Born Minus
From Shoeshine Boy to News Publisher
An Italian-American Journey
Armand Miele
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Armand Miele
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used, reproduced or transmitted by any means without written permission, except for brief excerpts for the purpose of review.
Dedication
To my wife, Ofelia Esguerra Miele, M.D. She gave me a chance by believing in me, and by letting me believe in her. If I didn’t have my wife, I’d have been gone a long time ago. She saved me many times, literally. I owe her my life.
We’ve been married for over 40 years and are still in love, even though she was and still is too good for me. She married me, a construction worker, and I hope that she still believes she wasn’t crazy to do it. We made it work together. Without her, there’s no way we would have what we do today.
This book will tell it all.
St. John the Baptist Church, Yonkers, NY, May 10, 1967
Table of Contents
Foreword by Dylan Skriloff, Editor-in-Chief of the Rockland
Part One: Born Minus, a Memoir
Childhood: Gifts from the Great Depression
The Draft: American Dreams Promised and Lost
Ofelia: A Love So Far Above Me
An Open Coffin: The Saving Grace of Boiled Rice
The Battle to Breathe: Boots Saves Me Again and the Ultimate Loss
A Ripe Old Age: Party Politics and the News
Government For the People, or Before the People?
Your Vote: An American Liberty, Not a Ticket to a Party
If the Majority Doesn’t Rule, Who Does?
~ Introduction ~
My father began writing “Born Minus” about 10 years ago, early in his 70s. Before that, his life stories and political opinions had existed only as long conversations around the dinner table, over a glass or two of wine; or as heated discussions with his friends, colleagues, and later, political acquaintances. I know that even at this point in his life, well into his 80s, my father is not done arguing or telling stories, nor will he be content to simply hand this book to people, whether they agree with him or not. Instead, he will keep talking, prefacing every story and argument with a withering look, and saying, “Haven’t you read my book?” So, reader, consider yourself one of the lucky ones who will be able to say, “Why, of course!”
Whether you avidly follow current events, enjoy new perspectives on history, or just appreciate a great story and good old common sense, there is something here for you.
You can read Part One, “Born Minus”, from beginning to end, as a story, since the chapters are arranged chronologically; but each chapter can also be read on its own. While the author has been as accurate as possible, keep in mind that the first part of this book is based mostly on his memories, and the memories of those close to him. In certain parts of the memoir, where a name was forgotten, the editors have invented names, for ease of reading. Events, however, have not been invented. The author hopes that you will accept the stories in the spirit that they were first told to family and friends, as parables for life’s lessons, based on his personal experiences.
-Part Two of this book, “Miele’s Musings,” collects a portion of the author’s writings for the Rockland County Times. The chapters of Part Two, also, can either be read in order, with each central theme building on the last, or separately, allowing the reader to focus on a particular set of ideas. The author has given the most recent publication dates, but many of these Musings have been reprinted several times, in varying forms, since 1998. They represent a lifetime of American experience and thought.
I join my father in hoping that you enjoy this book. It was a labor of love, not only for his family, but for all of you readers, who he feels privileged to address.
Donna Lee Miele
July 5, 2011
~ Foreword ~
By Dylan Skriloff
The story of Armand Miele is the story of America - one man’s fascinating journey through the landscape of the real American dream.
Some may believe the term American dream is a cliché, but it’s more than that - it’s a truth.
For Armand Miele, that truth means every American must be determined to fight and win, to make his or her own path in living life, and ultimately to enjoy success.
If that isn’t a value we can all agree on, I don’t know what is. Though Miele grew up in the Depression-era Bronx, where people had to struggle just to put food on the table and shoes on their feet, today’s society should value the same determination to survive and succeed.
In fact, I’m convinced that if more Americans would adjust their attitudes to the old-fashioned and hard working one that Armand Miele preaches, many of our problems would be put behind us in an instant.
I’ve certainly come closer to achieving those hard-working ideals since I’ve met Armand Miele, who was my direct boss for about a year and a half at the Rockland County Times. Miele is currently publisher emeritus of the newspaper, which he rescued from bankruptcy in the mid-1990s and which has been in existence since 1888. He took this role after a long and illustrious career in real estate, and a taste of politics, to assist in his efforts to reform Rockland County.
As editor-in-chief of this paper, I have been put right into the mix of everything going on in Rockland, and with Miele’s good counsel largely to credit, have done quite well. I couldn’t have done it without learning to push forward.
I often think of a time a few years back when I was helping Miele move some of our newspaper boxes, machines that dispense newspapers for 50 cents. Though I was young and in perfect health, I would groan to myself every time I had to pick up one of the heavy machines. Due purely to mental whining, it would take me a while to move even one. Then I saw Miele, 78 years old at the time and in less than the best shape due to many health issues, pick up the same heavy machine and move it right across the street in half the time it took me. Instantly I said, “Wow, that old guy knows how to get things done. I’d better shape up.”
Miele has lived through a lot of history and doesn’t mind sharing what he’s seen, as you will see in this book. His story will give you a taste of what life for a struggling Italian family was like in the 1930s. You will gain a window into the old Italian culture and how Miele transitioned to the American culture. You will feel the old streets of New York City. You will see, through Miele’s life story, what universal values bind Americans together - and you will also hear his frustrations with those who are undermining our values!
Miele is famous in Rockland County for publishing his editorials known as “Miele’s Musings,” a compilation of which comprises the second half of the book. In his Musings, Miele takes a no-holds barred approach to his audience, unleashing exactly what is on his mind and how he sees things. Because he has so been so active in business and life, Miele’s opinions are usually informed by his own experiences, adding an extra air of authority.
You won’t always agree with Miele’s Musings, but they will definitely fascinate you! You will often see conservative political thinking in action, in a way that is not portrayed in the mainstream media.
What I find most interesting about Miele is that he doesn’t give up, he sees things through and is persistent. If you knew him, you’d say the same. He’s a fighter, often an underdog, “born minus” as the title of the book says, but he’s pulled some surprising victories from his sleeves.
In Rockland County, Miele was the driving force behind removing the illegal Spring Valley toll on I-287. The state had no jurisdiction for a toll in Rockland and with little help from local politicians, Miele was able to do the research and legwork to have the toll removed. Recently, an analyst from the County Executive’s office told me he believes the removal of the toll has added as much as $1 billion to the economy of Rockland County in the last 15 years. It makes sense. Think of all the time Rocklanders have saved and all the traffic jams that have been avoided.
Miele fought to defeat school budgets he found wasteful, to build a new county courthouse in record time after years of delays and even to have smoking regulated more tightly in restaurants, so non-smokers did not have to suffer. He’s run for New York state assembly, Ramapo town supervisor and Rockland county executive. He helped found the Village of Montebello, where he still lives with his wife, next door to their daughter, son-in-law, and five grandchildren. In Clarkstown, he’s known as the man who built up and managed several properties on Main St. in Nanuet.
As you will read in the pages of this book, he’s also battled health issues that have plagued him much of his life. Yet those health issues did not stop him from being a good father and husband. Miele was on the cutting edge for treatment of celiac disease, when in his early 40s the simple gluten sensitivity nearly cost him his life. He survived cancer at a relatively early age, and then later he struggled through diabetes, kidney failures and many other challenges, but his mind always remained focused on getting things done for his family, his business and Rockland County.
Miele has one more fight he’d like to win, and most Rocklanders would like to jump in the ring and help him out. Get the Metropolitan Transit Authorty (MTA) out of Rockland County! The MTA taxes Rockland for services it doesn’t even use, basically grabbing $60 million a year in excess tax money out of the pockets of suburbanites and putting it in the pocket of Manhattan residents. ??In the last three years, since the infamous MTA payroll tax was proposed and passed (the eighth tax in Rockland to pay for MTA services), the issue has become a cause célèbre…but if you look at Miele’s Musings editorials you will see he has been talking about the problem for years.
Read this story of Miele’s life, from his youth growing up in the Bronx straight through to his career as a successful businessman and influential figure in Rockland County politics, and you will get a taste of America and a taste of life. The book is full of amusing anecdotes about life, love and work.
Miele had no special connections with high society, did not come from a privileged family, and did not even have the resources to attend college, yet he made himself into a genuine success story through the intrinsically American characteristics of hard work and a fighter’s attitude. If he can do it, so can you.
Enjoy the book, I know you will!
Dylan Skriloff
Associate Publisher and Editor-in-Chief-Rockland County Times
~ Part One ~
Born Minus, A Memoir
Clockwise from Upper Left: My mother and my brother Augie pose for a passport picture, circa 1923; Gene Crescenzi and me at P.S. 74 in the Bronx, 1941; my shoebox.
Childhood
Gifts from the Great Depression
The Great Depression is notorious in American history for bread lines, ruined fortunes, and rampant poverty. But this isn’t the whole story. For my family of Italian immigrants, escaping the devastation of World War I, America was still a land of promise. The Bronx tenement I was born in, three flights up from Hughes Avenue in December of 1928, was one of many occupied by the Italian-American families that became the backbone of the Arthur Avenue neighborhood. For us, the Great Depression was not only a time of struggle, but of holding onto a decent lifestyle through practicality, and of gratitude for the chance to start anew.
My earliest memory is going up those three flights of stairs to our apartment. Holding my mother’s hand, I would climb one flight and think I was at the top, then get turned around to climb the next flight. And that wasn’t even the top; we had to turn and climb one more before arriving at our doorstep. The stairs seemed endless.
When we could afford to move to a first floor apartment on 188th Street, my parents must have felt we had really arrived. That December was the first Christmas I remember having a tree. It was only a little bush on a table, but it was complete with lights, a real spectacle for boys like my brother Frank and me. I had just turned three, and Frank was only a year older. Jimmy and Augie, our older brothers, were five and six.
Christmas Eve, Frank got me out of bed to sneak a last look at the tree. “Armand,” he said.
“Yeah, Frank?”
“Maybe he’ll come, huh?”
“Maybe?”
“Yeah, let’s wait and see!”
“Okay!”
I would do anything my older brothers asked of me, especially Frank. But I guess I couldn’t stay awake, because later, back in my bed, I woke up to a loud bang from the kitchen. I heard footsteps, a whistle, and I swear, I thought I heard the reindeer talking to each other in Italian. “’Zite! Be quiet!” I wanted to go peek at Santa but I wasn’t brave enough to leave my bed, where I slept with brothers on either side, and eventually I drifted back to sleep.
Christmas morning, I woke to the sound of shouting and, just like every morning, to the smell of my mother’s strong Italian coffee. I jumped out of bed and ran to the living room.
It was Augie and Jimmy shouting, running around, and waving some muddy-looking scraps of paper that turned out to be dollar bills. Frank crept out from under the stove; he slept there when it was cold. He ran in with big eyes and pulled the papers down from the tree, handing one to me.
“It’s a dollar, Armand! It’s money! He came! He came!” We yelled and jumped up and down like our brothers.
My parents, at the breakfast table, told us to be quiet, “’Zite!”, but with smiles on their faces.
And then Jimmy shouts, “Pop, I saw you put the money on the tree. I saw you. It wasn’t Santa, it was you. Santa didn’t come! There is no Santa.”
Well, that was it. My father’s smile disappeared. He said nothing. In fact in all the years after, he never brought it up. But we never received a Christmas gift from him again.
This was our first lesson in honoring the dollars that my father earned, of which my mother kept track to the penny, with the work of his back, as a day laborer and stonecutter. My brothers and I understood without being told that bringing in the daily meal was a struggle.
As we got older, we learned to never ask for the “Americano” things that other children had: milk and cookies, baseballs and bats, picture books. We learned to take care of whatever we owned. We learned to pay our own way. spring of 1936, when I was seven years old. Winter was supposed to be over, but the coming spring had brought only slush and mud, not a real thaw. My sneakers were almost worn out. All winter I lined them with newspaper to cover the holes in the soles, but there were so many now that I came home with my feet wet and cold as ice almost every day.
We followed Pop to the shoe store, but he kept on walking.
“Pop, wait! We passed it,” one of us said. It was probably Jimmy, the only one who would ever speak up to my father. “No,” Pop said. “We got to go to the other place, to get the good shoes, with arches. Shoes for church.”
“Church? What for?”
“You boys get your Communion soon. Dopo la Pasqua, after Easter.”
For four pairs of shoes, Pop laid out four five-dollar bills. Who knows how long he had to work to make that money - with food and rent to pay for, it might have taken him months to save $20. The sweat that came down his face as he put down the money was like blood. I didn’t dare ask for sneakers too. The next day, Frankie and I started saving up for pairs of two- dollar sneakers, which we bought ourselves a month later, in the shoe store closer to home. We couldn’t wear the church shoes in the street every day. Our mother would have killed us.
My brothers and I made our money cleaning other people’s shoes. Although our neighborhood was strictly working class, many Manhattan office workers lived nearby. They took the train down to the city every day, and they relied on the street kids for shoe-shines.
I made my first shoebox when I was seven, right after school let out. It was a little wooden box that I filled with brushes, rags, and shoe polish. It had a stand for a customer’s foot on top, and a strap to carry it over my shoulder. My brothers by this time were shining shoes every day to make money for my mother’s groceries, and why shouldn’t I?
It was a relief to be outside, even in the street, in the summer. The tenement got hot as anything. All winter we froze in the bedrooms, because the steam heat went only to the kitchen and the living room. The winter that I turned seven, from December of 1935 to the thaw in 1936, was the coldest in 100 years. By July, though, we had to go out to the fire escape to get any rest. With four boys in the bed there was no way you could sleep. There was no breeze in the bedroom, even with the front door, the street door, and the windows wide open, all night. The tenements kept out the rain, but that’s about it.
Sleeping outside, I woke at dawn. Augie, who my father relied on to get the rest of us to work, would already be at the table, dunking a hunk of stale bread into coffee. Frank might be there too, falling asleep over his cup. Ma would be feeding Catherine, the baby, a little egg from a spoon.
“Come on, baby,” Ma would say in English, and then in Italian, “Mangi’un po’, Catarin, come on, mangi.”
Jimmy might be standing in front of the open icebox. Ma would shout, “Close that ice box, the ice will melt!”
The icebox was my mother’s single fancy, modern thing. She wasn’t really worried about the ice. She shouted because there wasn't any food in the icebox. I’m the one who had to bring the milk pail to the grocer to get our milk ration, and I remember how quickly it would empty.
If I was lucky that morning, Catherine would push Ma’s spoon away, and Ma would let her down from the chair. Ma would smile and wave me over. “Come on, Armand, you eat. She don’t want no more.”
I hurried to the table to get the leftover egg, beaten with sugar and a little sweet wine. It was delicious. There were never enough eggs to make for everyone; my mother only made one for the baby.
Ma turned on the radio and sang in broken English as she put away the cups and plates. “Be sure it’s-a true, when you say I love-a you, it’s a sin-a, to tell a lie…” She learned most of her English this way. Pop learned his on the job.
Pop would have left already, while it was still dark. All the stone cutting and construction jobs were in Manhattan. If he workers ahead of him, and he would be turned away.
In the summer, when construction work started, we boys had to help out on the farm since my father was gone so early. Our farm was an abandoned lot where Pop raised rabbits and chickens, and grew tomatoes and all sorts of vegetables: eggplants, peppers, zucchini and other squashes. For a few years, he grew peaches, too, big and sweet, from a single tree, before the birds discouraged him. We headed to the farm before starting our regular work of shining shoes at the Arthur Avenue Market.
The four of us went out together with our shoeboxes slung over our shoulders. Augie carried the scythe, leading the rest of us to where Pop left the wheelbarrow, loaded with burlap sacks.
We walked the two miles to the farm, passing through the park and the empty lots where the grass grew long. Augie cut it, and the rest of us stuffed our sacks. As we shoved fresh grass into the rabbit cages, Jimmy kept yelling, “Damn these rabbits!”
I don’t know what he had against the rabbits, except that he hated getting dirty while gathering their food. In the winter we fed them whatever vegetable scraps we found in the waste barrels near the Arthur Avenue pushcarts. You couldn’t help getting a little messy, leaning over the barrels and trying to walk on slippery old vegetables and slush. Pop warned us not to feed them celery and parsley, because they would get sick, but Jimmy packed his sack with celery and parsley anyway. He didn’t know that I would go in after him and take it out of the cages.
By the time we finished feeding the rabbits and got back, the market had come alive. The pushcarts were opened up. Each pushcart was actually a little wooden store on wheels, with shelves and even little cabinets for wares. At the end of the day, the pushcarts would line up along the sidewalks, shutters down and locked. During the day, the shutters were wide open, propped up with sticks, and the shelves were loaded with food. The vendors shouted to the passing shoppers, hawking their wares. “Signora, guarda! Milone com’u’fuoco!” Look, madam! Melon like fire! “Mangi’o pesce e morte mai!” Eat fish and never die! “Yimmee-yimmee-apple!” And of course the bean man yelling, “Hey, fazooool!”
Everybody sold something at the market. I started out at only four years old. My hands were too small to hold up the lemons and tomatoes like the pushcart vendors, so I sold shopping bags. I would buy them at two for three cents and sell them for two cents each, a half-cent profit on each bag. I bought a piece of chocolate cake with my first two cents profit, and then gave all the rest of my money to my mother.
Now that I was older, the other boys and I spread out along the sidewalks to shine shoes. It was five cents a shine. Slowly, over the course of the day, my pockets filled enough to jingle.
Once, a man came to me wearing old-fashioned high shoes - but I mean high! - with buttons instead of laces. He had four pennies in his hand, and he asked for a shine.
“It’s a nickel a shine, mister,” I told him.
He tried to chisel me. “Look, son, you don’t understand. A nickel is just one coin. I’ve got four pennies.” He held out the pennies in his hand, like I wouldn’t know the difference between four and five cents. How could he expect me to shine those high shoes for four cents? I could have charged extra!
“A shine is five cents,” I said, and I picked up my shoebox and walked away. I heard him cussing behind my back, in English, calling me an ungrateful WOP. I didn’t let it bother me, though. There were certain people you had to keep away from in the street. Once, a burly policeman caught me, called me a dirty Guinea, and kicked my shoebox in the street. I got to keep my shoebox, because one of the guys from the neighborhood stood up for me and the cop was afraid. But lots of boys had them taken away. Then they would have to go down to the station to pick them up.
At the end of the day I was proud to have two pockets full of nickels to bring home to my mother. It didn’t occur to me, when I started out shining shoes, to keep any money for myself, so I was shocked when I first saw Jimmy knot some nickels into his handkerchief, then throw it in the gutter. “Jimmy, what are you doing!”
"Ssh!" he said. "I'll come back and get it before they clean the streets tomorrow.”
“What do you get with that money anyway?” Augie said to Jimmy. “Cigarettes? You don’t even smoke.” “What do you care?”
I never kept money from my mother, but I learned later that throwing it in the gutter was the only way to keep it without lying to Ma. She kept our earnings in a jar over the sink for the groceries, and no amount of asking would get her to give us back a penny. That grocery money was too precious. I asked her for a nickel, once. I don’t remember why I wanted it, but I wanted it bad - I wasn’t above throwing a tantrum, lying down and kicking the floor. That nickel was mine! I had worked for it! But she wouldn’t give it to me. The milk pail was empty, and there were mouths to feed. Even if she herself went without, which I now know she often did, she couldn’t give up a nickel.
At the end of the day, when we came around the corner of our block, we could see Ma in the kitchen window, rolling and cutting the pasta dough. Later, as Pop came down the street, she would throw the pasta into the water she had simmering on the back of the stove. The pasta would be done by the time he walked into the apartment. She’d pour the tomato and meat gravy over it, and we’d eat.
Dinnertime was the only time that we saw my father during the day. He was very quiet, tired, I guess, after working hard all day. But sometimes, he mentioned memories from World War I. He was taken prisoner by the Germans while fighting for the U.S., and was sick in prison for a while. My brothers and I kept still for a moment to listen.
“They use the gas,” he would say, with a grimace. But he never told anything beyond that. He didn’t describe “The Horrors of Gas Warfare,” like they did in my scrapbook newspaper clippings. I also had pictures I found from Armistice Day, when World War I ended, and everyone in New York City celebrated in the streets. I only learned years later about the helplessness of the Italian infantry against German artillery and gas attacks in the battle of Caporetto in 1917. My father never gave us specifics; I could only wonder what exactly he had suffered. Instead, he would go on to a story from the old country that we already knew, like the one about Zi’ Angelo selling his old donkey to the gypsies, then buying it back by mistake.
The talk at dinner was all in Italian. We didn’t speak it outside the neighborhood, since the other children in school would make fun of us. But on the other hand, you didn’t speak English outside of school, because then your friends called you Americano.
My parents never really got used to America. They kept the old ways. My brothers and I thought they were out of date, and would never understand the way things worked here. To get his news, for instance, my father wouldn’t pay the two cents to get a newspaper and read it at home, like the Americans. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to find a paper on the sidewalk in the market for free, like I did, but he didn’t do that either, or even listen to the radio, like my mother. Instead, every night after dinner, my father had to take his walk in the neighborhood, no matter the weather. He visited with the other old men, saying hello, having a cup of coffee or a cigarette in the rain, in the snow, in the dark. They never looked like they were saying anything important. Often they didn’t even look like they were having fun. Yet that’s how he got his news. That’s how he learned of Roosevelt winning the election, how he heard about new jobs coming up, how he found out who was a racketeer and who was an honest man. He didn’t tell us that life was like this all over Italy; it had been for hundreds of years, still is, and may still be for hundreds of years into the future.
We didn’t know it, but these men were helping each other to learn what was needed for their families to struggle and survive in this new country. These men with their broken English, holding on to the old-fashioned Italian ways, were the reason we could sleep on hot summer nights with our doors and windows wide open.
My mother wouldn’t accompany my father on his walks. There was the cleaning up to do, the baby to put to bed, the baby to put to bed, the diapers or other laundry to put to soak in the bathtub. Everything was done by hand. It all had to be done before Pop came home ready for bed, because the minute he walked in the door all the lights must go out. During the day, my mother went to the market with the other women, and might invite them in for a cup of coffee, always making her friends laugh. But as soon as Pop was home, he laid down the law.
My mother came from Bisaccia, a small village in Italy, in the mountains east of Naples. She arrived at Ellis Island in 1924 at the age of 19, along with my brother Augie, who was nine months old at the time. My father, who came from the even smaller village of Andretta, was there to meet her. They had married in Italy, and he had gone ahead to set up house and find work.
Who knows how my parents came to be married! The merchants lived in Bisaccia, while Andretta was a village of farmers. My father was always the one with the long, serious face. My mother said his whole family looked that way. When we would gather as a family on rainy Sunday afternoons, she pointed out their faces in the slim family album she put together, and in the blurred old photographs they really did all look the same, no smiles on thin faces. How she laughed! She was the only one who could take the serious look off Pop’s face. We played cards on those afternoons, just played, no money involved. My father always had that same serious look on his face, like all the Mieles from Andretta. While he was looking at his cards, my mother and Jimmy would cheat. Pop would pretend he didn’t understand why they were laughing so hard, but then he would smile and shake his head.
When my father came home for bed, he would turn off the lights before anyone else was ready. He might catch my mother while she was still in the middle of changing Catherine, and she would holler, “Lasciala! Leave it!”
“Ed‘u’sprech’,” he’d growl, “It’s a waste.”
“Lasciala!” she’d repeat. “When I’m dead, I’ll sit in the dark!”
***
Some summer mornings, Augie and Jimmy would go out early with Pop, and I’d be on my own with Frankie. I spent most of my time with him. When he was eight years old, and I was seven, we were almost the same size. When we walked together down Arthur Avenue, there was always someone who called me Frank or who called him Armand.
One of those mornings when we were on our own, on our way to the farm, we saw a moving truck stopped at a light on Pelham Parkway, the long straight road that we had to walk for two miles. Frankie blurted out, “Let’s hitch a ride!”
I stared at the bent, rusty bumper that was as high as my chest. Frankie was already climbing on, telling me I had to follow. I knew my mother wouldn’t like it, but we were on our own. I was the little brother, and there was no time to argue.
“It’s only for a mile, or something!”
He told me to hold on to a certain spot. I was supposed to jump off when the truck stopped at the traffic light near the farm. It was okay at first, because the truck didn’t go very fast and Frank was with me, laughing.
Well, of course the traffic light did not turn red. It was green, and the truck didn’t stop. In fact, it sped up. Frankie panicked, shouting at me to let go and jump, which he did. Now it was my turn, but Frankie’s fear had paralyzed me. I didn’t think I could let go.
I woke up in an ambulance about a block from my father’s farm. My mother never found out.
The summer ended not long after that. My father’s vegetable plants died. We went back to school, where the teacher told me that my shirt was the whitest she’d ever seen, and that my mother must work very hard. I didn’t know what to say in response.
Before long the grass in the parks was frozen in the morning, and we went back to the waste barrels on Arthur Avenue to get food for the rabbits, separating out the parsley and the celery - except for Jimmy, who shouted as he shoved the bad food in, “But when are these rabbits gonna die?”
Christmas morning, Frankie woke up under the stove as usual. I think he liked being out in the kitchen where he could look at the little Christmas tree on the table. Frank and I had taken to decorating it ourselves by this time, because Ma was so busy with Catherine and the housework. We had saved up pennies to buy bulbs for the old string of lights.
Compa’ Joe and Zi’ Nettie came for coffee in the afternoon, bringing a newspaper and a dish of cookies. With the coffee my mother put out a little bottle of Anisette that she had made herself. The grownups played cards and told old stories in Italian. The radio was on; my mother sang along with the songs she knew, sometimes getting the others to join in. She set the table with a saucer under every cup, as she learned to do in Bisaccia, when she was a girl and her sister was married to the mayor. The smell of the black Italian coffee and the sweet anisette filled the apartment.
We brothers had to leave one cookie for Catherine, and then we looked at the paper and the funnies. I saved articles for my scrapbook, with titles like, “Mayor Puts a Ban on Artichoke Sales to Curb Rackets” and “Five Nations Promise War Aid to Britain if Italians Attack.” The War article might go next to a photo of Mussolini. The artichoke article, with its photo of Mayor LaGuardia making a speech from the back of a truck at the Bronx Terminal Market, and policemen in the background blowing bugles, might get a place of honor.
That year was the first that I remember going to gather old Christmas trees near the farm, a few days after the holiday. As we walked, we passed pile after pile of trees that people had dragged out of their apartments and left for the garbage men. There must have been hundreds.
My father walked with us. “Look,” he said, “I use these for tomatoes. Li portat’a farm, eh?” And then he went to work. He didn’t say how many trees to gather, or what the old trees had to do with tomatoes, but Augie and Jimmy seemed to know what to do. Frankie and I followed without saying a word.
Augie made sure to drag his first tree close by a bunch of boys hanging around on the sidewalk. “Miele, what are you doing?” one of them yelled.
“Gotta make a pile of these trees at my father’s farm. We’re gonna burn ‘em!”
“Yeah? Can I help?”
“Can I help?”
“Can I help?”
“Sure,” Augie said, and he led them, all dragging trees, to where Pop wanted us to pile them at the farm. It became a competition to see who could gather the most. Before long, we had cleared all the piles for blocks around.
After my father got home from work, we helped him to burn the trees. The dried needles and dead branches made a fast fire that flared up high; that was the fun for us boys in the wintertime, watching the big flames jump into the sky. After the fire died down, we cut away what remained of the branches and piled up the trunks, which were full of sap and didn’t burn as fast. Those would be stakes for the tomatoes.
The stakes would support hundreds of tomatoes next summer. My father always sold the best ones, but saved the rest for my mother to can for the endless pots of tomato gravy. Those pots of gravy got our family through the Great Depression in New York City. We made whatever we could, fixed whatever got broken, spent money only on the necessities. We brothers each had only the basics in clothing. We never had pasta from a box; it was too expensive. And if the chickens didn’t lay eggs, we did without; who was going to pay for eggs at the store? Ma only bought meat when we didn’t have enough chicken or rabbit meat from the farm, and even then, we only got the least expensive cuts. When there was no meat, we ate beans with pasta, pasta fagioli, sometimes for days or weeks on end.
Eleanor Roosevelt pronounced it “pastafazool” on the radio one day: “A family of four can dine on pastafazool, a healthy and hearty dish, for only fifteen cents a day.” My mother cussed her and called her “denti cavall’,” horse teeth. She didn’t like the president’s wife, who was dining on anything she wanted, telling us that we were all right because we had plenty of “pastafazool”.
***
We learned to find our own way. We learned what a dollar was worth: 50 shopping bags, 20 shoe shines. A shoe shine would buy two slices of cake with a little left over for a cup of coffee to share, and 40 shoe shines got you a pair of sneakers.
Would we have been happier if we had been given every comfort? I don’t know. I know a man who grew up an orphan, but slept in a warm bed, got fed and clothed, had toys, trips, games, and a chance to do his school work every night. He always seemed unhappy, even when he had left childhood behind. I woke up cold in the winter as a child, and wore sneakers with holes in the snow. Our breakfast was stale bread every day. The only thing that changed was that we dumped it in coffee, or tea, or Ovaltine, or milk, if we could get it. I didn’t even own a coat. My parents couldn’t give those things to me.
But we were happy. I don’t know if we could have been happier otherwise, and I don’t think it really matters.
My parents did not have the money to give us much in the way of material necessities, but instead they gave us something that no one can buy: the spirit we needed to survive in hard times and to enjoy what we had.
You can’t dwell on hardship or on mistakes. You learn from them. You learn from the past, and you live for the future.
I couldn’t have spoken these words at age seven, but I was able to face an uncertain manhood on the streets of the Bronx because my parents instilled in me a belief in hard work. As I came of age in the 1930s, America left the Depression behind. But we young immigrants from the ghettoes, steeped in family values and prepared for lives of manual labor, were poorly prepared for World War II. The draft was about to come in, reminding us, for better or worse, that we owed our lives to America.
Above right: High school graduation, 1947. Left, Above and Below: in uniform, 1951; with the unit at Camp Roberts, Indiana, 1951.
The Draft
American Dreams Promised and Lost
In 1943, the summer after I turned 14, I worked for Tank Levsky, one of the Kosher butchers on Kingsbridge Road. The Jewish neighborhood was the only place to get a job in a store; Arthur Avenue was still all pushcarts. I had started with Tank at age 11, as a delivery boy, and moved up to working the counter. I did whatever I was asked, even plucking the chickens. The lice were unbelievable! I learned to work fast so they wouldn’t get into my clothes, but some Friday afternoons I still came home scratching. Tank Levsky liked me because I was polite with the customers, and could add the prices in my head quickly, without making a mistake.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the draft took all the working-age young men from the neighborhood, and my brothers and I became little men. We did men’s work, for kids’ pay. Augie and Jimmy started delivering ice and moving furniture even before dropping out of school at 16. Jimmy drove a moving truck, sometimes even out of state, and supervised loading and unloading. I helped my brothers on a few occasions. I remember moving a piano with Augie once. He put his shoulders underneath his side, and I did the same on my side.
“On three, Armand,” he said, “Okay? One, two… three!” and we lifted.
As soon as I was up I sank to my knees. But somehow we got it where it needed to go. We were men before our time. We came home with real money now, not handfuls of nickels.
When Frank and I were not in school or working, we hung out with Joe DiGuardi, who worked at the fruit store down the street from Tank Levsky’s. Joe liked to go to the gym and hang out with the boxers, so Frankie and I went along too.
I could fight, but not like Frank. He had the biggest heart a person could have and backed it up with his long, strong arms. He always found trouble, defending his family and friends, because he loved to fight, rarely lost, and didn’t care if his so- called friends were using him to fight their battles. Fighting to him was the same as someone else eating a plate of pasta - part of a normal, satisfying day.
In junior high, I saw him fight with a broken foot and win.
We were walking to school, with Frankie on his crutches, when he caught sight of a guy who had made trouble for a friend of his. The jerk started to pick on Frankie. “Well, if it ain’t Hopalong!”
Hopalong was the name of a cowboy movie character in those days. The movies were popular, but the kid wasn’t paying Frankie a compliment.
“I gotta get him,” Frankie said to me.
“Are you nuts?” I said. But I saw the look in his eye; he couldn’t just walk by this guy. I said, “Frank, I’ll do it. Let me fight him.”
“Get outta here,” Frank growled, and he threw his crutches at me. He hopped right up to the other guy and called him out. They circled each other for only a few seconds before it was all over. One, two. The other guy went down. Frank hopped back over to me, picked up his crutches with a big, beautiful smile, and we went to school.
Frankie soon became a local celebrity as an amateur boxer.
Somewhere, maybe because of the kid who called him “Hopalong”, he got the idea of wearing a toy gun belt when he entered the ring. They called him “Two-Gun Miele.” On the street they called him “Shorty,” but with great respect. He could knock down any of these so-called tough guys, no matter how big. Like I said, he had long arms. And a big, big heart.
***
In September, I started my first year at Theodore Roosevelt High School. Frankie planned to quit in October when he turned 16, just as Augie and Jimmy had.
My brothers didn’t quit school because they had no brains. We all did well in school, and were considered bright. But high school did not allow enough time for work. It was the same for all the young men in the neighborhood. Work came first, because of the feeling of responsibility for the family. Most everyone I knew was strictly blue-collar.
I began to wonder, though. Why shouldn’t I be able to work in a suit, like a gentleman? Why shouldn’t I graduate high school?
I’d been a straight-A student all through junior high, even though I could never study at home. I got my homework done in the time before classes started at school, or during lunch or recess. I never took a book home, but kept up somehow. One time, a teacher assigned “Moby Dick”. I wouldn’t have minded reading it, but I couldn’t; I worked all afternoon, and in the evening after dinner, Pop turned off all the lights. So when I came to school each day, I asked the other students about the assigned chapters. I got a good score on the exam, just from hearing about the book from others. I scored higher than another boy who, would you believe, raised his hand and asked the teacher, “Why did Miele get a higher score than me? He didn’t even read the book!”
The teacher told him, “If he got a higher score than you without even reading the book, you’ve really got a problem!” And so it went. I always got by, and even did well.
But in my first week at Theodore Roosevelt High I began to run into problems.
One morning in my economics class, the teacher, Mr. Small, started to speak about politics. He loved Franklin Roosevelt. “Your families should thank this great man for leading our country into the future, and vote for him for another presidential term.”
I thought, this man is campaigning, not teaching economics. This is not what I am here to learn.
I had my own ideas about Franklin Roosevelt. Because I was good at math, I’d been doing my father’s taxes every year. I knew how hard he and my brothers worked. On the forms I saw that Roosevelt was taxing some people to 91 percent of their income. Even my father, who only made a few thousand dollars a year, was expected to pay 20 percent of it in income taxes. So I had my reasons for doubting FDR’s handling of the economy, even as a high school kid.
I also felt that Roosevelt had kept us in the War. I read the papers avidly, as young as I was, and I thought that for the teacher to just give one side of things was not right. If he was going to talk about Franklin Roosevelt, he should talk about Thomas Dewey too, and about Wendell Wilkie, whose campaign caravan drove right down Arthur Avenue that summer. Was Franklin Roosevelt coming to the Bronx for our votes? I didn’t think so.
I might have been young, but I insisted on being heard - an attitude that stood me in good stead all my life.
So I stood up and told Mr. Small, “If we are going to talk politics, I would like to give my view.”
He shouted at me to sit down.
I’d learned to show my teachers respect, so I didn’t shout back, but I didn’t sit down right away. “I don’t think Roosevelt is great,” I insisted.
One of the other boys jumped up now. “You’d better take that back!” he yelled.
“I said sit down, Mr. Miele,” Mr. Small said.
“What about him?” I said, pointing to the other guy.
Mr. Small pointed at me. “You’d better worry about yourself, sir,” he boomed.
“Roosevelt is not great!” I repeated.
Now the other student jumped me. A fight broke out. Most of the students seemed to think like the teacher, but some joined in to help me, and it became a brawl. Mr. Small ran out in the hall where he saw the gym teacher passing by, and called him in to break it up.
I thought it was on the street that I’d fight all my battles, and that fighting was something a man did with his fists, but I learned something different during my time at Theodore Roosevelt High School.
After the first trouble with Mr. Small, every economics test I took received a barely-passing mark. I answered all the questions right, but he graded me low on my writing. When I asked him why I got a low mark on one test, he ridiculed me by reading my writing aloud in a mocking way, making the other students laugh.
I thought it was my imagination, but it seemed that certain other teachers also refused to grade my work well. In my homeroom, there was a girl who had a few classes with me, including economics. She always asked me about the homework, and she copied all my notes. She got A’s while I just passed. I couldn’t understand how I could be working so hard and getting such low marks. For the first time I gave up working after school so that I could study.
After midterms, I became convinced that Mr. Small wanted me to fail. There was a student sitting behind me who had been in the Armed Services, but left, for whatever reason. We took our midterm exam. Afterwards, he was all upset; he was sure he’d failed. Mr. Small told him not to get excited, that he’d gotten one of the highest marks in the class.
He tapped me on the shoulder. “Miele!” he said. “I must talk to you.”
I’d never had a conversation with this person, and I wondered why he so urgently wanted to talk to me. When he was able to take me aside, he told me, “Miele, if I got one of the highest marks, you definitely had to have got the highest. I copied everything over your shoulder.”
Guess what - I got one of the lowest marks in the class. That’s right. Mr. Small was a phony. As winter came on, I began to wonder whether it was worth it to struggle so hard.
***
For once, I was not looking forward to Christmas. Augie had been drafted into the Navy, and Jimmy volunteered, although he was only 17. He knew the draft was going to get him in a year anyway, and he figured that he could at least avoid the Army; the Navy, he said, was a cleaner operation. As I’ve said, he didn’t like getting dirty. Yet Augie and Jimmy weren’t unhappy. They were going to serve their country, and that commanded a lot of respect from people. They were finally being treated like the men they were.
Frankie was happy too. He had quit school for good once he turned 16. He had two years before the draft would get him, and hoped that by then the War would be over. He’d been going to the gym a lot with Joe DiGuardi, beating a lot of local boxers and making a little extra money. He put the money into getting a bigger Christmas tree this year. This one reached almost to the ceiling from the little table it stood on. He dressed it with a new string of lights. Underneath it he put Ma’s Christmas present, a new coffee set with saucers, cups, and even matching teaspoons. He had to borrow a little from me to pay for it, which I knew he’d forget to pay back, but I didn’t mind. I was so glad he remembered to get Ma a present.
I seemed to be the only one who felt bad. I was angry about school and lonely because my brothers were growing away from the family. As things got harder at school, I’d seen Frankie and Joe less and less. The economics midterm left me feeling the odds against my graduating like a lead weight. What if I did all this work only to get left behind, either by failing to graduate or by getting drafted? Maybe I should give up school and build my life on the honest, hard work of my back, like my father did, like my brothers were doing.
Frankie urged me to come with him to the gym one Saturday afternoon, a couple of weeks before Christmas, just a few days before my birthday, in fact. He was going to fight one of his rivals. He’d beaten him before, but the other guy had also beaten Frank. It was the kind of thing Frank loved. He couldn’t wait.
We got to the gym to find a crowd not just around the ring, but spilling out the door, with Joe DiGuardi squeezing through to meet us. “Armand! How you been? How’s-a-the-Eengleesh- a?”
We all laughed. That was Joe’s way of asking about school. A lot of the guys joked with me about quitting work to stay in school, “learning to talk good.” Some were not so nice about it, and I had to use my fists to make them back off, but Joe meant well.
“Come on, we’ll be in Frank’s corner.”
Frankie put on his shorts and his gun belt. Joe and I made sure Frank had water, a couple of towels. The spectators were already getting loud.
Frank and his opponent fought well, and the guys watching were having a great time. There were cheers for both fighters, whenever one of them got in a shot. But I wasn’t having a good time. It’s like for the first time, I saw my brother getting hit, and getting hurt.
Frank had been in a million fights, like I’ve said, and at first, he gave as good as he got. But it was a long match, and it began to take its toll.
A minute into the final round, Frank landed his famous left hook. The other guy staggered backward three steps but did not go down.
“The right, Frank, the right!” Joe and I screamed. “Finish him!”
Frank was moving much slower now. He didn’t get in quick to follow up, almost looked like he was waiting for the other guy to come back. In fact, Frank practically stepped into the next shot, a right hook that landed hard on his ear.
“Don’t let him get you, Frank!” Joe yelled. “Uppercut!”
Joe was right; the other guy was not guarding himself well, and was open to a shot to the jaw. But Frank was still lurching sideways, with a look on his face like he was wondering what to do next. The other guy moved forward. Frank didn’t look like he could meet him. At that moment, I couldn’t stand to see my brother go down.
A folding chair went flying into the ring, narrowly missing the other guy’s head.
Did I throw that? I thought.
Suddenly I was in the ring, scrambling for Frank’s opponent, while around me everyone in the gym went crazy. I heard Frank behind me, talking around the mouthguard. “Armand, what are you doing?”
At the same time, I’m yelling. “You get off my brother!”
The other guy backed off right away, and someone grabbed me. Luckily I looked around before I swung at him. It was Joe.
***
After the riot I caused, the boxing match broke up and the police had to clear everyone out of the gym. At least Frankie didn’t lose. But I was still all steamed up, and left to walk home alone while Joe and Frank worked things out with the other boxer.
I had a lot to think about, walking the half-mile home. My two oldest brothers leaving to serve in the Navy. Frank out of school. Me, struggling to fit into the mainstream society at Roosevelt, where I had the strong impression I wasn’t wanted. By the time I reached my block, it wasn’t yet dinnertime, but I had a new plan. I decided it was time to be a man.
I’d heard that there was work in Bridgeport, Connecticut, putting together submarines or pieces of submarines for the Navy, 90 miles away. I had a little pocket money, but a luxury like a train ticket didn’t make sense for such a short trip. I could probably hitchhike it by nightfall. I’d have to swing a job at the submarine factory within the week, before my money ran out.
No matter if the president was keeping us in the War. I was an American, and I wanted to do my part. I was tired of waiting. I pulled my jacket up under my chin, yanked my hat down over my ears, shoved my hands in my pockets, and headed for the Bronx River Parkway.
By dark, I’d just gotten out of the city, and was hitchhiking along the Merritt Parkway, when a police car pulled up. The cop asked where I was from and where I was going. “I’m from the Bronx,” I told him, “and I’m going to work on defense.” But when he asked my age I had to tell him I was 14 years old. Within minutes he’d flagged down a passing car with New York plates, and instructed the man driving to bring me back to the Bronx. I was too cold to say anything on the way back. I put my stiff, frozen hands between my knees and tried hard to keep from shivering. I guessed I’d just have to wait.