The Internet Shrinks the World:Family Reunion

The Great Road Trip Continues

So I blog about a lot of stuff. I get a little feed back from Blogger that tells me what people are hitting with their searches. Apparently Faeto, Italy has brought me a few searchers, and here they found the food I love. And Faeto, Italy again, where they would learn about my trips there and the charm of Faeto and Celle. I am very proud of my Italian hometown. My Grandfather and Great Grandfather as well as my Grandmother all came from this charming mountain village. Another Faeto, Italy post is here with some of those details and a tribute to my dad and his ancestry. Periodically I get a comment from someone who has ancestors from Faeto. The names are familiar from the streets, the cemetery and sometimes the same as mine. Petitti.

So one day not so long ago, I got a comment from a Bob Petitte. He thought his family name had changed from Petitti. He told me about his grandfather coming over, and his dad going to his cousin Patsy's farm in Dundee. Hmm. I was curious. My dad and Grandfather are both Patsy, also known as Pasquale. And, they lived on a farm in Dundee. He left his email so I contacted him and gave him some info and asked him what else he knew. He sent a picture that made me, my dad and my Uncle Mike all drop our mouths. It was of his grandfather and his great uncles. And there in that photo is my Great Grandfather. The exact photo found on his tombstone in Mt. Carmel. We were related.

The tallest gentleman is my Great Grandpa Vito Petitti

When we began planning the summer adventure, I emailed Bob and he agreed to have dinner with our entourage. So we found a pizza place, casual, loud and perfect for our large 20+ group. Bob is just a little older than I, but his grandfather was the last of something like 11 children, so his family tree is essentially a generation behind mine. It also means that most of Bob's family tree has passed. How wonderful that we could introduce him to all these new relatives.
I have started a new blog called Faeto in hopes that people will google and get there. I would love to have a meeting place and find family, friends, distant relatives. We hope one day to have a Faeto reunion. Now that would be quite a story!

Where I Come From: Part 2

This insert is dated Aug. 2011, I encourage anyone with Faeto roots to head over to Faeto.blogspot.com.
So I have blogged about my Croatian/Bosnian adventure and the maternal side of the family history, now for my paternal heritage. The last part of the great European adventure was spent in Faeto, Italy. Faeto is a small town in the Puglia region about an hour from Foggia, unless of course I am navigating the terribly marked roads, then it could take closer to 2 hours. Faeto clings to a rocky hillside, probably looking very much as it did when my grandfather left there at the age of 14. This was my second trip there, and it was as moving as the first. But the first must be revisited to bring perspective.

In 2003, my entire family, 23 of us went to Italy. We were celebrating my parent's 50th Anniversary and saw Italy in our own bus. We hit the highlights, David, the Leaning Tower, Ponte Vecchio, the Coliseum, the Vatican and Amalfi. But hands down the highlight was the culmination of the treacherous drive on the narrow roads to Faeto. The last few miles are canopied by trees that were in blazing color. The bus parked at the edge of town, and our new internet friends met us for the day, we had 3 guides to help us with the language. Faeto has a heavy French dialect and the Italian there is different than any other region.
We began at the small farmer's market where this cute old man walked up to me and and said "Who are you?" And I said, "We are Petittis." He smiled and said "So am I". And that's how it was. We were quite a sight as our mob walked the small cobblestone streets my grandparents walked. We made offerings in the church where they were baptized and walked Vico Valentino, the oldest street, dating to the 15th century and named for the women of my family, sisters or cousins Rose and Maria Valentino who married the Petitti men.

Six years later we took the same walk on a similar fall day. The air was heavy with the smell of fires in the small homes, and the cemetery was filled with Petittis, certainly we all share the same blood. The cemeteries are peculiar here, perhaps because of the rocky terrain or the wet winters, but they do not bury the dead. They have large walls like a mausoleum and a headstone, wired with electricity so they have a light on all the time. The addition of a photo is also very common, and a little eerie for sure, but a rarity in the U.S., although my great-grandfathers grave in Chicago bears his photo. Sitting alone in the cemetery on a small rock wall, was an old lady, wearing black and saying her rosary. The whole town has been burying their dead in this small cemetery, it is a moving place.
We have very little information on the lineage of the family. My great grandfather came here as a young man and was murdered in Cleveland, OH. My grandfather was just 14 when he made the trip from Naples, just a year after his father died. They were so willing to walk into the great unknown for a better life. My own dad says that there was very little information about Faeto from his parents. Like many immigrants, you were careful to only speak English and absorb the new culture. No one wanted to be labeled an immigrant, they wanted to be Americans. My grandfather served in WWI to become a citizen. The history of the Italian heritage was literally lost over the years. But there is something oddly familiar and comforting in Faeto. Maybe because it is so small and after two trips I know the town like the back of my hand. Maybe it is because although my grandfather came to America, he left many family members in Faeto, and the names in the cemetary and the faces in the windows are my cousins, many years removed.

On this trip my parents, my sister Lori and I arrived in Faeto at dusk and found our hotel in the small park in the woods outside of Faeto. The lights were aglow and we entered the modern building and found no one there. We laugh to think that this could never happen in the U.S. There on the counter was a note (in Italian of course) and 2 room keys, skeleton keys, no less. We brought in our luggage and hunted for the bar for a little wine to take the chill off. Our host arrived shortly thereafter and spoke NO English. Our old friend from the last trip, Pepino, came to have dinner with us at the hotel in the woods and we celebrated my dad's 80th birthday that night. Imagine, celebrating your birthday in the town where your own father lived 100 years ago? It was a poignant evening. The food was rustic and home made and delicious. I love a 3 hour meal, what a wonderful way to live!

We spent a few days exploring the area, eating the wonderful comfort food of Italy, and meeting the locals. One afternoon we walked into the bakery. We had been eating this wonderful bread everywhere in the area, and the small bakery where they bake it was warm and inviting. We sampled the day's offerings, my favorite being the bread stuffed with sweet cipollini onions. The funny thing was Anna the bakery owner was sitting with her laptop surfing facebook! I gave her my card and she friend requested Lori and I. Too bad my Italian is pitiful and we can't really chat, I am very dependent on Google translator. She especially loved the photos I posted of her, her family the bakery and some of the colorful locals. It was a short visit to Faeto, but we have accepted the fact that indeed, this is where we come from. Many of the little details are faded and lost, and that's okay. We embrace what is left, we hope the grand children and their children will someday drive under those canopied trees and walk Vico Valentino, pray for the Petittis buried in the quaint cemetery and feel the same connection to generations of family.

A Father's Day Tribute

Yes, Father's Day has passed, but my dad is coming back through Memphis and we decided to celebrate again, and this blog is for him. We had a mini celebration for Scott, which also happened to be Nic's last day before Basic Training began. So no one gets their own day with everyone present and accounted for, but that's okay, life sometimes gets in the way. The photo above is one of my favorites of my men. My dad, Scott and Nic, all laughing about something, I wish I knew what it was. But how wonderful that this moment is captured. How often do we really get a good belly laugh?

Because Father's Day was also Nic's last day, he had a special request: apple pie. I decided that was the perfect dessert for many reasons. You see apple pie isn't just a pie, it is a memory, a story, a piece of my heritage. Many of you read my Mother's Day tribute, this is the Father's Day tribute. Scott and Nic ate one pie on their day, but the blog tribute comes with a pie for my dad that I made and froze just like he used to do for many summers. Happy Father's Day Dad!

Around 1909, Vito Petitti, my Grandfather, was 14 years old and he boarded a ship in Naples, Italy. He was unaccompanied by an adult, and was following a journey his own father had made just a year or so earlier. Sadly, his father was dead, he had been murdered in Cleveland, Ohio. He had made the same passage to America to make a living and send for the family. My Grandfather wasn't willing to let his father's dream of a new life in America die with him. So, as a very young man ( almost a child) he made his passage to New York City. The ship arrived at Ellis Island, where my Grandfather was processed with thousands of immigrants. I am amazed at the information I could find online at Ellis Island and we have searched pages of manifests to determine his exact sailing dates as there were a large number of immigrants from his small town of Faeto, and there are an astounding number of Petittis. Strange, because in my life I can only think of 3 Petitti that I know or have heard of that I wasn't directly related to.

He told the story of entering New York to my father. As they arrived at Ellis Island, he was amazed at his new country. There were volunteers all about and they were passing out a small sausage and a small hand pie to the new arrivals. My Grandfather's village in Italy is famous for its pork products, so the sausage was not that interesting, but the pie was unlike anything he had ever seen so he ate that first. How "American" that his first food on this soil was apple pie. It was love at first bite. He quickly traded his sausage with another immigrant for another of those apple pies. So began the family tradition.

Many years later my own father, Pasquale Vito Petitti was born in Chicago. His mother was also an immigrant from the same Italian village. My Grandfather owned a grocery in Chicago called North Avenue Food Mart. It was located at 2654 North Avenue in Chicago and he also owned a few meat markets on Taylor or Palina and Cicero and Lake St. This photo is in the meat market, Grandpa and Uncle Joe. You can't see the sign well, but it reads, "Don't ask for credit". Smart men!

In 1941 my Grandfather decided to leave the city and set up a farm. He held on to one of the markets, but established the biggest dairy farm in Kane Co. Illinois. The farm and the grocery are where my dad has his childhood memories. I love looking at the old photos of the grocery store with its neat stacks of cans and hand lettered signs, and the meat market with the men in their white aprons. I have the the box of stamps they used to make the signs with the prices on them. Truly an era gone by.

But back to the pie. My Grandpa got more than cows when he moved out to the country. He had gardens and chickens and an orchard, full of apples. Apple pie would become a tradition alongside Sunday gravy and home made wine. In my own childhood years we too had apple trees. Not an orchard, but trees. Now, no offense to you folks in New York or Washington, but in the midwest we don't grow apples with names. They are apple trees plain and simple. And the apples are green and tart and small. You want to get them before the worms do, and you pay the little kids to pick them up off the ground before they rot to a mushy brown and the bees come in. But they do make the best pie! Green apples tend to be a little drier so they really compliment the cinnamon sugar combination, and we make ours with a crumble on top. Yum, as the baker I am privileged to eat a little hunk of that butter, sugar, flour on top as soon as the pie emerges from the oven. My dad would spend an entire summer day making pies. First the crust, made with lard and Crisco, I said they were good, not good for you. And then the endless peeling and slicing. He would make a dozen pies at a time and put them in the freezer. What a treat on a chilly winter day to eat from your own backyard.

So Happy Father's Day Dad. Really, it's always father's day. This pie is a great tradition and we are all so proud of the great heritage from which we all came. Bon Appetit!

One pie crust
A large pile of tart apples
Peel, core and slice the apples. Place them in a large bowl and toss with ½ cup sugar and 1t of cinnamon. Place in the pie shell. In bowl mix ¾ cup flour, ½ cup sugar and 6T butter. Using a pastry blender or fingers, incorporate the ingredients until they are pea sized. Place on top of the apples and bake at 400° for about 45 minutes. The sugar can be lessened depending on the sweetness of your apples. Too much sugar with sweet apples makes for a disaster! Happy Baking...