Clementina Maria Anna Poto (1897-1964)
Cousin Clementina Maria Anna Poto was the daughter of Nonna’s brother, Luigi Poto. She married Joe Langone, Jr. (1893-1960) on February 2nd, 1914. We visited them every so often.
She served four times as delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
She was very well known and loved for helping the poor. There is a plaque on the wall of the house where she was born.
This plaque shows her birth year as 1897
Her husband, Cousin Joe, ran the Langone family funeral Parlor, from which the falsely accused Italians, Sacco and Vanzetti were buried. He had a very successful career in politics, but this legend is not about that. It is about one of his funerals.
Funerals were different in the old days. They were not motorized, and they didn’t have so far to go to get to the cemetery. The procession walked, although the hearse might be drawn by horses. In the North End, they were often accompanied by a marching band, one that did not play what would be played at a funeral nowadays. One of Cousin Joe’s favorite pieces for the band to play was “Yes, we have no bananas. We have no bananas today.” It was a popular song at the time, though not intended for use at funerals. But Joe had them play it very slowly, and, played slowly, it made an excellent dirge. You would not recognize it as the same song. It wasn’t, really.
One day, while Cousin Joe was still a young mortician, learning the family business, another funeral procession was approaching the same intersection that his funeral was approaching. Assertiveness is a strong element in the Italian culture, especially in young Italian men. Joe speeded up and cut the other funeral off. They had to wait till his funeral procession passed by. That was not good. It was a Mafia funeral.
The word got out in the North End that there was a contract out on Cousin Joe.
Joe’s father, Joe Langone, Sr., did something about this. We all have an instinct to protect our young, but Joe, Sr., did something people don’t often do nowadays. He went to the cantina where the Mafia don always held court, and challenged him to a duel.
This was not as bold a move as you might think. Before he came to America, Joe, Sr. had been an officer in the Italian cavalry. Horse cavalry. When you are shooting at a target from the back of a galloping horse, the target is not moving, but you are. You have to draw your pistol, line up your sights, and squeeze off your round in a very, very short time, or you miss. That is embarrassing for an officer. In actual combat, it might be fatal. He had a strong incentive to get very good at it. Twenty years of practicing shooting from horseback had given him exactly the skill one would want to have in a duel with pistols.
Italian military pistol of the period
Did the don know about Joe, Sr.’s unusual background? Of course! It is the business of a Mafia don to know all about everybody in the community. In fact, everybody in the North End made it his business to know everything about everybody else. It was a place where young men stood about on the street corners, chatting and watching, and older women sat leaning on pillows on their window sills, chatting with passers-by and watching.
The Mafia don had not been in the Italian cavalry. He probably had not done much shooting at all. He paid others to do that for him. He would have been at a serious disadvantage in the duel. One should never enter a duel if one is at a disadvantage. It is not smart. But a Mafia don has honor to consider. Loss of honor would be loss of status, of alpha male status. Besides, he could still be in a de facto duel. When everybody in a close-knit community knows you have put out a contract on a man’s son, the man, the son, or both could shoot you down like a dog in broad daylight and no one would blame them. They would consider it self defense, and rightly so. Not that urban dwellers are likely to admit knowing anything about a shooting, anyway.
He did the wise and honorable thing. He said, “I could not shoot a white-haired old man. If your son will apologize publicly, I will call off the contract.”
Cousin Joe had a flair for verbal expression. The apology was a masterpiece.
Some people say our cousins and the don became good friends. When you have taken a man’s measure, that often happens.