My Town transcript
- [Narrator] The Festa of the Madonna of Light is celebrated in Hingham, Massachusetts one week after the same festa in Italy. Every year, at the end of August, immigrants return to Palermiti for the feast in honor of the town's patron saint. This day in Hingham is for those who could not be in Palermiti.
- [Narrator] Southern Italians have been immigrating to the United States for 100 years. Traditionally, immigrants ties to their paese or town are stronger than their connections with Italy. For Palermitesi, the festa is a day that brings paesani together. It is a way of going home.
- This festa is almost everything. We keep our tradition so alive, and doesn't matter what happen in the future, okay? I don't think... Whatever happen in the future, this festa is here.
- We do nothing but carry the traditions that our ancestors started. They came from Palermiti, a small town in Calabria, and beside their suitcases, they brought the faith of the Madonna. They brought with them the traditions from the little town that we come from, and they carry all those years, and we try to do the same they did.
- And a man from Palermiti tried to get off, and it came right off, but they couldn't decide who it would go to. So they put the picture on a cart pulled by oxen, and they just sent it on its way.
- [Michael] And wherever it stopped, the Madonna would be their patron of the city, and it stopped in Palermiti, and they have that original painting right in the church in Palermiti.
- So when we was a kids, it was very bad for us. We have no future. I got to learn to tailor over here, you know, but with no money, no nothing until you big, and then when you know something, you have to go in a big town to work. That's what I did. I work over here until 20 years for nothing just to learn, and then I go to city to work little bit, and they pay me.
- Now, you know, between the money coming in from people for the immigrant, everybody's building houses, and there's this job for everybody, you know, the carpenter work and the brick layer works, the electricians got job, and there's a lot of money you know, there is a lot of money around, and when I was kids, most of the, you know the people living in town that was living on the field, there wasn't many--much, you know, business, and there was no money around. They used to pay... The pay was like a exchange day for work. You know, you work for me one day, and I will work for you another day.
- I came over here, you know, for two years with the school to start English at the UMass University. After, you know, I got married and start work and bought a house, and I heard, you know, that this business was for sale. So, you know, I got myself into the bakery business. The first time that I move out of town of Palermiti, I was six years old. I was just at the beginning of the elementary school, and since then, you know, did all my study, all my schools, in northern part of Italy, and we used to go to south of the village, just, you know, the month of August, you know, for vacation. I always, you know, in back of my mind, was always the idea, you know, to go back and live in my town maybe because, you know, something inside, you always, you know, try to go back where you were born.
- [Narrator] Some Palermitesi return to their town, while others keep their customs in a foreign land. This exchange brings a small corner of Calabria to the United States and a little bit of America to Italy.
- [Michael] I live in New York City in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York which I miss so much.
- [Interviewer] So it's a regular thing to come back for the festa or...
- Yeah, you know, it's either here or in Boston. There's a festa, too.
- [Interviewer] So you've been to both the festas?
- Yes, either here or Boston. Every year, we celebrate. You know, it's not like every other festa around here, you know? This one's like a certain important one 'cause it's a Madonna, you know, and they say she came out of a rock, and you know, when I hear things like this from my grandparents, I, you know, I tend to get really excited about it, you know? It just means that I come back to the old country, and I, you know, meet all the old people and everybody.
- [Narrator] Tradition and family ties make people seeking better opportunities abroad hope that someday they will return home, even their children leave the United States to live in the old country. As a result of this reverse immigration, families are split between Italy and America.
- If we have to come back from home, from the place where I lived for so many years to come go live in Rome or live in Milan or Bologna, I stay in this Boston, believe me, 'cause the city, it's a city. It's confusion no matter where you go, but a small town is better. It's quieter anyway. It's peaceful, really.
- So I live in New York, and when I saw New York, they make me a wrong, I mean they give me the wrong impression. There was dirty. Yeah, the airport, the people, asking for five cents, 10 cents, and I said to my brother, which he come to pick me up, said to my brother, "If they make us like this, forget it. I'm going back. Leave the luggage on the boat, and I want to go back to the old country."
- My only problem was because the kids with the drugs problem there
- -we had there--with the drugs and delinquency, really, generally, I was scared.
- After the couple years, the first two years, it's really tough, but have to. Yeah, you start learn some words. You start making some money. You start buying a car, houses, and you start to like. All the way, you got in mind to go back.
- In this country, at least, you know, the way I live after I finish work, I just, you know, just go home and, you know, stay with the kids just in the house, watch TV. There's no, you know, much of a social life, and in Palermiti, mostly is, you know, in the evening, we all getting together in the square, and you know, they either play cards or they get a cup of coffee, and they talk about, you know, all different things.
- And then I went to United States, and started to work, and that was a better life.
- I might have been born in New York, but I feel very, very Italian, more Italian than I do American.
- I teach them to love this city, you know, my town in Italy, and when she started to go to the college, I had to stop because she started to talk bad about this country, yeah, no, for the America, and one time, I say, "No, now, you gotta stop because this your country now. You born here. We're not supposed to say America no good because you are Americans."
- Over there, with a different background, They, well, it's... They treat you differently because you're maybe Italian and with a different background. Then coming here, they treat you like you're an American, and it's like you don't really belong anywhere.
- I work very hard, and I try to put some money on the side. I fix my house over here, buy another condominium, and I give it to my Mary. So this way, I settled with them, and, now, I finish. I got this house here to live over here when I retire.
- I always wanted to come back here and stay here for good. I feel, I don't know. I miss the States a lot. I have to admit that, but I always had a passion inside, deep inside that I wanted to come back.
- So Mary, 1982, we went back, and she marry Enzo. So now, they got each other, and they got a baby. So I come over here, come back. Now, maybe another couple of years, I come back, and I retire over here because I reached 62.
- To me, I always had the ambition to-- someday, if I ever move back in Palermiti, I will open up a flower shop since there's nothing, you know, not like that over here. And I did. So people like the way--I work the American way. I do all my design the American way, and people like what, what I'm doing. It's not that we come back here, and we forget, you know we forget the way we lived in America, no. We live exactly the same way, and if we have to build a house, we build house the American way. I'm thinking of a swimming pool in the back of the house someday. You know, it's, you know, something new. You know, something in the town, and we'll see.
- [John] The day of the feast over here, family get together here in Summerville, and we follow the day step by step. We sit at the table, and we say, "All this time, people in church celebrate mass," and maybe 15, 20 minutes later, we say, "Now, the Madonna's ready to be carried out the church," and we follow the Madonna, all the whole procession, all over time, step by step.
- [Mary] The Madonna is part of us. To us, it's not a statue that's in a church. She actually moves us. We believe in her, and we look up to her anytime we have problems.
- [Mimo] I believe, you know, with the time, some of them, some, you know, the tradition, they disappear. I strongly believe the tradition that never disappear in town will be, you know, the feast for the Madonna.
- [Joseph] Even if we away 100 years, our hometown in our heart is always Palermiti.
