Growing up, I would joke with my friends, "they better watch out - I was connected." As a young man, I was filled with stories about my Sicilian family - life and times in Hamilton many many years ago. My mother - who is now in her 80's recently sent me a narrative of what her life was like as a young child. She and her family lived next door to the notorious mobster Johnny "Pops" Papalia., on Railway Street in Hamilton.
My Mothers Words:
My parents both came from the same small village in Sicily, yet never met until they immigrated to Hamilton Ontario Canada. My father was a gregarious man, greeting visitors at the door with warmth and in the winter, a shot to take the chill from your bones. My mother, staunch and practical, running her household with a firm and loving hand. My father worked for the Canadian national Railroad for as far back as I can recall. My mother, while a full time housewife when her 5 children were born, worked in the cotton mill when she met my father. I was the youngest, with two sisters and two brothers whom I idolized and looked to for advice and protection. My mother spoke only Italian but insisted the children speak English in order to help her assimilate into the culture. She was a proud woman, not embarrassed by her heritage but wanting a better life for her children. My mother’s job as homemaker was long and arduous, she spent the days chopping wood for the furnace, cooking meals and sewing clothes for her children. Every week one of us girls would accompany her to the market to buy a wagon full of vegetables and a chicken for the week. I remember an occasion, when I was 9, the chicken jumped out the wagon and my mother frantically beckoning me to catch it! I ran feverishly after it unaware of the school children who watched in amusement. I lived with the title “chicken girl” for many weeks after. My father would wake in the early hours and melt into the early dawn of Railway Street. He was a railroad man, and in the winter would spend 3 or 4 days at a time making sure the trains and tracks were functional. My sisters and I were responsible for taking lunch to him and his fellow workers, and when the weather was biting and frost mingled with my father’s mustache my mother would include a shot of John De Kruyer gin for warmth.
Life on Railway St was never dull; the neighborhood was peppered with bootleggers, mafia and racketeers. I remember it through child’s eyes as being exciting, but looking back I can understand why my mother wanted nothing more than to move us to a better neighborhood. Her fear for us was not our safety but, as any parent she wanted a better life for us than she had and worried my brothers would fall prey to a less than reputable lifestyle. Many times I would wander down the street and the bootleggers would beckon me, holding out a shiny dime, or quarter to alert them to approaching detectives. Often, in the evening I would be sitting on my stoop and would see the same menacing detectives sitting on the stoops of the bootleggers, laughing and raising a glass of gin in good cheer. Our families were close and my cousins lived directly across the street. Many winter evenings were spent lying behind the wood burning stove with my cousins, as our parents reminisced about the old country and the warm breezes of the evening air.
Our neighbor, Johnny was one of the more intimidating mafia men. He used his car repair shop as a front for less reputable business. Johnny’s mother was a bootlegger with a long skirt and heavy apron to keep her bootleg money concealed. I spent many afternoons on her Veranda, visiting and when my confirmation came around my mother asked her to stand up for me. I remember with delight the beautiful doll she gave me as a gift. I had never seen anything so precious, money was tight, and we went without frivolous things in order to keep food on the table. Later I realized that my mother’s need was so great to get us out of the neighborhood that she was secretly saving money in order to buy a new house. Years later Johnny was gunned down in the neighborhood over what could only have been a mafia family dispute.
My mother’s fear of the mafia were superseded by her need to protect her family and one afternoon, long after we had moved from the neighborhood she once again ventured onto Railroad Street to see our neighbor Johnny. My father had received a very chilling Sicilian black hand symbol in the mail. Johnny squelched my mother’s fears, telling her not to worry, he would handle it. It was this lifestyle that fueled her to save and eventually buy us a new home in, what she concerned a better neighborhood. We were then exposed to unfamiliar cultures; Scottish, English and Irish families who starred as I walked down the street in my red bloomers and hoop earrings. My mother yelling my name, Concetta caused embarrassment and I later begged them to address me as Connie, so I could fit in.
My memories of Railway Street are still fresh in my mind and now, when I happen to visit I still can see the Mafia woman, sitting on their stoops with little bells in their laps to alert their husband of impending trouble. I recall Rocco Parry, a prominent Mafioso dressed in finery walking down the street, later to be found on the bottom of Hamilton Bay with a block of cement attached to his shoes. I envision my mother and father lovingly, always teaching us right from wrong regardless of our surroundings. Railway Street is no longer peppered with racketeers, Mafia or bootleggers, it is now a friendly inviting neighborhood where children ride their bikes and families sit on their Verandas visiting their neighbors…but in my mind it’s not much different from what I remember.
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