Lucio Battisti, "Uno in Più"

WILL SOMEONE GET ALL THESE ITALIANS OUT OF HERE?

According to local legend, I shouted these words at the top of my lungs from the center of the overcrowded Elks Club baby pool off Youngstown Road, one afternoon in the summer of 1976 or 1977. People still talk about it. Not in hushed tones or anything. It’s just one of those funny stories my extended Italian family likes to tell.

Where this sentiment might have come from is lost to history. My best guess is that at that early age, whenever I was in a big crowd with lots of strangers, the people I met turned out to be Italians. This was certainly true on any given Friday night in my grandfather’s restaurant down the road. And earlier that summer I would have attended the Memorial Day Abruzzi-Bufalini Family Reunion over at the Cortland Conservation League, and I’d say 90% of the couple hundred attendees there, whether actual family or immigrant workers at my grandfather’s restaurant, were of Italian origin.

So I suppose I just figured all these no-name kids cluttering up my pool were probably Italian, too.

For my part, I grew up thinking I was exactly half-Italian, because both my grandparents on my father’s side were full-blooded paesani, first-generation Americans born in Pennsylvania to parents from Collelongo, a small town in the mountains in Abruzzo, and Patrica, a slightly larger town near Frosinone in Lazio. This made my father full-blooded, too, and as my mother (maiden name: Husher) is English and German, my blood-share from the Old Country had to be 50%. Not so long ago, my dad sent some DNA to 23 & Me, and the results back were more nuanced: he is in fact only ~89% Italian, with some Iberian and Northern European heredity mixed in.

Which makes me at most now 44.5% Italian, genetically speaking, unless my mother is contributing something from her side, and I’d be really surprised.

I haven’t been to Patrica, though I would like to go. I’ve been to Collelongo three times, in 1998, 2000, and 2016. My father, his two brothers, and his sister jointly own a small house there. They inherited it from my grandfather, who either owned it outright or inherited it from its last regular occupant, his half-sister Fortunata. In that house is what I’ve been told was the first indoor water closet in the town, installed at my grandfather’s direction, from 4,599 miles’ distance in Warren, Ohio. That gabinetto is a bit of an odd fit, a tiny alcove tacked onto the house and jutting out toward the street. (There are many bigger and better bathrooms in Collelongo now.) More than once over the years I’ve abraded my head on the lintel over the door to that bathroom, when I was in too much of a hurry to get into it. These injuries remind me that I’m only 44.5% Italian. Abruzzi family members who aren’t blessed/ burdened with Germanic Husher-length legs have at least three inches of clearance there.

My grandfather’s name was Guerino. People called him “the little warrior.” I understood that to refer to his character. He was pint-sized, with Abruzzi legs, but he was ever a force to be reckoned with. On a visit to Collelongo I found one of his old school books. The name inscribed in it was not Guerino, but Quirino. Quirinus was an early Sabine war god, later absorbed into the Roman religion as the divine alter ego of Romulus, the Eternal City’s co-founder and its first king. So the “little warrior” epithet was as much a matter of etymology (consider, too, that guerra is Italian for “war,” that guerriero means “warrior,” and -ino is a diminutive form that attaches to nouns and makes them “little”) as it was the story of his life.

Greenie wasn’t a fighter in the literal sense of the word. But he was enterprising and courageous in the face of adversity. Born in Connemaugh, Pennsylvania in 1912, he was neighbors, we’re told, with Olga Bufalini, three years his junior. Greenie and Olga both lost their mothers to the Spanish flu in 1918. Greenie’s father, Massimo Abruzzi, moved his two sons back to Collelongo after his wife’s death. Records kept by the Prothonotary of Indiana County, Pennsylvania disclose that the U.S. District Court issued a summons to Massimo sometime after he left, and when he failed to appear, he forfeited his U.S. citizenship.

Greenie’s uncle had died of the same flu in Italy, and Massimo arranged to marry his widowed sister-in-law, joining the two grieving families. And so Greenie went to primary school in his father’s hometown in the Apennine Mountains that make up the spine of Italy, some 80 miles east of Rome. His cousin Vincenzo became his step-brother, and his father and step-mother had two more children, the aforementioned Fortunata and a boy named Antonio, whom I would know in Warren decades later as “Uncle Tony.” Vincenzo, “Uncle Vince” to us, had two sons. They and their families—children and grandchildren—live in Collelongo to this day.

On August 11, 1926, three days after he turned fourteen, Greenie left Italy for America. He traveled alone, on a boat called the SS Presidente Wilson, arriving in New York eleven days later. A few years ago I found a copy of the ship’s manifest online. It shows his name as Guerino Abruzzo.

In the meantime the Bufalini family gutted out life as newcomers in Tunnelton. Olga’s father Amato also remarried, and many half-brothers and -sisters were born into the family. On at least one occasion the local Ku Klux Klan chapter showed up on his property, gearing up to burn a cross. Amato stepped out of his house with a cocked shotgun, and the cowards ran off—tripping over their sheets, I like to think. They didn’t come back.

Greenie tracked down his uncle Agosto in Morgantown, West Virginia, and initially settled there. Some time later he moved to Warren, Ohio—my hometown—where he worked several jobs at local restaurants. He met Olga again at a wedding reception in Tunnelton. They fell in love and got married. At age 27, Greenie and his business partner Orazio Rossi opened the Café 422, an Italian restaurant in Warren, maybe a mile down the road from the site of the Elks Club pool. He and Olga would start a family the following year. Thereafter Olga stayed home and cared for the family’s four children: Bob (named for Indians pitching phenom Bob Feller), Dick (my father), Rus, and Anita. Olga and Greenie were a dynamic pair. They were whip-smart, both of them, as well as hard-working and loving and two of the most generous and welcoming people you’ll ever meet.

Having said all that, I’ll note that their children like to recall the time when Greenie sent new arrivals from Italy to his house for dinner, calling Olga from the restaurant to let her know they were on their way. Olga didn’t have it in her that night to host yet another crowd of inbound Collelonghesi, so she turned out all the lights in the house and went into hiding with the kids. The guests arrived and knocked on the door a few times before leaving unanswered, unserved, and unfed. This is another of those Abruzzi family stories.

Based on some back-of-the-envelope math I did just now, I feel comfortable saying that I ate at the Café 422 at least 2,200 times growing up. There was a McDonald’s literally next door on Youngstown Road, and from time to time I would complain that we were going to the 422 yet again when there were Happy Meals available just steps away. On the table there was always a metal plate with a half-loaf of Italian bread on it. Conceding defeat on the McDonald’s question, I would grab a piece, punch the soft center out of the crust, and eat it with half a stick of butter, while my father scooped the restaurant’s disgusting original-recipe hot peppers in oil on his bread.

Again: I was 44.5% Italian.

At some point Grandpa Greenie always stopped by the table. He would pat me gently on the cheeks and ask my mom and dad: Why don’t you go next door and get that boy a cheeseburger? Then he’d take my crust off the plate, telling me I had left him the best part of the bread. I see his point about the crust now, and I’ve come around to the hot peppers, too. (Buy them here today!) At the same time, though, I’m still a sucker for a Big Mac.

During the Second World War, Greenie’s brother Marco fought for Italy in North Africa and was captured by the Allies. The Germans occupied Collelongo, after Italy changed sides. The first two times I visited Collelongo were on the feast days in August: Ferragosto on August 15, with the Feast of San Rocco, the town’s patron saint, the day after. In those days tons of Collelonghesi from Warren went back each year for the August holidays. You’d walk the streets and see dozens of people you knew from Ohio—from the restaurant, the Memorial Day reunion, or just around town. Many of them were relatives of varying degrees and removes I did and didn’t understand. Others were family friends my grandfather had convinced to come live in America, often by giving them jobs. The feast days were magical because you connected with people you saw and sort of knew from home, but in Collelongo you had time and tranquility to get to know them better.

One year when I was there, my great-uncle Tony got to talking with us about the German occupation. Uncle Tony explained that each of the families in town had been required to provide quarters for one or more German soldiers. (Shout-out to the Third Amendment — hey ho!) Massimo and his family had been required to host one of the occupying commanders. One winter day the German soldiers ordered all the young Italian men to assemble in town; they were given shovels and led down the street. Uncle Tony was one of the assembled young men. He thought he was going to be killed. They all did. They believed the Germans were sending them to dig their own graves. It turned out this wasn’t the case at all. The soldiers simply wanted a trench dug. The officer who lived with Massimo saw his host’s son Antonio shivering in the cold and relieved him from the work.

I don’t know if it was on the same trip, or the time afterward, but at some point after we heard that story we were up at the top of the Via Roma, the main drag in Collelongo, late in the evening on the San Rocco feast day. A pop singer was jamming it up on a ported-in soundstage a block below us. I was standing with family talking. Some locals were hovering near us. Eavesdropping, it seemed like. And giving us the fish-eye. Finally, they walked up and addressed us directly:

Siete tedeschi? [Are you German?]

44.5% Italian—pale, with Husher legs. Quarter-German, speaking a Germanic and therefore German-sounding language. This was asking for trouble, even five decades after The War. It was incumbent on us to clear up any misunderstandings.

No no no no—Americani. Siamo ’mericani!

This changed the tenor of the conversation completely. Ah! ’Mericani! Benvenuti! Bona fest’!

We talked some more with these interrogators, as best we could in our broken Italian. At some point one of us revealed that we were Greenie Abruzzi’s family, and they threw open their arms and hugged us. My grandfather hadn’t just installed a bathroom in his half-sister’s house and given livelihoods to dozens of townsmen through the restaurant. He had also sent money back to Collelongo all his life, funding charities, youth soccer teams, etc. By then Greenie had left us, but he was remembered 5,000 miles from where he had lived and died. And he was loved.

The aforementioned Uncle Rus—we call him Zio—will be getting his own standalone post at a later date. For now it’s sufficient to say he is 110% Italian: a fluent speaker and regular traveler to Italy with friends up and down The Boot and an abiding love not just for Italian culture—the language, the food, the cinema, Serie A—but for the Italian state of mind. Zio is a great lover of music (more on this in the subsequent post), and Lucio Battisti, beloved Italian rock singer-songwriter of the 1970s, is one of his favorite singers. Over the years Zio has brought a number of Battisti’s recordings to the house for me to listen to, and I’d say I absolutely love maybe … 44.5% of what I’ve heard.

I was into “Acqua Azzurra, Acqua Chiara” (Apple Music, Spotify) from the first listen. My Italian teacher played “7 e 40” (Apple Music, Spotify) for the class in spring 2001, and that one really landed and stuck, too. Pensieri, Emozioni is a two-CD compilation of Battisti’s hits. I’m listening to it now: “Un’ Avventura” (Apple Music, Spotify), Battisti’s first single, “Non È Francesca” (Apple Music, Spotify), and “Mi Ritorni in Mente” (Apple Music, Spotify) are standout tracks. Earlier this week I texted to friends a link to “Il Tempo di Morire” (Apple Music, Spotify), declaring that it’s the only blues I ever want to listen to. Battisti’s voice drips with desperation as he pours out his soul to the woman he loves … or wants to get with, at least. You don’t need to know Italian to feel what he’s feeling in that song.

“Uno in Più” (Apple Music, Spotify) is a song from Battisti’s first, self-titled record, released in 1969. It’s not the usual stuff about romantic love. As far as I can tell, it’s about welcoming. Battisti and his gang (“noi”) are on a long stretch of beach, walking. They see you (“tu”) swimming off-shore, and they’re asking you to join them:

Se sei stanco di lottare, siedeti qui a riposare. Se non sai più cosa fare, poi cantare. E così, tu sarai uno in più, con noi.

[If you’re tired of struggling, come sit here and rest. If you don’t know what to do anymore, then sing. And in this way you will be another one of us.]

This is music as community-building (see “Any Wednesday”): when you’re at your wits’ end, when you’re fried and exhausted and don’t know where to turn, come sing with us. And whatever comes next, we’ll have your back.

That’s as welcoming as it gets, and of a piece with what I’m trying to get at in this post. The stories we tell in our Italian family—the serious and important stories, that is, where the grandmother isn’t hiding under the bed from her guests and the grandson isn’t calling for the pool to be emptied—are, at their core, about welcoming. They’re about the essential moments when we grow closer to each other: when cousins becomes brothers after a tragedy, when friends cross an ocean to become cousins, and strangers who understand 44.5% of a conversation can become friends. We are all benvenuti, many times over, and we sing together.

In the winter of 2020-2021, dead smack in the middle of COVID-19 nothingness, I was looking for a project: something to work on and work toward, while I waited for the vaccines to be ready. I consulted with friends and family, did some online research, and it turns out 44.5% Italian is Italian enough, at least in my case, to apply for and receive jure sanguinis Italian citizenship (“by right of blood”). It’s just a matter of pulling the required documentation to prove that I am descended from ancestors who were themselves Italian citizens—in my case, my great-grandparents.

I have an appointment with the Italian Consulate in Boston in July 2024. When I go I’ll present all the records I’ve pulled: birth and marriage and death certificates of my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, naturalization records, apostilled with translations into Italian. I’m a little anxious about this, because the records aren’t pristine. For example, my grandmother’s birth certificate records her name as Mary Bufalini. Her marriage and death certificate read Olga Marie Bufalini. Hopefully discrepancies like this don’t grind up the gears.

Assuming they don’t, then sometime in 2025 I’ll be issued an Italian passport. E così, io sarò uno in più, con Lucio Battisti and his people.

One hundred percent.