Mama Paternoster would make her own pasta and hang it out in the back garden on cane poles to dry. Pasta was the staple of life for the Italians. There was very little meat available to them. Eggs were very dear. On the black market they brought 37 to 50 lira each. They could purchase fish locally so pasta and fish made up the bulk of their diet. I don't remember Papa ever going to work, so the Solvay Chemical plant must have been shut down.

Things were very difficult for the family; yet they were better off than some for Mama had a lady come in one day a week to clean for her. She suggested that we have the lady do our laundry, so we did. We paid the lady about $1.50 or 150 lira to do laundry for all four of us and Mama Paternoster said, "Oh No! No! Too much! If you pay her that much she will never want to work for me." So Mama did our laundry and we paid her.

We never paid any rent. Giovanni was wearing a pair of shoes that had been patched and repatched and held together with a piece of wire. I ask him what size he wore and was told size 37. He was a fairly small thirteen years old. I knew he wore about a size smaller than I did so I went to the PX and bought a pair of military style low cuts size seven and a half D for him. I had a friend for life.

One morning I was in the house after breakfast and found Lena disassembling her father's black silk fascist shirt. She was having difficulty because the sewing was quite fine and very tight. She was using a pair of scissors. I showed her how to use a single edge razor blade and rip the seams apart so I did my bit to rip up the last vestiges of Fascism. Leno was an unreconstructed Fascist. Even four years later when Jo visited the family just before we were married, Leno was still a Fascist.

The family asked us to dine with them on Easter Sunday. Mama had prepared a full Italian meal. There was of course, the pasta course, followed by the fish course with pasta, then a meat course of veal with pasta, I don't remember what vegetables she served. I think there were peas. When I ask if they ever served corn, they were horrified! Maize was to be fed to the pigs. There was wine with each course, Vino Nero, red wine, with the pasta; Vino Biancho, white wine, with the fish; then red wine again for the rest of the meal. Our part of the meal was the desert. We had each brought over Hershey bars enough to last us for months so we furnished chocolate and figs for desert.