Italian Roots and Genealogy
This podcast is dedicated to Italian Genealogy, finding your Italian Roots and how to navigate through Italian records. Your host has over 12 years of experience and we will have excellent guests that will discuss a variety of genealogy topics. Please subscribe!
Italian Roots and Genealogy
Family Legends and Historical Ties in Italy
Have you ever wondered how your DNA connects you to ancient civilizations and far-off lands? Join us as we chat with Sal Provino from Australia, who shares his incredible journey of tracing his Italian roots. From his father’s courageous migration from Sicily to Australia in the 1950s to escape post-World War II hardships to his mother's origins in Calabria, Sal paints a vivid picture of his family's resilience and the cultural nuances that shape their identity. This episode promises an enriching exploration of family history that started long before the internet made genealogical research easier.
Sal opens up about the surprising twists and turns in his genealogical quest, including captivating personal stories and the rich tapestry of ancestral DNA diversity in Italy. Discover how genetic influences from regions like Greece, the Middle East, and the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires have left their mark on family traits and historical roots. We touch upon the fascinating intermingling of cultures in places like Calabria and Sicily, offering a fresh perspective on ancient migrations and conquests. Through Sal's anecdotes, you’ll get a sense of the shared human family and the diverse connections found through genetic testing.
We also uncover the Norman influence in Sicilian history, where surnames tell amusing and poignant stories about their origins. Hear about Sal's great-great-great-grandfather's successful restaurant in Palermo and the dramatic shift in family fortunes due to a card game. Learn about the deep historical ties between the Kingdom of Sicily and the Plantagenet family, alongside the transformation of mosques into cathedrals in Palermo and Naples. From wartime survival stories to the post-World War II migration struggles of Italian immigrants, this episode captures the essence of preserving cultural heritage and the emotional ties that bind us to our roots.
Turnkey. The only thing you’ll lift are your spirits.
Farmers and NoblesRead about my research story and how to begin your family research.
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Hi everyone, this is Bob Sorrentino from Italian Roots and Genealogy. Be sure to check out our blog, our YouTube channel and our newsletter on our great sponsors, your Dolce Vita Italy, rooting Phil Italy and Abiativa Casa. And today I have a special guest all the way from Australia Sal Provino. So welcome Sal. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Nice to be here. Bob, I like when you speak Italian, I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's about the extent of my Italian. It sounds good, keep it up, but that buongiorno and ciao, you know? Bravo, bravo. Bravissimo but for you, it's Buona Sera today, right.
Speaker 2:It's actually Buona Sera. Here in Australia, it's just after 9 pm, so I'm keeping you up late. No, no, hey, we're Italian, we go to bed late. What are you talking about? That's the matter of you, eh.
Speaker 1:So it's, you know, I love having I've had a few guests from Australia and I love having people from Australia on because, you know, here in America, especially as Italian Americans, we're very Italian American centric, so it's great to hear the stories from down under.
Speaker 2:I love your accent number one. You guys have an accent.
Speaker 1:Well, you know it paid off. We lived in England for two years and it paid off because if somebody kind of went a little wonky on me, I would just say something in my New York accent and that would take care of things right away.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Well, you know, did you want me to tell you about my family?
Speaker 1:So I want to ask you you know why and when did you start doing research on your family?
Speaker 2:you start doing research on your family. I did research on my family. It started when I was about 20. So that's a long time ago now. It's well over half a century and I was going to a church that really believed in genealogy and keeping family history intact and that sort of thing and keeping records. But I had an interest as a little boy because, although I was born in Australia, my parents thought they could relocate to Italy back in the 60s, 1963. I was seven years old so we went back to Italy and just meeting all my cousins and my nonna and other relatives. I just wanted to know where we're from and there's a lovely story about my paternal and my maternal side of the family. So I thought that for my children and grandchildren I'd like to start a type of history record.
Speaker 1:I didn't start that long ago. That's great that you started that long ago. Back then there was no internet or anything, you had to just use paper records?
Speaker 2:No, there wasn't. But it was very frustrating because I did start writing to Il Comune in different places and unfortunately, as you know, italy is a very bureaucratic sort of society. But people don't like to look up books and things like that, and you know, blow the dust off the book and look at who's. You know who's who and that sort of thing, so it's better done when you're there in person. I found out, so that's what I did. I've been to Italy backwards and forwards dozens of times and that's how I got a lot of information.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's quite a trip from Australia to Italy, I guess.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it's only about 20 hours in a plane. You know, we have our maps here of the world in Australia depict Australia being in the middle, but in actual fact it's at the arse end of the world. You know where the last thing you go to?
Speaker 1:Well, I guess every country does that, right? I suppose we do the same thing. Yeah, so now. So your roots. If I remember correctly, your roots are in Calabria, right?
Speaker 2:So basically, Dad came out from Sicily in 1952 and he came to Sydney, Australia, by ship. Of course I didn't have many fights back then and dad was in the police force. But he didn't like it. He just wanted to get away from the misery, the poverty, the famine, from the ravages of World War II. And they were promoting people. They were promoting for people to come from all countries over here, from England, from Greece, from Spain, from everywhere. So dad hopped on a ship and came out and he met my mum here.
Speaker 2:After he was in Australia two years he went to the fruit shop to buy his greens, his vegetale, and then the guy there says oh, you know, my sister's out from Italy. Oh, really, yes, why don't you come over for dinner Friday night and meet her? And the rest is history. My mum was that from Calabria and dad was learning English by reading the newspaper and talking and stuff like that. And he was in. Dad did a lot of construction work. Most immigrants here came were bricklayers, carpenters, that sort of thing, and so they got married in 1955, and in 1956 I popped out and Dad called me Salvino because he's Salvatore. My nonno, his father was Salvatore, my great-grandfather was Salvatore and I'm Salvino, so that's why I'm Sal, Little Sal, yeah.
Speaker 1:But that's my father, little cell, my father will in america. He was nicholas, of course that's what he was. That's that's his, you know, given name, but his grandfather was nicola. But uh, I heard my cousins always referred to him as um little nikki that my grandmother used to call him in English, but then, when I saw something that she wrote about him, he was Nicolino.
Speaker 2:So OK. So I have to tell you for the benefit of your listeners on your podcast, we call Tesla Nicola Tesla, that's incorrect. Nicola is the name of a female English person. It's Nikola.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my American accent says Nikola, no, no it's your fault.
Speaker 2:It's not your fault, but I know because one of my uncle's mum's brothers his name was Zio Nicola, uncle Nicola.
Speaker 1:Well, you know and I mentioned this on one of the podcasts I just did about names you know, when I was in Italy, I was so embarrassed by saying my last name, sorrentino, because there it's, sorrentino, sorrentino. Yeah, we don't roll the R's here in America.
Speaker 2:You have to, you got to be Scottish. The Scottish do.
Speaker 1:Ireland. It's a car. That's funny, yeah, yeah. Well, what's funny about the Scots is, even the English don't understand the Scottish, right.
Speaker 2:So Well, they consider themselves to be a totally different breed anyway, which is great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, exactly. So now I'm assuming that your parents spoke. They both spoke their dialect back then, so were they able to communicate in Calabrese and Sicilian. Okay, in Calabrese and Sicilian.
Speaker 2:Okay, so Siciliano and Calabrese. The two dialects are extremely similar because the kingdom of Sicily back in the old days, going back a thousand years, were all taught the same language. The variations came out later, but Sicilian and Calabrese is pretty similar. They're about 90% compatible.
Speaker 1:Oh, so that's closer than I thought, because my parents were from Naples and Bari and there was a big difference there from what they told me. Anyway, they used to argue all the time over who was speaking proper Italian. They used to argue about anything really Well, yes, that's true. So now you've done a lot of research. How far back have you been able to go?
Speaker 2:So I've been able to go back to the 1700s, but back in Italy, when I talked to my nonna as a little boy and then my auntie, who's the only sibling of my father. Provino is my surname, and it only became Provino in the 1800s. Before that it was Provinus, and I'll tell you the story that my auntie told me and I put things together and the Provino clan went to Sicily in about 1180. They were knights from Normandy who fought in the Third Crusade and then were given lands in a place called Bagheria, provincia, palermo, and so the Proveno, as my aunt called me, are a semi-aristocratic. They've lost any titles now, but they were Normans, norman lords given lands, and that's how they became Sicilian and that's how my dad came to be there, and so Provinus became Provino.
Speaker 1:Ah, that's an interesting story. That's an interesting story Now have you done DNA?
Speaker 2:Have done DNA and I have some, also a minor, for example. I'm the oldest of four boys, mum's from Calabria, dad's from Sicily, and I have more to do with France, which is the Norman part, and more to do with also Greek. So because the Greeks at one stage held that part, calabria and Sicily were called Magna Grecia, you know, the Great Greece. I had just a tiny bit fraction from the Middle East, whereas my brother, who's darker skinned than me, and when I go to the beach and lie in the sun I become red like a boiled lobster, whereas he becomes brown like a lebanese boy. And so that's the the difference in our dna. And he's come up with a lot, about 75, I think, just over 70, like nearly 80% from the Middle East, and that's why it's got that, that lovely complexion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, isn't that amazing? I, you know, my dad was. He had a very dark complexion. He was the same way. If he, and when he was out in the sun within you know, the summertime, within two weeks he was, he was really, really dark. And I guess my sister probably has more of that complexion than my brother and I, because I was the same way. I would eventually get tan, but first I would burn and then and then it would get. We got tan and then my mother was more fast, scared, fast skin, which is, which is interesting, because, well, I'll tell you, my, my mother, I did living dna and, uh, you know, to get the mother and father lines and my mother's uh line is like 95 percent from the caucasus.
Speaker 1:There's no, you know, no, you know, going back 10 000 years. Wow, so it. So it's really, really something. And I can't, I can't figure it out. My my father uh kind of has some of that Levant and then up through, uh, mountainous areas, you know, through through Switzerland and then into Spain and then eventually into Italy. So they were, I guess they were herders and stuff like that. But yeah, you know, I try to explain that DNA because people, some people get very violent when they say and my DNA shows that I'm Greek and Middle Eastern and I'm a hundred percent Italian, and I don't believe it.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, I know, I know. I mean, at the end of the day, even in modern days, you have people here who say to me they say, which part of Italy were you born? I said I was born in Sydney. Oh yeah, but you're still a foreigner, aren't you? Why is that? Because you speak two languages. I said where are you from? Oh, I'm Australian. Hang on a second. You were born here, like me. But did you come out of the ground in Australia? No well, where are your folks from? Oh, that was five generations ago, yeah, but where? From England? Well then, you're Anglo-Australian, I'm Italo-Australian, but we're all Australian. You see so?
Speaker 2:But back in those days, when there was a lot of intermingling, you had slaves that were caught in Africa, for example, and brought back to Italy or to France or to Spain, and they were slaves in the palace or serving some lord or something. And if they had children and they married someone who was, and they were half breed children, there can be throwbacks later on, and there's a lot of stories where, you know, people look more greek. Or my brother's married to a lovely girl whose family is in from sicily, but she looks more like a greek girl because that's when the g inhabited and colonized Sicily 5,000 years ago. And she's the throwback and she looks very Hellenic.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, and my wife, she's half Sicilian and half Puerto Rican and she's as fair-skinned as you can be, with very, very light blue eyes, and she's got some in her DNA. There's some Norwegian like 10% Norwegian, the combinations, especially in Sicily. I mean, everybody was there so you could be almost anything if you were born in.
Speaker 2:We're one big family, bob, one big family. The human race is not a race, it's a family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, and you know, back then there was the intermingling, now it's it's. You know, everybody's marrying everybody, uh absolutely back then it wasn't so much marrying, as it was other stuff going on, but, uh, that that's what happened. So, um, so that. So now, how about that? That was your dad's family, right? Well, how about your mom's family? Have they been in collabia for many years?
Speaker 2:on my, on my mom's side, for example, the influence, the genetic influence, is a lot of the Byzantine, the Ottoman Empire that held Calabria for such a long time. In fact, where my mother comes from, near Catanzaro, which is one of the capital cities there and Catanzaro is the capital of Calabria, up in the mountains there's a place called Santa Caterina dello Ionio. So Santa Caterina is a saint, we would say Saint Catherine of the Ionic side of things, that side of the peninsula, the right side of the peninsula, next to the ionic sea. Now the saint is depicted a beautiful woman holding a sword and at her feet is the head of a turk. They call it oturku, the turk, but in fact it's one of the Ottomans who had he wanted to marry this beautiful woman in the village.
Speaker 2:You know that a lot of legends are created in folklore in these villages to preserve the history and the story right. So Santa Catarina was a very forthright, like the Joan of Arc of this village, and she told this suitor to go and get lost, and he didn't like that. So a scuffle broke out and there was fights, swords came out and she chopped the head off the Turku, the guy, the Ottoman leader, and that's what's at her feet. So when they bring out La Madonna and the men carry La Madonna during La Festa, whatever festa it might be, particularly the one of Santa Catarina, there she is in her full glory holding a sword and her foot is on a Turk's head. I had an uncle called Uncle Vincenzo, uncle Vinny, and he had a little moustache and I swear he looked like a Turkish man and because the intermingling he was a throwback from that. Do you see what I mean?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah yeah, exactly so I'd say to my brother with the dark skin. I said, yeah, but you're a Turk and he gets upset about that.
Speaker 1:There's nothing wrong with Turks, goodness me, they make good food name was Nicoletti and there's a story that goes back to St Nicholas, when the people from Bari went to Turkey to get the relics of St Nicholas, and supposedly there's one story that says that the men who went and got the relics they were known as Nicoletti after that. So I don't know if there's a connection there or not. That's again, you don't know about some of these stories. You know like how much is truth and how much is fiction right.
Speaker 2:But you know, throughout history, bob, I found out during my research not everyone had a surname. If you were a servant, born in the household of the landlord, who was called Michele Michael, in Italian Michele and when you got registered for taxes, who are you? I'm Mario, yeah, but who do you belong to, michele? Oh, so you're Mario Di Michele. And that became his surname Di Michele, di Francesco, di Mario Di Maggio, we say in the States, you say Joe Di Maggio, joe Di Maggio. Di Maggio mean he was born in May.
Speaker 2:You see what I'm saying the family, the original, and so people got named after the month or who they belonged to. Or if he was Russo or Lorusso, which is the Russian, or Russian, an Italian father. His name is Anthony Albanese. They call him Albo for short, or Albanese. It's Albanese because there was a time back in the 15 and 1600s where there was a huge move of humanity migration from Albania to that part of Italy, from Bari right down to Calabria. A lot of Albanian people settled here in this area, and so they were called surname Albanese. It was an adjective.
Speaker 1:He's Albanian, yeah, and the interview I did just previous to this was with Raffaele Fontanella, with Raffaele Fontanella, and he's been studying you know surnames for years and years and years and he goes through. You know the various ways of how people got their names, going back to the Renaissance period, where there were too many Giovannis in the town, so they had to start distinguishing people by giving them some sort of name like you said I've met people.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry, no, no, go ahead. I met people with the surname of Ferrari. We say Ferrari, ferrari and they say, oh, I'm named after a car. I said actually Ferrari was the ancient name for a blacksmith, because Ferrum in Latin is iron, an iron worker, a blacksmith Ferrari. So the surname Ferrari was like Smith in English Ironsmith, blacksmith, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Right and you don't have now, for example, Mario Televisione. That doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:Not yet In 200 years we television maybe.
Speaker 1:Well, there's 300,000 distinct surnames in Italy, so that's, yes, that's a very interesting thing. Now my I, I go back. You know, my third great grandparents were the Count of Montebello, but I could trace back to the Rufo family directs to the Rufos in Cantanzaro and in different places because of my grandmother, but Calabria, our favorite place in Calabria was Shilla. We just that was just so amazing oh, shilla's beautiful Gorgeous beach Shilla.
Speaker 1:That's wonderful, yeah, and it's a nice little town. You know the steps are a little much coming up, but yes yes, it's pretty high up.
Speaker 2:I want to tell you a little story that might put a smile on your audience, and that is that when I was mid-teens, I used to take my mum to the doctor. You see, italians get to an age where they've got to go and see the doctor all the time because they're not feeling right, which is like everybody else. But we're sitting down in the waiting room. It's an Italian doctor, and so you can imagine the waiting room is full of italian people. So dr rumore was his name. Dr rumore would come out and say signora pomodoro, which means tomorrow, and she would get up and go in. Then they come out and say, oh, signora latuca, so one was tomorrow in italian. Or daughter tocca, which is lettuce. And one bloke says what is this? A salad? Yeah, una insalata. Is there a salad here today? Sort of thing. So, going back to surnames, they can have all sorts of funny surnames, even coniglio, which means rabbit, which was another one. People were just laughing and making fun of it, but it was good fun.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, and that's what's so interesting about it is that, again, some people got names back then based on they had a big nose, they had one eye, they had this, that and the other thing. Like I said in the other podcast one of my favorite ones is my friend Nick set aucato right, so seven ducati, and we were we were kind of like talking about it, saying, well you know, he said it could have been somebody who charged seven ducati for something, or he may have had seven ducati or he may have lost seven ducati or it could have been the.
Speaker 2:It could have been the seventh duke yes, right, that too.
Speaker 1:That too, we talked about that, yeah yes, exactly right very interesting, I love that I love that a lot. Yeah, and you know, and the names, yeah, like I said, the names are so, so, very interesting. So now, in this research, did you come across anybody like you? You said, wow, because they had a certain occupation or you know, they did something amazing, or maybe not so amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that. Yeah, there's a bit of a story there. With the Pravino my paternal side, dad's side, there was my great, great great grandfather. He had nine children. He built, he had a wonderful restaurant business in Palermo which is 14 Ks I think, that's about seven miles out of Bagheria and he built a beautiful house as well which still stands and now belongs to my cousins over there because my auntie passed away.
Speaker 2:Dad passed away two years ago. My dad. He wasn't bad to live to be 92 and a half and was a man who smoked 60 cigarettes a day from the age of nine and he quit probably 20 years before he died. But still, 92 and a half is pretty good innings, I reckon. And anyway, my great-great-great-grandfather. He built this wonderful restaurant and place.
Speaker 2:He built properties and of course there was all the hand-me-down from the time when they were Normans. Back then they had lands everywhere. One of my great uncles, in a few game of cards, had lost all the properties of the Provinos and that was a big blow and that was a big blow. There is one of my dad's cousins who's Salvatore Provino, named like after the grandfather, and he lives in Rome and he's a painter, an artist, and his paintings go for $100,000 each apiece and that sort of thing. But going back to the history that you're asking me about, I haven't been able to peg down any one of great note, but I did find out that, for example, the time that the provinos arrived in bagheria, sicily, the normans actually that the kingdom of Sicily is is very was very closely linked to the Plantagenet family, which was, you know, richard the Lionheart, and he had lived in Palermo for quite a while before he went off on his crusade.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that and yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:I've got some notes here that I'm reading out to you. Richard the Lionheart, his father was Henry II and he was the first Plantagenet, and they really held a hold on Sicily. Why did they go to Sicily? To get rid of the Arab overlords, who were there for nearly 400 years, and so it took them 30 years, but eventually they kicked out all the Muslims. The other thing that people don't realize is that la catedrale di Palermo, which means the Palermo cathedral, used to be a mosque, and when you look at it's got a huge dome on it. And when you go outside, do you remember watching Godfather 3?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the bad one. Yes, I remember watching the bad one.
Speaker 2:Michael Corleone goes to Sicily and he meets the cardinal and he gets an absolution there. He confesses outside in the courtyard of the church. In any case, I've been there and people don't realise when you go through there there are two different columns that hold up the arches. One was put there by the Arabs when they built the mosque. Another one next to it was put in, installed all along, all along the courtyard, by the Normans, to say that this is our church now, and they converted to a Catholic church, catholic Church. The two biggest cathedrals in Italy at the time were Palermo, which was one of the largest trading ports for Islam, and Napoli. Napoli has a lot of domed. They're all the old mosques that were converted to churches later. So Napoli, the port of Napoli and the port of Palermo were the two largest trading ports for Islam in the Mediterranean at a certain time. Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:And I actually traced my direct line back to Richard through my paternal grandmother because of her connections.
Speaker 2:That's the one from Sicily.
Speaker 1:Yes, she's half Caracciolo, her mother was Caracciolo, and that family dates back to 950 in Naples, and I think originally they were from the Byzantine Empire also. Yes, because the name, it's Caracciolo in Italian, but I've seen it spelled with a K in there, which of course we don't have, you know going back.
Speaker 2:We don't have. There's no K.
Speaker 1:There's no K Exactly, but yeah, I had no idea that.
Speaker 2:that I mean, of course I knew he was in the crusades, um, but I had no idea that he spent time in uh palermo, yeah I, I think that and also the wife of king roger might have been roger ii or Roger II or III, who was King of Sicily at the time. His wife was somehow hooked up with Richard the Lionheart's family. He was related to her. That's why he went to visit her there and he stayed there for quite a while. He loved Palermo. It wasn't the first time that he's been to Palermo, because Palermo was becoming very much one of those Norman strongholds and a getaway for a lot of the Norman noblemen that were throughout the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a great city, the jewel of the.
Speaker 2:Mediterranean? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we like it.
Speaker 2:Now it's a little bit. It got bombed a lot. I mean, there were about three and a half years where it got bombed nearly every night when the Allies were trying to get rid of the Nazis out of there. There's not much left in Palermo. That's why Milano, too, was the most bombed city, and when you go to Milano now it's all new. It doesn't have a spirit or a soul. My wife and I lived in Lago di Como, lake Como for three and a half years, and so Milano was only a 35, 40-minute drive for us, and we'd take the train or drive the car, it didn't matter. But when you drive there and you think, it doesn't feel the same. Whereas Como was preserved, como never got bombed. It had the Nazis there, but it never got bombed. In fact, mussolini got shot just above the hills there, above Lake Como, just before the Swiss border. He was about to cross the Swiss border.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, and that's where my mom's family was from in Torito. They're about 30 minutes from Bari. They never got bombed. They could see it because my uncle was still living there until the 50s. So they would see the planes coming over and bombing the port and everything like that and they would run into the fields. But they never got bombed because it was a small little farming village. There was nothing really there. But my cousin told me she's like 90 something, now 92, 93, uh, she was about 12 or 13 uh, at the end of the war and she used to go into barry and and sell things on the black market to the yes, the americans and the english, um, and I asked, I said what did you live on? You know, she said beans, mostly beans. And you know, then you know they would you know barter with, I guess, the English and the American troops when they came in. But you know, I asked I said, did you see any German troops? And she said not in her town.
Speaker 2:Really, they were all in the in the city right, but body's the same way. You still have the old enough, yeah you still have the old city.
Speaker 1:Uh, pretty much, but but to the well, I guess it would be the west of of the old city. Everything is like brand new bomb yeah, yeah, for that reason.
Speaker 2:Do you know my dad?
Speaker 2:Um, when the war finished, my dad was nearly 18 years of age and he told me that at night during the war he would have to sneak out with a lot of the other young blokes young men, that's what we call blokes here in australia, young men and they would go up on the hills and look for a particular weed called we call a burridge in english, but they call it a burrania burrania, and it looked a little bit like a cabbage, but a long leaf with some, um, some prickles on it.
Speaker 2:And he would bring some home and his mum would would boil it and take the prickles out and make a soup and they would eat that grain. That's all they had to eat for a long, long time, and the flour was very scarce. They didn't have things like even olive oil at one stage, and so they had to dad had to scrounge the hillsides for food, basically whatever they could find mushrooms, that sort of thing wow, that's, that's rough, that's really rough, uh, and so I saw I think you mentioned it, but I don't know how old was he when he got to australia.
Speaker 2:So dad, when he got to Australia, was 24 in 1952. And it was interesting because as soon as he arrived here he got a job and he started working. And he told me a funny story. Australians have a habit of saying no worries, mate. That means okay, no problem. And someone said to him no worries. They called him Sam because they couldn't say Salvatore, hey, sam, no worries, he goes. Hey, what do you mean? No worries, he goes, it's no worries. Listen, if no worries are bad, then no worries to you and your whole bloody family, but if no worries is good, then it's okay. He didn't know what no worries meant.
Speaker 1:That's funny. Well, you know, when we were living in England we used to watch. We'd be watching a comedian. Of course we understood the language right, but we watched these stand-up comedians, or something like that, on the television and then they would get to the punchline and we had no idea what we everybody's hysterical laughing. We had no idea what happened.
Speaker 2:Lovely, that's the best way to be. I've got to tell you a story about my auntie Now. My auntie, who is my mother's sister mom, was three years old when her mother died in 1934. And she had older sisters who raised her like it was. They became her mom and she became their child, even though they were siblings. And so my auntie, who God love her, died in 2006 at the age of 96. She was actually a few weeks, six weeks, before her 96th birthday.
Speaker 2:She told me an interesting story that she was in the, my nonno's orto, which is the vegetable garden up on the hills, and she was collecting figs from the fig tree, so she's on on a big branch.
Speaker 2:This fig tree was 200 years old, so it was massive tree, thousands of figs everywhere, and she had an apron with pockets in it, and so she was reaching out and grabbing the fruit, putting it into the pockets, and all of a sudden she hears an explosion and something whizzed by her and the leaves fell and all of a sudden all hell broke loose and she said she could see men on either side shooting at each other, and later we realized that it was when the uh, the the allies had arrived in the village and were pushing back Nazis.
Speaker 2:They were actually having a combat in Nonno's Orto and she stayed up in the uh in the tree for hours and hours and she was scared and crying. But then later the soldiers helped her down, the Allies helped her down and she said all the figs she had in the pockets were squashed because she was hanging on for her dear life. They're things that you and I have never had to go through, but just imagine all those people that lived through those kind of well traumas really aren't they? It's crazy, but they had to live and survive through all that and she told me the story like it was nothing.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's some story. I'm lucky too. That's an amazing story.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've, I've interviewed a couple of people who, uh, you know either well, not them, but their, their parents, um, lived through some of the battles and you know, the towns were destroyed and and, uh, uh, you know one outside of Naples where they, the whole town, evacuated into the caves and were there for a very, very long time, you know, even after the war ended, until they actually they didn't even rebuild the city. They kind of moved the city and rebuilt it, you know, a couple of miles away from the original city, because it was just so bombed out. Yeah, yeah, you know, really scary, but you know what's what? This crap still goes on today. It just, you know, make sure it'll never stop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I guess not. When we lived in Como, I had the privilege of meeting a wonderful man. He was in his late 80s and he told me that as a little boy he helped his father move contraband across the border to Switzerland, because the Swiss loved olive oil, they loved Italian wine, they loved the pasta, and then he would exchange that for other things he could bring back, whether it be medicines or whatever. And so they did this on a nightly basis, but they had to be careful. They had to be careful. They had to paint their faces black and wear hats and beanies, because the Nazis were everywhere and they couldn't be caught because they'd be thrown in jail, sort of thing.
Speaker 2:But that was their living. It was actually to go across to Switzerland, which was a neutral country, and they would gladly buy Italian things and also barter a lot by giving back things that they needed back in Italy. Wow, that's something. So they had special packs, he told me, like it was like a big box on his back and as a little kid he had to carry it and his father would then put a lot of stuff in there. And so him, his father, his uncles, cousins, they carried a lot of stuff over the hills into.
Speaker 1:Switzerland. Wow, yeah, that's really risky, that's very risky. Well, it was back then, yeah, yeah, and you know, I never thought I have to ask my cousin, one of these. I never thought to ask. I don't know if, I mean, I know my, my mom's um parents were sending money back to italy to actually bring people over into canada and then eventually into america, because america, we, our board is closed, and I think it was 1923. Um, nobody from, nobody from southern europe was basically allowed to come in um, and and then, even when my uncle came in the 50s, he had to spend four or five years in Canada waiting to be able to come into America. At the same time, australia was open, right, and I said to somebody from Australia I think Australia is probably, as far as the immigration goes, probably like 30 or 40 years behind where we were. Well, we had that big influx between 1900 and 1920. You guys had it, I guess, after the war into the 60s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's correct. Well, ours continued to the 70s. That's correct. Well, ours continued to the 70s. But it's interesting because when I went to my mother's village, there was an old lady there sitting down and she goes who are you? I said my name is Salvino. Who is your mother, rosaria? I don't know her. Who was your grandfather? And I said Giuseppe Leto. Nah, what's his nickname? I said Pepe Ucheremidoto, which means Pepe, which is short for Giuseppe Ucheremidoto, the man who makes roof tiles, because Nonno had clay and a kiln and he and my uncles used to work making roof tiles to build the houses in the village. Oh, now I know who you're talking about.
Speaker 2:Everyone had a nickname. There was Gambaruta, which means broken leg. Testapinata, which means bald head. Manjakapiri, which is a woman with lots of hair, a bit of frizzy, and she's a manjakapiri, which literally means she can hear. That's how much hair she has. And if she didn't say a nickname, they wouldn't know who you're talking about. She said to me ah, now, where do you come from? La America piccola or La America grande? I said what's La America piccola? She goes La America piccola. The small America is La Australia, la America grande is the USA. So that's how they would distinguish between people who had gone to America and people who had gone to Australia, because Australia was America. Piccola, little America, is that interesting?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is so very interesting. Well, yeah, like I said, you know, until I started doing this, I never realized that so many Italians, you know, migrated to Australia. I had no idea, of course, I knew, well, I even learned even in America Not many.
Speaker 1:Even in America. You know, I knew about New York and San Francisco and Chicago, but throughout all of America there's been so many people who didn't just necessarily, you know, like move from New York to these places. They they landed in New York and then they took a train to Ohio because they were building the railroad, or they needed miners, or they needed sculptor or whatever they needed. You know, and there's so many Italian enclaves in the united states that probably too many to count a lot of them don't even know where they originate from.
Speaker 2:You know, people didn't even know that lady gaga is of italian descent. Her surname is di giovanotti, that's right. Yeah, you know Madonna. Madonna's name is Ciccone, I mean, and it goes on and on and on.
Speaker 1:Well, we all knew, you know Madonna, because we knew that growing up you know. But it's funny, you know growing up, if somebody asked you what are you, you would say you would automatically say italian. We didn't say italian american, we would just say italian. And now we, you know, then went to italian american. And then, after you know, once you go to italy, you come back and you're not, you're just, you realize, you're just american.
Speaker 2:At that point by the way, you know where madonna is now, don't you?
Speaker 1:No, I don't know I don't pay attention that much. Portofino oh, is that where she is? Yeah, well, she's got the money to live in Portofino.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's in Portofino. Portofino is a beautiful place and she's in Portofino, but she's doing a little bit of a tour of Italy. While we were living there, there were rumors. While we were living there, there were rumors because it doesn't become public that she had bought a house on Lake Caramo as well. I mean, Sting has a house there, Murdoch has a house there, Also, Nicole Kidman when she was married to Tom Cruise, they had a house there, but I think they've since sold it, and you know, George Clooney has a house there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, george Clooney, yeah, I think he has a little bit more than a house.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a villa, villa Oleandra. Now listen, I just want to tell you too that when we first moved into Lake Como, my wife and I, she got one of those maps about Lake Como and what to see, what's good to see. One afternoon we're sitting down there having a coffee in our kitchen and she goes oh my God, look at this. I said what? Look at this church here in Como. It's like 400 metres away, la Chiesa di San Provino, san Provino, get out of town. So we went there and had a look. And lo and behold, in 834, this monk from Normandy walked for months and arrived in Como and built an orphanage and he became bishop, the second bishop of Como, and they built a church called La Chiesa, the church of San Provino, and on the 8th of March every year they open it, because it's so old you can't go. You know they're afraid it might break down, but they have a very short mass on the 8th of March to commemorate La Chiesa di San Provino.
Speaker 1:I never knew that before yeah, yeah, and, and I guess provino does that mean they, they came from uh, well, I guess was it um, what's the uh, what's the place in?
Speaker 2:uh, france, uh, that's got a similar name normandy and normandy oh no, you're thinking of you might be thinking of the region le provence yeah, provence.
Speaker 1:So they didn't come from there, they came from, they came from. No, no, that's down the south, from the north so they were probably originally I've got some.
Speaker 2:They were probably originally vikings, yeah, yeah I was gonna say, I've got some Viking in me. Not that much, but some yeah, because that's. Normandy. Well, at least they conquered there absolutely, but it was at a time he went over when the Catholic Church was growing and, of course, was becoming the only sort of religion in the known world around the Mediterranean. So it was a very strong order to be part of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Well, listen, Sal. This has been great fun, interesting stories for sure.
Speaker 2:Like I said.
Speaker 1:I love getting the perspective from other countries. It's nice to meet italians from around the world fantastic.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me on here and, uh, you know you're doing a great job. Keep up the good work, bob. That's all I can say, because you know we're trying to preserve also our heritage. That's what we're really doing, and it's not just the language or the history, but it's, like you said, our DNA. Whenever I go to Italy, my DNA sings. It just vibrates. A certain frequency that makes me feel like this is where I belong. But I live in Australia, but my DNA was created in Italy, if that makes sense. But my DNA was created in Italy, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I know exactly how you feel, and there's tens or hundreds of thousands out there that feel the same way.
