Little Caesar

Little Caesar

Shortly before noon on a Wednesday in October, 1894, the clients of a small-town Italian barbershop leisurely undergo the ritual of shaving. A group sit along the side wall and trade observations in phlegmatic, Neapolitan dialect, while the patron in the barber's chair listens. Occasionally, between strokes of the razor through thick stubble, the barber adds his opinion to the conversation. A pair of young children regularly chase each other through the shop and are peremptorily ordered back out.

A young man rushes in off the street and declares himself, somewhat unnecessarily, to be in a hurry. The older men are silent for a moment and share disapproving and curious glances while he climbs into the chair and the barber begins to lather his face. With hazel eyes and sharp features, 22-year-old Giuseppe Zambarano stands out in a gathering of swarthy peasant stock. His closely trimmed moustache and neat hair already appear well-groomed, his overall appearance verges on fastidious. He announces to the barbershop audience that he is getting engaged today. He will receive his betrothed and her family at two o'clock in his father's house.

The men offer formal compliments to young Giuseppe on his engagement, and perhaps some patronizing words of wisdom: Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi; Take wife and cattle from your own village.

The men in the barbershop know that Giuseppe's future in-laws, like most of them, come from the same triangle of villages in the back-country of Campania. Fontegreca, Ciorlano, and Prata Sannita lie two hilly miles. walk from the last station on the Naples line. Now many of the squat cottages there stand empty. Most of the one thousand or so natives of these villages make their homes a short way from the terminal of the Cranston St. trolley car, in Thornton, Rhode Island, on farm land that resembles the fertile hills of the old country, with island-dotted Narragansett Bay like a reflection of Naples in the background.

* * *

As a yet unmarried youngest son, Giuseppe Zambarano lives in the home of his father Gioacchino and his uncle Lorenzo, a modest wooden affair in the heart of this growing neighborhood. The Zambarano brothers of the older generation disembarked in 1882 to join the so-called "pick and shovel brigade" of new immigrants, who tilled the land in Thornton and Simmonsville, as they had in Italy.

Now many of the early arrivals have become disenchanted with the hard conditions and meager returns of family farming that drove them from the Italian countryside in the first place.