In 1961, Vince Vitale is faced with the daunting task of supporting a family of thirteen. Unable to continue in his current full-time job, he chooses to acquire a barbeque restaurant, inside of a neighborhood in North St. Louis, Mo. Michael, is the eighth of ten children in this family. He chooses to spend every weekend, and all his summer months off school, at the restaurant to be near his father. Neighborhood segregation around the restaurant is coming to an end. Integration of the black community has slowly begun moving into the neighborhood. Michael details the difficulties and challenges encountered to keep the restaurant open and profitable.
The story goes inside the history of this Italian-American family and some the noteworthy events that helped to shape their incredible bond of faith and love. Along the way, he reveals a cast of characters from the restaurant and others from his tales of adventures. One constant is baseball which unceasingly makes its way through his life. Above it all is the deeply shared personal relationship with his father. Memories, every so often, we take them out and look them over. If we do it enough times, these memories become unforgettable.
In 1961, Vince Vitale is faced with the daunting task of supporting a family of thirteen. Unable to continue in his current full-time job, he chooses to acquire a barbeque restaurant, inside of a neighborhood in North St. Louis, Mo. Michael, is the eighth of ten children in this family. He chooses to spend every weekend, and all his summer months off school, at the restaurant to be near his father. Neighborhood segregation around the restaurant is coming to an end. Integration of the black community has slowly begun moving into the neighborhood. Michael details the difficulties and challenges encountered to keep the restaurant open and profitable.
The story goes inside the history of this Italian-American family and some the noteworthy events that helped to shape their incredible bond of faith and love. Along the way, he reveals a cast of characters from the restaurant and others from his tales of adventures. One constant is baseball which unceasingly makes its way through his life. Above it all is the deeply shared personal relationship with his father. Memories, every so often, we take them out and look them over. If we do it enough times, these memories become unforgettable.
---Prior to 1962---
In 1961, my father was financially supporting a family of thirteen. A wife, mother-in-law, and ten children: five boys and five girls. He held one full-time job and three part-time jobs, working up to sixteen hours a day to make ends meet.
His first part-time job was delivering medicine for a pharmacy owned by one of his cousins. His second part-time job came by way of another cousin. Dr. Pete was a dentist who owned a small building of offices with a parking lot around five blocks from Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. My dad and his dentist cousin made the following arrangement.
Whenever the Cardinals were in town playing a ball game at Busch Stadium, Dad and my older brothers would shout out and wave a white towel at passing cars. This was done to solicit people to park their cars in their lot if they were going to the ballgame. The proceeds from this venture were split 50-50 between Dad and his cousin, Dr. Pete.
This job of his was my personal favorite because he sometimes allowed me to come along. I watched my brothers vigorously attempt to flag cars into the lot, yelling out, “Park, Park it right here, Park.” I watched as they slowly began filling up the lot, one car at a time. Whenever it got busy with cars pulling into the lot, Dad would let me get out there and continue flagging cars to come in.
Since I was a shy young boy, Dad would come over and start shouting at me. At the same time, he would explain the proper way for getting cars to pull into the lot. “You have got to bark out the words “Park, park it right here, park,” he instructed. “And you’ve got to wave and snap that towel quickly,” he added.
Whenever the Cardinals were playing good baseball or a good team came into town, the lot would nearly fill up. However, if they were playing poorly or there was a bad team in town, we would be lucky if the lot filled up halfway. He could usually get anywhere from fifteen to thirty cars in the lot for one dollar a piece.
The best paydays came when the Cardinals were playing a doubleheader. In addition to parking cars along each side of the two buildings, Dad would squeeze another sixteen cars bumper-to-bumper in the middle of the lot between the two sides. Besides that, he would charge a dollar fifty for each car because it was for two games.
There was no time for him to go home for dinner after getting off his day job. So, during night games, after all the cars were parked in the lot and the game started, Mom would stop by and deliver dinner. Sometimes, we sat inside cars in the parking lot and turned on the radio. It was a real privilege hearing the ball games being called by Harry Carey and Jack Buck, two of the greatest broadcasters of all time.
I loved Harry Cary because he was so colorful and enthusiastic. I never got tired of hearing him yelling over the radio, “It might be… It could be…It is…a home run.” I thought Jack Buck was dry and boring until I got a lot older and started listening more closely. His style of wit, humor, and the stories that went along with his play-by-play of the game were pure and rare entertainment. I would sit there and stare up at the stars in the sky and watch as the bats flew around the clock tower across the street at Northside Bank.
My Grandma Catherine owned a four-family apartment building in another section of North St. Louis. This was Dad’s third part-time job. Grandma began to live with us around the same time I was born. She helped our family out financially through the rent money we collected from the apartment building.
The neighborhood where this apartment was located had already begun seeing the integration of Black residents into the area. On Saturdays, I would go along with Dad, and he would knock on the doors of tenants’ homes, attempting to collect the monthly rent. It was always uncertain as to whether we would collect any rent. Much of the time, the tenants would answer the door and pay their rent. At other times, they might ask for more time to produce the rent money, and sometimes, there would be no answer whether they were home or not.
Although it could be a bit of a struggle at times to collect, tenants were overall paying their rent. Other times, I would tag along because Dad needed to fix one of the tenant’s maintenance issues. There were other times when one of the apartments might be vacated. He would take care of any necessary repairs, then get the place all fixed up and ready for new tenants to move in.
Dad was very handy with building and repairs, a skill he learned from his father. He attempted to pass these skills on to me but with little success. I do not believe that he had much patience or tolerance for slow learners. Therefore, his aggressive style of teaching proved to be very ineffective for me.
Over the past nineteen-plus years, his main full-time job was that of a delivery route truck driver for the Hostess Cake Company. Their main products were Twinkies, Cupcakes, and Snowballs. During the Christmas holidays, fruitcakes also became part of their product line. When Dad was first hired by Hostess Cake, there was this policy of no facial hair allowed. The man in charge took one look at Dad’s mustache and said, “I like it. It looks good on you; keep it,” and he was instructed not to shave it off.
Every morning, Dad would go non-stop at breakneck speed to complete an enormous number of cake route stops. He would go in and pull off the old product from the shelves and replace it with a new product before heading off to his next stop. Since he was working day and night to make ends meet, there would be times when he would find it necessary to pull the truck over and rest. This break would be just long enough for him to grab a ten-minute nap, and then he returned to working the route feeling like a new man.
Many would attest that Dad was one of the quickest, fastest, and hardest workers you will ever meet. However, the Belleville, Illinois, route became too big for any one person to manage. Over the past couple of years, he had continuously requested his supervisor to cut down the size of the route. Instead, the top boss just kept admonishing him. “Vitale, you are taking way too long to complete that route of yours.” he barked. It finally reached a point where the stress of this job was beginning to severely affect his health.
He was nearing fifty years old, and the Hostess Cake truck route was no longer manageable for him to complete in a given day. Dad would arrive exceedingly early in the morning at the truck depot on Hebert Street. From there, he would begin the long trek of his cake route into Belleville, Illinois. Coincidentally, this depot just happened to be located two blocks from a quaint little neighborhood barbecue restaurant.
The restaurant was nestled at the corner of Elliott and Sullivan, where this delightful little structure fashioned in brick and stone exuded its charm. This gem of a building was located in a tranquil neighborhood, gracefully poised in between Midtown and North St. Louis, Missouri. From the start of its brief twenty-something-year existence, from the 1950s through the 1960s, it became known for its barbecue. I feel confident in stating that St. Louis is widely known for its barbecue ribs. The original owner and builder of this little spot was Phil Polizzi, and he aptly called his place Phil’s Bar-B-Que.
Phil got his first taste of barbecue at Big John's, another neighborhood joint. "I used to go to Big John's and see how they cooked the ribs," remembered Phil. "I watch, and I watch, and I figure I can do just as good."
So, Phil built a large fire pit behind his house, set up picnic tables in his backyard, and began selling ribs during the summer. “The yard was loaded with people,” he recalled, and even Big John came over. He ate my ribs and said, “You dago, you got me beat.”
By 1951, Polizzi had erected a more formal rib shack on the corner of Elliot and Sullivan, next door to his house, and had taken on his wife's brother Joe as a partner. The restaurant became so successful that he was able to quit his job as a presser for the Rosenberg Garment Company.
This little neighborhood spot had gotten quite popular and flourished throughout the 1950s, and as mentioned in the above newspaper clipping, it was located only three blocks east of Sportsman’s Park. For anyone unfamiliar with Sportsman’s Park, it was home to the St. Louis Browns baseball team (1902-1953) and the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team (mid-1920–1966). In 1953, the park’s name changed to Busch Stadium, reflecting the name of the team’s new ownership.
As the 1950s ended and a new decade began, people with foresight were witnessing and understanding the beginnings of a slow deterioration of property value in this area of town. It was evident that in the surrounding neighborhoods, people were moving out of the city and migrating as far out as the North and South St. Louis County lines. A steady flow of vacancies from these homes and apartments enabled lower-income people to move into the area. In the 1950s, this area of town was still very segregated, but this recent turn of events was creating fear and uncertainty. These changes were creating a potential risk of lowering neighborhood property values.
When lower-income Black residents moved into certain neighborhoods, white residents tended to move farther out. Throughout the past century, St. Louis had experienced "white flight" — white people progressively moving away from the city's urban center and into the suburbs. Between 1950 and 1970, close to sixty percent of the white population fled the city. After 1970, depopulation of the city, especially the northside area, fell by almost 170,000 based on the 1980 census.
I must admit my family was part of this massive flight from the city. It was 1957, and we were living in a different section of the North St. Louis area. My parents had decided to sell their home in the city and build a new one in North St. Louis County. In our city neighborhood, other neighbors had made attempts to enforce or pressure others not to sell their homes to a Black person. Dad would have none of that, and anyone was allowed to view our home for sale.
Even at the age of five years old, I can distinctly remember the Black couple who came through our home and purchased it. I do not understand why this moment in time was so memorable to me. It may have been the possibility or fact it may well have been my very first close encounter with any Black person.
In 1958, after moving into our new home, my mother found herself pregnant with the last of her ten children. Our new home came equipped with four bedrooms. Mom and Dad were in one bedroom, and our grandmother, Catherine Deluca, was in another bedroom. This meant only two bedrooms remained for all of us children. My oldest two sisters took one bedroom, and my next two sisters got the other bedroom. My youngest sister slept with our Grandma Catherine in a twin bed. After she got too big to fit in the bed with grandma, my parents squeezed her between my two younger sisters in a double bed.
The question remained: where to put all of us brothers? Well, behind our two-car garage, there just so happened to be this large indoor patio. There were two double beds placed inside this room. My two oldest brothers slept in one of the double beds. Another older brother and I slept in the other bed.
There was one other modest problem. The main wall of our room facing the backyard consisted of Jalousie windows. These louvered glass panels were used in storm doors, enclosed porches, or breezeways and were a common feature of mid-century homes, especially in warmer climates. Typically, these windows enclosed outdoor areas like porches. Thankfully, our mom eventually put curtains or drapes on the glass panels, allowing us more privacy.
During wintertime, our room got very cold, even with the extra heater our dad had placed in the room. My two oldest brothers would always complain about the cold temperatures inside our room. “One day, Mom, you are going to come into our room and find the four of us dead, either from a fire caused by that indoor heater or just from freezing to death,” they predicted. Our youngest brother was yet to be born. He would be sleeping in a crib in our parents’ room and, later, in a small bed alongside them.
***
Once the 1960s decade arrived, Phil Polizzi was asking himself, should I continue to stay in this neighborhood, or should I consider selling my golden goose and moving to brighter pastures? By late 1961, he finally realized the time had come to sell. For all we know, Phil may have already begun seeing a decline in his business. He set out with a plan to make an offer on the sale of his popular little barbecue restaurant. I can confidently state one person whom he considered to be a potential buyer: my dad. Let me explain how an offer from Phil Polizzi would even be coming my dad’s way, and the answer is my mother.
Mariano and Catherine Deluca were an immigrant couple from Italy. They came to the United States after getting married around the turn of the century. This couple, unfortunately, were unable to produce children of their own. Catherine was over forty years old and desperately wanted children in her life. Mariano went looking into the underground market to find and adopt a baby.
Their first adoption was a boy they named Jackino, and the second adoption was a girl they named Lena. This was my mother. For a large part of her life, she was frustrated by never knowing who and where she had originally come from. She expressed to me many times this awful feeling of emptiness. For Lena, having ten children was to be her way of filling this void in her life.
My parents had made several attempts and gone to great lengths and effort in trying to discover more details about Mom’s roots, but with little success. At one point, both were certain they had found the original place where her birth mother had delivered Lena. However, the records were destroyed in a previous fire. The only discovery they made was the young mother’s name, Elizabeth Rivers.
Through further investigation, it has been determined that the father of this baby, my mother, may have come to them from another brother of Mariano Deluca. This is just one more possibility of how this baby found its way to Mariano and Catherine Deluca. To my way of thinking, Mom's birth and wherever she came will remain a mystery for all time.
The Deluca and Polizzi families were related. Rose Polizzi and my grandmother Catherine Deluca were sisters. Therefore, you might think Phil Polizzi was related to my mother. However, Phil belonged to a different Polizzi family, and there was no relationship between them and the Deluca’s. However, it so happened that Phil’s wife, Theresa Bono, did have a family relationship with the Deluca’s. In fact, Phil and Theresa were both in the bridal wedding party of my parents.
Phil Polizzi came to my dad with the following offer. “Vince, I am willing to sell you my restaurant and business,” he said. “Besides that, I will stay on and train you with everything you need to know about running this business.” he offered. However, there was one thing that could not come from training. That would be Phil’s personality, along with his warm, friendly demeanor and charm. Undoubtedly, this served Phil well in cultivating and growing his loyal client base, which repeatedly kept coming back to his restaurant.
Phil sweetened things even further by offering up this deal. “I am going to personally offer you the financing to purchase my business.” Of course, this was the only viable way the purchase could have taken place. Dad could not provide any up-front money. Supporting a large family of thirteen on a blue-collar worker’s salary made it almost a certainty that he could not secure a sizable business loan. The asking purchase price was $35,000, and payments would be monthly for ten years at a reasonable fixed interest rate.
However, Dad would be required to quit three of his jobs to take over a business that he knew nothing about. The income potential was there, but he would need to successfully make this transition and keep the business running at or near its current profitable level. There was another pivotal factor in this decision process. In less than nine months, he was to become eligible for a twenty-year pension from Hostess Cake. If he were to resign, it would mean a total loss of that pension. With that being said, he was still considering going forward with Phil’s offer. This will attest to how incredibly difficult and unbearable it must have been to continue doing that Hostess Cake route every day. I cannot imagine the painstaking decision process he must have gone through before making a final decision.
My oldest brother, Don, was very skeptical of Phil’s offer. “Dad, I think he is asking way too much for his place. Before looking into this any further, negotiate with Phil and force him to lower the asking price,” he advised. There may have been true relevance in this statement. For example, at this point in history, a McDonald’s restaurant chain had over 250 properties throughout the country, and their current franchise price was approximately $12,000.
Phil Polizzi was requesting an extremely high premium price that was based on the restaurant’s current popularity and sales. There were no discussions regarding changes in the demographics coming forth in the surrounding neighborhoods. This could have brought into question the viability and strength of the restaurant’s future economic outlook. I can almost say with certainty that Dad was completely unaware of taking into consideration these types of sophisticated business studies.
In the meantime, the offer to purchase this restaurant was on the table now, and if he turned it down, Phil would be moving on to look for another potential buyer. After long and thoughtful consideration and deliberation, Dad had made his decision. He would reach out for the proverbial brass ring while at the same time agreeing to pay Phil’s inflated asking price.
He turned in his resignation to Hostess Cake within a matter of days. Over the next couple of years, there would be a lengthy list of drivers who took a shot to adequately perform and complete the daily Bellville, Illinois route, but with no success. Management finally came to the realization one person could not complete this route. It left them with no choice but to split the route between two drivers and then, later, a third driver.
When I first heard about the restaurant being purchased, I was shocked yet happy. How cool was it to own a restaurant? Of course, being only nine years old, I had no idea of the time, effort, or amount of work involved in running this kind of business.
The first few months were uneventful from my point of view. Mom and Dad were going through their restaurant training period. During this time, I was unable to find any opportunity to check out or, for that matter, get a glimpse of the place. After a lengthy bit of time, the training period ended. It was now up to my parents to hold onto and continue the success of this wonderful little brick-and-stone building on Elliott and Sullivan.
After selling off his popular barbecue restaurant on Elliott and Sullivan, Phil Polizzi, several months later, purchased another long-time-standing barbecue establishment. He relocated from North St. Louis to Afton, less than fifteen miles away. This new spot was in a stable middle-class area of town, and in all probability, the reason behind selling off his other place and moving to Afton, Mo.
Jack Polizzi, Phil’s cousin, was initially a partner at the new location, and their new restaurant was called Jack's & Phil's. Sometime after 1967, the two parted ways. One of their waitresses, back in the day, had a son who went on to star in movies and television. Of course, after he became famous, she retired from her position. The son’s name is the famous St. Louisan, John Goodman.
Phil's new place was initially the size of a living room, and people would line up outside to get a table. By the mid-1970s, the restaurant had expanded to 160 seats, but it was not unusual to still be waiting for a table on weekends. Phil’s Bar-B-Que and his successful business lived on.
However, our story is about that little place on the corner of Elliot and Sullivan and the Vitale family who kept it going through the 1960s, along with a cast of supporting characters. The events to be described herein come from my memories of that period. Admittedly, I was an impressionable young boy growing up between the ages of nine and seventeen. You will find there to be distinct details pointing out Black and white people. Undeniable prejudice and segregation were occurring during the 1960s. It is important to understand my portrayal of the events that took place is strictly based on my perception and what I observed to be happening.
***
In 1938, the first child and eldest son born into the Vitale family was Damiano, named after our paternal grandfather. My brother chose to go by his preferred name, Don. It is an old Italian tradition to name your first son and daughter after your paternal grandfather and grandmother. My parents did not waver from this tradition.
My paternal grandfather Damiano Vitale was a tyrant and, from my understanding, abusive to his wife and children. While still a young man, before the turn of the century, he worked for law enforcement in Northern Italy. During this time, he married his first wife. While giving childbirth, neither his wife nor child survived. Undoubtedly, this must have been a devastating blow to bear, and it pushed him to return to his home in Sicily.
While back in his hometown, another young girl named Patrina Biando captured his interest. Damiano went to her father and asked for her hand in marriage. Patrina was only fifteen years old and nine years younger than Damiano. She showed no interest in wanting to marry this man; besides that, he was already beginning to go bald. Her father gave him a resounding “No,” but Damiano was unwilling to take that answer and devised a plan.
He managed to figure out a way to coerce this young girl into a building and then stayed with her overnight by keeping her locked up until the next morning. Rape marriage law was the term for this phenomenon in the 2010s. However, the practice has existed within the legal systems in history and continues to exist in some societies today in various forms. Such laws were common around the world until the 1970s.
These women feared being vocal about their assault. They felt guilty for shaming their families and experienced sexual shame and self-blame. It even caused them to develop negative views of themselves as women. Patrina ended up living the rest of her life with a man she never loved. It was an unhappy marriage and a difficult family life for which their children paid the highest price. Although she gave birth to twelve children, Patrina was a bitter woman, and she struggled to care for them. My father loved his mother. “She tolerated me,” he remarked whenever talking about his mother and her love for him.
After Damiano and Patrina immigrated to the United States around the 1900s, he found work at Laclede Gas Company in St. Louis. Eventually, he would quit his regular job and opened a small grocery store. He then began running a bootleg business in a backroom bar during the Prohibition (1920-1933) era. Damiano sent his oldest and youngest sons off to learn the trade of cutting hair at barber school. Dad was the middle son and had shown signs of good intelligence. At the age of nine years old, he began working alongside his father.
At ten years old, he was managing the grocery store and assisting his father with running the bar and bootleg business. During those years spent in his father’s business, he came across many shady and unsavory characters and was involved in his share of dealings, fights, and circumstances that ranged anywhere from bad to evil. Being surrounded and trapped in this lifestyle caused him to become hardened, a little wild, and difficult to handle.
Dad never completed the eighth grade. He found no interest or need to attend school. Besides that, his father was dependent upon him working in the business. Although prohibition had ended, Damiano continued to run his liquor business illegally. At first, he paid off the police, but after years of doing this, he grew tired and decided to stop paying.
By the age of twenty-four, Dad had grown into a person unmanageable to handle even for his father. There is only one way to solve and correct this behavior, thought Damiano. He would take my dad around town, try to find a nice girl for his son to marry, and hopefully settle him down.
My father was a good-looking man but small in stature at barely five feet four inches tall and weighing under 130 lbs. However, you would be sadly mistaken if you thought or believed you could take this man down easily. Tough and fearless, he was always prepared and ready to do whatever was necessary to defend himself. In working all those years behind his father’s bar, Dad became quite experienced at handling himself and others whenever things got rough. At times, his actions could get a little crazy, making him a bit unpredictable.
Grandpa Damiano took Dad to visit a considerable number of young Italian women. The purpose of these visits was to discuss the possibility of an arranged marriage if both families agreed. They had no luck in finding a match. Then, one day, his cousin Louie came by to visit, “Vince, I went to the home of this widow who has this beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter,” he explained. “I courted her, but she refused my proposal. I think you should try and visit this girl,” advised Louie.
We discovered years later from Mom that our cousin Louie, for whatever reason, did not appeal to her in any way. My Grandma Deluca told my mother, “I think you should marry this man.” At that point, Lena became overly dramatic and stated firmly but plainly, “If you make me marry him, I will kill myself.”
This opened the door for my grandfather to arrange a meeting with the Deluca’s. Vince and Lena were immediately attracted to each other and quickly nodded in agreement to liking what they saw in each other. After a formal courtship, they were married in 1937 and became one. Lena was not only beautiful, but she was also tall and slender, reaching a height of around five feet eight inches. Maybe it had something to do with his small stature, but Dad always had this great attraction and affection for things big, large, or tall.
Grandpa Damiano was right. His son finding a good woman and getting married eventually did settle him down to become a faithful and loyal husband and father. Unfortunately, it took quite some time to calm down his intense and unruly nature and demeanor. My oldest brother, Don, had become one of the recipients of this unruly behavior. One day, Dad came home from work and suddenly noticed this look of fear and terror showing on his son's young face. Understanding that he could be the only person responsible for this, Dad vowed right then and there to subdue his unorthodox ways and behavior.
Not once, but twice, Dad took his father’s place and served a jail sentence for the illegal sale of alcohol. The first time, my oldest brother was only two weeks old, and the second time, my second brother was only six months old. After that, he realized it was time to quit his father’s business and find work elsewhere for the welfare of his family.
***
After graduating from high school, Don wanted to continue and further his education. Dad made it clear that there was no money for him to attend a college or university. The idea of higher education for his son never crossed our father’s mind. That was more for the affluent families who could afford to meet these kinds of financial demands.
Don was not going to allow this to get in the way of achieving a higher-level educational goal. However, he still needed acceptance into a college or university. Mom took the initiative and spoke with her cousin, Phyllis, one of the older children in her Aunt Rose’s family. The success in their pecan business had afforded them tight connections with St. Louis University, and she secured a meeting for my mom and brother to speak with the administrator.
Saint Louis University is a private Jesuit research university founded in 1818 by Louis William Valentine DuBourg. It is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River and the second-oldest Jesuit university in the United States. After meeting with the administrator, Don managed to secure an acceptance letter into the university.
When my parents first took over the restaurant business, my oldest brother, Don, had already graduated from St. Louis University. He landed a position at Mercantile Bank and Trust and was doing everything possible to make the most out of this opportunity.
Even before starting to help at the restaurant on Fridays, Don had worked at the parking lot flagging cars down for St. Louis Cardinals baseball home games. His biggest concern and fear were that someone from the bank might spot him. Don had worked extremely hard to get to this point in his life. He could not risk embarrassment or have anything else happen that might spoil the current opportunity with Mercantile Bank and Trust. Fortunately, all his fears were unfounded, and he would later go on to achieve professional and financial success.
***
In 1940, the second child born into the family was Mariano, named after our maternal grandfather. Grandpa Mariano was a prosperous man who, over the years, had acquired many properties. Back in those days, the area where he lived was under the influence of the mafia, who required payment for protection. One time, this henchman came over to collect, but Mariano refused to pay, and instead, he picked up an axe and killed the man. His mistake was not disposing of the body properly. The mafia put the missing pieces together and discovered what happened.
Lena was only seven years old when she witnessed her father murdered by gunshot in the footsteps of their home. Over the next ten years, she lived with her mother, who became obsessively protective and fearfully paranoid about their safety. Lena was an intelligent young girl, but she contracted Scarlet Fever at an early age, which then developed into Rheumatic Fever. After her bout with this illness, she later confessed to me that her mind was never quite the same. A combination of developing this sickness along with her mother’s constant fearmongering drove her to finally stop attending school at the seventh-grade level.
Grandma Deluca was inexperienced and ignorant in the handling of finances. Over time, this resulted in her sizable wealth becoming greatly diminished. By the time Lena reached seventeen years of age, her mother realized it was time to consider finding a suitor for her daughter. That is how my cousin Louie and dad got the opportunity to meet with her. Grandma was hoping the right person might come along to lighten or improve their financial situation.
In my family, for whatever reason, some of the males are late bloomers, reaching their full potential later in life than expected. This quite likely was the situation with my brother Mariano, and it caused him to struggle through his early educational process. After graduating from Catholic grade school, Don and then later Mariano were enrolled in seminary school. It was our mother’s wish and desire that they might someday enter the priesthood. However, after spending enough time in the seminary, Don realized that he liked girls way too much and had to walk away from this vocation.
On the other hand, Mariano happened to believe this very well might be his calling. Unfortunately, it was a great struggle for him to pass their academic classes. The seminary had no choice but to release him. It is difficult to understand the expulsion of a person wanting to dedicate their life to God because they did not meet a certain level of academic excellence. This was to be my brother's fate.
Mariano always gave of himself in helping with the needs of our family. After graduating from high school, it was apparent his educational prowess was not that strong. Our father still had no financial means to permit another son to consider going off to college. Besides that, he needed his son’s help and support to fulfill the needs of our large family of thirteen. Dad would do what he thought was best and send him off to work. Mariano took employment with Hostess Cake as one of their bakers.
***
In 1942, the third child and eldest daughter born into the family was Patricia, named after my paternal grandmother. When she began having difficulty achieving acceptable grades during her sophomore year of high school, Dad said to her. “Patricia, I think it is time that you consider looking into a trade school for your future education.” He mentioned the possibility of attending a beauty school and becoming a hairstylist. “Yes, that type of work does sound appealing to me,” she responded. Patricia attended a beautician school for six months and immediately began working at a beauty parlor. At that point, her only other ambition was finding the right man that would lead to marriage.
And then it happened…one evening before dinner, Patricia announced to her sisters, “Something good is going to happen to me tonight.” On this evening, she was going to meet a certain someone. She spoke with her younger sister, Catherine. “I know Rosemary isn’t too happy with us right now, but I need you to call and convince her to pick us up so we can all go out together,” she explained. You see, their girlfriend had a car, and my sisters needed a ride.
An Unforgettable Pastime by first-time author Michael Anthony Vitale is a loving memoir of his early life growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, during the 1960s in a large, close-knit Catholic Italian-American family. Not only is it a step back in time and perfect for readers of the Baby Boomer generation, but it is also a testament to faith, family, parental devotion, determination, and strength as the Vitales navigate the turbulent times to keep body and soul together in a quickly declining neighborhood.
The author is the eighth of ten children, five boys and five girls, and he vividly recounts his memories of growing up surrounded by family and love. I instantly felt his admiration for his parents as he detailed their struggles, sacrifices, and successes as they strived to make the best life they could for their large brood. Through it all, they instilled high moral principles and a strong work ethic, all the tools they felt their children needed for a successful future. What these parents and children accomplished, the sheer effort they put in daily, is amazing, especially looking back over a more than 60-year time buffer. As I read, I appreciated every restaurant workday, every floor cleaned, every effort to keep the children in Catholic school, and every family wedding.
I enjoyed how the author cleverly laid out the years of his story as if they were the innings of a baseball game: each year, one inning. As a contemporary of the author, I could completely relate to baseball's role in our daily lives back then. Every child in the neighborhood, boys and girls, would converge on the large empty lot to play and compare the latest "best" glove or bat, and baseball was enjoyed by radio.
Vitale's writing style is conversational and easy to read, though there was a little repetition of thoughts at times, and, on occasion, events were related out of order, making for a little confusion down the way. I was quickly drawn to his story and the memories of his childhood. The behind-the-scenes look into this family's restaurant business was fascinating and eye-opening as to what all is involved, not to mention the impact the transitioning neighborhood had on their success. Young Michael's devotion to his family, especially his father, was heartwarming, and how he wrote about them caused me to feel like I knew each individual personally. I was delighted the author ended with a summary of where his siblings are today and included family snapshots of himself, his parents and siblings, and his grandparents.
AN UNFORGETTABLE PASTIME is a wonderfully satisfying step back in time and a loving tribute to hard-working parents and strong families.