Moving to Italy: A Little History: Marino and Zio Silvio

Zio Silvio--fifteen years after we left.

Our plans to live permanently at Gabi were a threat to Zio Silvio. My mother-in-law told me that as a young man, Silvio (the youngest of the four Marca brothers) left the farm and earned money at various jobs. He had the opportunity to buy a bar/restaurant and spent all of his money to do that. However, instead of running it himself, he left it with a manager while he went off hunting, fishing, and playing. Eventually the bar failed, and late in life Silvio had to return to farming. He had no house, no tractor, and just a few fields of his own. As the oldest brother, my father-in-law took pity on Silvio and offered him a place to live--a small house at Gabi that he had purchased—a house bought with money Marino had earned working in a factory in California. Silvio also rented his fields from Marino and borrowed from him the money to buy the tractor that he drove—money that had never been repaid. Silvio owned his cows, but they were housed in the barn that belonged Marino—part of the big house where we lived. Silvio had never paid the $600 per year rent for the house, the barn, and the fields, and Marino had not pressed him for it. He had asked for just one dollar per year to establish his ownership. In addition, Zio Silvio’s little old Fiat had belonged to Marino, who had given it to him. Silvio was under considerable obligation to my father-in-law for his continued well-being. George’s return to Gabi to run the farm meant that Silvio would lose the use of Marino’s fields, his barn, and perhaps his tractor. Since Marino would no longer be earning California wages, it would also become necessary for Silvio to start paying rent on his house. Contrary to what Silvio might have thought, Marino was not a wealthy man, and he had worked hard all of his life to get what money he had.

Rina and Marino with Paul in Burbank, CA

As a young man Marino had played the violin, composed music, and had formed an orchestra that was moderately successful. He and his musicians had traveled to dances and concert halls in northern Italy. When Mussolini gained in popularity and power Marino, who was strongly opposed to the Fascists and inclined to let that be known, decided that he had better leave Italy for a while before someone turned him in. He moved to Italian Somalia in Africa and started an import-export business, which was very successful. He owned a fleet of trucks and bought a large house. Then he got married.

Several years before the start of WWII, Marino married my mother-in-law, a tailor, by proxy: in front of the proper officials, in Africa he swore to love and honor her, in Italy she did the same, and they were legally married. A single woman could not safely travel alone to Africa, so Zio Silvio accompanied her. It took two months to get there. When they first docked, she was so dismayed at what she saw that she didn't want to get off the boat, but eventually she did and enjoyed a good life. Instead of a farm house with all the accompanying work, she lived in a large and comfortable house with many servants. When the war started, Marino’s loyalty lay with the Allies, since he had always hated the Fascists. The British fought the Italians in Africa and took over Somalia where Marino owned his business. He cooperated with them and provided them with his trucks to transport men and supplies to the front lines. They in turn promised to pay him.  

When their only child was born in 1942, Marino named the baby George—after the reigning king—in an attempt to curry favor with the British. It didn’t do him any good, because the British army eventually seized his trucks and his property without reimbursement, and he was forced to return to Gabi with very little money. Several years after the war, he emigrated with his wife and George to Endicott, N.Y. where he had relatives, and he started all over again.

 After a few years they joined other relatives in Southern California, and Marino found work in a factory. My mother-in-law became the seamstress for a local men’s store, doing alterations. Their jobs were humble, but they worked hard, converting their little house in Burbank into a triplex, one paycheck at a time. Each Friday, Marino would cash his check, take out the weeks’ expenses, then buy a load of lumber. He sawed and hammered, and eventually he trained George to help him. They hired an electrician and a plumber, but the rest of the work they did themselves. When the triplex was finished and they had the rental income, they lived simply and saved carefully. 

When Marino’s brothers wrote to him that the big house at Gabi (along with its barn and two smaller houses) was for sale, he bought it for his retirement. That house was the one we lived in. One of the smaller houses he rented to Zio Silvio, and the other one was the "Apple House" attached to the main house. In order to buy the property, Marino used money earned in long hours of hard labor. He had worked as hard as the farmers he had left behind. America provided him with the opportunity to earn money, but as many immigrants and native-born Americans have found, success doesn’t happen without hard work.