random thoughts and thoroughbred selections

Saturday, May 07, 2005

Origin

It's not quite quarter of seven in the morning, it's Saturday, and I'm up.

My dad and step-sister rolled into town from Milwaukee this weekend on and for a variety of errands and events, and my old man needed a 6AM wake-up call in order to make a tee time with his buddies.

A gracious host brews a pot of coffee and doesn't bitch about having to be up at a god-awful hour of the morning on a Saturday. That being said, a gracious host doesn't miss an opportunity to gripe that his bathroom has been so befouled that it is nearly impossible to walk by the doorway without instantly falling woozy.

I guess a man of 56 can't drink a bottle of wine and toss a half a pound of prime rib on top of it without brewing something ridiculously horrid deep in his bowels.

It's nice to see the old man for the first time in about six months.

He managed to talk me out of pizza last night, an option I posed simply because I knew he'd be buying dinner. Instead, we started out with a drink upon his arrival at my apartment, which featured my first double Southern Comfort Manhattan of the night. Thus began my first hour of five consecutive where I could no longer feel my lips. From there, we caught up with the lil bro and his wife up at the mall, and from there came back to town to a restaurant called The Rosebud for dinner.

My dad is like Norm from "Cheers" in this joint. The owner and five waitresses out of six came by to chat him up on his first visit back to town since he left a few weeks before Christmas. I got my second of three double SoCo Manhattans, we ordered some food (appetizers were Bruschetta, Carpaccio, and Lox. The men all had the Prime Rib), and got to talking.

About family.

I'm about as genuinely Italian-American as Chef Boyardee, to be perfectly honest with you. But I've got the Italian last name, and my grandfather was one of those proverbial right-off-the-boat men of the pre-WWII era that thought the promise of America was worth investigating.

I identify with that side of my family history for the last name and the romance of the story. Not to mention it gives me an excuse to explore the wonders of the cured-meats-ending-in-vowels because they're from my people. But I've never known much about the backstory of my dad's side. I know my clan is from Northern Italy, I know my grandfather was an only child, and I know he certainly didn't get off the boat flush with cash and connections.

He came to Michigan's Upper Peninsula where others from his region had landed. He had a promise of work in Michigan's iron mines, in which he spent a few decades as nothing more than a working man.

I've wondered about Italy, wondered if the terrific Brunello that carries my family's name is somehow connected back to a cousin, a brother to a great-grandparent, something. Had my grandfather not left for America, what would have been in store for him?

I discovered more of the story last night, things I'm not even sure my dad knew until recently.

There is some romance to the story. My grandfather left for America's greener pastures, but his father had something in mind for his return. Not only was there land in the Abruzzi region that would become my grandfather's upon his return, but there was also a woman - an arranged marriage. My grandfather took the long boat ride back after a few years in the mines with the intention of marrying the girl and taking her home. The land would be his, and maybe another decade of breaking stone would flush him with the dough necessary to come back to Abruzzi with his family and the more pastoral life.

It wasn't meant to be.

Within days of his arrival back in Italy, the thunderbolt. My grandmother, a woman who passed away when my father was only three or four years old, stole his heart and disappointed the family so much that the land destined to be passed to the only child was held back in spite. The thunderbolt.

"And by the way," my dad added at the end of the story, "did you know why your grandfather was an only child?" His grin grew and he took the dramatic beat or two that put us on the edge of our seats. "Your great-grandmother, my father's mother?..."

In an instant, the dream that maybe somehow we were connected to Italian nobility or at bare minimum the vineyards that produce one hell of a delicious Brunello, were dashed with a revealing fact that proved our people's peasant past.

"Your great-grandmother was stoned to death by the women of her village. For stealing chickens."

[>>]posted at 7:15 AM by BG - click to email
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