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SF: Maybe we can go back one step to your, your family. When your family had these gatherings, like for the holidays and stuff, you had your Irish side from your mom and then the Italian side from your dad, how, how did your family negotiate that? Go to separate things? Did everybody come together on the holidays and stuff like...

JF: This was, most of the time it was just the Italians. I mean, my grandmother's house was just so big, and we, she, we pretty well filled it up, just the Italians. But we did have, we had either one or two parties at our house where we had a little bit more room, where both sides got together, and we had a ball, yeah. No, they all knew one another growing up. Apparently, my Irish grandmother had a store, little candy store, and that's where our people hung around. And I don't know whether there is such a thing as doing that today. Maybe, maybe you guys hang around a certain area, the U. District or maybe people still do. I'm not quite sure. But in those days there were stores all over the place, and each one had its little clientele and clique and I guess my grandmother had her share of people that she knew. And she must have known a lot of people because my dad sure knew, knew everybody.

I was thinking of that the other day, and my -- as a for instance, my, my mother's older sister, my Aunt Mary, had been married to a man named Talbert, and they had two sons. Well, one of those sons, I guess it would've, he would have been my cousin, my Cousin Leo, and my father's, one of my father's younger brothers were friends, and they joined the Maryland National Guard together. So I mean, they had, they knew one another pretty well. And it never ceases to amaze me how, how thoroughly my father knew so many of the people that he -- that later became shirttail relatives of his. Like my, when my, my Irish grandfather was a, a custodian in the school, I guess the school janitor, and my father used to, and my father and mother went to the same school together, my father, I think he went three or eight or something like that. My mother had more education. I think she went through sixth grade. But at any rate, he'd always say, "If I'd known that old man was going to be my father-in-law, I'd have been much easier on him than I was as a kid." [Laughs] They all grew up together, and they all had stories of when they were kids together. Just, just amazing to listen to them. And the funny thing was that some of the worst of them, when I'd say, I'd say to my dad, "Well, whatever happened to that guy you were telling about, that guy who did this and did that?" "Oh, he became a cop." So many of them became policemen. But they sure, they sure knew one another when they were growing up.

JB: Since both sides of your family were Catholic, did they also gather at the Catholic church together?

JF: Well, my, my Aunt Mary and my Uncle Joe and my grandmother, my Italian grandmother, used to go to church together, yeah. But my Italian grandmother was, I mean, she wasn't about to wait around on church, doors opened. She was there a half hour before the doors ever opened. She wanted to be sure that she got there. So she'd leave real early, and she'd be waiting on the steps for the priest to open up the church. I mean, that's the kind of, if I look back on it, I would say it's anxiety. And I think I have some of that from, from the Italian side of, being anxious about time because I don't like to be late. But my grandmother carried it to extreme.

JB: Joe, could you tell us a little about your experiences with going to church as a child or what lessons you learned from your times at the Catholic Church?

JF: Well, one thing I learned was never to cross that big nun who used to teach us Catechism on Saturday mornings. [Laughs] She appeared to be about six foot tall. And not going to Catholic school, I therefore was subjected to Catechism lessons on Saturday mornings. So I would go to the church hall, and the nun would teach us the Baltimore Catechism. And that, I learned very fast. I didn't want anything to do with that nun. She always carried a ruler, and she would swing it around. But, I don't know, I got to be a fairly religious person. I never, I never missed a mass. And that carried all the way through my army career and so forth. I've attended a lot of meetings, a lot of masses where the, the jeep was, the jeep hood was an altar in the jungle and so forth. I kind of slid away from it in the last fifteen or twenty years. But all of our kids went to Catholic school.

SF: When you were really small and you had to go to the Catechism classes, did you see that as sort of a big pain in the south side, and you'd rather be out playing baseball?

JF: Oh, definitely, yeah. It was just one more thing to study for. And I don't know. It was just another, another thing that I could probably have lived without, but my mother was rather influential, so I went there. But I never, all my friends were altar boys. All of our kids were altar boys. I never was. I couldn't, I didn't want to mess up in front of everybody, so I never, I never tried the altar boy route.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.