You can be free in America to be anything you want. They listened. And they came, to be free, writes John Kass in Chicago Tribune. Read on:
My people didn’t know about Independence Day when they came to this country.
But on this Independence Day, I’ll lift a glass to them, my wife’s family from Sicily and my family from Greece.
They risked their lives and everything they had for the one thing America offered:
A chance to be an American.
They didn’t come for a government safety net. They didn’t expect that, and it wasn’t offered. All they wanted was opportunity.
When they left their poor villages, they didn’t know about the motto of New Hampshire, “Live Free or Die.” But that’s what they set out to do here in America: Live free or die.
The Fourth of July fireworks; the red, white and blue; parades; a country so rich that the people could play games, and sit and watch others play games, on green grass.
Games? Sports? Entertainment? All this was quite foreign to them.
They knew nothing about the Declaration of Independence, which established our American rights as given to us by God. And they had no clue about the Constitution of the United States that protects individual liberties against the reach of government and the passions of the mob.
Unfortunately, many born here have no clue, either.
Those who grew up in the old country weren’t taught such things in village schools. And they didn't know about privilege. They spent their time in the fields, plowing behind mules, bending their backs, hoeing the earth with a chopper in their hands.
They grew vegetables but not for fun, not to find refuge from the screaming in the world. They grew food to eat, to survive.
The women wove blankets at their handmade looms, and when they finally sat down at the end of the day, after working and cooking and feeding and hauling, this was their entertainment:
Knitting sweaters by lamplight with wool they’d shorn by hand. They entertained themselves by embroidering shirts and telling stories. Their thumbs were for their needles, not for Twitter.
They weren’t Americans when they came over. But they desperately wanted to become Americans in all things; in culture, language, custom. They bought in, determined to be part of this country. They read American papers religiously, looking for clues on how to become Americans.
They stripped away the old and put on the new, so their children could be Americans not only in fact of birth, but in spirit.
So, when we gather at our home on Independence Day with the American food of summer, barbecued ribs and corn on the cob, and festive red-white-and-blue napkins and so on, I’ll raise my glass and think of those who risked so much to come here.
My wife’s father, Grandpa Don, was a Sicilian orphan of a family from Montemaggiore Belsito, near Palermo.
His mother was dead, his father wasn’t around and he was alone, in New Orleans, where anti-Italian sentiment had led to lynchings in the not-so-distant past. Eventually, he came to Chicago, then fought in World War II, in France.
Distant relatives in Chicago offered him work, good cash money with which to buy nice suits and cars and take care of his family. But it was Outfit work. He wanted no part of it.
Instead, he drove a cab and washed windows, alone, and built his own large brick house far away, on the edge of a cornfield in Arlington Heights, alone, with his own two hands, literally, from the foundation up.
There he raised his family. He remembered New Orleans. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the Outfit.
He wanted to be a free American. And that is what he made of himself.
And another toast to my grandfathers who came through Ellis Island because they wanted to be free.
Papou Pete was a boy of 8, alone, a note pinned to his shirt, the oldest son of a family with 10 daughters. It was his job to send money home, to keep them alive, to prepare their dowries.
He ended up in Massachusetts, at a shoe factory. He lived in a shack with a dozen or so other boys and one older man, their “sponsor,” who preyed on them.
The sponsor took the money that was supposed to go back to the villages, money their families depended on for survival.
The boys found out about the money, and one night they fought back, and left him on the ground.
They scattered, little boys alone, at the turn of the century. Papou Pete made his way to Utah, alone, to work on the railroads.
And my paternal grandfather, Papou Yianni, a young man with $5 in his pocket — his life’s savings — who used it to buy strawberries. He carried boxes of fruit on his back, shouting what they told him to shout:
“Stomberries!”
When he was done selling that day, he tried to rent a room. But Greeks weren’t allowed to sleep in rented rooms in Chicago back then. They told the Greeks to go sleep in the barn.
Papou Yianni returned to Greece and years later, back in the village, by lamplight, with the occupying German Army in the streets enforcing martial law and the Communists in the mountains preparing for the Civil War and the slaughter to come, he’d tell his children about America, the promise of it.
You can be free, he told my father and my uncle. Free. You can be free in America to be anything you want.
They listened. And they came, to be free.
Thank you, America.
Happy Independence Day.
My people didn’t know about Independence Day when they came to this country.
But on this Independence Day, I’ll lift a glass to them, my wife’s family from Sicily and my family from Greece.
They risked their lives and everything they had for the one thing America offered:
A chance to be an American.
They didn’t come for a government safety net. They didn’t expect that, and it wasn’t offered. All they wanted was opportunity.
When they left their poor villages, they didn’t know about the motto of New Hampshire, “Live Free or Die.” But that’s what they set out to do here in America: Live free or die.
The Fourth of July fireworks; the red, white and blue; parades; a country so rich that the people could play games, and sit and watch others play games, on green grass.
Games? Sports? Entertainment? All this was quite foreign to them.
They knew nothing about the Declaration of Independence, which established our American rights as given to us by God. And they had no clue about the Constitution of the United States that protects individual liberties against the reach of government and the passions of the mob.
Unfortunately, many born here have no clue, either.
Those who grew up in the old country weren’t taught such things in village schools. And they didn't know about privilege. They spent their time in the fields, plowing behind mules, bending their backs, hoeing the earth with a chopper in their hands.
They grew vegetables but not for fun, not to find refuge from the screaming in the world. They grew food to eat, to survive.
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| Fireworks explode during an Independence Day celebration at Navy Pier in Chicago on July 4, 2017. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune) |
Knitting sweaters by lamplight with wool they’d shorn by hand. They entertained themselves by embroidering shirts and telling stories. Their thumbs were for their needles, not for Twitter.
They weren’t Americans when they came over. But they desperately wanted to become Americans in all things; in culture, language, custom. They bought in, determined to be part of this country. They read American papers religiously, looking for clues on how to become Americans.
They stripped away the old and put on the new, so their children could be Americans not only in fact of birth, but in spirit.
So, when we gather at our home on Independence Day with the American food of summer, barbecued ribs and corn on the cob, and festive red-white-and-blue napkins and so on, I’ll raise my glass and think of those who risked so much to come here.
My wife’s father, Grandpa Don, was a Sicilian orphan of a family from Montemaggiore Belsito, near Palermo.
His mother was dead, his father wasn’t around and he was alone, in New Orleans, where anti-Italian sentiment had led to lynchings in the not-so-distant past. Eventually, he came to Chicago, then fought in World War II, in France.
Distant relatives in Chicago offered him work, good cash money with which to buy nice suits and cars and take care of his family. But it was Outfit work. He wanted no part of it.
Instead, he drove a cab and washed windows, alone, and built his own large brick house far away, on the edge of a cornfield in Arlington Heights, alone, with his own two hands, literally, from the foundation up.
There he raised his family. He remembered New Orleans. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the Outfit.
He wanted to be a free American. And that is what he made of himself.
And another toast to my grandfathers who came through Ellis Island because they wanted to be free.
Papou Pete was a boy of 8, alone, a note pinned to his shirt, the oldest son of a family with 10 daughters. It was his job to send money home, to keep them alive, to prepare their dowries.
He ended up in Massachusetts, at a shoe factory. He lived in a shack with a dozen or so other boys and one older man, their “sponsor,” who preyed on them.
The sponsor took the money that was supposed to go back to the villages, money their families depended on for survival.
The boys found out about the money, and one night they fought back, and left him on the ground.
They scattered, little boys alone, at the turn of the century. Papou Pete made his way to Utah, alone, to work on the railroads.
And my paternal grandfather, Papou Yianni, a young man with $5 in his pocket — his life’s savings — who used it to buy strawberries. He carried boxes of fruit on his back, shouting what they told him to shout:
“Stomberries!”
When he was done selling that day, he tried to rent a room. But Greeks weren’t allowed to sleep in rented rooms in Chicago back then. They told the Greeks to go sleep in the barn.
Papou Yianni returned to Greece and years later, back in the village, by lamplight, with the occupying German Army in the streets enforcing martial law and the Communists in the mountains preparing for the Civil War and the slaughter to come, he’d tell his children about America, the promise of it.
You can be free, he told my father and my uncle. Free. You can be free in America to be anything you want.
They listened. And they came, to be free.
Thank you, America.
Happy Independence Day.
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