| Chapter 1: | Italian Americana 1920s–1930s |
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It could be intimidating for those unaccustomed to the atmosphere; however, while to those of us who grew up in the environment, it may have been a nuisance at times, it otherwise was regarded a natural and inevitable circumstance of life on the block. As I look back at this setting, I can better understand the immigrant’s strength of attachment to the village of one’s youth in the old country and of one’s longing either to return home to visit or to see, hear and talk with someone from the old country. The reality was that pre-Pearl Harbor America was not a melting pot, it was instead a society “marked by important ethnic divisions and tensions,” a society in which immigrant groups highly valued ethnic “churches and schools, lodges and mutual aid societies, shops and festivals, foreign-language newspapers and radio stations, and group intermarriage.”27
German Background
Although by the time I became a teenager, there were perhaps only two or three buildings on the block that housed non-Italians, mostly Germans, there were multiple palpable reminders of a Germanic background in the immediate neighborhood. There were many German delicatessen stores, bakeries, and beer parlors that attracted family gatherings on Sundays and the Wagner, a movie house that featured German-language films. German heritage was manifest in the faded, but still visible Myrtle Avenue elevated line station sign, heralding the Hamburg Avenue station that had been obviously been supplanted after the First World War by Wilson Avenue. It was also evident in the German language newspapers that competed with Italian newspapers that could be purchased daily. On occasion, I would go on an errand to purchase a German newspaper for an elderly German woman who lived in our building. Proximity, not surprisingly, led to friendship with German youngsters. In one case, my brother had a friend on the block whose family was known for its pro-German sentiments,