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Submitted by a Colts Neck resident
These freezing days make us long for better times – times when the weather was nicer and one could depend on dozens of sales each weekend with lots of interesting objects to look at and maybe even a few things to buy. Spring will be here soon, and with it we hope for some exciting new searches. We spend our evenings fantasizing about treasures waiting to be discovered and recalling past adventures.
One story that we tell over and over again, fabricating when necessary to fill in some long-forgotten details, concerns a simple little muslin gown we found many years ago at a sale not far from home.
We were looking through some piles of ancient linens, many of which were wrapped in crumbling old foreign newspapers, and admiring the faded, hand-embroidered napkins and tablecloths, and the delicate sheets and pillowcases that were neatly stacked in willow baskets on the front porch of the brick house. Their condition was such that they could not survive even one cycle in our washing machine, so we decided to leave them to another seeker and move on. Then we spotted, hidden near the bottom of one of the baskets, a child’s muslin gown with little pink and green flowers stitched around the collar. As we held it up to get a better look at it, the lady came over and said, “I’m sorry. That’s not for sale. I told him not to put it out.” Then, over her husband’s grumblings, she explained that the little gown was precious to her; it had belonged to her grandmother when she was a young girl, and it represented an important milestone in her family’s heritage.
She said her great grandparents had emigrated to New York from a little town in Southern Italy in the 1880s and lived in Greenwich Village where they worked hard and prospered. Soon, they were able to buy a tavern on the corner of Spring and Sullivan streets, and they settled down to raise a family in this new and exciting country. But try as they might, they just couldn’t have a baby. The wife was pregnant several times but was never able to give birth. As each pregnancy ended in sadness, the woman became more and more despondent, until at last, in desperation, the husband vowed that if God would give them a living baby, on their 12th birthday, he would bring the child to the little church in his hometown in Italy and present them to the patron saint of the village. In May of the next year, the couple was blessed with the birth of a healthy baby girl. They named her Concetta, but she grew up in the New York City of the 1890s, so everybody called her Katie.
The lady was busy with garage sale customers, but she said if we were really interested, we could have a look at her grandmother’s diary from back then. She brought out the little book bound in brown leather with the word “diary” engraved in elaborate but somewhat faded gold script across the front cover. It was a tidy journal written in the beautiful penmanship of a child educated at the turn of the century.
After the first few pages, which were filled with episodes of daily life and the anticipations of her upcoming journey, there was a page, across the top of which was written in bold letters “Katie’s Trip to Italy.”
It begins with her telling about the new clothes she and her mother had bought in the wonderful downtown stores and how everything had been packed so carefully into big steamer trunks in preparation for the trip. Then she told of the ride to the docks where the giant ship waited for them. She had never been to this part of the city before, and it was all so exciting: the frighteningly loud blast of the ship’s horns, the screaming seagulls swooping down trying to steal bits of fish from the men in bloody aprons as they unloaded the fishing boats, and the strange foreign languages she heard as people in exotic clothes rushed from carriages to dockside waiting for arriving passengers.
She told too of how nervous she was as she walked up the gangplank and how high off the ground it seemed. She described in great detail the furnishings of the luxurious staterooms that she would share with her father for the long journey. And she remembered how confused she was by the look of determination mixed with concern on Papa’s face as, once they were settled in their cabin, he withdrew two shiny, silver pistols and a box of cartridges from inside his coat and hid them in the drawer of the marble-topped mahogany bureau. Then she wrote about how sad she was to see Mamma and her two little sisters waving goodbye as the steamship pulled away from the dock.
The boat departed on a sunny day in April 1900. They weren’t due to arrive for the ceremony until May 4, so they would have plenty of time to sail across the sea and maybe even have a chance to visit some parts of her parents’ native country as they traveled overland to the little village.
The trip across the ocean was relatively peaceful, with only an occasional rainstorm and once even a little snow, but she felt secure and comfortable in their cozy staterooms, and she really enjoyed eating in the open-air restaurant where the delicious food was so different from what she was used to and where the waiters with accents like Papa’s were so friendly. Then, when the trip was nearly over, a huge storm blew up and drove them so far off course that by the time it ended two days later, they had lost more than a week’s travel time. The storm made everyone seasick. Even Papa, who was so brave, had looked green for a while, but then they chewed on the Chinese ginger root given them by the ship’s doctor and they were better. Finally, the ship got back on course, and they entered the Mediterranean Sea where the waters were calm.
Everyone had left their cabins and was strolling the decks in the sunlight – absent, it seemed, for so long. Then, in the distance, she spotted a boat traveling toward them at great speed. When the captain and crew saw the boat approaching, they rang the bell and told everyone to get below decks. Immediately, her father grabbed her and lifted her off the ground, and carrying her in his arms, rushed down to their cabin. Finally, when they got to their rooms, he pushed her under the bed and said just one word: “Pirates.” From under the bed, she could see him remove the two pistols from the drawer and quickly load them, and then push the heavy dresser against the door. She felt the ship’s speed increase and heard the distant sound of a few guns being discharged, then a short pause, then an enormous volley of gunfire and the booming of canons that seemed to last for many minutes – then all was quiet. The ship sped even faster for a while and then slowed to normal speed. After about an hour of quiet, Papa told her he thought it was over. He would go out to look, and she should keep the door locked, stay under the bed and await his return. He soon came back and said that all was safe.
Back on the deck, Katie saw men whom she recognized from the boat – sailors, deck hands and even the waiters – but now they were all armed with rifles, and their friendly faces had turned grim as they looked to the horizon and scanned the open sea. No one on the ship had been injured, but people were saying that several of the pirates had been hit with bullets before their boat was sunk. She heard them say that the pirates had been stopping the ships from the United States and stealing the young American girls and holding them for ransom, or worse, selling them into slavery in Africa. That was why their steamship had sped away after the pirate ship was sunk; the captain refused to rescue the drowning white slavers as their boat disappeared beneath the waves.
(At that point we paused and stopped reading the little diary for a minute. Pirates? Were there really pirates in the Mediterranean as recently as only 100 or so years ago, or were we just reading the words of a little girl with an active imagination? Later, our research would show that slavers did attack ships and kidnap women in the waters between Italy and Africa back then. In fact, there were reports of pirates boarding pleasure boats off the coast of Sicily only last year.)
The danger was past, and the ship would arrive in Naples tomorrow, but her father said that because of the storm, they were going to be late and only a miracle could get them to the village on time.
Then the skies opened up again, and it rained almost as badly as when they were out at sea, but the boat picked up speed anyway, and in the distant mist, they could see the lights twinkling on the shores of Naples.
By the time the ship landed, it was near midnight and the rain had not stopped. There waiting on the dock in the pitch black, she could see a big black coach trimmed in gold, with eight even blacker horses snorting white plumes of smoke from their nostrils and twitching nervously in their harnesses as the lightning lit up the sky. Her father hurried her into the carriage, saying the baggage would follow later, and off they galloped into the dark. They drove at speed through the stormy night, only stopping once in the drenching rain to change the spent horses for fresh ones. She dozed from time to time during the bumpy ride, but the thunder and lightning kept awakening her. Every time she opened her eyes, she could see Papa with his silver pistols at the ready diligently looking out the foggy windows. Did he fear pirates even here in the countryside? The storm subsided, and the morning sun emerged just as she saw, on a mountaintop in the distance, the red roofs of a little village. Less than an hour later, the coach came to a stop in a town square that was crowded with people. Her father, who had finally fallen asleep with his hands resting on his pistols, opened his eyes and looked around, as amazed by the bright sunlight as he was by the noisy crowd that surrounded the carriage and the panting horses.
At first, frightened by the activity outside the coach and then curious, Katie looked out into the square to see what was causing all the commotion. She could see groups of little girls dressed in white gauze gowns, with angel wings sprouting from their shoulders and lighted candles set into gold-painted wire tiaras attached to their heads with pink ribbons. Off to one side, there were about 15 men, all with shiny brass instruments and one man with a big bass drum. Near them, dignitaries stood in formal, black suits with top hats and red sashes across their fronts. And then she realized – it was all for her. The crowd had been waiting for her to be presented by her father, in gratitude to the patron saint of the village, on her 12th birthday.
Her father straightened his hat and tie, threw open the carriage door with a flourish, and as he descended the steps of the coach, he was seized by the hands of old friends he had not seen in more than 20 years. After the initial flurry of hugging and shedding of tears of joy by simple people who never expected to see their childhood friend again, the kissing began. Every single person in the little village stepped up to Papa and gave him a kiss on each cheek. Then the priest gave a signal and the crowd formed into a loosely knit parade. With the little angels leading the way and the brass band taking up the rear, and Katie and Papa somewhere in the middle, they marched up the hill to the church.
When they got to the church steps, Papa knelt down and began kissing the ground as he slowly crawled up the stairs. He continued crawling and kissing the ground as he made his way down the aisle to the alter. Katie, with a village lady on each side of her, walked down the aisle right behind him. When she arrived at the altar, the priest spread his arms wide, said some words in Latin and some in Italian. Then the women of the village surrounded her and removed all her clothes; they dressed her in the simple little muslin gown with the pink and green flowers stitched around the collar. Papa said some prayers and made a little speech in Italian. The priest said some more words, everyone stood, kneeled, stood again, and the ceremony was over. Then, on May 4, 1900, a great feast was held in the little Italian town.
After a brief description of the festivities, the food that was served, and the speeches that were made, and then of the uneventful journey home, the diary comes to an end.
Katie’s granddaughter told us that when Katie was around 18 years old, she married Joseph and soon they had two daughters. Just after the second one was born, Katie moved back to the little village in Italy and lived there for a while. When she returned to America, she had two more daughters, and the family lived happily for some years. But then Joseph got sick and died, and Katie and the four girls were left alone. Katie and her girls were strong, and they all endured and lived happy lives. Katie lived until 1975. She left more than 60 direct descendants.
We reluctantly handed the little book back to the lady. We would have loved to have owned it but didn’t even make an offer. We felt that it belonged with the family.
Whenever we think of Katie standing in the village square surrounded by dancing angels with crowns candles in their hair, we wonder how many of her descendants know the true story of her first trip to Italy. We wonder, too, whatever happened to her diary and the little gown with the pink and green flowers.
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