| My mother and father often told me their marriage was
arranged. I do not know if it was true, but I believed it then and I believe
it now. I believe everything my dad told me to be the truth; I have never
disproved anything he told me. My mother on the other hand, well let’s
just say making me happy was sometimes more important than the truth. You
see, being born on St. Patrick’s Day, I often asked my mother if I was
Irish, She always told me I was. Over the years, through lots of research,
I have figured out I am Italian, not Irish, but that's another story.
My two grandfathers were close friends all their lives. When they became adults they often pooled their business resources together to their advantage. They both owned grocery stores in Italy and they bought goods together to gain buying power, while maintaining their independence. When they immigrated to this country, they continued their friendship and the practice of having a business partnership. So the story goes, they decided they should marry my mom and dad to join the families together. And it was so. As I grew up we had these wonderful parties/dinners at my house. Both families, both large families came. Because of my grandfathers’ friendship, the families were close. My father and mother treated both Grandpas the same. Now I should point out, Grandma DiMaggio passed before I was born and Grandma Altavilla passed when I was three. So I did not know them. Except that I love to watch the Friday night fights, which my Mother said I got from Grandma Altavilla. It seems she liked to watch the fights and wrestling on TV and I would often sit in her lap with her. So, I got my love of the fights from her. Grandpa Altavilla’s grocery store was on Ellery St in Brooklyn. Grandma and he lived in the back. His brother Salvatore Altavilla lived on the second floor. Aunt Anna and Aunt Lily lived in the next apartment. Aunt Anna lived on bottom floor and Aunt Lily on second floor. Salvatore’s daughter Marianna lived in the apartment also. Grandpa owned both apartment houses. There was a garage across the street where Grandpa housed his horse and wagon. He went around selling ice cream in the summer. Grandma's sister Echel had a store a couple of blocks down the street. He made his own lemon ices. My sister Grace remembers helping him.* During the summer months, both my grandpas would come down to our summer house in Ocean Gate for two weeks together. They walked and talked, and played 'briscola' They played for wooden match sticks and would argue and cheat like crazy. I would sit and watch. They would kick me under the table when they were pulling a fast one on each other and wink. I loved those days. Grandpa DiMaggio was my Godfather and Aunt Francis, my mother’s sister, was my Godmother. I was named after my Grandpa Altavilla. My middle name was supposed to be Altavilla. My mother told me she put it on the form in the hospital, but the nurse removed it, saying we don't do that in this country. Grandpa Altavilla was tall, and always stood straight up. He had an air of elegance. I always felt taller and safe walking with him. Grandpa Altavilla had his store in New York and Grandpa DiMaggio’s store was next to our house on Merritt Ave., in Bergenfield. Grandpa DiMaggio ran his store until about a year before he passed away. During that last year, he lived with us; my Mother took care of him. We had a back room, which was my father's office and den. A bed was set up for him and that is where he stayed. I often sat with him. Sometimes we just sat, but often he talked to me. One time, Grandpa propped up the foot of his bed with a chair, to raise his legs. Mom saw it and started yelling at me, thinking I had done it, and in most cases she would have been right. Grandpa told her, he had done it, but I got that look out of the corner of her eye. She was sure Grandpa was covering for me. Now Grandpa did not speak English well and I spoke no
Italian, yet the conversations were very clear to me. I can still hear
his voice. He often talked about the importance of Family and Friends.
Both were important to him. And loyalty was equally important; the friendship
of my two Grandpas' is testament to that.
Fifteen years later I was working on a label machine project at Revlon. When we applied the labels, they would not stick to the bottles; instead they would pull back and stick to the machine. The senior engineers kept telling me that was impossible. We had a hole in the dispenser and it blew a shot of compressed air to blow the labels off. So they had to come off and no way could they stick to the machine. But they did, I saw it. Finally we figured it out. When we blew the air, it rushed across the top of the label, creating a low pressure, like the top of an airplane wing. So the label flew back up, once the air stopped, it once again stuck to the dispenser and not the bottle. Manny Futter was the senior engineer. After figuring it out he said, "I could not predict it, but now I can explain it." With his words, my grandfather’s words came back to me. "Nothing is impossible, only things we do not know how to do." From then on those words stuck with me and defined my career as a design engineer. Nothing was ever impossible to me; we simply had to figure out how to do it. I owe a great deal of my success as an engineer to both my grandpas, and to this day I believe nothing is impossible. ~ Joseph DiMaggio
March 27, 2012 Addendum:
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