The Way Things Used to Be: Tales From Our Elders

Richard Fossa, eighty-three, Federal Hill and North Providence. Photography by Alex Gagne.

Richard Fossa, eighty-three, Federal Hill and North Providence

As told to Jamie Coelho

M y family came from Italy around 1910. My mother came here with her father and her sister. Her father went back to Italy after one year and left his two kids here, and they were just teens. My mother was eighteen or nineteen when she got married. My parents met here, and they came from two separate towns, Teano and Roccamonfina. My father was a tailor. Neither of my parents spoke English.

I was born in 1936 at 62 Spruce Street, into a family of eight children. Five boys. Three girls. I was the youngest of the eight.

When my mother was pregnant with me, and after having seven kids, she knew when she was ready. She said, “call the doctor” in Italian — “sono pronto,” which means “I’m ready” — and he came over with a flashlight, because there were no lights in the stairway. My mother’s name was Luisa. The doctor said, “Luisa, you have two more weeks,” and he left. About an hour later, my mother said to my aunt, “go across the street and get the midwife.” A half-hour later, an eight-pound baby boy popped out. The midwife delivered half the babies on the street, and years later, when she would bump into me, because I wasn’t the best behaved kid on the street, she would always say to me in Italian, “You made me run.”

At that time, the day after babies were born, a visiting nurse would come check on the mother. My cousin always tells the story. The nurse says, “I’m looking for Luisa Fossa.” My cousin says, “She’s right here,” as my mother’s on her knees washing the floor. The nurse says, “You just had the baby!” And she’s trying to pick her up off the floor, she’s trying to put her to bed. And my mother’s like, “I can’t go to bed. I gotta cook,” in Italian.

We lived in a three-tenement house, no hot water. My mother and her sister — my aunt — both had five boys and three girls. They lived on the first floor, and we lived on the second. In those days, a three-tenement house was occupied by all relatives.

We had four bedrooms. One was a parlor, so we were down to three bedrooms. And one was my mother and father’s bedroom, so now we’re down to two bedrooms for eight kids. Parlors: you couldn’t go in unless you died or you got married. You heard about the plastic on the couches? No one could go in that room.

If you wanted a shower once a month, you went to the bathhouse, which was across from the Old Canteen. To bathe at home, everyone had a big galvanized pan. There was always hot water on the stove, because they had to boil pasta. You put the hot water in the pan, and then you’d stand in there and wash up the best you could. There was no bathtub in my house.

The families on Federal Hill were very close. My father and mother couldn’t find the key to the door if they wanted to lock it. People would say, “Oh, Federal Hill, be careful.” I mean the neighborhood took care of the neighborhood. They could say whatever they wanted about the organized crime. My father was in business for years and no one ever bothered him. There were no drugs on Federal Hill; they wouldn’t allow it.

Believe me, it was a rough place in the old days. People got killed. But it was people who were connected, and they didn’t kill working people. You were in a gang, or you lived by the gang’s rules. It was rough, but my mother never worried about walking down the street. They would say to me, “You see something, run.” That was their last words to you. That and don’t take a pregnant girl home.

Federal Hill was off limits to the sailors during World War II. Whenever they were up there, they were chasing girls. The sailors would come up the Hill and there would be trouble. When they docked at Quonset Point, a sign was posted that actually said, “Federal Hill Off Limits,” and naturally, you get ten rebels from down in South Carolina, they go up there and never come back healthy.

I got thrown out of more schools than most people went to. I was a troublemaker in those days, it was mostly fighting. We were the immigrants of our day. On Federal Hill, there were all Irish people before the Italians came here. If you look at the street signs off Spruce Street, you’ve got McAvoy Street, Ames Street, Lily Street, it’s all basically Irish-named streets, so we went in and infiltrated, and they moved out as we went in.

We attended Nathanael Greene Junior High School coming from Federal Hill and we had holes in our shoes. You’d wear your brothers’ shoes, they could be two sizes too big for you. You didn’t get a new pair of shoes until your feet were on the ground.

It was nothing for a teacher to call you a guinea or a wop or slap you in the mouth. The first time I got hit, I was sassing some female teacher and another teacher grabbed me by the collar and slapped me, and I punched him. We went tumbling down the stairs, so they threw me out.

Then I got thrown out of high school for fighting. They said, you can’t come back until your mother or your father comes here. My father wasn’t taking a day out of work to bail me out. I woke up one morning and said I am not going to school, and I just never went back. No one tried to find me.

My mother didn’t drive. She hardly went out. She’d walk up to DePasquale Avenue because I lived about six houses away from DePasquale Square. From Atwells Avenue to Spruce Street, there were pushcarts on both sides. My mother could go to what was called Balboa Avenue at the time, and buy all her fresh fruits and vegetables. The fish truck would come through and blow the horn. Everyone would go downstairs to buy the fish right off the truck.

Atwells Avenue had four or five butcher shops, so you went and purchased your meat fresh every day. There were Italian clubs up and down Spruce Street and Atwells Avenue. Every town in Italy had its own club. They drank wine, played cards and talked on weekends. They smoked stogies, Italian cigars. You couldn’t even see the person next to you because of all that smoke. All those Italian people, they worked very hard.

I worked for Coca Cola for thirty-six years. It was on Pleasant Valley Parkway and Valley Street. I was twenty-one years old, just got married when I started.

Around the same time, my mother was hit by a car on Broadway when she was sixty-three, right in front of the Uptown Theater. I was living two doors away. I didn’t know it was her, but I heard the rescue and everything. My wife told me to go downstairs but I didn’t want to be a gawker. Then later, my brother-in-law came to tell me it was my mother. I am the last one left in the family. All my brothers and sisters are gone.

I started on North Providence Town Council in 1973, after we moved there. Former Mayor Sal Mancini asked me to run. After refusing a number of times, I decided to run expecting to lose so I could be done with it. Well, I won. I served on the Town Council for ten years, zoning board for four years, school committee for three years as chairman, mayor for three years, thirteen years as chairman of the Democratic party and chief of staff for thirteen years. This position is a three-month favor I did thirteen years ago.