Italians-Americans are omni-present in New Jersey. Most people will not remember a New Jersey without pizza and hoagie shops. I grew up in Hammonton and I remember when all the local slang was infused with Italian curses, words that I cannot spell like mi-cue, citruelle, and my favorite gubba-doste which means hard-headed. I never really saw these words in print so I do not know how to spell them. I know the one nice term that my grandmother Baglivo used for all her girl grandchildren was gwandiza-bella. Well, I wanted no part of that Italian heritage at that time and I didn't curse in Italian either. What I clearly remember was a clash of cultures when I visited my grandfather Tassone's house on East Stokes Road in Atsion. There was absolutely nothing Italian going on in that house. I believe it was due to the fact that my Tassone grandmother died when my father was about eleven years old leaving him to be raised by his older sisters: Anne, Julia, Loretta, and Mary. I guess all the culture and the Italian cooking died with her. During visits we were offered sliced white bread, cold-cuts, and mustard. I viewed mustard as "what the other people used"--- a foreign condiment. It always was a step back in time when I visited there but that was exciting to me. The yard had white sandy pine barrens soil with a few sparse sprigs of grass that only needed a swinging scythe to cut it back. These Italians talked like true Pineys. Even the names in the neighborhood excited me: Wells, Lemunyon, and Giberson. There was a pump in the kitchen with no plumbing or toilet until about 1955. I actually had to use the out-house. The center of the house had a huge black wood/coal burning furnace and I remember the bedrooms being horribly cold. There was one impressive centerpiece in this house: a player piano. They had a phone but it was a party line and if you wanted to be nosy you just pick the phone up and you could listen to your neighbor's conversation. I think it went by the number of rings to enable you to know who the phone was for. My grandfather was lucky enough to have my father for a son because I believe he got a television for my grandfather before they got plumbing. My grandfather would watch boxing matches in the kitchen and he seldom joined in the conversations. We never got gifts but we usually got silver half-dollars or dollars from him. The only other Italian family that lived in the area was the Chiappine family. Phil Chiappine and my father were boyhood schoolmates and now they both reside on route 206 in an assisted living home called the Heritage. Also, it is only recently that we have become aware that our father's birth certificate has Louis on it. We found out that a kindergarten teacher preferred the non-Catholic spelling which was Lewis, so my father forever after became Lewis J. Tassone. (We have to get the certificate out again I have heard it's just J, John and James.)
I will post some photos of my grandfather, my grandparents and my father.
Antonio Tassone
Older Antonio Tassone:
Older yet:
Antonio Tassone (with the moustache below) working or relaxing at the station in Atsion, NJ.
Tassone grandparents
(grandmother's maiden name: Rosa Bagiotti)
My father, Lewis J. Tassone:
Grandmother's Ellis Island document:
H
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