OUR STORY
ITALIAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
An Ode to Gramp BY JOSEPH SORRENTINO
When I picked up the phone and heard my father’s voice, I knew it was bad news. My father never called anyone. It just wasn’t his style. He never answered the phone, either. And his call did deliver bad news. Gramp had died. I dropped the receiver and sobbed as I hadn’t since I was a child. Gramp—my maternal grandfather—was a natural storyteller. His stories were always entertaining and told in that wonderful mix of Italian and accented English. He butchered both languages to get a laugh or an eye roll out of his grandkids. Gramp always tossed in a few words none of us knew existed before, probably because he made them up on the spot. He especially liked telling stories about winters when he was in the Alpine Army during World War I. He somehow remembered the days—and how much—it snowed, often correcting his memory as he’d go. Gramp strove for accuracy in his stories. “There was’a six’a inch’a snow on’a the first’a June … no, the second’a June,” he’d say in that accent I always loved. “An’ it was’a eight inch.” We never believed he actually remembered such details, but we didn’t care. He’d follow up this weather report by telling us how hungry those soldiers were, all of them losing weight high up there in the Alps. “The belt, it goes’a two times around’a the waist.” But his favorite story was how he’d captured a German soldier. “I tol’ him, ‘Putta you hands up or I’m a’gonna shoot you,’” he’d recall as he pointed an imaginary rifle. The German wisely surrendered. That story always struck me as a little off. Why was the German behind Italian lines? And what was Gramp, who had been in a medical division, doing with a rifle? But we never questioned him. We didn’t really care about facts. He was telling a story and he was well known for embellishing them. At the end of a story, he’d always look at us and ask, “Whaddya dinga ‘bout that, huh?” Whenever I visited home, I’d stop by to see Gramp and Grandma first. Being Italians, we hugged without SPRING 2022
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reser vation. Gramp smoked cigarettes for many years, only quitting cold turkey when a doctor ordered him to. When we hugged, I could smell the mix of wine—which he made in his basement—and cigarettes Antonio Martori—or Gramp— that enveloped him. I with his family in one of his finest suits. The author’s mother, miss that smell to this Antoinette, is on the far left. day. After hugging, we’d sit down for a glass of wine and whatever Grandma had whipped up in the kitchen. I mourned his passing for days until my mother told me something that made his death easier to accept. In their final years, Gramp and Grandma had hired a woman to help. On the morning of his last day, the woman entered the bedroom to ask Gramp what he wanted for breakfast and found him going through his clothes closet. “Mr. Martori, what are you doing?” “I’m a’lookin’ for my suit,” he replied. “Why do you want your suit?” “I’m a’gonna see my father today.” Although I’m sure this struck her as odd, she let it slide and asked him what he wanted for breakfast. “I wanna spaghetti,” he said. She probably figured, he’s 85 years old; if he wants spaghetti for breakfast, he gets spaghetti for breakfast. He entered the kitchen dressed in his suit and sat down to the plate of spaghetti that was set out for him. He ate, stood up, and had a massive heart attack. Dead before he hit the floor, I was told. Somehow, he knew what was coming. He wanted his suit because he was going to see his father—whether he meant his real father or God, who knows?—and if he was going to die, he was going to die with his favorite meal in his belly. Joseph Sorrentino is a writer, photographer, and playwright. His book, Stinky Island Tales: Some Stories From An Italian-American Childhood, is available on Amazon. It contains four stories and 26 drawings and is in English and Spanish. ITALIAN AMERICA