World War II veteran Dominick DeGiorgio, on the left, with his brother and sister in law: my grandparents
A photo can tell incredible, complex, wonderful stories.
You are looking at one of my favorites. The man on the left gave everything. His life for his country. He was a soldier who knew great fear in the heat of battle. He wrote letters home, talking of the smell of death. He dreamed of a world where there was no war, no conflict.
The man on the right never had to run from the bullets of enemy attack. He had to make a living in the country that was home, but not his place of origin.
He didn’t die young in a war, like his brother. He lived 92 years, a physically challenging life that would include work, until he no longer could. Until his body said “no more.”
Brothers in arms, in blood, in life. They proved their mettle time and again, building the cornerstone of our family. Their influence is felt every day. Long gone from this earth, but always in the hearts of those that were close.
These are the makings of an epic life.
There is the cornerstone, and there is the mortar. The woman in the middle of the photo is my grandmother. The family may have been built by the men, but it was kept together by the women. The women held the vast influence.
Our generation was shaped, formed, and molded by the women. They taught us our truth, our ethics, our way of life.
My grandmother, and her sisters, represented generations of tradition. As our incessantly frenetic modern lives attempt to strip away any semblance of tradition, values, and common sense, we must fight back in their name.
Fight to keep traditions, values, and a vision of the world as a kind and decent place.
Legacies left behind should be handled with care.
Working class, immigrant, depression era lives. Lives that were truly epic. You and I would be at a loss to describe their stories.
Epic because of the ashes they rose from.
Epic in the tragedy they endured.
Epic in their relentless nature.
Epic with the love and comfort they created.
We don’t know the meaning of the word. Its definition is far different today.
At the time of this writing, it is the 100th anniversary of the birth of my grandmother, the former Rosa Tagliarini. Who took the name DeGiorgio from her love Sebastiano, that handsome devil to the right in the photo. The date of her birth, December 21st, will be like every other day.
Her influence will hover. Her presence will be felt.
To celebrate one hundred, my wife and I will raise our wine glasses in a birthday toast. In remembrance, and thanks.
With gratitude. For the path she helped pave, to our unquestionable abundance, by living her epic life.
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When John F. Kennedy made his now iconic address to the nation concerning the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, two young boys sat side by side, taking it all in. It was dramatic prime time viewing, in which nervous Americans were informed of missile sites primed to attack our shores just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.
My cousin (Little) Anthony along with my uncle (Big) Anthony watched transfixed as the President told them of “a clear and present danger”, and then spoke of initiated steps for the defense of our security from the Russian and Cuban threat.
My uncle’s response to the telecast?
“Well, there goes Christmas!”
My uncle was just a boy, knowing nothing of political strife, or wars between countries, or the madness of men seeking to rule the world.
He cared about his family, and about how this new situation with the President would ruin the holidays.
Their paths would converge again, in 1963, as darkness would fall and the world, and its history, would change in a profound way.
Nothing But The Pain
I was born in the middle of a ferocious snowstorm in March of that year, a new member of a family that was growing and becoming more prosperous. My parents hadn’t been married a year yet, and here I was already making my appearance.
The first child and grandson, I was new royalty, and these were happy times. The American Dream was being formed right in our household. An occasion to celebrate.
It was a time of celebration that was short lived. My uncle passed away only months after I was born, leaving a gaping hole in our family, and my grandparents wracked with grief and despair.
They had nothing now but the pain, and their adopted country soon followed suit. The year got no easier with America’s deepening involvement in Vietnam, escalation of racial tension in the south, and the final blow – the assassination of the President.
In the working class neighborhood where my family lived, the same shock was felt everywhere when hearing of the nature of Kennedy’s death. They had heard it on radio, read it in a special afternoon edition of the hometown newspaper.
If you were able to afford a television, you watched as Walter Cronkite gave you the timeline of events, wiping his eyes because he knew a promising young life had been cut short. The axis of history had been moved.
The Promise
Today, fifty years later, I find it hard to believe that my grandparents gave the President’s killing more than a brief thought. A life they held close, their Anthony, had already been cut short. There was no grief left to offer the Kennedys, or our country. They couldn’t have cared.
As my cousin said to me in a phone conversation, “It took them a really long time to get over it”. If they did at all.
1963 was my year, my beginning.
The year that began with much promise on a winter’s night took a turn down a wrong highway and could not turn back.
Our nation, with that promise of hopes and dreams to be fulfilled, became a bleak and bitter landscape. In Washington. In Dallas. On the edge of my town, in a house on a corner lot where my grandparents lived, there was sadness.
Fifty years later, there is remembrance. Our country was changed, our lives were altered. The promise was taken away, and we can never know what might have been.
Midnight Special host Robert Smith AKA Wolfman Jack. Courtesy of Wikipedia
Old School.
It makes people groan a little bit and roll their eyes. And mutter to themselves, “Oh God. Really??”.
Want to insult someone? Whisper behind their back, “He’s so Old School”.
I’m curious as to how this bad rap came about. Really, is it that bad to embrace the past, keep tradition alive, and keep the fires of old school lessons burning?
You wouldn’t want to be trapped in the 70’s, I understand that. Modern advancement and technology is a wonderful thing, a blessing.
I’ll give an example. When I was a kid, I had pen pals. If you’ve never heard that phrase before, don’t worry, it’s just because you’re young. But, pen pals were guys and (hopefully) girls that you wrote letters to, with similar interests, usually in other parts of the country or world.
Write. With a pen. On paper. Then you had to stuff the letter into an envelope. And put a stamp on it.
And here’s the best part. The last phase of this project was to take the letter and walk it out to a mailbox for delivery. At times the mailbox was close, other times not so much. Then, the recipient would probably receive that letter in several days.
The Beauty of Modern Life
Here’s where the modern (mostly) trumps the Old School. Now when I write a letter, I can compose it on my laptop, and skip all the other steps. To send that letter, the Post Office need not get involved. I can do it by pushing a button, and it’ll be received in two seconds. Two seconds!!
Email…is amazing.
And I also know that the letter has been opened and read! With a pen pal, how could you possibly know? Hypothetically, that letter could have gone straight from the mailbox to the fire pit.
Modern technology, if its not abused, makes you more productive and efficient. I’m all for it.
Old School Value
An example of the value of old school thinking can also be drawn from my youth. On weekend nights, I would typically stay over and my grandparents‘ house, and you could find me up late watching one of my favorite TV shows, a musical variety program called The Midnight Special.
Midnight Special featured all of the big music acts from the 70s, and I would lay on the living room floor, in my feetie pajamas, mesmerized by the large console TV with live concert footage from my favorite bands.
Only one issue. It was on late. Remember, it was the Midnight Special.
Many times, my Grandmother would try to get me off to bed before the show was over. I’d ask her why.
“It’s late and you need your sleep”.
There was no arguing that position. My Grandmother was old-school smart.
There was no need for her to quote from a study, but the eggheads at the National Sleep Foundation find that if you are sleep deprived for any length of time, you won’t stay healthy and/or bad things can happen.
Here’s my point. Common sense and old school thinking eventually merge on the super highway of living a quality life. And when you combine them with smart modern efficiencies, well, now you can really blow it up.
Like I implied, working old school common sense and ethics with modern advances is a win-win. Don’t just make anything overly comfy or convenient. Students of the old school, no matter their age, tend to shun practices that will turn them into cream puffs.
Examples:
Old School – Still listening to the beautiful and funky sounds from the 70s and 80s. There’s nothing better.
New Age – My, that’s a large and impressive (read: space destroying) album collection you have. You do know you can listen to Kool & The Gang on an iPod, right?
The new school is more efficient here. This example is solid and remarkable. What has happened with music seems to be a necessary part of life. But I think that’s the exception rather than the rule. Read on:
Old School – This smart phone does everything. Damn, how did I live without it? Oh, I do need to put it down occasionally so I can actually enjoy my real life.
New Age – Hopeless. Never, ever puts the phone down. Especially when around friends and family. In the future, won’t see that water fountain straight ahead, or that school bus bearing down on him. Tragic.
Old School – Will use the occasional app to track calories, finances, et al. Wants to ensure things are staying on the right track. Uses tasks to free up time to enjoy with actual humans.
New Age – Apps equal advertising. Look at what I did! I upgraded my iPhone for the 6th time! I saved on my car payment, it’s only $550 a month!!
Old School – Uses social media sparingly. May still think of blue jays when they hear the word “tweet”. Removes people from Facebook that always complain or are excessive braggarts. Uses blogs and websites to advance their agenda. 🙂
New Age – Again, hopeless. Addicted to hashtags. Wants to know via update when you go to the bathroom. Becomes morose and sullen if there are less than 100 “likes” for their latest update. Checks their phone to see what their friends are doing…when they are at a party with the very same friends.
You get this gist. When you temper our coolest and latest with a little old school mentality, the result can be spectacular. Better life, less stress, more health, and you seem a little more informed where you may not have been before. That’s the perception, anyway.
If you prowl the hallways of the Old School, you know better.
That’s my take. What do you think? Is that combination of old and new thinking a necessity these days? Or should I take my head out of 1973? Comments in that little box sure would be nice (ain’t technology great?) !
On a cool summer evening in the late 1930s, my Grandmother stood on a neighborhood sidewalk, talking in Italian to a friend that lived on the same street. In the middle of conversation, the friend noticed a man walking up the sidewalk.
“Here comes your husband,” she said. My Grandmother replied that it couldn’t be him, that she didn’t recognize the silhouetted figure. A stunning moment later, she realized it was him, although she couldn’t see his face. The man she married was covered in soot and grime from a new job at the railroad yard, one of the first he held in a steadfast pursuit of their version of the American Dream.
Coming to America was just the first step at the bottom of the hill. He was relentless in his ascent up the mountain of that dream.
That dream must have looked impossible to a man whose English was rough, and came to the USA with primarily physical skills.
His was the story of thousands of Italians who emigrated to these shores, to the land of hope and dreams for sons and daughters to follow.
Joe DiMaggio turned to baseball because he hated the lingering smell of dead fish that stained his father’s fishing boat. Rocky Marciano ran straight into a boxing ring, to avoid the factory life that crippled his father into a shell of his former self.
My Grandfather’s family came from the unforgiving terrain of Southern Italy, for just a chance to chase something better.
His relentless nature proved to make a modestly successful immigrant life, and paved the way for the generations after him. We enjoy what we have now in part from the fruits of his labors.
He had to continue to be relentless with sadness and grief as a life companion. He lost a brother in our country’s Great War, a brother fighting for the nation he had just begun to call “home.” Fighting for the freedom we enjoy and take for granted in modern America.
He had to continue to be relentless after the death of a son who was barely a teenager in the early ’60s. His attempted therapy to make his sadness go away was cleaning the floors of the restaurant that would support our family. My cousin’s description of his demeanor was that of “a rock,” steadfast in the face of the worst tragedy.
He was relentless with old age and declining health, still coming to the restaurant although he, at times, had to drag one of his legs across the floor while walking. He never complained of physical pain or ailments. It was hard, maybe impossible, to know if he was feeling under the weather. There were no clues.
I make it a common practice that whenever I think I have a “problem,” I think of what my Grandfather had to go through. His courage and relentless nature are traits that are hard to replicate, deemed unnecessary in our society, concerned with comfort and convenience.
I can only admire, and myself barely scratch the surface of, the relentlessness ingrained into the hearts and will of the immigrants that dug through the mud and built the foundation of our lives.
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Many of you that commented on the last post may have noticed it took a painfully long time for me to respond to those comments. It wasn’t because of a sudden surge of laziness or arrogance – I appreciate every comment I receive, whether I respond or not, and think they equal internet gold.
The reason is I simply fell off the grid – and I have nothing to blame but this beautiful season they call summer and the equally important summer vacation. There was no checking of blog stats, no Facebook or email notifications. For the better part of two full weeks.
The obvious thing to do is when traveling, leave the technology at home. The kids did have their iPods with them to entertain during rainy periods – and there were a few of those. But my wife and I left the laptop at the house – and if you read the last post, you probably figured out we don’t own an iPad or a smartphone. This sets us up to enjoy important vacation activities.
Our most anticipated summer activity is the trip to Cape Cod, to enjoy the Atlantic Ocean and its breathtaking views. We usually splurge on this trip, renting a loft room at a hotel facing the ocean, just a few steps from a beautiful beach. We are all about being beach bums here, so we spend a lot of time sitting on/ walking down the shoreline and jetties. We also do our fair share of dinners out, drives for ice cream, and a round or two of mini-golf. Total relaxation.
Whenever we cross the Bourne Bridge to head to the highway and leave the Cape, it is always with a heavy heart. It’s our favorite getaway destination, bar none. This year, we stopped at home to refresh our suitcase, and we were gone again. Many of our summer weekends are spent boating and swimming in Lake George, and we are fortunate that my wife’s parents have a house nearby that makes for a very short trip to the lake. Total relaxation mode is still in high gear here, as the boat is anchored in the warm bays of the lake for the kids to swim, kayak, and snorkel.
Done on the lake, we’ll head back to the house we call “camp” and spread out on the spacious front porch for cocktail hour. Accompanied by fine hors d’oeuvres, drinks will be had and dinner preparations made. From the comfort of Adirondack chairs, I may spy my daughter on her iPod, and feel a slight twinge of internet deprivation.
“I could be missing important information!”, I’ll think to myself. Thankfully, the feeling lasts only a few seconds and I’m back to sipping vodka.
Another favorite summer pastime is attending rock concerts in Saratoga Springs. Thanks to a good friend, we were able to see Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers from 5th row seats to initially start the vacation. Of course, high technology was prevalent at the show, with the majority of people in front of us using their phones to take photos of the band…and themselves. My “dumb phone”, which takes 1890’s quality photos, stayed right in my pocket. Had no choice but to simply enjoy the music and watch a band whose talents have been honed razor sharp over the last 35 plus years.
Actually watching the band play their entire set without taking a single photograph with your phone is a very old-school way to enjoy a concert. Very few people do it that way.
Yup, we were this close. Thanks to my friend Jeff for the primo seats!
I know it sounds like the above was enough to fill vacation time, but I enjoyed yet more low tech, high touch activities. I played golf with my Dad and his friends in a country club setting, read a couple of chapters in a book (yup, I turned pages on an actual book), and cast a fishing line into a river a few times as well.
A summer vacation like this one reminds me of the summers of past, free from school. Outdoor activities were the norm and the only “high technology” that was enjoyed was falling asleep to the television, being too exhausted to watch. Or spinning albums on my stereo turntable long into a warm, breezy night.
It also brings back memories of my grandparents. Television was their technology of choice. Or perhaps an old transistor radio, its sound echoing to the back yard patio, among the fruit trees and grape vines.
Twitter, Facebook, and email fade into the distance. The summer sunset, my family on our deck, and the rising of the moon are all important in the seasons of here and now, and those that we may be privileged enough to have in the future.
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Joe DeGiorgio 