Coppa Monte by John A. Mango

March 3 2014 I wrote an article on bubblews about a book I read by a local author. I happened to see that the author read my post and tweeted about it on twitter. How cool is that! Since Bubblews never paid me I have removed the post, edited it and posted it here. I hope you enjoy it.

I laid around last night after my kids went to bed and laid around all day today while they were in school because I was so engrossed in this book wanting to finish it.

Coppa Monte means "up a mountain" in Italian . This was an amazing book written by a man who used to live in the town I grew up in. He took us through his memories of WW2 , The Great Depression, and a new medicine at the time called Penicillin . The book is about his ancestors who came from Moiano Italy in 1883 with a promise of work and better lives. They wound up in Susquehanna Pa working on the railroad . There was so much to learn from this book! I loved the two sections of pictures.

On page 3 we are shown what Moiano Italy looked like in 1883. I could hardly believe it when I read "The prevailing opinion in Moiano was that schooling did not teach boys the skills to work the land coppa monte, nor teach girls how to sew, cook, keep house, or raise children. Also, the chidren's help was needed coppa monte. Thus, only a child who was physically weak, or sick, or the children of the few wealthy families were sent to school."

What I enjoyed the most was reading about the way my town used to look. I read about places in town that I have never heard of before such as Lannon and Baxter Grocery Store, Bronson Piano Store, Condon's Grocery Store, and Bucci's Grocery Store. I only recognized one man in the story because when I worked in a hospital the man was a resident in the the one wing. I did however recognize the last names of some people whose ancestors must have come from Italy such as Ficcaro's, Oropallo's, Parrillo's and Radicchi's.

There were a lot of sad events in this book such as railroad workers accidents and deaths from Measles and Leukemia.

The author writes about how his father would sometimes go to the meat market and buy a pigs head. The mother would boil it and they would all cut off their favorite pieces to eat for dinner. The author's favorite part was the eyes. I nearly vomited reading that.

I have heard many stories over the years about how rotten teachers used to treat the students but what I read in this book blew me away. On page 103 & 104 the author writes about a teacher named Mrs. Lanning saying "Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, when she decided a student was not learning their lessons well enough, she called the student to the front of the room. She asked a question and told her victim to write the answer on the blackboard. Any hesitation, especially by an Italian student, caused her to grab the student by the hair and pound the students head on the blackboard"

I laughed pretty hard at something I read in the book. The author's little sister Lena when she was small was allowed to play outside and would talk to anyone who walked by and follow them down the street so her mother tied her to the fence with clothesline. My sister and I were such little terrors when we were young and one day when my sister and I kept running off in opposite directions my dad finally caught us he tied us with rope to the fence. Now that would be considered child abuse but it was funny hearing stories about it and knowing just how bad my sister and I was I could see why my father did that.

At the end of the book we learn that the author now lives in California. He has been married 44 years and has 3 children as well as grandchildren.

This is the 18th book I read in 2014

I originally wrote this post on personapaper.com on May 29, 2015. The site is shutting down and I never earned any payment. I have transferred this post here on this awesome new blog site and deleted the article on personapaper.