my second story, along with a touch of what Sicilians call “omerta,” a concept now familiar to the world at large due to the stories Mario Puzo and Joe Valachi told about the Mafia. It may not have been as strong an influence in Bari as it was in Sicily, where (as Puzo wrote) it was unthinkable that a person would collaborate with anybody in authority or even converse with innocent strangers who were simply asking directions. My father told me of a time, when he was a very young boy, when a local criminal was living under the family’s porch for a week or so to hide out from the law. Whether my family’s reluctance to inform the police was due to fear of retaliation or dislike for the police, my father did not say.

It so happened that after graduating from Syracuse University, my father applied for a job with the Central Intelligence Agency. Because it involved a security clearance, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent two agents to inquire of my father’s background. They interviewed some of my dad’s friends and instructors, and came at last to visit my grandmother. Let us imagine the scene in the parlor of 237 North Beech Street, as they introduce themselves:

“Mrs. LaTorre,” They begin,  “we’re from the government, and we’re inquiring about your son Joseph.”

“I got no son,” my grandmother replies.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. You’re Palma LaTorre, of 327 North Beech Street in Syracuse? We have you as the mother of Joseph LaTorre.”

“I got no son.”

“Well, then, we’re sorry to have troubled you.” They get up and leave. No sooner does the front door close than Grandma is on the phone to her oldest daughter Anna.

“Anna! Anna!” she says in Italian. “There’s some men from the government looking for Joe!”

“Oh, Ma!” says Anna. “Don’t you remember? Joe said that there’d be some people from the FBI to visit us for that job he wants in Washington!”

Grandma drops the phone. As two very confused FBI agents are opening the door to their car, the front door of 327 North Beech Street flies open, and there’s Mrs. LaTorre, running down the sidewalk toward them. She’s waving her arms and saying “Come-a back! Come-a back! I tell-a you EVERY THING!”