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Collected by Felicia Romano McMahon. Christmas Eve, 1989; Rutland, Vermont.

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My mother’s name was Enrica Cavicchi. Her mother died at the age of thirty-seven during childbirth, and she had to really raise the little brother. Of course in those days they had to work, they had to work in the wheat fields [in Bologna, Italy], so she used to bring the baby with her. That was her brother, yes, but she was fourteen, and then when her father remarried, the second wife had her own children because she was a widow, and she was mean because she [my mother] had another brother and another sister, and of course the little baby brother. But she was the oldest, then the brother, then the sister, and then the baby. Alberta Romano tends Tom the Tomato, her favorite potted plant, at Maple Downs Retirement Community in Fayetteville, New York. Photo: John M. McMahon. And so when she married . . . I don’t think my mother would have come to the United States if she had had a happy life there, but the stepmother was mean, just ignored, because of course they weren’t her children. So when she married . . . when my father [Alberto Accorsi] came to the United States, of course, he came first during World War I because a cousin was over here, and he said the opportunities were really great and that they could have a better life than over in Italy. Then he sent money over to her for transportation, and my two brothers were born there. They were like two and three or three and four, and so she came over by boat during World War I, and all of them were seasick practically all the way and landed in Boston. In the meantime, her husband, my father, had been here a year, and then he had decided he didn’t like it here and had written to her not to come and that he was going to return to Italy, but she never got that letter. That’s how she got to the United States. Of course he wasn’t there to meet her because he didn’t expect her, and of course she had been seasick and didn’t speak English, and so she was finally able to get on a train from Boston to Petersboro, New Hampshire, and when she got there my father still wasn’t there to meet her, so—the poor little kids, of course, you can imagine—so there was a man there who could speak French, and her dialect has got French so she could speak some French, so she was able to communicate with him and tell him she couldn’t understand what happened. And she did have his address, and they had the phone at the train station—the old-fashioned kind that you crank—and so he called, and where he was living these people had a phone which was a good thing, and said, “Your wife is here from Italy with your two children,” and he said, “No, it isn’t true. I’ve written to them that I’ve made arrangements to return to Bologna.” So he said, “I’m going to put her on,” so that’s how they came, and then they lived out in the country in West Petersboro there, and he was into truck farming. He was going around selling vegetables. He started out that way and then they did finally have an Italian grocery store, selling the Italian foods in Haverhill, Mass. There just wasn’t any money because he bought this enclosed truck, so Christmas Eve, the children upstairs, their parents had the shoe factory, so they had some money, but they got all these gifts, and we got nothing. I’ll always remember that. I couldn’t understand. The following year there was a little bit of money, and I did get a doll—one of those porcelain dolls—and your Aunt Lunda got a little carriage. We each got one thing. But she took out my doll one day—of course, she didn’t think, she was younger than I was—and didn’t tie it in or anything, and of course the doll fell and just smashed to pieces, and I never got another one. I learned to sew in high school, when I went to West Rutland High in Vermont, and I remember that I learned to crochet, and when I married, I crocheted my own doilies and afghans. I had a doily on every table and even on the arms of the chairs. Everybody made afghans then, and later, that was when I started, I really liked crocheting teddy bears and knitting dolls dressed in old-time clothes. Those were knitted, too. I gave them to my children and to the children of my friends. It’s important to make the toys soft and the eyes should be sewn on so they don’t come off, because babies put everything in their mouths. I see dolls today, and the eyes are plastic, and a baby could swallow them—you have to be careful because they don’t know. I always make sure my toys are safe for babies, you know.

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