Years to Remember

US Army after World War I. He had his job to come home to at the barber shop on Bank Street. His father, Luigi, lived in the Mill Plain section and Angelo, a single man, found his room waiting. He was twenty-four years old.

His friends were Italian-Americans most of whom were born in Benevento, Italy. Many, but not all, were barbers.

The barber business had not changed. The working conditions were the same as when he had enlisted. Barbers worked six days a week and from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Sunday was the barber’s day off unless one worked a "barber boss" shop with a price cutting approach to the barbering business. The usual cost of a haircut was 25 cents with one-half going to the owner and one-half to the barber. In a 10 hour shift and if business was good, Angelo could cut 20 to 25 head of hair and thus clear about $16 to $20 per week.

Sunday was a day of relaxation for him and his friends. When weather permitted, the major activity, both before and after his tour of army duty, was playing baseball. His friends in later years said that as a left-hander, he had to be the pitcher because then as now left-handers had no sense of propriety. The pitches of left-handers traditionally curved, dropped, and sometimes were so erratic that they headed for the batter’s body. Angelo also had a sweet tooth. Iced coffee, served when they played, was always sweetened with two heaping teaspoons of sugar in order to meet his taste.

Photography was still in its relative infancy. Friends felt the need to have a portrait taken in some type of a posed remembrance. One such picture was on a summer’s day in a Waterbury field that served as their baseball diamond. They played in collared shirts, ties, suits, and some also wore vests. Proper attire was the correct thing to do. A photograph captured the protocol of the era. One of the players holds the bat and eight team members stare into the camera.

A few years later, he posed in a photographer’s studio with two of his barber friends. Each was smartly attired with vested suit, hat, and a topcoat draped over the left arm. The picture seemed to have a purpose. As if by this photography they were reinforcing a belief that they had achieved the successful life style that was emerging as adopted Americans.

Life was good.

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Saturday, December 9, 1939 was a day typical for December in Connecticut. Icy sheets of snow lay upon the ground in patterns - snow, mud, and snow again. Connecticut winters, especially as the wind blew off the Sound, were typically cold but not necessarily snowy. The snow, when it came, piled high into drifts and then slowly melted forming seemingly never ending patterns of ice and mud and ice again. Today, the snow had hardened on the ground and the patches of ice and mud formed a criss-cross pattern across the vacant lot next to the house. Men in uniform came to the side door. They issued some papers and then two other men, movers, entered the house and began to take out the furniture. They placed the furniture on the snow and the mud in what appeared to be a strange pattern of statues on the barren ground. Placed at intervals were a mahogany table with matching chairs, a china closet, bed posts, and mattresses protected from the elements by blankets wrapped around them. This day was our day of eviction. Efforts to pay some of the back mortgage payments had not been successful. The dream was dying in front of my mother. Mrs. Sistilli came from across the street toward the house. She carried a pot of coffee the steam from which rose in the cold air. Tears rolled onto her cheeks. My mother was in the kitchen, trying to both supervise the movers and to find a way to make bread and butter sandwiches for her children. She wiped away tears from her own cheeks. My sisters, standing by, cried. Sam Sistilli who always wore his soldier pants from the War came to look and to offer sympathy by his presence. Mrs. Pennington, our neighbor from across the street, watched in disbelief. Neighbors stared dazed by things that were difficult to understand. How in this place with the love and belief in America that was so much a part of my mother’s and father’s life did this moment in time occur?