Italian enough?

My claim to an Italian identity is pretty slim. My father's father was born in Italy in 1892, but emigrated to the United States nine years later with his family. He changed his name from Pasquale di Carlo to Charles DeCarlo and married an Irish-American girl (to the horror of both families). I don't remember ever hearing him speak Italian or talk about where he came from, which might only mean that I wasn't paying much attention.

However, since my grandfather didn't become a naturalized U.S. citizen until after my father was born, my father was, per Italian law, an Italian, even if he didn't know it. And so, therefore, am I, and so are my children. At least that's what we are hoping to convince the Italian authorities.

A few months ago, in the midst of our family hoo-ha about this Italian venture, I coincidentally made contact with a cousin whose existence was news to me, the granddaughter of one of my grandfather's five sisters (whom I also didn't know about). Sometimes Facebook really is amazing. She sent me this photograph of my great-grandmother, Concetta.

From things my father said, I gather that Concetta was the ambitious one in the family, the one who pushed her husband to bring her and her children halfway across the world to a strange new country and a whole new life. I see that in her face in this photo.

They settled in the outskirts of Pittsburgh. After her husband became disabled and couldn't work, she opened one of the first movie theaters in town, or so my dad said. The theater showed whatever footage of marching soldiers and whooping cavalry she could get hold of, spliced together by her young son, my grandfather, and billed as exciting scenes from the Italian campaign in Ethiopia of some years before. My grandfather told my dad that the theater attracted lots of customers, who cheered on the Italian heroes (even the ones wearing cowboy hats and shooting Indians). But the audience wouldn't leave after the show, staying to watch the same movies over and over. Before too long the theater went bust.

I have no idea how true any of this really is. My father's family were storytellers, a trait that has been passed down, and I often discover that a shapely narrative I've enjoyed telling and retelling is more or less a figment of my imagination. But I've always loved this story about the movie theater, so I'm happy to keep spreading it around.