Janet Messina ii: early years

 Ed. Note:  Janet and I talked by phone today and this is what she told me.  Anyone who has photos which can go along with this part of her story, please send them and I'll add, gladly.   rvm

The Depression

Growing up then didn’t make a very happy childhood.  We lived in Camden  my three sisters (I’m the second one) and my brother and parents, and during those years my mother worked, cleaning and baking for people who were wealthier.  My father had been laid off…there were many lay-offs then…so she had to go out to support our family.  Now I look back and feel sad for my mother, thinking of how hard she worked.  But we stuck together.

I mentioned before that children often left school at sixteen to work, helping the family along.  In a class of 50, maybe two went on to college.  The rest of us worked.  We grabbed any job we could, in a candy store, or Woolworth’s five-and-ten, maybe a restaurant, whatever we could do.

It’s hard to compare kids then with kids now.  For one thing, we had no phones even in the house.  To make a call, I had to go out to the street to a public phone.  And some people had no bathrooms indoors, only the outhouses in the back yard…I remember in my earliest years going out there!

Twelve and 13-year olds were mature then.  They had to be.  I see the same age children now…very child-like still.  Before they had to help mom and dad, often raising the younger ones.  There were movies and radio to listen to, not much else to entertain us.  Radio had few shows for children, except Saturday morning…I can’t think of the emcee’s name now…when a talent show for children would come on.  I had a friend who was Portuguese; she was on that show a few times.

Coming into the Cozzoli Family

I met Roccina in junior high and we became life-long friends.  She introduced me to my beloved Anthony, and I became part of the wonderful Cozzoli family when we married in 1939.  That was when Joseph Cozzoli, your great-grandfather, had just died.  He was, they said, a real gentleman.  Every morning, he would set out for a walk, his fedora on his head and his walking cane in hand.  Sam the shoemaker would set his watch by when he walked by.

We lived with your great-grandmother Rocca and my mother- and father-in-law, Erminia and Anthony Messina, in the house in Linden. We were just starting out, so we lived with parents. Especially in the war years, there was a shortage of apartments and housing.

Moving in with my husband’s family was not as comfortable as, say, moving in with my mother, but I respected them and we got along fine.  My mother-in-law liked to work, not only to help out financially, but because she enjoyed it.  Each day she would leave the house for her work in a dressmaker’s shop.  She told me, “Don’t tell Grandma where I’ve gone…tell her I went to church.”

I used to bring Grandma her breakfast upstairs in the morning.  She didn’t come down until noon…she would be in her bedroom, making the bed, dressing, fixing her hair, so it took her all morning.  At the top of the stairs she would call down in Italian, chi e piano di sotto (who’s downstairs?) [See Ed note 1]  She would always speak to me in Italian, and I’d never know what she was saying!  So I asked my mother-in-law, what is she saying? And Zia Erminia told me.  That was all the Italian I learned!

So every morning I would answer her, Erminia is at church!

Tony, my father-in-law, had a fruit and vegetable business.  When he came home with apples unsold, we cut and pared them and Grandma would make huge apple pies in a roasting pan.

Every Thanksgiving, the whole Plainfield family would come to Linden.  What a time we had!

We were fortunate that the young men in the family who went off to war all came back, some better than others.  Except for my brother-in-law… we lost him under Patton.  It was a sad time then.  While he was away, Anthony wrote me every day from his ship and when he got to Washington state, he mailed me a letter with 39 pages!  He was a good writer and like to write. [See Ed note 2]

When Gary was three years old, we moved to an apartment in New York, where Anthony went to work for his uncle Lennie in the printing business.  It was right in the middle of Manhattan, near the Flatiron building.  The shop printed doctor’s prescription pads and stationary, among other things.

Then when it was time for the children to go to school, we moved back to Linden, and eventually started our own business and went on from there.

 Famous people along the way

In 1943, I was at Franklin Field in Philadelphia when FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) was there.  He rode around the Field so that everyone could see him, so I got up close.  He never stood in public...he was always seated.  That way, his infirmity wasn't obvious and he cut a good figure.  For that reason, too, his son James was always by his side.

In 1964, Anthony, who was working for a medical firm then, was awarded a vacation in the Bahamas.  At the same time, Queen Elizabeth, young then, and Prince Philip were being feted at a reception.  She and he went by in an open carriage, very decorated with flowers, and we saw her.  At the reception, people were filling the staircase and walkway, there were so many.

Ronald Reagan was visiting the Republican National Convention, when we were visiting dear friends in Fairfax, VA.  We heard he was going to be there, so went along, and met him, too.

Bill Clinton was another one...I shook hands with him at the Washington Hotel in Washington DC.  We were visiting friends in the city again, and decided to have dinner at the hotel.  He was very good about leaning over the first rows of watchers to shake hands with the people in the third and fourth row, too...so that was our chance.

At church in Florida on Easter in 2019, I found I was sitting four rows behind the current president, his wife and relatives.  He was married there, and though his wife was a Catholic, they went to church there when they were in their house in Palm Beach.

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[Ed note 1:  I’m translating fairly straight here, but Janet repeated it in dialect.].

[Ed note 2:  somewhere I have a copy that Gary gave me of Anthony’s reminiscences…I’ll find it…it is really good and reminds us of what family is like over the years.]