Testa Dura (Hard Head!)
So, this is what an Italian speaking customer called me not too long ago.
For decades, clients have been urging me to write a book about my stories, and so I did re-start my blog. However, one of my clients who knows me well said, “You need to tell your personal story.” I asked why they thought that was important and they responded, “Because you and what you do are important.” I’m not entirely sure that is true, but I do know this customer would not steer me in a bad direction, so here goes:
Now I don’t necessarily think I’m that important…but you may take a different view.
I started out life in 1948 as an infant, pretty much the way most people do. I was born in the heart of South Philadelphia on Mole and Dickinson. Mole Street is between 15th and 16th, and Dickinson is about 1600 south. That’s 16 blocks south of Market Street. On one corner of Mole was Strolli’s bar, the usual South Philly tappy with food and directly across the street was the Pellicano Bakery, run by my mother’s father Salvatore Pellicano. Turiddu is a nickname for Salvatore. It means, “man of god.” My Grandfather was hardly that! Sometimes they shorten it further to Todo. Todo came from Palermo directly to Philadelphia; no Ellis Island for him. In Sicily he was in the army, then a lineman for the electric company. Of course, there was no job for him here in Philly. So, Grandpop started by buying pasta by the pound for a penny and re-selling it for two cents. That went just so far, so he ventured into pastries; buy for a nickel, selling for a dime. It wasn’t long before he got the idea to cut out the middle man and bake himself, but the problem was he was a lineman not a baker. He put an ad in the newspaper and somehow that ad reached Chicago. He had at least one child by now, Agnese, Sicilian for Agnes. The ad that made it to Chicago was answered by one Thomas Miceli, a Master Pastry Chef from Sicily. What was to become my Uncle Tom, as he fell in love with the boss’s daughter and became famous in South Philly in that he literally taught all of the bakers here how it was really done.
The first Pellicano bakery I remember was again, on Mole and Dickinson. As with most businesses then, it was in the street level part of the house and the rest was for family. Grandpop set up shop in the adjoining garage; mixers, ovens, tables, everything one needed to make pastry from scratch. I remember Uncle Tom teaching me to make phyllo dough to make all sorts of things, but the specialty was sfogliatelle, a light, multi layered dough filled with an egg/cheese custard type filling. Uncle Tom was famous for his butter cream icing. It was never out done even to this day. His wedding cakes, many layers high, required a ladder to finish off.
As time went on and Tom married Agnes, more children came along and things got harder and harder. There were 5 children in all: Agnes, Michael, Francis, Rose, and Peter. Grandpop lost or threw away the brochure on being a loving father. Instead, he was an abusive, authoritarian animal. All the children suffered for it as did their offspring. Throw organized crime into the mix, there was no mafia, which was just a contrivance of Mario Puzo, and the problems mounted. So as the Pellicano family grew, so did abuse. In truth, each sibling requires their own book as does my grandfather and grandmother. Each has their own horror story. Maybe one day Stephen King will pick up on it.
Let’s take a break from that mess and visit my father’s side of the family, the Onesti’s. Onesti in Italian literally translates to ‘honest’ and did they ever take that seriously. So seriously in fact that one day my father took me into the kitchen to teach me a new card game, solitaire. After a few times through I got the gist of the game at which point my father collected the cards, replaced them in the box, looked at me and said the following, “Whenever you play this game, you always play by yourself with a loaded gun on your lap.” Holy crap, now you have a 12-year-old looking for a deck of cards and a 38 special. Years later, I asked Dad what the hell that was all about. “Oh” he said,” You mean cards and the gun!” He continued, “That is what my father taught me. Solitaire is the easiest game in which one can cheat. You are alone with no supervision. If you ever lie, cheat, steal, or are unethical, blow your brains out as you are of no use to anyone including yourself!” I carry that with me today. I couldn’t lie to you if you put a gun to my head, but if you pull the trigger…don’t miss, it will be a sad day for you.
My Dad’s family lived a half block from my mother’s family. In those days, no one had an automobile, so you dated withing walking distance. “Where does your girlfriend live?,” you might be asked, “Over there.”, as you pointed to a nearby house, and that’s the way it was.
The Onesti’s were on 16th and Dickinson…you know…over there. Grandpop was from the Campania region of Italy, Naples. He came here as a master barber. His barber shop was in front of the house, while the rest of the house was for the family. There were 7 children, and I’ll try to do this in order. First was Frank who became a school teacher and was literally responsible for building the Philadelphia School System, the high school curricula and the libraries, then Theresa, who worked as a seamstress, Bill, a butcher in the old original Reading Terminal, Vito, my Father, a factory worker, Elsie, a seamstress and afterwards worked in the Leonetti Flower shop, Antoinette, a seamstress and nun wannabe but Grandpop would not allow it, and Henry, a barber in the Union League. My Dad was a brilliant man and the army wanted to put him through school, but after the depression, a job was more important. Mathematics and memory were his specialty. You did not want to play pinochle with dad. He was a card counter.
Unlike the unruly Pellicano family, the Onesti’s were the opposite, nice. The aunts were bat shit crazy but loving and nice. The boys were worker bees and even nicer. I like to think I took after my Pop.
That is the family in the short term. A long-winded account of the Pellicano’s would just curl your toes. Fasten your seatbelt if you decide to read on.
In 1952, we moved to the new section of South Philadelphia which was down at the end of South Broad Street. There was a small section of new houses that were new. Aunt Rose was married to Uncle Bill Rotella by then, a lovely man, and my mother, dad, and I were a half block away. At that time there was nothing except Christopher’s Diner, think “Happy Days”, a bowling alley, Park Lanes, and the South Side Drive-In. After that was the Municipal Stadium, the site of the Army/Navy Games, then the Philadelphia Naval Yard. That was the East side of Broad. On the West was the Southern Home for Boys which my mother often threatened me with, and the A&P market and that was it. There was a farm, game over. By the way, there was no Walt Whitman Bridge, which came later. Instead, there was a ditch with a railroad track that went from the Delaware River to the refinery with crude oil to be made in to gasoline. To get from North on Broad to South on Broad, to go over the ditch, was a wooden bridge.
At that time, at four, my childhood was pretty normal. We had to go to church on Snyder and Broad in the Plaza, a skating rink. Soon there was a new school, a rather large chapel, the rectory for the priests and the convent for the nuns. Before that, the priests lived in our neighborhood as did the nuns.
As for me, I was an avid reader, I had math skills like my dad, and when the new school, Stella Maris was finished in my first year, I was moved from Epiphany to the Star of the Sea. That by the way is when everything went the wrong way. The nuns were animals. They were angry and mean. On one occasion, my younger brother Jim, in first grade escaped school and the nuns came to get me to retrieve him. I ran after him as fast as I could to protect him and walked him home. I think if he had a gun he would have done them in. I learned later that the nuns were borrowed from another duty as they had no teaching nuns for us. They came from a women’s prison hospital. The girls didn’t stand a chance! Most of the priests were nice except for Father Neilon, a certifiable mean son of a bitch.
My Mother got a job at the Naval Ship Yard. Things became more important than family, and nothing less than perfection was tolerated. I can remember her making me erase pages of homework and making me do it over and over. School became a place of fear. Home was the other place of anxiety. She became the animal her father was. In fact, she made it my fault whenever my brother did something wrong. He got in trouble, and I was beaten for it. Can you possibly imagine biting your own child? She was responsible for my almost hating him and for that, I hate her. I love my brother, but it’s too late now. She ruined us. The only regret I have about my mother’s death was that I didn’t cause it. And she was an out and out liar.
All she did was fight with her siblings over her father. She would send my father and me to Grandpop’s to smooth things over. I should not have been a part of that. Again, I was put in the middle to fix things; the kids called me Henry Kissinger. She fought with her sister Rose continuously. She and her sisters died far from being loving sisters. In fact, when my father died, she made me stand guard at the funeral parlor door to make sure her older sister Agnes did not gain access. To top that, they accidentally buried him on top of Uncle Tom. Remember that Italian families by funeral plots by the dozen. That was a huge mistake. That festered in my mother’s sick mind for two years until she made my brother Jim and I go to St’s Peter and Paul cemetery, have him dug up, put him on a flatbed truck, and then back in the ground in Holy Cross Cemetery. Is that the sickest family story you have ever heard?
My Dad and I were friends and would, on occasion, he’d come to visit me. We would sit at the dining room table and have scotch. One day he told me that every once in a while, the “boys” would come to the barber shop, give my grandfather an envelope and ‘borrow’ my father. In a huge Hudson, together they drove to somewhere upstate New York or Connecticut. Stopping at a farm house and honking the horn, the farmer would appear with two giant tins of pure grain alcohol…prohibition days. The hootch was loaded into the trunk and they drove back. At the end of the run, the guy gave my father five bucks. It was like a million dollars back then. My father explained that police, noticing an older man and a child would suspect only a family situation.
After that my father got quiet and said, “You know, every once in a while they would come for the two-year-old.” It was the same scenario, envelope, take the kid. This time the kid was offered ice cream to go for a walk, any kind of ice cream you wanted. What two-year-old would say no? What father would, or could refuse? So off for a walk and when they got to a certain address, the two-year-old was instructed to sit on the “stoop” and wait until ‘Uncle Joe’ came out. Uncle Joe went in, and no one in the house lived through the visit. Uncle Joe would emerge, take the two-year-old and get any kind of ice cream and as much as they wanted. I quietly asked my father if I had ever gone for one of those walks. He said, “Pour me another scotch.”, and never said an additional word on the matter.
Okay, back to school. Through all of that, I did more than well in grade school, fear and all, so much so that at graduation, Central High School wanted me to go there. Did you hear me, Central High School, that was a huge, huge deal. However, I was not allowed to go. Why? It was in North Philadelphia and there were black people there, and I promise I just cleaned that up. My mother was an ignorant, bigoted woman. Instead, I went to the worst high school in the city, Bishop Neumann High school. There you learned what priest not to be alone with. One day, I was called into the Dean of Discipline’s office, big mistake. I went there and he locked the door and asked me to sit, and he put his hand on my shoulder explaining that we were to become good friends. It was there he met Jesus. Jesus was the ceramic statue on his desk which found a new home on his head. Down he went. I quietly got to the door, unlocked it, and returned to class. I thought I had killed him, but I didn’t. Some days later I was approached by a guy in a fancy car. He said, “Raphie, I hear you clunked a priest on the head and almost killed him.” I nodded in the affirmative. He asked me if that bothered me, and I told him it did not. He then told me he may have some work for me, and he meant exactly what you think it meant. I will end that story right there, any more is not important.
Bishop Neumann High School ruined me. Between high school and my sick mother, I developed learning disabilities. I knew I was not ready for college, mentally, physically, or socially. I knew myself enough to know I would fail in college, but the Viet Nam war was on and unless I was in college with a 2S deferment, I would surely be drafted. So, I was accepted to Temple University Technical Institute. That did not go as planned. The Dean called me to his office. He said that my professors in my technical classes thought I was a genius, but the professors in the liberal arts classes, the easy ones, thought I was a moron. I had no explanation.
I was sent to the testing center at Temple U and there I spent a week going through a lot of mental poking and prodding. The idea was that perhaps I was in an area that was not suited for me and perhaps a change was in order. I went back after a week; they were shaking their heads. They said I was most suited for engineering, or psychology. We were all at a loss. No one realized I had learning disabilities and a great deal of PTSD.
At that point I had to take control. I joined the United States Marine Corps. They were the only ones that would take me; I was fat. I joined the regular Marines, but they felt the numbers said they needed me more in the Reserves. I could switch over at a later date. I thought I was going to Paris Island, but they were full, so I went to San Diego instead. They tested me to see where I would fit in. When I took the English and Math test the Sergeant said, and I quote, “You are the dumbest white man alive.” He said I got only a few questions correct. When I looked down at the tests, I noticed he had the Math template on the English exam and the English template on the Math exam. He said he was wrong and that, as it turned out, he was the dumbest white man alive and then said I could have any position in the Corps I wanted. I wanted electronics. Again, they were filled up and that Air Traffic Control and Weapons Tactical Management would serve the Corps best.
Off to San Diego, I went. I was really overweight, and the normal chain of events was to send me to the “fat boy” platoon to lose weight and get in shape then to boot camp. Instead, my drill instructor, (and I’m not sure you are aware, but every Marine Drill Instructor has a doctorate in Dietitian Sciences,(sarcasm)), said they couldn’t do anything for me that he couldn’t do. So, I was put in a regular platoon. I was instructed that I could eat only raw carrots, raw celery, and black coffee. Doing everything everyone else did I had no nutrition to survive. I grew weak. There is the rule of “3’s”; a human can live three minutes without air, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. I did 12 weeks with no appreciable nutrition. I was sent to the doctor, and he said if I continued in this vein I would die. I just did what I was told. We would have to do a rope climb, maybe 30 feet, and half way up I would literally black out and of course hit the deck at the speed of gravity. We would go on 3 mile runs and when they looked back, there was Private Ralphie out cold on the road. Well, guess what? I did make it up that rope and made it on the runs, how, I couldn’t tell you. And while in boot camp, having to learn things about the Corps, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, I made sure every one of my fellow platoon buddies made it through. At the end, I was voted the marine you would want to have your back in a fight. My marine buddies became my charge; NO MAN LEFT BEHIND! I was a MARINE!
Toward the end of boot camp, we were gathered to sit on the deck for one more lecture on Viet Nam. There was a chair and a table. On that table was a semi-automatic weapon, a hand gun. They dragged in what appeared to be a female-not sure as the head was covered in a sack. “This”, the DI said, “Is the woman who would roll her baby carriage into your marine buddies and in that carriage would be a bomb. Who of you are going to stop this murderous bitch?” While he was talking, I quietly got up, walked to the table, picked up the side arm, put it to her head and squeezed the trigger. It was unloaded of course, but the DI said, “You are nuts…PERFECT!” Everyone clapped and that’s when I realized that I was a murderer, and I liked it. I was a MARINE!
At the end of boot camp, after, in a tent, assembling and re-assembling our M-14’s blindfolded, a full bird colonel took me outside and said I had what it took to be an officer and that they were going to send me to OCS, Officer Candidate School. I declined. I wanted to be with my brothers in arms. After all, I was the trained murderer that would protect them. The Colonel thought I was nuts and he was right!