Patricia Civitate: Transcript

Italian cultural director
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My name is Patricia Civitate. I’m a lifelong Italian American from south Des Moines, Iowa. My father’s parents, along with their brothers and sisters, all came to Des Moines back in the late 1800s, early 1900s. And all, for whatever reason, came to the south side of Des Moines to establish their residency. They worked for the railroad company. They have all stayed right within kind of the confines of south Des Moines, which in the early years of course was called Little Italy.

I think there might still be a little difference of opinions between the northern and southern Italians, here in Des Moines. Now, for many years Francis Avenue was kind of like a Mason-Dixon line, it just seemed that the northern Italians lived north of there, as well as Carney, and Ankeny and Madrid and those places. And many of the southern Italians all lived down south of there. And their dialects were so different that it was really difficult for them to communicate. I know that, now, they have intermixed as far as the lodges, because we have a lot of southerners who have joined the Vitoria Lodge and a lot of the people from the Vitoria Lodge who have joined the Society of Italian Americans. But, there is still is this little thing, “well I’m from Abruzzi” or “I’m from Terravecchia”—you still hear that.

As for myself, I knew that I was of Italian background, but it didn’t really mean a whole lot to me, because there was no Italian spoken in our home. And my grandparents died when I was young, and so I didn’t really know them. Then, all of a sudden about 20 years ago or so, it dawned on me that there was something more to being Italian than pizza, pasta, and the Godfather. And so, all of a sudden, I got this obsession to know more about being Italian.

There are so many folk tales and so many beautiful things about being Italian. We celebrate the Feast of St. Lucy, Santa Lucia, in December, and that’s actually the beginning of the Christmas season in Italy. It seemed that Lucy was a beautiful young Italian girl, and the son of the King fell in love with her and wanted to marry her. Well, she had promised herself to Jesus and said that she would never marry. And so, they captured her and put her into jail. And so, she said, “All right, if you bring me the golden thread, I will crochet a spread for our wedding bed.” So she would crochet all day long, and at night she would rip it out, so therefore it was never getting finished. And so, they decided that this was just a game she was playing with them. And so then they burned her at the stake, but before they set the fire she asked, “What made me so popular in your eyes?” and he said, “Your eyes, your beautiful eyes.” And so, as the story goes, she plucked out her eyes and then threw them into the fire. And so, when you see her statues, you’ll see her holding a plate that has two eyes on the plate.

Today’s children, I don’t believe, are into being Italian other than, pizza, pasta, and the Godfather. They turn on the TV, and they think the Sopranos is the greatest thing in the world. They think that the Godfather movies are just fabulous. And that really bothers me, because that is a false impression of what Italians are. I don’t want them growing up to think that all their relation are Mafioso because they know better! But they present this on television, and I’m afraid that our younger people just think that’s the way it was and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. And perhaps it was. I’m not going to say it wasn’t. But let’s accentuate the positive. Our children today have a tough row to hoe. I feel for them. I really do.