| Chapter 1: | The Family |
stealing from one another and eventually the business folded. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the Stockertown Cheese Company store on Arthur Avenue was a Mecca for Italian cheese lovers throughout the United States.
I was born to Rosalie and Benedict Mondello on February 27, 1932, the first of four sons (Alfred, Charles and Benedict). I was baptized at St. Ann’s Church at 312 East One Hundred and Tenth Street on May 8, 1932. I was born with blue eyes. Since no other Mondello ever had blue eyes Salvatore Mondello, for whom I was named, insisted I was not his son’s child. Twenty-two days after my birth, Benedict abandoned Rosalie and went to live with a Puerto Rican woman. My mother left her new apartment in the Bronx and returned to her parents’ apartment on One Hundred and Seventh Street. My grandmother, recently retired from the shirt factory, took care of me since my mother was in a state of depression. I was vaccinated on December 14, 1935. When my grandmother and my mother took me on the bus to the hospital to have my tonsils removed, I discovered that a button was missing from my jacket and asked them to take me home to put a new one on. My request was denied, of course. I stayed in a ward for one night and felt very uncomfortable there.
I remember the dead body of my great-grandmother in a coffin in the middle of our parlor. I saw women screaming hysterically by the coffin. There were no funeral homes in our neighborhood. I never saw my great-grandmother alive.
My father came down with rheumatic fever and returned to my mother. About a year and a half after I was born, Rosalie and