Читать книгу From Sicily to Connecticut - Paul Pirrotta - Страница 3

In August 1970 I flew into JFK on a Boeing 747, one of its earliest flights from Rome, and it was a rough ride! But we did arrive and now we had to find a connecting flight to Hartford, CT, on Pilgrim Airlines (no kidding, that was the name of the airline)! Neither I nor my traveling companion, a woman from my hometown on her way to visit relatives in the Hartford area, spoke any English. We somehow managed to catch a midnight flight on an aircraft that, after the 747, looked like a toy. I was dead tired, having been awake more than twenty-four hours, and I fortunately slept the hour it took to get to Hartford, impervious to whatever additional rough weather we flew into!

Since the turn of the twentieth century, Hartford has become home to thousands of immigrants from my hometown of Canicattini Bagni, and from other towns surrounding Siracusa! Economic conditions in Sicily in the late 60’s, while improving, were still very difficult and when we received the “call” from the American Embassy in Palermo, we did not hesitate and made the decision to come to America!

My parents arrived in 1969 while I had remained home to get my high school diploma, objective which I met in July, 1970 at age 20 ( “fashionably late by one year)! My parents had rented four rooms in the first floor of a duplex across the street from my Uncle Joe! We lived in the heart of Hartford’s “ Little Italy “ which had become established in the south end and Franklin Avenue section of the city having been evicted from the prior location of Front Street by the Constitution Plaza redevelopment project some 10 years earlier!

Here we could shop at the nearby Italian stores owned by our paesani; my father, who found work in construction, was given rides to his various jobs by some of our relatives who had moved here in the mid ‘60’s; and my mother could catch a bus that would take her to the nearby town of Manchester, where she worked as a seamstress. I could go to the Italian clubs, more precisely the Canicattinese Club on the main avenue, which was well within walking distance. I knew so many people here that it was almost like being back home in Sicily!