Chapter 1
La Mia Famiglia, Mondi
Growing up in a large Roman Catholic Family, spaghetti was an automatic meal two to three times a week. Dad would not venture to new flavors and styles of cuisine. So, it was Spaghetti and Meatballs, Rigatoni and Meatballs, Spaghetti and Italian Sausage, Lasagna, Spaghetti and Chicken Cacciatore, but mostly Spaghetti and Meatballs. Fried chicken and "leather steak" were Dad's American favorites on the days off from pasta.
Mama Madeline, let the sauce with seasonings simmer at least six hours or it wasn't the real thing with the right flavor. Hers was the sauce of mountain villages and the working class. Nonna, Grandma Antonia Mondi, age three, immigrated to America in the late 1890s from Napoli to New York with her Mother Bisnonna, Maria Piccoli. Grandma Antonia married Dominic Mondy and delivered 13 bambini in Pennsylvania.
Nonna Grandma Antonia shared her recipe with my Mama Madeline. Nonna passed on the Old-World Italian recipe thick in tomatoes, to my mom, Madeline. All day and into the evening, the aroma of tomato sauce simmering and the flavors permeated everywhere in our home, and I thought this was the stuff of every family meal.
Front to back-Dad Vincent with brothers, my Uncles Nick and Joe
Nonna Antonia, Buon Compleanno, birthday with her children's families My father Vincent, mid-table left leaning into light with pompadour
Mama would take many cans of tomato paste plopped into a stewing pot, enough for a small army. Even with seven of us kids, there was always enough for last-minute invites or friends visiting. Dad would often bring home stray airmen from work at Lowry Air Force Base so they could share in our home-cooked meals. I remember some from India, Italy, and all over the United States. We called them "zoomies" or flyboys and in the Beatle era, their buzz cuts were not cool to us kids.
A trio of Italian soldiers came over and said to Mama, "you rest, we want to fix'a spaghetti meal the way'a we do at home'a in Italy." What a delight and treat it turned out to be for our family with such an act of kindness and heartwarming care. I realize now that Dad was simply carrying on the tradition of Italian hospitality. At the Mondi home, this was our version of Sunday family feasts, usually for ten or more as if we were in the old country, outdoors on the long wooden tables. We even had China, silver, and crystal over a white tablecloth crocheted by my Slovenian, maternal grandmother.
Dad was a nice 'a meatball maker. This was his "specialty," he would say with a broad-faced grin, biting his tongue. It was an occasion around our house to see him take a giant bowl of raw ground beef, add in his ingredients of breadcrumbs and eggs, seasonings strong in oregano and knead the squishy red substance into just the perfect consistency, rolling little balls in his hands. He made it a show with this Italian American tradition.
Mama boiled the spaghetti or rigatoni until limp and soggy. This is the way Dad expected it. Not until I reached my thirties did I learn from a well-traveled film producer (not Italian but Jewish) that il dente, firmer pasta was the true Italian way of better texture and enhancing flavor.
Dad's most dramatic time was at the dinner table. It wasn't so rare that a utensil would set flight across the table with his taking aim at one of my four brothers engaged in trouble-making stints that day. He'd become enraged after finding out during dinner that brother Jim was again launching a metal ball, not a meatball, from an M-80 firework canon that he made about the size of a zucchini.
Or Dad could flip out about something annoying him from the week before. Those were evenings I was happy to be away at ballet rehearsal. We never knew whether we'd be joking or avoiding catastrophe at the dinner table, but we always had plenty to eat, laughing under the table at Dad's explosive expressions. We could see it simmering. Dad was brought up in the drama of an extremely expressive, temper's flaring Italian home of fourteen children, in poverty. His Dad Dominic provided spankings as regular fare and Dad was pre-wired and determined to carry on the disciplinary tradition. Growing up, he and his brothers often walked the train tracks to find any form of food. Rabbit, squirrel, or squab was the best they could do when it was found.
Enrolling in the Air Force and receiving regular meals with a roof over his head was pure luxury. While stationed in Denver Dad met Mom at a local club The Brass Rail, and they both loved ballroom dancing together at Lowry Officer's Club, Elitch Gardens in Denver, and The Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs for over 60 years.
Even in our humble home, I felt blessed, to share in a close-knit family. We siblings usually stuck together in defense of any disturbance. I was happiest when dancing to a piano, invented by an Italian, in ballet class, founded by the Italian Court in the 15th Century, and peacefully attending Mass at St. Pius X Catholic Church on Sundays.
Sunday afternoons we'd often load up and drive off to Collaci's Ristorante, in Louisville, "Louieville", as we endearingly called the then tiny little town near Boulder, CO at the base of the Flatirons of the Rocky Mountains. Louisville was not your eco hipster town like Boulder. Boulder is home to Colorado University and the sixties hippie movement. Even back in the seventies, we called Boulder residents, tree huggers, and granola heads.
Its neighbor, Louisville today boasts being one of America's top small towns to live. An hour's drive across Denver from our suburban home of Aurora in the fifties was quite a trek for a meal in those days with a family of eight or nine.
Collacci's was a family-style restaurant founded in the fifties by Anthony Colacci who opened his own restaurant after serving two years in the army in 1946. Relationship frayed; Anthony stormed out of his father Mike's Blue Parrot Restaurant. The pasta clan feud endured. My father, Vicenzo knew the makings of simple, authentic, and cheap Italian fare with nine mouths to feed. Red and white checkered tablecloths, mixed salads, anti-pasta, and bowls of spaghetti warmed our tummies as we bellied up to the table. Colacci's restaurant survived till the early 2000s and Blue Parrot, 98 years till January 2017.
Yes, somewhere during those formative years, I felt it was special being Italian American. We struggled with seven kids' mouths to feed in our suburban neighborhood outside of Denver. Many other kids didn't have hand-me-downs, often getting new toys and weekly allowances. Yet I was given opportunities to go to parochial school and join a ballet company since Dad worked three jobs. First with the U.S. Postal Service, second a painting contract business, and third Army/Navy surplus sales.
I didn't even dream it possible when I grew up to visit this far-off-land of Italy that my grandmother fondly referred to as il paese vecchio, old country. We would intently listen because she was as tough, sometimes tougher than Dad, shouting out in an equally gruff voice, "Gett'a to bed now'a like your father said!" Grandma Antonia had a saying when she did not approve. "God-da knows." When Grandpa Dominic was asked a question, he could not answer, he'd say, ask "God-da knows."
Speaking Italian was discouraged, unfortunately, rather than being invited into our home, which was the case in many Italian immigrant homes. The foresight to maintain Italian as a second language did not exist. Discrimination was rampant and feared as with other ethnic groups. That is with twenty million Italians representing over 6% of the United States population. A desire to speak proper, or at least good English to blend as an All-American became their number one priority to them.
Few schools offered the Italian language for the following generations. From age five to ten, some Sundays were spent with Aunts and Uncles in the Denver area on my mother's side of the family-- she's Slovenian. Uncle Lou had a basement loaded with animals shot and stuffed, up on the walls. Everything from mountain lions to geese. Sometimes the beastly kind like the bear's head "creeped" me out.
Some of the greatest fun we had in Uncle Lou's basement, Mom's brother, was with the pinball machine, like bowling with a puck down a standing shuffle alley board. We would send a puck hurling down shuffle alley, across metal pins on the surface that caused the bowling pins to fold up and disappear instead of being knocked over. I remember being so little that I had to stand on a stool and push the puck with all my might in hopes of getting the pinball bells ringing and lights flashing. Our getaway in the basement from the adults with Cousin Lou Junior was as exciting as an amusement park.
Aunt Rose, Mom's sister, also lived across town in North Denver and had a 45 RPM player with a few choice records. Our favorite 45RPM to play a thousand times over was Harry Belafonte's Day-O. My brothers and I would belt out "Day-O" all day long. "Daylight Come and we won't go home" we'd sing out, hoping we wouldn't have to go home to Dad's temper.
I used to think as a child that my father was nuts for cursing and shouting out opinions while reading bad news from the...
