A Tough Life
An Image of Tony Ferraro at a younger age, as sent by Richard Gazzola to myself, Yasameen Tareq, via email.
Parlando ulteriormente dell'orribile freddo invernale, Tony afferma che per potersi riscaldare nel periodo invernale, prima o dopo essere andati a scuola, lui e suo fratello dovevano sempre andare a raccogliere ciò che rimaneva del carbone dai binari ferroviari dove gli ingegneri delle ferrovie lo gettavano, sapendo che la gente aveva bisogno per metterlo nella fornace per riscaldarsi “we’d go at night time, pick it up, put it in bags and take it home, because we couldn’t afford to buy any”. Tony procede per mostrare quanto duramente la vita della sua e della sua famiglia è stata, spiegando che non molte persone sarebbero state in grado di affrontare una vita così difficile. È stato forse a causa della dura vita della sua famiglia in Italia che riuscirono a sopravvivere e prosperare in circostanze come la famiglia di Tony proveniva da una provincia molto povera. Inoltre, l'Italia meridionale non è stata trattata così come l'Italia settentrionale è stata, per ragioni che non conosceva, e la gente del sud ha subito un molte sofferenze, come ha spiegato. Tuttavia, Tony si sente ancora nostalgico quando si ricorda gli inverni freddi, e quando parla di sua madre che ha usato per cucire l'unico maglione che Tony possedeva con diverse lane colorate e filato, più e più volte, fino a quando il suo maglione sembrava un arcobaleno e sembrava “a rainbow walking down the street” quando lo indossava.
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Further speaking about the horrible winter cold, Tony states that in order for them to get warm in the winter time, him and his brother, after they came to Canada in 1935, had to always go before or after going to school to collect what was left of the coal by the railroad tracks near which the train engineers used to throw coal, knowing that people needed it to put it in the furnace to get warm. “we’d go at night time, pick it up, put it in bags and take it home, because we couldn’t afford to buy any”. Tony proceeds to show how hard his and his family’s lives had been, explaining how not many people would have been able to cope with such difficult lives. It was perhaps due to his family’s tough life in Italy that they were able to survive and thrive in such circumstances, as Tony’s family came from a very poor province because southern Italy had not been treated as well as northern Italy for reasons that he did not know, and people from the south endured a lot of suffering, as he explained. However, Tony is still able to be nostalgic about the memories of the cold winters when he speaks about his mother who used to patch the one sweater Tony owned with different colored patches and yarn, over and over again, until his sweater looked like a rainbow and he had look like a “rainbow walking down the street” when he wore it.
