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JB: Now, how about your father's side of the family, your Italian grandparents? Could you tell us a little about them and where they came from?

JF: Yeah. Unfortunately, I don't know where they came from. I did a lot of genealogy, a lot of research. I became very good friends with a lady who was a publicity person from the Mormon Church, and I helped them quite a bit, and so she helped me with my genealogy by taking me to the Mormon library in Bellevue. And we found nothi-, no record of any Frisino there. She, through the aid of some friends, in fact, I think she went back to Utah at one time, and she looked up herself in the main files and found nothing. And I always told her, I said, I'm Irish and Italian Catholic, and there's no way you're going to find any Mormons. And she said, "That doesn't make any difference. We have everybody here because everybody," as I understand the Mormon Church, if you're on the list, why, you're on the list to be saved for salvation by the Mormons. So that's why they have this huge list. But I, I can't find all the records -- I've got where they were married.

JB: Was that in Italy, or in America?

JF: No. That was here in the United States. My grandfather could speak and write English before he came over here. He was a barber. My grandmother spoke rather halting English. And my grandfather, my father and his older brother were both born in Duluth, Minnesota. How they ever got there or why, I haven't the slightest idea. That's one of the puzzles of my life, is trying to figure out why they apparently landed on the East Coast and went in that direction. I thought it was because my father, my grandfather was following the railroad, but it wasn't. It wasn't at all. So I don't know why they went through there, but at any rate...

And then the next question is, why did they leave Duluth and go to Baltimore? I got sailing records from about twenty years or so, what time and which -- maybe it's not, it was only ten years -- passenger list of ships coming into Baltimore. Pardon my pronunciation, it's really "Ballimer." But Baltimore, so people know what I'm talking about. I got these passenger lists from the, from the federal, federal government. They, they put out the -- out at Sand Point Way there's a huge series of buildings, and they're all federal records. And through them you, as a researcher you can get these ship, ship manifests. And I looked and looked and looked, and I found no, very few Italian people coming into, into Baltimore. So I don't know. That ended in a zero. So I don't know.

My young son's -- youngest son spent nine months in Italy. And he was down on the, near the heel of the Italian boot, and then one of my cousins who's done some research but who lives back in Baltimore, told me the name of the city she thought the family came from. And Tim looked it up, and it was just a small little place, and unfortunately, they had burned the records. And rather than move 'em years and years and years ago, they just simply burned the damn thing, which is kind of a shame. But, so I don't know where they came from. They had, as I said, they had my father and my Uncle Tom, two oldest, when they lived in Duluth. Then they went to Baltimore, and moved into a neighborhood on Madison Street, where I was born. And that's near Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. And that's where they had the rest of their family. Their family -- my, as it wound up, my Italian family and my mother's brother and sister lived within about a block of one another in eastern Baltimore.

JB: So when you were visiting your Italian grandparents, do you remember any lessons learned from, from that side of the family or any, maybe Italian culture they passed on to you?

JF: Just the, the fact that they, a love of eating and wi-, drinking wine. [Laughs] That's about it. I was a wine drinker when I was just a very small kid. I was the oldest grandson, oldest grandchild. But wine and, and good, but very simple Italian food -- my grandmother didn't go in for anything fancy. She, when we had a gathering, say at Thanksgiving, we would, we would simply have spaghetti and, spaghetti and chicken or turkey and beef and meatballs. And, I mean there was no real fancy, fancy food. Every once in a while she'd, she'd make something a little more fancy, but she went in for quantity rather than for -- well, she went in for quality, but she also went in for quantity. She had a bowl about this big and about this deep which she filled with spaghetti when the whole family was there. And my, my Uncle Tom, who was my dad's older brother, had to be one of the, one of the great eaters of all time. He would eat out of what would normally be a family serving dish. He just, I don't know where -- he was not, wasn't a huge man, but he was about 5'10", and broad and straight down.

JB: Wow.

JF: Very -- he worked on the railroads, doing repair work after accidents and so forth. So he worked very hard and he lived pretty hard and he'd eat pretty hard. I mean, I was always amazed. He would, we would be at my grandmother's, and he'd be off to work and he'd have a pie, six sandwiches and a pie. And that was his, I mean, not, not little, skimpy sandwiches, but... sandwiches.

JB: Now, Joe, you told us that you were born in 1919, and I believe you have one sibling. When was she born?

JF: My sister was born about a year and a half after I came along.

JB: Okay.

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