Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century Read Online Free PDF Page B

astonishment.
    He stood up from his chair and approached her. He reached for the broom and set it against a wall. He knelt down on one knee before her and held her right hand in both of his, as if clinging for dear life. “Just give me one chance!” he strained his neck to look up into her face.
    She looked down into his dark eyes, so deferential yet unyielding, and exhaled. She knew that she couldn’t deny him the chance to at least try. She shuddered at the thought of ever leaving her home and family. But more frightening still, she knew how easy it would be to lose him . As she plumbed the depth of determination in his eyes, hers began to well with tears, causing her voice to crack: “How do I know the same thing won’t happen to you as happened to your father?”
    He leapt to embrace her. He felt the warm tears from her cheeks anoint his brow. Holding her, he rolled his head gently onto her shoulder and spoke softly into her ear: “Maybe we could make his dreams come true.”
     
    Serafino boarded the SS. Taormina at Naples in March 1912. He arrived in New York City 16 days later and took the train south to Philadelphia. He was 26.
    His old friends heard that a company in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was recruiting workers. “Lehigh Portland Cement Company,” one friend mentioned to Serafino. “About 70 miles north of here. Up near the bend of the Lehigh River.”
    “ Lehigh River!” Serafino kept silent but raised his eyebrows, his mind drifting into space as he recalled the end of his search of years ago. “Could it possibly be?”
    “ They’re hiring immigrants,” another friend shook Serafino by the shoulder, “because Americans won’t do the work. Let’s go!”
    “ We need men to work in a quarry in a faraway place called Mason City, Iowa,” the hiring supervisor informed Serafino. The site had been chosen because of its large deposits of limestone, glacial till, and blue clay. “We need men to extract the raw materials for producing gray cement. We offer housing as well as jobs.”
    It sounded too good to be true. Serafino thought he must have misinterpreted the supervisor’s English. “You say both house and job?” Serafino asked.
    “ Yes,” the supervisor confirmed. “Both house and job.” There was just one hitch: “We need men to start work immediately. Otherwise, no deal.”
    Serafino voiced just one hesitation: “When could I return to Italy for my wife?”
    “ You do good work for six months,” the supervisor grumbled. “Then you can get your wife.”
    “ Perfect!” Serafino agreed. He needed to work at least six months anyway to save enough money to bring her back.
    From May to November 1912, Serafino drilled the bedrock on the outskirts of Mason City, Iowa. He then returned to Farindola with the money to retrieve Maria.
     
    Serafino spent the rest of 1912 and all of 1913 still trying to coax Maria away from the village. “I prepared everything for you,” he told her. “I kept my promise.”
    But removing Maria from Farindola was like tearing a mother away from her children. She agonized over the fate of her seven younger brothers and two younger sisters: Francesco, Paolo, Ettore, Guirino, Leandro, Antonio, Ottilio, Bice, and Rosina. The faces of each of them kept passing through her mind. Feeling accountable for any misfortune that might befall them in her absence, she toiled harder than ever on the spring planting and the summer crops so that she could leave her family a record surplus, if nothing more.
    She became pregnant in the middle of 1913. And then lost her baby. She kept beseeching Serafino for one more month. “Just one more month.” The idea of leaving her family and home behind forever, perhaps never to see them again, on top of having just lost her baby, all became too much for her to bear.
    “ If you’re not happy there,” Serafino negotiated, “we can come home.”
    She turned to God for help in making her decision. She visited the village church at