A New Beginning - Part II
The next morning the sun was already bright and warm and the excitement of spending the day with my new family was almost too much to bear. We made arrangements to meet with Giovanna back at her home at 2:00 PM. This was the day I had planned to make dinner for Tony and our new British friends down the hall at our apartment, so we stopped at the market to pick up supplies before meeting Giovanna.
Just as we entered Montelepre, we stopped at a little market. I gathered tomato, basil and other items for sauce, and I would use the olive oil Joanna gave me the previous day. To simplify, I picked out some ready-prepared spiedini from the butcher case. Spiedini was always one of my dad’s favorite dishes that my mom would prepare. Spiedini alla Siciliana are grilled scaloppine Sicilian style veal rolls that are stuffed with a mixture of breadcrumbs, cheese, pine nuts, raisins, and salt and pepper. The rolls are threaded on a skewer with bay leaves and onion slices between the meat rolls. They are grilled or broiled until brown on all sides. I discovered there are many different kinds though with different combinations of stuffing. My cousin, Maria, makes spiedini with chicken, one of my favorites.
I learned quickly that in a little store like this you don’t touch the produce. A man stands at attention ready to gather the items you want and places them in a bag with a price marking. I’ll never forget the smell of the store; it triggered a flashback of being a kid while visiting my mother’s family in the Bronx. It brought me back to a time in one of the stores in Little Italy in the Bronx. Back 45 years ago that part of the Bronx was almost all Sicilians. The remembered smell of that store replicated what I was smelling at that moment.
The next stop was Giovanna’s house in the center of town. Before we headed farther up the mountain to our cousin Vita’s country home for our Sunday dinner, Giovanna and her sister, Vitanna, took Tony and I to the cemetery. The word for cemetery in Italian is cimitero. After my first Italy trip, it became one of the first words I remembered because every time we drove past the cimitero, my cousins would make the Catholic sign of the cross as a prayer. It just stuck with me. Giovanna and Vitanna escorted us to the family grave sites which were contained in various mausoleums. She retrieved the keys from the attendant and opened the door of my great grandmother Antonina Monaco’s tomb, which had the name and dates of birth and death engraved on it and her photograph. This was the woman that tied us together, our shared great grandmother. The mother of Giovanna and Vitanna’s grandmother, Vita Gaglio, and the mother of my grandfather, Francesco Gaglio. This was the moment I could feel the inherent love these cousins had for my son and me, and I knew for sure that I would return to Sicily again very soon.
As Giovanna took us to her grandmother Vita’s tomb, I noticed a parade of sorts of people going to one particular grave site. Despite our language difficulties, I asked my cousin, “Why are there so many people going to that grave?” I learned that this is the grave of the “Great Bandito,” Salvadore Giuliano, who is revered still to this day by the Sicilian people. It was kind of an Elvis-like Graceland, where people from all over Sicily come pay respect for the man known as the modern day “Sicilian Robinhood.” Giuliano had dreamed throughout the war and until his death in 1950, to make Sicily an independent country for the first time in its human existence.
That’s a story for another day, but if you want to learn more, check out a cool movie by director Francesco Rosi, with the title Salvadore Giuliano (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055399/). This 1962 authentic portrayal of the Giuliano story depicts the unclear and complicated twists between governmental and police powers, the independent party and the Mafia in the Sicily of the 1940s that culminates with the death of Salvatore Giuliano. In a later visit, my cousin Riccardo downloaded the movie on my laptop and explained to me it was a cinematic first in using flashback in a story. I can’t confirm that fact, but I can say the movie’s neo-realist style makes it well ahead of its time. In the trial scene in the movie that follows the death of Giuliano, there is a defendant with the name “Gaglio," which I got a kick out of. There were good odds a Gaglio was in the Giuliano gang, since so many Gaglios can be found in Montelepre.
It was time to head farther up the mountain in the countryside to a place called Calcerame where cousin Vita and Pino had their country home. In southern Italy and especially in Sicily, families often have a second home higher up the mountain to spend summers growing produce and maintaining the olive trees for the fall harvest. The air is much cooler, and the nights give a great relief from the heat of the city. An already growing crowd of family members greeted Tony and me with hugs and kisses. Giovanna’s friend, Maria, who taught Italian at Auburn University, Alabama, for 20 plus years before returning to Sicily, translated all communication between our Sicilian cousins and us strictly English-speaking American cousins.
Pino first showed me his vast garden filled with fruit trees and vegetable plants. There were various vegetables, grapes, fruit and nut trees, out-of-this-world basil plants and other herbs, and, of course, tomatoes. Hanging braided heads of garlic and figs, and tomatoes drying out on racks, soaked up the sun. Inside, the women cousins prepared the feast, an array of homemade dishes. It was the typical Italian menu: homemade wine, meats, cheeses, nuts, and figs to start for our antipasto. Next, we all sat in the kitchen for the oncoming courses; primo piatto, fresh homemade macaroni with a tomato sauce that exploded with flavor served with fresh ricotta cheese. Believe me when I tell you, you have never tasted ricotta cheese until you have been to Italy.
Secondo was a tasty breaded chicken cutlet, sautéed veal, and a delicious fresh salad. They passed plenty of Sicilian bread—you know the kind—a hard crust covered with sesame seeds encasing a soft spongy white center. Then, we ate huge slices of ruby red, mouth-watering watermelon; a truly Sicilian feature to serve fruit after the meal and before the dessert.
Dolce was an amazing experience, because I got to participate in its making. The ladies had fun teaching me how to make a tasty fried dough dessert called Sfince di prescia. The dough is prepared over the stove with 1 kilo of flour, 1 liter of milk, 1 liter of water, 3 tablespoons of oil, 8 tablespoons of sugar, a packet of saffron, and a dash of cinnamon. Cook and stir quickly the mixture over the hot stove. Next, dump the hot dough onto a wooden cutting board and roll into long ropes. Cut ropes into smaller pieces and twist into a ribbon-like shape. Drop the formed dough into hot cooking oil until golden brown, then toss into a bowl of sugar and cinnamon to coat the outside. This, combined with Sicilian gelato, brought an end to the best meal experience I’ve ever had.
The evening was approaching fast. We still had another dinner to prepare for our British friends. That’s right! We just consumed about 3,500 calories and then had to drive down the mountain to our apartment to consume another dinner. No problem! That food was so good! During that second dinner, my cousin, Luciana, joined us for gelato. Our new British friends were clergy guides taking priests and ministers to the various sites, so they could help us communicate with Luciana. When we said goodbye, Luciana said, “The next time you come to Palermo, you stay with me in the home your parents stayed when I was a child.”
After that night, Luciana became the link to my Montelepre family for years to come.
It was an incredible day, an experience that Tony and I that will never forget. But, the trip wasn’t over. Our new family insisted we come back, so we agreed to return after a short tour of Sicily, plus a visit to Siracusa. This ancient city turned into one of my most favorite cities in all of Italy. What is not to love about this beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Site City? The Greeks, Romans and Byzantine left their mark, as well as the Saracens and the Bourbon dynasties. Imagine a cathedral constructed with the remains of a 2,500 year-old Greek temple, a huge Greek theater carved out of the rock facing the East toward Greece on the Mediterranean horizon, and the Island of Ortygia with its collection of interesting buildings, shops and markets, all within a day’s visit reach. You’ll want to stay longer. Walking the streets and dining at one of Siracusa’s authentic Sicilian restaurants is an event in itself.
Our next stop was Agrigento and the Valley of the Temples, a Greek archeology site that includes the remains of seven temples, all in Doric style. Another UNESCO site, Agrigento is one of the most outstanding examples of Greater Greece art and architecture in all of Italy. Sicily is clearly a place to discover historical treasures as well as cultural and culinary riches.
We returned to Montelepre and were greeted to a royal welcoming at a local restaurant. More than 30 guests treated us to, you guessed it, another multi-course meal. This time I was showered with gifts of wine and Sicilian mementoes as family members poured into the restaurant. It was a wonderful meal and Maria returned to translate our numerous conversations. One of my cousin’s husband said something to me twice, at which point Maria turned her head and said, “Sicilian men repeat themselves a lot!” Surprised, I said to Maria, “Oh my God, my ex-wife hated when I did that!” I guess you really don’t know who you are until you see where you come from.
Our adventure to Italy ended the following day. For me, that simple inconsequential decision to take a vacation changed my life forever. I was so moved by the experience of reconnecting with my family in Sicily after two generations had passed, that I made the pledge to return for as many years as possible to rebuild our family relations.
I started my tour business as a result of this goal and the tours I created over the past six years are based on the emotions and feelings I experienced on that first encounter with the family my great, great Aunt Vita created. I’ve since introduced three of my four siblings to our cousins. I can honestly say I’ve experienced a great joy from the love I’ve received from my cousins over the past eight years and look forward to including them in many years to come.
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