Nonna (Dad’s mother, Mariarosa Poto Alciere)

(picture taken in Italy)

Nonna is Italian for Grandmother. That’s what I always called Dad’s mother. When Dad’s father died she really had to struggle to earn enough money to feed herself, Dad, and his sister, Niccolina (Lena), or Zizi, as I called her. (Zia is Italian for Aunt.). Nonno Luigi’s death left them desperately poor. Dad remembered that when he had enough money to buy candy, he used to eat it with a pin, so he could eat just a tiny piece at a time, and make it last longer. Nonna was too proud to let on they were hungry, so when they visited relatives or friends and they were offered anything to eat, they had to refuse. One exception was when the Jewish lady upstairs was celebrating Passover. The Torah says if a family is too small to eat a whole lamb, they must share it with a neighbor family. They couldn’t keep her from performing her religious duty.

Fortunately they lived near the waterfront, and one night two merchant sailors came to the door and asked her to buy a bag of jewels for a quite reasonable price. We aren’t supposed to buy property that has been stolen, as this bag of jewels may well have been, but obviously there would be no way of finding out how to return the jewels to their rightful owners, so she bought them. Now she was able to pay the rent, eat well, and buy a car. It wasn’t ladylike to drive a car in those days. It was a nasty, dirty job. So Dad got to drive it.

One day, they were out for a ride in the country, and another car passed them like they were standing still. Nonna said, “How come we don’t go as fast as that car?” Dad said, “That car is a Stutz Bearcat. It’s the fastest car in the world.” Nonna said, “I wanna get one.” So they went to the Stutz dealer on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, and Nonna said to the salesman, “I want that car right there, in front of the store.” The salesman said, “Oh, that car isn’t for sale. It’s my personal car.” Nonna handed him the bag of jewels and said, “Yu take what you want. I want that car.” This was a very respectable car dealership, very concerned with their reputation, and they didn’t want people to think they would take advantage of a poor, ignorant immigrant woman, so they went next door, to an equally respectable jeweler, who told them how many jewels would be a fair price for the car. Of course Dad got to drive it. He was very popular young man at college.

With those jewels she also bought a house out in Somerville. She turned the house into a boarding house, and lots of Italian immigrants were happy to move into a place where the proprietor spoke Italian. When she couldn’t fill the place with Italians she took in foster children, so she prospered and Dad never had to eat candy with a pin again. She was going to buy General Motors stock, but relatives persuaded her not to because she didn’t know anything about stocks. Instead, she bought houses and rented them out. She owned six of these rental units when the Crash of 1929 hit. Her tenants couldn’t pay the rent, and she didn’t have the heart to evict them. Instead, the bank foreclosed and evicted them. Since she was illiterate, she had Dad sign all the papers, and the property was all in his name. He went through bankruptcy. That made him a poor credit risk, and we couldn’t have a telephone or a charge account.

Nonna remarried. Her second husband, Raffaele Capozzoli, (“Zi Cap”), was a cobbler. He made high quality shoes entirely by hand. As a boy, Dad was always subject to being called into the shop to show off his beautiful shoes to customers. He had to keep them shined at all times. When I was twelve years old, Zi Cap gave me two top quality shoe brushes to shine my shoes with. Zi Cap used to read to Dad, in Italian, of course. I got to read some of the same stories when I studied Italian literature at Harvard.