Thursday, November 21, 2013

Mary and Amalio: The Trip to America from Italy

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The Trip to America


This is continuation of the 1999 interview with Amalio Mallozzi and his sister, Mary Mallozzi.

Amalio: We (Amalio, Alesandra, Mary, Filippina, and Delia Mallozzi) went on the ship, Roma, from Italy to America [when Amalio was seven and a half, so about 1927-1928]. We all slept in the same cabin, with Amalio in the top berth.

On the ship he saw his first toilet, and didn't know what to do with it. He wondered if it held drinking water. (At home in Pulcherini there was no toilet; they had just dug a hole in the backyard, or used the stable. They would put a stone on each side of the hole to sit on, then wipe themselves with grass).

The Roma, which traveled from Italy to Ellis Island in the Twenties
Could this be the very ship they sailed on?
From: http://stevemorse.org/ellis/eipix.php?ship=roma

Amalio [back at the ship]: He "ate every day" on the journey. He didn't get sick. "Mary and Fil were sick the whole trip" - they couldn't eat at all. "Mama didn't throw up too much." He went up to the bow all the time. There was a "bald-headed guy from Rome," another passenger, who acted "like a father" to him during the trip. 

Amalio: The trip took eight days. John (Giovanni Tucciarone, born 1895, Frances Mallozzi's husband) met them in New York in his Model T Ford pickup truck. He "put the trunks and everybody in and went to West Main Street" [Stamford, Connecticut]. The kids rode in back with the trunks. 

2 comments:

  1. That had to have been the same ship. "ate every day." !!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, there were a lot of ships called Roma. You know that when Amalio said he "ate every day" he was just comparing himself to his sisters who were so ill they couldn't eat on the trip.

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