By Robert Lupo
My mother’s family came to America from their home in Acerra and eventually settled in the near-west side of Chicago in the Little Italy area, much of which has since disappeared under the concrete of The University of Illinois-Chicago. They established a grocery store and meat counter that saw them through the Depression, supporting the five children they raised during an era of lazy days pitching pennies by open fire hydrants, gang warfare and rampant corruption (some things never change), and the rule of neighborhood bosses. My mother was born in the apartment at the back of that store and, being the only girl, was shielded from some of the worries that swirled during the pre-war decades.
This article first appeared in the December 2024 edition of ISDA’s monthly Italian American newspaper, La Nostra Voce. Subscribe here.
As kids in the late ‘50s, whenever we visited, we loved to seek adventures in the dark in the small corner store that fronted the impossibly cramped living quarters that was my grandparents’ home. Their living room and the store were separated only by a curtain of unknown origin that had likely been there since the ‘20s. When we visited — whether on Christmas Eve, Easter or just an ordinary Sunday — siblings and cousins, sometimes numbering upwards of a dozen, joined at least as many adults. The adults gravitated toward the inviting smells of the kitchen and the steady stream of black-and-white images flickering from the Admiral television, perched on its spindly legs in the living room. The young people opted for the adventures of the store in the dark. We came to know every inch of it, including the areas that were off limits to us unless given access, which could be granted by our grandmother alone. The first was the cooler that contained cold “pop” in the form of grape and orange Nehi, Dad’s Root Beer, and the special treat that was Kayo, a kind of chocolate soda that we lusted after, especially if we could pair it with a Ding-Dong, a Twinkie, or — my favorite —s a Hostess Snowball.
But the Grail of all treasures within that mysterious Merlin’s Cave were the penny candies and nickel candy bars that called to us from their innocent perch in a turn-of-the-century wooden case. During the day, Red Hot Dollars, Necco Wafers, Bull’s Eyes, Bottle Caps, Jawbreakers, Bit-o-Honeys and reams of Candy Dots unnaturally stuck to paper stared back at us from the penny bins. Cardboard boxes filled with nickel versions of Snickers, Paydays, Chuckles, Hershey Bars, Red Hots, candy cigarettes and countless others were displayed like a sultan’s bounty, where gold-wrapped discs of chocolate emphasized their preciousness. A Chunky was a special treat for me. They weren’t sold everywhere, and I rarely had a nickel to spare to purchase one, and even if I did, nickels were usually reserved for packs of baseball cards featuring pink, dusty, unchewable gum that resisted every impulse to create bubbles.
At night that display case was empty — empty! My grandmother knew what was up. When the store closed, the candies were covered and spirited off somewhere far from the grasp of sugar-addicted young ones. Where that was, we never knew. I envisioned some chest locked away somewhere that required several keys and was protected by alarms and maybe one of the wooden soldiers from the Laurel and Hardy movie I loved so much. If we lingered close enough to the case, we could pick up a hint of the saccharine perfume that swirled through the dreams of preteens.
Christmas Eve was all about the aromas. When we walked into the area that served as the family room, dining room, playroom and entertainment center, the first thing that came rushing at you were the smells; the redolence of fried fish, bubbling sauces, vinegary-laced salads, raw shellfish and a simmering broth laced with earthy snails. Members of the family had planned and prepared for days to provide our family’s version of the “Feast of the Seven Fishes.” And it certainly was the main event for the evening. The food would come in waves, and by the time desserts appeared, there would be groans and facile protestations of being stuffed “to the gills.”
There was fried shrimp, baccala — both fried and dried — and salads that were green and salads that featured calamari and polpo. My father and uncles were kept busy shucking clams at the kitchen table, after which the same Formica top would serve as part of the adults dining table once the feast began. What seemed to me as a child to be impossibly large stock pots contained two versions of the sauce (gravy): one featuring the fresh squid that had been cleaned and sectioned that morning by my mother, grandmotherf and various aunts who popped in and out as needed; the other, a plain marinara for those of us whose palates had not been conditioned for the mild, slightly sweet, firm taste of calamari in its red, peppery sauce.
The sauces would be ladled over mounds of al dente spaghetti and served in bowls accompanied by crusty bread delivered and deposited outside the front of the store that morning, long before anyone was there to receive it. Yes, there was a time when bakery trucks cruised neighborhoods before first light and deposited large brown bags of freshly baked Italian and French bread outside the entrances to stores, restaurants and hot dog joints, where it remained undisturbed until the proprietors came to retrieve them before opening for business. Even as I type these words, I am amazed that there ever was such a time.
As the meal progressed, the children slowly floated away from the kids’ table, leaving behind remnants of spaghetti (most of us opted for the plain marinara sauce, the sight of rings of calamari and tubes with tentacles reminded us a little too much of a monster created from a radiation accident in one of the ‘50s sci-fi movies we might see on “Shock Theater,” the local scary movie program that was the catalyst for many nightmares over the years). As the meal wound down, one by one we would drift into the recesses of the shuttered and dark grocery store, where the older children would taunt the little ones with cries of “I want to suck your blood!” or “It’s alive!”
We walked around in the dark, expecting something awful, something wonderful, to materialize from beneath us or from within the recesses of the cavern-like darkness, cloaked only in the refracted light from a dim streetlamp nearby. The dark provided the mystery, but all our senses were engaged. Our footsteps echoed on the decaying linoleum, which edged up against ancient wooden floors that creaked and strained in places worn uneven by decades of passages up and down, over and around cases containing daylight treasures shrouded by butcher paper. Some of the cases hummed with the steady vibration of electric power. The vague buzz of adult conversation, indecipherable in our realm, seemed to lengthen the distance between our adventure and their mundanity.
Inevitably one of the smaller ones would react to the sight of a cousin holding a flashlight beneath his chin and would go screaming back into the crowd of adults, who immediately spoiled all the fun with threats of making sure that Santa would bypass their houses unless they stopped all the fuss (but of course “bypass” and “fuss” were not words in any of their vocabularies). By the time we were all wrangled back into the living room, the tables had been cleared, the dishes washed and dried in a whirlwind of activity, and the desserts appeared from yet another unseen cache, the whereabouts of which were also a guarded secret. There were ricotta pies and pound cakes, cannoli and eclairs. And cookies of all shapes and sizes: from a struffoli of fried dough saturated in a syrupy delight, to delicate, powdery stacks of pizzelle, biscotti and fig-filled cuccidati, glazed and covered with red and green sprinkles. The coffee was sometimes enhanced with anisette, which lent a licorice scent that hovered above the proceedings and mingled with the perfume of the ashes of dozens of unfiltered cigarettes that overflowed the ashtrays that took up any flat surfaces not occupied by discarded dishes.
The kids were now encouraged to go off into the dark, while yet another set of dishes was cleared and cleaned. We took our cookies and cakes with us back into the dark and the older cousins commenced torturing the younger ones again; this time invoking images of Godzilla and Dracula as they chased around until everyone was exhausted. Just in time someone from within the cramped living space yelled “Santa has been here!” and we all rushed back, cursing our luck that we always seemed to be elsewhere when he made his visit (the fact that there wasn’t a chimney anywhere nearby seemed to be lost on us). Back in the living room, the tables were gone, the tiny Christmas tree was moved out from the corner and gifts — some wrapped, some not — were strewn about the floor, on the top of the couch and under various chairs and end tables. No signal was needed. Paper flew, toys appeared, children screamed and I saw my grandmother sit for the first time all evening, smiling out of amusement, contentedness or happiness that it had finally ended, we never knew.
Toy airplanes, all manner of dolls, Erector Sets, Lincoln Logs and countless other prizes found their way to the empty store, which by now was bathed in light from the rising moon. If we were lucky there would be snow. The weather then dictated our next move. If the skies were clear, we would remain until it was time to pack several cars and head to Our Lady of Pompeii for midnight Mass. If precipitation loomed, our father would make sure we got out “ahead of the weather” and we’d make it home to the suburbs in time for the 1:15 a.m. Mass. For a moment before we left, I’d always go back into the silent store and sit on the ledge, looking out the broad front window into the night, smiling and thinking about the joys to come in the morning.
