| My paternal grandparents, Michele Petracca and Maria Impagliatelli, were born and grew up in a rural Italian town called San Giovanni Rotondo, near Foggia, across the boot from Naples. They never met each other in San Giovanni but were introduced after they emigrated separately and ended up in Brooklyn. Then they got married; see below. Not much exists in the way of photographs from their San Giovanni years, but here are a few images: the town blurrily nestled between olive trees and foothills; a fifteenth century drawing of a Capuchin monastery ruin outside town; and a pre-WWII festa day photo |
| My grandfather's US citizenship papers, verifying his former residence in Italy as "Rotondo" and his name as "Micheles" (actually Michele, for whom I am named). |
| My grandparents' wedding in New York around the turn of the century |
| Jump forward six decades and some real Italian-American family pastafazool: my dad went back home for a visit in 1961, and the following photos come from that trip. Below, my above-pictured nonno (grandpa) and nonna (grandma) and a random assortment of cousins |
| Same 1961 trip, more family: some of my dad's six sisters and brothers, and a couple more cousins |
| For a creative nonfictional account of grandparents' marriage and my father's childhood in early twentieth-century Brooklyn, find a used copy and read Come Back to Sorrento, Atlantic-Little Brown, 1952. |
| My dad was not in the armed forces in WWII, because he had rheumatic fever as a child, which left him with a permanent heart murmur. Instead, he worked the pre-war and war years in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I have this very long photo framed in my house. The inscription in photo plate reads: MACHINE SHOP OUTSIDE, Dry Dock #3 – Navy Yard, New York, August 23, 1939 |
| Inset from the above Navy Yard pano shot, left end; my pop is top row center, the one with wavy hair and the not-so-large head |
| My father enjoyed a glass of Cinzano now and again. If recollection serves, my mom took this picture of him sporting a spaghetti pot on his head and a twig in his hair and his signature briar pipe. Brooklyn, 1946 ... next stop, Los Angeles! |
