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the Italians came here. If you look at the
street signs off Spruce Street, you’ve got
McAvoy Street, Ames Street, Lily Street,
it’s all basically Irish-named streets, so
we went in and infiltrated, and they
moved out as we went in.
We attended Nathanael Greene Junior
High School coming from Federal Hill and
we had holes in our shoes. You’d wear your
brothers’ shoes, they could be two sizes
too big for you. You didn’t get a new pair
of shoes until your feet were on the ground.
It was nothing for a teacher to call you
a guinea or a wop or slap you in the mouth.
The first time I got hit, I was sassing some
female teacher and another teacher
grabbed me by the collar and slapped me,
and I punched him. We went tumbling
down the stairs, so they threw me out.
Then I got thrown out of high school
for fighting. They said, you can’t come
back until your mother or your father
comes here. My father wasn’t taking a
day out of work to bail me out. I woke up
one morning and said I am not going to
school, and I just never went back. No
one tried to find me.
My mother didn’t drive. She hardly
went out. She’d walk up to DePasquale
Avenue because I lived about six houses
away from DePasquale Square. From
Atwells Avenue to Spruce Street, there
were pushcarts on both sides. My mother
could go to what was called Balboa
Avenue at the time, and buy all her fresh
fruits and vegetables. The fish truck
would come through and blow the horn.
Everyone would go downstairs to buy
the fish right off the truck.
Atwells Avenue had four or five butcher
shops, so you went and purchased your
meat fresh every day. There were Italian
clubs up and down Spruce Street and
Atwells Avenue. Every town in Italy had
its own club. They drank wine, played
cards and talked on weekends. They
smoked stogies, Italian cigars. You
couldn’t even see the person next to you
because of all that smoke. All those Italian
people, they worked very hard.
I worked for Coca Cola for thirty-six
years. It was on Pleasant Valley Parkway
and Valley Street. I was twenty-one years
old, just got married when I started.
Around the same time, my mother was
hit by a car on Broadway when she was
sixty-three, right in front of the Uptown
Theater. I was living two doors away. I
didn't know it was her, but I heard the
132 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l MAY/JUNE 2020