Afrodite, a daughter’s remembrance

Afrodite and her family came to America, to Southern Illinois, in 1915, so that Annibale, her father, could dig coal and put bread on the table. She was two and half years old, the youngest of three daughters. At home in Tuscany, in their town of Massa Marittima where the first mining regulations in the Western World were developed, the mines were closed. The only remaining work for poor men and women was on the big plantations owned by rich Florentines where most of her relatives worked. It was what her people had done since the late middle ages, but it was not what Annibale would do. He would dig coal in America. In their county in Illinois more coal came out of the ground in one year than lay beneath the soil of Italy.

There was always trouble in the mines, too much or too little coal to dig depending on what the boss wanted. Debts, boarders, accidents in the mine, the wine resting in a big barrel in the basement, the coal stove, these things made up the contents and the limits of their lives. Annibale was a gentle man but the debts frightened him.  Twice he had sent money, hard earned, to Angelino his brother to join him in America. Twice Angelino’s mother-in-law had decided there were better uses for the money. There were friends from Massa all around him but no kin.

The two older daughters married young. Amelia, Afrodite’s mother, began to take in boarders, single Italian miners, who paid to eat and sleep at the house. Afrodite, who was nine when she started doing embroidery piece work on a small hoop in the evenings after school, loved to talk about what she learned at school, and how she was going to high school someday. In the winter of 1924 the work was slow; Battista, their best boarder, had been forced to move out because someone had whispered about the amount of time he spent at home reading when only Amelia was there. On a chilly evening when the stove needed more coal than the cellar held, Afrodite talked and talked about Columbus coming to America and how much more she would learn in high school. Annibale shouted for her to be quiet. There would be no high school; she would go to the dress factory after eighth grade. The family needed her income.

The summer after she graduated at the top of her class from the eighth grade, she went to work in the dress factory in Collinsville. She joined many girls and women she knew, many spoke Italian, some were from her home town. Hundreds of women worked to produce women’s dresses for major manufacturers. When autumn came and her class went to the first day of high school, Afrodite refused to get out of bed, refused to go to work. Her mother cried. Her father paced around the kitchen and went to the cellar for a glass of red wine. Margaret, the oldest daughter, brought her strong coffee with cream, sugar and a shot of whiskey, held her hand, and told her stories of all the women who sewed at home in Italy. The next day Afrodite went back to work in the dress factory, where she stayed until she was nearly twenty-nine and gave birth to me.

By the time she was eighteen she was beautiful with thick very curly dark hair and clear green eyes. All the photos from that time show her smiling or laughing. Amelia was an expert seamstress and made her fashionable dresses from remnants of fabric and extra buttons bought cheaply at the dress factory. Her fluent Italian served her well. When the women were organizing their union or working on strategy for a new contract, the workers talked in Italian. None of the bosses spoke Italian, and one worker who spied for the bosses read lips but could not understand Italian.

The sewing factory continued to operate during the depression, so Afrodite’s pay kept her family in their house when the mines were down.

In the spring of 1934, John Condellone came to Sunday dinner. He had decided he would marry Afrodite when he was seventeen. She had waited three years for him to ask her out. John had ridden the rails West to work in the wheat fields and copper mines. His father had worked for John L. Lewis organizing in the coal mines or traveling to hunt. John had to help feed the younger children.

While they walked in the neighborhood after dinner, Amelia mended the lining of John’s jacket. John proposed to Afrodite on that first Sunday afternoon, thirteen years after that had met at the two-room school house. She said yes, but he had to find reliable work.

John went to work in the packinghouse in East St. Louis. They married in the summer. John worked his way up through the ranks of the union and was president of the 2,000 member union until the packinghouse moved to a right to work state 25 years later. John worked long hours at the packinghouse and for the union, often traveling to other locals to help with contracts or strike tactics. Afrodite worked until she became a mother, then volunteered with the women’s group of the AFL-CIO Packinghouse Workers Union to educate other women on the union.

She continued to sew. She made my clothes until I left home. We would go to the best dress shops and look at the current styles, examine collars and sleeves and pockets and buttons, but we never bought anything. We had a lovely small house and garden, but very little money. Afrodite would sketch the dresses in her note book. Then we would go to the dress factory to buy remnants, zippers, buttons and buckles. At home she would put pattern pieces together until the design for the dress appeared. I was a very well-dressed child. My first bathing suit was orange with white polka dots made from her jersey robe.

Afrodite was the family seamstress, she made all my grandmother’s aprons, drapes, slipcovers, made decorative pillows for the aunts, made my bride’s maid dress for my aunt’s wedding. In old age she learned to knit and made blankets for babies. She mended my husband’s pants and sewed on his buttons. She never taught me to sew or knit or crochet. She would say that I was a professional woman and should not have to sew. I studied sewing in high school and made my maternity clothes on a 1910 treadle sewing machine. Afrodite approved of the shirts and dresses I made. A friend taught me to crochet.

At the age of 54 Afrodite graduated from high school and went to reunions with her class. She always wore a great dress that she had made herself. She never tired of things Italian and gathered a library of books on Italian history and Italians in America. I have the embroidery hoop she used as she sat by the  stove when she was nine years old and talked about what she would learn in high school.

 Joann Condellone