| Chapter 1: | Italian Americana 1920s–1930s |
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It was astonishing to see a mature Italian shoemaker working in dark basement or, as in the case of our back yard neighbor, on the first floor store that pulsated with running motors and slapping belts of leather trimmers and buffing wheels, who managed to conduct business speaking broken English.
One cellar on our block accommodated an Italian bakery, operated by the Leggio family where one saw men covered with white dust delivering large bags of flour, followed by inhaling the warm, soothing aroma of freshly-baked bread, rendering it difficult not to buy the freshest baked product daily for evening meal. On special occasions such as Thanksgiving, for a small fee block residents could have their large meats or turkey baked in the Leggio ovens. The purchase of fruits and vegetables was an artful enterprise in which all Italian American mothers took justifiable pride in the skill required to discern between overripe produce and that which was ripe and ready. The choices were to walk along Knickerbocker Ave. where there were a number of fruit and vegetable shops originally Jewish-owned, but which gradually became an entry point for Italian American entrepreneurs. When the weather was favorable, Italian Americans waited for the itinerant pushcart peddler whose horse-drawn cart was stocked with crates featuring fresh items and prices crudely marked on brown paper bags. Employing a singsong manner, the peddler would shout with conspicuous accent his features of the day “scarola (escarole), lattuga (lettuce), melone (watermelon)” etc. He made periodic stops to cater to women who sometimes shouted their orders from their windows and either came out into the street themselves or sent one of their children with the requisite cash.
Brooklyn’s Little Italies
To say that one grew up in an Italian area in Brooklyn in the generation preceding World War II is somewhat misleading. There were, in fact, several Italian “Little Italies”—Red Hook, The Navy Yard, East New York, Gravesend, Greenpoint, Williamsburgh, and Ridgewood—ethnic enclaves that rendered Brooklyn arguably the county that housed more residents of Italian heritage than any other; however, these enclaves were, in reality, more accurately known as Napolitano, Abruzzese, Calabrese, Sicilian, etc.33