David P. Demarest Jr., 1931 - 2011

Farewell to David Demarest, retired CMU English professor and immigrant history super-hero. His name may not be immediately recognized, but his work certainly is:

Out Of This Furnace: A Novel of Immigrant Labor in America, by Thomas Bell
Written in 1941, Mr. Demarest rediscovered this novel in 1976 about 3 generations of an immigrant family who worked in the steel mills of Homestead.

The Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanko
Mr. Demarest's fundraising helped raise money for the restoration of Maxo Vanko's murals in St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church. The stunning murals, 22 in all, tell the Slovak immigrant story of religion and poverty. Think Sistine Chapel, but with mill hunkies.

Braddock Carnegie Library
He was instrumental in the rescue of Braddock Carnegie Library and then founder and editor of the Braddock Fields Historical Society newsletter.

Obituary, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

S.S. Presidente Wilson

OCTOBER 5, 1919
92 years ago today my grandfather arrived in America on the Presidente Wilson (passenger #21). But not until he put up a little bit of a stink about it.

As the story was told to me by my grandfather himself, he was just 5 when he and his mother left Arnara, Italy to join his father in Pennsylvania. And the little tyke just didn't want to go. He didn't want to leave his nonna or his little dog. He didn't want to travel to Roma and get on the big ship. According to him he was cranky and disagreeable for most of the trip, picking a fight with his mother as the ship passed through the Strait of Gibraltar. While his mother admired the Rock my grandfather tore the little cap from his head and threw it overboard.

Things went from bad to worse after the incident at Gibraltar. At some point, either during the journey or at Ellis Island, my grandfather was served oatmeal - for the first and last time.

Ask my grandfather anything about this voyage to his new home and he always managed to circle back to that frightening gray blob of oatmeal - very little about the sights he saw, absolutely nothing about meeting his father for the first time. It was always about the food.

Search Ship Lists on the Ellis Island site

Italian Americans: The Immigrant Experience
Leslie Caron Carola

Grannie Annie

If I hadn't been goofing off on Facebook this morning (instead of, you know, my job) I might have missed a post by my friend Kathleen about her 101-year old grandmother.

Kathleen's grandmother, Anne Zimmer, the daughter of a saloon-keeper, grew up on the North Side of Pittsburgh. Do the math: this grandma has tales to tell about Prohibition.

We here at Real Housewives Industries have a real soft spot for grandmas, especially when they become media darlings at 101 (you can read the article below). Mrs. Zimmer is the first nominee for the coveted RHo19 Grammy Award, details to follow.


Prohibition Made for a Dry Climate
Anne Zimmer is interviewed for the Observer-Reporter  

Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America
Edward Behr 

The Music Of Prohibition
Various Artists

Citizenship Day

Today is Citizenship Day according to my pal, Big Mick.

If Big Mick is the source of any information then it's a good idea to check the facts. He's a big-shot, know-it-all Pittsburgh lawyer with a questionable political compass, and he's most famous for endless tirades of trivia that put me right to sleep. The only reason I talk to him at all is he usually buys my drinks - and he's definitely buying now after all this free advertising.

Big Mick's Citizenship Day announcement was almost more useless bar trivia: a federal holiday with no parade, the banks were open, mail was delivered - what's the big deal? But the beauty of this day is the simplicity. It's merely a time to acknowledge American citizenship, be it by birth or naturalization.

The images to the left are from my great-grandmother's copy of "Federal Textbook on Citizenship - On the Way to Democracy". I know it's her book because she wrote her name in pencil on the cover, just like any child in school would do. Except she was a 64 year old grandmother in 1942.  The workbook is comprised of one page chapters on topics such as The Right to Govern and The Convention of 1787, and then a series of simple questions about the information in the chapter. It would be almost impossible for a student not to ace the questions because the answers are at the top of each page. Pretty easy, right?

Great-grandmother Angelina never learned English - she could have been taking the LSATs for all she knew. My guess is one or more of her children helped her cheat her way through the test so she could get the dang naturalization certificate and hang it on her wall. It was WWII, for cryin' out loud. No time to be an Italian citizen in America.

So today, in addition to my own citizenship, I'm taking time to remind myself about Angelina's path.

Constitution Day and Citizenship Day
Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School

Rabbit, rabbit

I have a friend, I'll call her Karen*. On the first day of every month she plays a game with her sister and brother on Facebook where one posts "rabbit, rabbit" very early in the morning, and then is immediately cussed out by the other two. The whole game appears to be over before 6 am, forgotten until the first day of the next month when the sibling rivalry is born again.

I don't get it either.

In my family we play for something more than just bragging rights. Like money. I just figured Karen's* game was some sort of small town weirdness. But today I remembered that I really dig small town weirdness and took to the interwebs to figure out what the heck was going on. Turns out "rabbit, rabbit" is a superstition of unknown English origin, possibly dating back to the 1800's. If a person says "rabbit, rabbit" first thing in the morning, on the first day of the month, he will have good luck for the rest of the month. There are variations of the charm: saying "white rabbit" or the speaker must still be in bed. Not much else to report - vague beginning, middle and end, which is pretty much want you want out of a good superstition.

Poor Karen*. I fear she will never win Rabbit, rabbit - and if her unladylike language after her loss this morning is any indication she also has doubts.

* You can call her Karen, too. Her name really is Karen.

What's so Lucky About A Four-Leaf Clover?
Claudia De Lys

Lightning Never Strikes Twice (If You Own a Feather Bed : and 1904 Other American Superstitions from the Ordinary to the Eccentric)
Vergilius Ferm

Favorite Folktales from Around the World (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library)
Jane Yolen

Road Trip: Tenement Museum

A failed attempt to visit Ellis Island last weekend turned into a serendipitous trip to the Tenement Museum at 97 Orchard Street. If you're visiting New York City this is a must-see.

The Tenement Museum web site alone is fascinating, but to actually stand in the dark, creaky building is very moving. The tenement was built in 1863. Rather than bring the building up to code in 1935 the landlord evicted the tenants and allowed the building to remain empty until it was purchased by the museum in the 1980's.

I still can't wrap my head around what daily life could have been like for the people who lived in this tenement.

• Each apartment was just 3 rooms totaling 275 square feet
  If you're in suburbia find the largest closet in your house, and then live there with your immediate family for a few years.
  
• Plumbing wasn't installed until 1901
  Until then, 22 families shared outhouses with a saloon on the first floor of the building.
  
• Residents of 97 Orchard St. tossed their garbage in boxes on the sidewalk
  And so did their neighbors. In 1863, the New York Tribune described garbage boxes as "one festering, rotting, loathsome, hellish mass of air poisoning, death-breeding filth".
  
  

Tenement life was not for sissies.



97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
Jane Ziegelman

Tenement Stories: Immigrant Life (1835-1935) (Raintree Fusion: American History Through Primary Sources)
Sean Stewart

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith