Stati Uniti

On June 29, 1920, the course of my family’s history changed forever. On what I imagine to be a sun baked, sweltering port dropped right in the middle of the hazy blue Mediterranean in Genoa, Italy, my Great-grandfather and Great-uncle boarded a steamship headed for New York City, U.S.A. I can only imagine their thoughts, their anticipation as the ship pulled away from a country that was quickly changing from a place they called home to a place they found hard to recognize. They had seen the first “world war,” and at that time never knew they were sailing far away from what would be another one nineteen years later. They spent sixteen days on that ship, sailing across miles and miles of open water, expecting the ends of the Earth to appear on the horizon, upon which the bow of the Giuseppe Verdi would teeter and then fall into the black endless night sky. There had to moments they thought they’d never make it. There had to be times they’d questioned their decision to leave a place our family had known for centuries to come to a place only seen drawn out in books. U.S.A.. It was a place whose very existence had to have seemed surreal in a time when a peasant crossing an ocean was a new phenomenon. They made it. As I scrolled down the pages of the manifest of the ship, scanned onto a computer and available at my fingertips, I saw paper and ink proof that on July 14, 1920 my Great-grandfather and my Great-uncle had seen the blazing beacon of the lady on the sea, and had passed through Ellis Island with flying colors…red, white and blue.

Two years later my grandfather, seventeen at the time, would join them in what we’ve come to know as the land of promise. My grandfather did not want to become a blackshirt. He did not want to fight for Benito Mussolini or anyone else for that matter and in 1922, the same year the fascists overthrew the Italian Prime Minister and placed il Duce on the throne, my grandfather hitched a two week voyage and never looked back. He had dodged a thousand bullets, so to speak, and luckily joined his father and brother working as a laborer in a factory in a place he’d never been called Willoughby, Ohio. In 1929 he met and married my grandmother, who wanted to go to college to become a teacher but in 1929 educating a woman was worthless, and her only worth lied in landing her a husband to bear the burden of feeding, clothing, and sheltering her. I have always hoped that my grandmother felt some sort of overdue satisfaction after all six of the children she and my grandfather raised graduated from college. That is a testament to what this country did for my grandfather. Had he never left Italy, not one of his children and most certainly not one of his four daughters would have seen the inside of a brick laden college lecture hall. Not one of them would have earned a master’s degree, and most certainly his youngest son wouldn’t have been able to earn a Ph.D. Those would’ve been the dreams he wished upon falling, tumbling, crumbling stars stricken by war and poverty. To him, this was absolutely the land of promise and his patriotism was endless. The irony of this story of the American Dream is that at the heart of fascism lived nationalism, national unity, and national pride. Why then, if you page through the archived manifests of ships arriving from places like Genoa, Rome, or Naples in the early 1920s, do you see thousands of Italians pouring out of Italy and flooding Ellis Island like the blight of a plague? And isn’t it funny how my grandfather’s patriotism and loyalty to the United States of America were fierce and unwavering, his national pride booming, and all it took was having the freedom to feel that way?

On Friday, July 2nd, my grandfather would’ve been 105 years old. He loved the red, white and blue, but also made sure we never lost our identity, our roots in the red, white and green. This year for the Fourth of July, my mother and I threw a small dinner party for a couple of friends. When we do Italian, we do Italian. We are Italian, and somewhere inside of us there are living, breathing cells that remember the rolling foothills of the Veneto province, or the mountains of Molise where our ancestors reaped and sowed their lives. That never comes out more than when we make Italian food. This year, in honor of my grandfather’s birthday, and the commemoration of a journey made 81 years ago, I decided that here in this place where I am free to celebrate Independence Day any way I want, I would share this culinary celebration of my heritage. Only in the Stati Uniti, could anyone celebrate a day of national pride with the flavors, memories and culture they left behind to pursue happiness here. That is the quintessential America for which I thank God I have the privilege of calling home. Happy Fourth everyone.


For Starters...


Toothpicks dressed with roasted red peppers, pearl mozzerella, and basil, then wrapped in a slice of proscuitto and dipped in homemade pesto. A seriously easy appetizer that looks and tastes gourmet.

For our dinner my mother made a pot of Bolognese Sauce, which she and I have perfected over the past couple of years, collaborating on how much wine to add or how many crushed tomatoes to add. We've finally got it to just about perfection and to serve it over, I made homemade linguine.


To top off our Fourth of July celebration, we decided to end with something more American, something we all love. Tart cherries are just starting to come in here in Cleveland and I highly recommend taking advantage of them while they're here. They have a very short season, and if you've never eaten a cherry pie made with fresh tart cherries, you're missing out. It's a little bit of work, stemming and pitting them, but in the end the biting tartness and plump pop of the cherries are worth it and it's the perfect July pie.


Have a safe, fun, memorable and proud holiday everyone!