Beyond All Expectations: From Paolisi to 7th ave to pursue the “American Dream”

By Felice Falzarano

This book is about the story of my life which was lived, so far, in two different Countries. The one that gave me birth “Italy,” and the one that adopted me the “USA.” As a legal immigrant, I left my native land to come to America, which it’s also known as: “The Land of Opportunities.” The main objective for my move was strictly “The American Dream.” When I was young I had many dreams, many of which came true, while others proved in vain. Among all those that came true the most important was that of having found the girl of my dreams, who became the woman of my life, here in the USA. My story starts from re-enactments of family affections, of painful moments, and loving sentiments, to the most intriguing story of my life as a legal immigrant, but especially as an entrepreneur, in the USA. Particularly, I am presenting my involvement in the daily struggle that exists lately in the “Apparel Industry,” in New York. An industry, which like many others, has been transferred from the land of “The Free,” to the land of “Slavery,” China. It has all been done with the complicity of the corrupt Politicians in Washington DC, who not only have destroyed every small business, but they have, perhaps destroyed: “The American Dream,” as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369418284

Felice Falzarano

Felice Falzarano is a retired garment factory owner who immigrated to the United States in 1968. He relocated from New York to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida where he now lives with his wife Josie. He has three daughters and seven grandchildren. He loves to play tennis, likes good wine and traveling the world with Josie.

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CHAPTER 1

Many events took place during the course of my life. Some happened so long ago, and at my age, memory isn’t what it used to be.

There are a few events, however, in which the memories will always be crystal clear: my life experiences of my youth, of my immigration, of my life in the love for my family, and most importantly of my working life.

I came to America as a legal immigrant at the age of twenty. The land of opportunities didn’t let me down, it gave me every chance to succeed, to achieve things.

America is seen by many as a land where social justice is possible, where the poor and oppressed would find a chance for freedom, and where the ambitious and adventurous could make their fortune.

This is what is known as the American Dream. By working hard, and being persistent, I was able to achieve it. So, as an entrepreneur, I had a lot of success and much satisfaction, but there were many adversities.

Some of the bad luck came naturally, from things that during the course of our life we can’t control, no matter how we try. The biggest disappointment I experienced during my working life though, was manipulated by the same people that were supposed to protect my freedom.

They tried in every possible way to put a spanner in my works, to put me out of business, and to ruin my American Dream.

When I was just a little boy, I often fantasize about coming to America, by simply using my tricycle on the train track.

In reality, I seem to have grown with the precise purpose of coming to America from a young age. It seems to me, from the moment I was born, that it was part of my life’s destiny. I knew so much about the USA, even before I set foot in it, thanks to my maternal grandfather. Every time he had a chance, since I was capable of understanding, he would brag to me about it.

He had been here for many years, coming from Italy as a legal immigrant, with his family, when he was just a little boy. He was the youngest of four siblings.

I heard stories, many of which were recollections of his own life experiences in New York City. I learned, thanks to him, what the purpose of Ellis Island was, and what the Statue of Liberty represented.

So, since I was a child I listened to, attracted by his tales, about the many differences between the two countries, Italy and the USA.

He spoke with so much pride about the USA, when he was telling me about him having his own business, and the opportunities that this Country gave to many people. To be precise, he owned a bar, in Manhattan’ Little Italy neighborhood near Mulberry street, in New York, by the time he was just twenty years old.

Stories, leading all the way to the First World War, in which he fought as a proud American, when he was just twenty-two. Evidently he was one of the lucky ones, he was able to return home.

When the war ended, and it was safe to travel to Italy, he had decided to get married by choosing a girl that lived in his native little town.

He knew her just from pictures, but he liked her, she lived next door to his grandparents. He went there and married my grandmother Carmela, with the idea to come back to New York and establish his family there. That was exactly what they did.

The USA was the place where he and my grandmother wanted their children to grow up. That was their wish from the moment they got married. They had three daughters, my mother being the oldest.

Suddenly his story became a mystery to me. By the time my mother was six years old, they were back in Italy, back in their native little town.

Every time I asked him what the reason for going back to Italy was, his answer was always ambiguous. Until he passed, which happened to be by the time I was seventeen, I was never able to learn from him exactly what the reason for doing that was.

I respect to this day the reason for him to keep me in the dark, so to speak, about that particular issue. He must have had his good reasons.

The desire to follow in his footsteps was very alive in me, being that I was besotted by everything that he had told me for years. Coming to America for real, though, was something completely out of my life’s plans.

Back then, when I was a teenager, young boys like me were not as independent as the boys are these days. Coming to America was only an ephemeral dream.

But life, as we all know, is full of surprises. Suddenly, I started listening to talks about America again and again, surprisingly, from my parents, this time. Since my mother, as I said before, was born in New York, she was an American citizen. That allowed the entire family to emigrate to the USA any time we wanted to, legally.

My parents were constantly talking about it, most of the time while having dinner. Being that I’m the oldest of six children, I was always the one to be affected more than the others by whatever decisions or plans my parents made. I had the feeling that, dreaming about coming to America, suddenly, for me, was a heartbeat away from becoming reality. For a better future for us all, especially for the children, that’s what my parents were saying, they had made the decision to take the entire family of eight to the USA.

On January 8, 1968, at the age of twenty, I found myself, with the rest of my family, leaving my town on the way to the airport in Rome. A few hours later I was sitting on an airplane, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, on the way to New York, as a legal immigrant. What can I say other than that I fell in love with this Country and everything about it, from the moment I set foot on its soil, so to speak. The American dream became available to me, all I was thinking about then, was what my NONNO, grandfather in Italian, had continuously told me.

These are his exact words, and even after all the years that have gone by, they are still impressed in my brain: America gives the opportunities to everyone, no matter where they come from. Opportunities to have a better life, and achieve your dreams for success, but it’s all obtained through sacrifices, risk-taking, and hard work, rather than by chance.

The very first thing I did, after a few days, needed to learn how to get around in New York City, was to visit some of our relatives, nieces and nephews of my grandfather, and my mother’s cousins, in Little Italy, in Manhattan. My grandfather’s memories started flowing back immediately, as soon as I saw the building where he once lived, some of the relatives still owned it. That was, for me, a very emotional moment.

We established ourselves in Brooklyn, where everyone was able to get a job almost immediately. Thanks first to my grandfather, then to my mother, I was able to come to the USA, where I’m now a proud American Citizen. After working as an entrepreneur in the Apparel Industry for almost fifty years, I was able to retire successfully. Up to now, what you have read, are the true facts that made the American Dream available for me, personally. My story continues with the real facts, regarding the rest of my life. The life of an immigrant that actually lived The American Dream. My life, so far, has been lived in two different parts of the world; the place where I was born, Italy, and the place where I built a good future and a proud family, all the way to the day I retired, the USA.

I recently retired from a long working life. I am sitting in front of the fireplace, on a cold February afternoon, in my house in Staten Island, New York. While drinking my cappuccino, I am trying to read a book; but my mind is wandering, and I can hardly concentrate.

I’m thinking about the past years of my life, what I did, and what I wouldn’t have done, and I imagine how nice it would be if I could go back in time and rectify all the mistakes I had made. I look up from the book and I see my companion of fifty years.

Her eyes are closed, she is tired and sleeping peacefully. Ours was, and still is, a great love. I try to read again, but I cannot. When I looked up again I realized that she is not sleeping any longer, but just relaxing. I gaze into her eyes, in front of me, full of love; she has loved me in youth like a burning fire, and now with a passionate love.

When you love each other, you have to sacrifice yourself for the happiness of the other. We always believed that selfishness does not bring positive results. From the beginning of our relationship we understood that love alone cannot be enough to stop intentions, without wanting to hurt the one you love.

That’s the way it is, man’s nature, which cannot be otherwise. Together we have overcome the ugly that life has given us and enjoyed the beautiful with happy harmony. From the beginning of our life together we have embraced that particular love philosophy.

The task of that philosophy is to present the appropriate issues in a convincing manner, drawing on relevant theories of human nature, desire, ethics, and so on. All of those things enabled us, during our life together, to have a closer bond, and reduce life’s daily stress and anxieties.

Idly, as I am looking at my empty cup, I’m getting up and going to refill. As I am passing by a mirror I look at myself in it, wondering if I am the same person who, many years ago, lived in a small town, between those mountains, who was full of projects and dreams.

Of course, I am not, youth is fleeting, it goes away quickly and never comes back. Nothing is like before, everything has changed after so many years, but what will never go away are the myriad of memories imprinted in my brain.

If I want to write them all down, all the paper in the world, so to speak, would not be enough to record them, so I’m presenting the most vivid. Putting my life story on paper is something I meant to do for a long time, but being so busy working I was never able to achieve it. I’m thinking that if I want to do it for real this will be a good time. I have to stop looking for excuses and do it for real, since I’m retired now, I have the time to do it.

The sheets of paper are on my desk in front of me. I want to start writing, but the inspirations are so many that I got a bit confused about where and how to start. On the other hand though, I believe that once I start, memories will surface.

Even if sadness will take over, and surely emotions will grab my heart, I am starting anyway because at this point, I can’t do without it. Sitting by my desk, while slurping on my drink I’m leaning back and admiring the white snow in the backyard through the floor-to-ceiling windows along the entire wall.

That scene reminds me immediately of my native place where getting snow in February was very common. That inspires me even more to begin writing my autobiography.

I was born and lived in a small town in a valley surrounded by mountains. As a child, I lived a simple and carefree life, away from the chaos of the big city. The town of Paolisi had a population of about five thousand when I was there.

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Paolisi origins can be traced back hundreds of years. It’s a medieval town. Above the hills surrounding it, still today you can see ruins of medieval castles.

Church archives in Paolisi store old information. You find parish records of some important events (Birth, Marriage, and Death). But importantly, you could go further back in time. It’s good to know that parish registers in Paolisi started during the 1500, the Renaissance period for Italy.

Paolisi is in The Caudine Valley. A historic site, named after the ancient Samnite People, called The Caudini. Their ancient city, Caudinium, was in the same area where the town of Paolisi is today.

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I lived there until I was twenty years old, before immigrating to the USA.

The town of Paolisi of fifty years ago is no more. There, as well as speaking the correct Italian language that we learned in school, we spoke a dialect.

I think the evolution of the dialect is a useful work tool to deepen, not just the knowledge of the past, but the evolution of a culture. The beauty of the dialect is in its distinctiveness. Each language varies with the use that the different generations make of it.

No language retains unchanged over time its grammatical and syntactic structure. The dialect, then, for its porous character it’s subject to more changes that pollute the originality, made up of phrases, of accented voices, of consonance of call, that in their irreproducibility, they constitute the social history of a population. The beauty of the dialect lies in this peculiarity.

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Life was simple then. As children we spent our free time modestly; we were content to bounce a ball on the wall, kick a soccer ball, or play with glass marbles.

Nowadays with the advent of new technologies, children prefer the computer, PlayStation, their cell phones, etc., losing sight of the importance of oral, dialectal communication, indispensable value for transmitting experiences, and fully participating in the life of the community.

Now everything is different, even the language. The topography of my town has changed, the roads that delineate it are different, but the colors that embellish it still offer distracting beauty.

The voices that populate it, don’t come with a sparkle anymore to the ears of the PAOLISANO like me, of seventy years ago.

Since my last visit, I have realized that the town of my youth no longer exists, so the picture that I painted with this writing can only serve as an element of reference to the one that is willing to look at it, with an open mind, to the future.

I often think about the house where I was born and lived, I think about my distant origins, and all the years that have passed since.

The roots of the origins of my family can be traced back to ancient BENEVENTO, in the Campania Region. This is where Paolisi is located. I descend from the Falzaranos. According to the Historical Dictionary of Blazonry and Armory, in Rome, the Falzarano Family was a family of Vassals ‘‘Land Owners." The family Coat of Arms was one of Heldary’s most Distinguished and Revered Symbols of Courage and Bravery.

I understand from the same Historical Dictionary, that the Family had the title which was also Pontifically Blessed as FIDEI DEFENSOR, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, going all the way back to Feudalism Times.

The Family Motto was FINIS CORONAT OPUS THE END CROWNS THE WORK.

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CHAPTER 2

The house where I was born on the outskirts of the town was given to my father by his parents.

We lived there until my youth, before moving to a house in the center of town, given to my mother by her parents.

The one where I was born had a huge garden in the back of it, enclosed by a high stone wall. I passed some beautiful years in that house of which I carry with me lots of memories.

I remember a winter, when we had so much snow overnight, that the next morning we could not open the snow trapped door.

Looking at the mountain, we could barely see any of the chestnut trees, and we noticed some wolves that came down looking for food. Even the sparrows were so hungry, they came to my windowsill.

They were not afraid, I was so excited, they wanted the breadcrumbs from my hands. More than a month passed before all that snow melted.

The garden in the back of the house, weather permitting, was the playground during my life as a child and youth. My brother and I had a lot of fun there.

We would spend entire days there, safe while my mother was conducting her housework. That garden full of varied trees was very impressive.

The large horse chestnut tree was divided at the bottom into two large trunks forming a V shape. To climb up there I had to put my foot in it. Sometimes for not being able to take it off, I left my shoe there, but once I got to the top I had a spectacular view. I would see the red roof tiles of my house, full of sunshine and full of sparrows.

Another majestic tree was a very old fir tree and twisted around its trunk there was a big wisteria that looked like a boa, all wrinkled, rough, but which served perfectly for the rapid climbs, when we played hide and seek.

Very often I would sit up there, watching what the neighbors were doing on the other side of the wall. I enjoyed touching the wisteria locks hanging above my head, it resembled bunches of grapes.

Wisteria has a bittersweet taste, and the leaves have a smell of peaches and ether. There were many different fruit trees, like, apple, pear, peach, plum, persimmons.

The most majestic was a mulberry tree. My younger brother and I, being afraid of staining our clothes, after stepping out of our shorts, and dropping our tops would climb up that tree just in our underwear. Once up there the battle started, and by the time we came down from there, our bodies were of a red color, as if we were bleeding from throwing the fruit at each other.

The curiosity of a little boy makes you do crazy and weird things. That was me, who while doing one thing, simultaneously, I thought about doing a hundred more.

I used to like to experiment with new things. In the summertime, as soon as the flowers of the fruit tree lost their petals, and the tiny fruit grew, I was curious to taste them, still unripe. They were bitter, but I tried them all, to see what they tasted like.

Unripe they are tasty, the shell of the core is still tender, like coagulated milk and inside there’s some very clear, juicy water.

Then after a few days it becomes like a gelatinous gum, sweet to sorbet with the tip of the tongue. But regarding the meat, as it is so good and so sour, at first the teeth are almost afraid to touch it.

Then when you bite into it, the gums burn, the teeth huddle on top of each other, and they become harsh and rough as stones, and the whole mouth becomes a rich water. At the end of the summer, to get to the few remaining fruits, I had to be almost like a bird. I went where birds are not afraid to go, and they are not used to seeing someone up there.

At the bifurcation of the two branches, up high, I kept myself hooked with one foot, and balancing myself with my right arm outstretched, I’d proceed like a caterpillar with my left hand to grasp the most towering branch, holding my breath, until I got to the point where it folded and little by little the fruit came close to my face.

Sometimes I had to let that branch go quickly, since my mother having noticed what I was doing and how dangerous was, would scream at me, Son, are you trying to kill yourself, get down from there immediately! Fearing punishment, silent and afraid I slipped down smoothly, like a squirrel.

Next to the wall, at the side of the road that led to the countryside, there was a yew tree; the trunk was in bad shape, and I used to peel off the bark in big chunks, to make it look cleaner and reddish. It had three branches on the first level that looked like a bed. There I built a treehouse, and I slept there, and played there with my brother and friends.

Often after lunch we used to go up there to throw berries at friends that happened to pass by on the dirt road. Some people ate them. We never did, we didn’t like them, so we threw them at our friends. The boys from the road, instead, threw rocks at us!

Alarmed, we would jump down, furiously, run to the gate, remove the latch, and at breakneck speed we’d chase them to the center of town, where we bombarded them with berries that we had in our pockets.

On the other side of the wall which separated the two properties lived a girl of my own age, we went to the same school, her name was Catherine. She had a dog, a German shepherd, named Argo.

We very often engaged in conversations when she happened to be in her garden, and I on one of the trees. We were like Romeo and Juliet.

One day, while conversing, to my surprise, she invited me to go on her side of the wall, down into her garden. She smiled and said: Felice, come to my side to keep me company.

I stole a glance at her. Where are your parents? I asked. She snorted loudly and shook her head. Hurry, don’t worry. They are not home, they won’t be back until later this afternoon.

It sounded very strange to me for a girl like Catherine, who had strict and jealous parents, to invite me to go there. Such behavior had seemed incomprehensible to me at the time. Nevertheless, I knew she liked me and since I was infatuated with her, I accepted the invitation.

We were just fourteen, but there was an attraction between us two. I guess that was a good reason for her to invite me, and I accepted her invitation with great pleasure. Using the ladder from my side I climbed on top of the wall. She had a ladder on her side, for me to come down from there.

Half way down I stopped. I widened my eyes while studying the area. I was concerned about her dog. Catherine, where is Argo?

She tilted her head. Felice, don’t worry about the dog. It’s inside the house!

Her dog wasn’t so friendly, it was always barking and growling. Since there was no sign of Argo in the garden, I believed what she had said and I started to come down the ladder. I was very excited about the idea that finally, once in her garden, I might be able to kiss her for the first time.

My excitement didn’t last long though. As I was about to put my foot on the last rung I heard the growling of the dog.

I didn’t have time to react because Argo was much quicker than me, and instead of me getting a kiss from Catherine, I got a bite from Argo on my butt.