Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (Touchstone Book)

by Cramer, Richard Ben

  He was a small man, but thick through the chest, shoulders, and neck, from hauling up net through the water. He wore a brown fedora, even in shirtsleeves, and, like the other men of the Wharf, a sash to hold his pants up. He had a small, old-country mustache. Sometimes, he clenched in his teeth a short black cigar of the sort the fishermen called Toscani. He fished six days a week, made some wine in the basement, raised nine kids, and kept his troubles to himself.

  Giuseppe had come to America in 1898, when his in-laws wrote from Collinsville, California, and told him the fishing was good. A young man who’d work could make enough money to buy a small boat and make a living on his own. That pretty well described the limits of Giuseppe DiMaggio’s ambition. He had just married Rosalie Mercurio, a girl from his village—and their first child was on the way. Giuseppe decided he would go to the New World for a year. In the worst case, he’d come home with some money. As it turned out, he would stay for the rest of his life. He was a Californian for the next fifty years. But an American he never quite became.

  Giuseppe was fully formed in the old and wary spirit of his native land. Through Sicily’s long history—centuries of conquest by Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Europeans—authority was always imposed from without. The only institution in which you had a say was your family. And even there, it was better to keep quiet. (The island’s most famous export, la Cosa Nostra, was created to protect the peasants from predatory government, nobles, church—authority of any stripe. Small wonder, la Mafia, too, was organized on family, and silence.) In Sicily, a young man learned early to keep his head down and follow the ways of his father—all the more in Giuseppe’s poor village, where seamanship and netcraft, passed from father to son, spelled the difference between survival and extinction. Ísola delle Femmine (“Island of the Women”) was a tiny outcrop of rock, a mile off the main island coast. The name came from Roman times, when this was the island of exile for wives who could not stay faithful while their soldier-husbands were at war. In Giuseppe’s day, the islet was formally a part of the province of Palermo, but, in fact, was cut off from everything save the Tyrrhenian Sea. Even by the standards of Sicily, it was backward; and its sons—formed, as was their home, by wind, waves, tide, and changeless time—bore its heritage of stillness and isolation.

  After four years, when Giuseppe sent for his wife and daughter, and moved them into a house in Martinez, California, they began a life that must have seemed wholly new—not just half a world away from their old village, but centuries distant, too. Martinez was an East Bay hick town to Americans; yet, for the DiMaggios, it was unimaginably modern. There were electric streetlights (eight of them, on Main Street); factories worked day and night; there were great steamboats plying the Carquinez Strait (even some fishing boats had engines!), and just twenty paces from their house, there were the gleaming rails of the Southern Pacific: hundreds of trains rattling through every day.

  Still, in most ways, Giuseppe stood apart from all the bustle. He had only a few words of English, and none of the skills of the machine age. He got his little boat (and named it for his bride, the Rosalie D.). In time, he even had a motor in it. But his life still ran to the rhythm of the tides, followed the shad, sturgeon, sardines; still, he rose in the silent darkness, spent his day alone with the weather. Home was a cabin on the dirt road of Grainger’s Wharf, closer to the fish than those newfangled streetlights. This was the wrong side of the tracks in Martinez. The Anglos called this zone the Portuguese Flats (Porta-geeze was the way they said it), which may have meant some Portuguese once had lived there, or may simply have implied that it was filled with greasers. (In those days, such distinctions didn’t have to be nice.) In fact, the Flats were filled with Sicilian fishermen, who’d taken over the wharf in Martinez, and now re-created their old-country villages in the twentieth-century U.S.A.

  Every afternoon you’d see them with their wine and food, outside on Marrazani’s porch, or next to the fish shed of the buyer, Pellegrini. Sundays, the street became a bocce court. Saturdays, after the boats came in, a score of kids played in the dirt between the troughs where the nets were tanning in a soup of redwood bark. The mothers were outdoors, too, recrocheting the rips in the nets with new flax and hand-carved wooden needles. Talk was in Sicilian, and about Sicilians—there was so little contact with anyone else. Or they’d talk about the fish: “How’s the run?” . . . “When you think we’ll see salmon?” . . . like farmers talking weather ’n’ wheat in some tiny town in Kansas—everything else was too distant to merit talk.

  Giuseppe’s house had a living room and a closet-sized bedroom in front, a kitchen and another bedroom behind. The outhouse in back hung over Alhambra Creek, where Giuseppe also tied up his boat. Next door, in an identical tiny wooden house, lived his brother, Salvatore, also a fisherman, who had also married a Mercurio—Rosalie’s sister, Frances. It seemed like the DiMaggio-Mercurios were making a pretty good village by themselves. Kids kept coming, more or less every two years. Giuseppe’s first child, Nellie, had been born in his absence, in Sicily. In America came Mamie, Tom, Marie, Michael, Frances, Vince, Joe, and finally, Dominic. Papa Giuseppe gave all the boys the middle name Paul—for Paolo, his favorite saint. By the time Joseph Paul was born, in 1914, there wasn’t anyplace in the Martinez cabin where there wasn’t a DiMaggio asleep or at play.

  When Joe was still a toddler, his sister Frances was playing on the railroad tracks and got a hot cinder in her eye. In Martinez, the only doctor who served the Sicilians was the man who’d delivered Joe, Dr. Marrefew—the fishermen called him il Dottore del Dichu, the Doctor of the Ditch (the Creek)—and all he could do was bandage the eye. So Rosalie DiMaggio had to take Frances twenty-five miles across the Bay to San Francisco—back and forth, back and forth to the doctors—while Rosalie’s sister and Giuseppe watched over the other kids. That couldn’t go on for long. Within months, Giuseppe moved the whole brood into the city, to a North Beach apartment just up the hill from Fisherman’s Wharf, where he could dock his boat. And there, on Taylor Street, they’d stay for the next twenty years. That’s where all his younger kids would come of age, in the city . . . which, as a true Sicilian, Giuseppe considered “just his bad luck.”

  YOU COULD CALL IT a case of too much change or too little. San Francisco was a big town, worldly, even elegant in spots—as distant in tone and tempo from Martinez as that town was from Ísola delle Femmine. But Giuseppe couldn’t change that much, that fast. He still couldn’t speak English, couldn’t read anything, even Italian. For that matter, he couldn’t speak Italian—not the pure Northern language of the Genoese and Florentines who ran North Beach. Giuseppe’s guttural Sicilian patois marked him from the first syllable as low-class, or none.

  The Northerners had come to California generations before, from the Gold Rush days of the mid-nineteenth century. They didn’t think of themselves as Italians—Italy wasn’t yet united. They were Genoese (Zinesi), Piedmontese, Ligurians, or Florentines. They came with their educations, some with money, all with precise and unshakable ideas about class. Zinesi wouldn’t talk to Siciliani, even if they could. In San Francisco, the Genoese were merchants, produce purveyors, and scavengers. (In fact, the garbage trade was their monopoly, a license to print money.) They were landlords. They were truckers and teamsters. They ran the wharves and the fish business. When Sicilian fishermen started to arrive, around the turn of the century, they had to fight their way in.

  For some families, that struggle was a spur—even a blessing. The crab fisherman Lorenzo Maniscalco had his boat sunk, his family threatened—but Lorenzo was fearless. He bought a new, bigger boat; he fished the rocks, closer than any other man would dare; he put out to sea in weather that no one else would brave. He became the King of the Crab Fishermen, lived in a mansion in the Marina and, Sunday afternoons, drove his wife and twelve children through the old neighborhood in a Buick touring car. Another crabber, Giuseppe Alioto, fought his way into wholesaling—he became the first Sicilian buyer—and then expanded into the r
estaurant business. He sent his sons to the church school at Sts. Peter and Paul’s, and enrolled them in the ambitious Salesian Boys Club. He encouraged them to study music, poetry, acting, law . . . and his son Joe would become a visionary mayor of San Francisco.

  Giuseppe DiMaggio kept his head down and stayed small. He came with his old double-prowed boat: the Monterey hull, sixteen feet long. That was too small for crab or salmon, too small for anything outside the Golden Gate, in the open sea where the rich fishing lay. So Giuseppe stayed inside the Gate, only fished the Bay, where the best he could find was herring, or shad (at three cents a pound—and that, only for females). Most days, he simply hauled up bait fish—nothing worth eating—and sold his catch to more adventurous men. Or he sold to the processors of fish meal and fertilizer, the lowest end of the business. It was the marine equivalent of rag-picking: collecting by weight what others disdained.

  No DiMaggio boys were sent to the church school, where Salesian priests groomed the future prominenti. For one thing, there was no money for tuition. But it wasn’t just the cost. In Giuseppe’s view, the Salesians weren’t for “people like us.” Those priests (all from the North) preached aspiration, advancement, Americanization. The Salesian Boys Club was known for its acting troupe, musicianship, debaters—and that new American sport, basketball. The director, a dedicated soul named Angelo Fusco, lavished attention on boys who’d “go far,” like that Zinese boy, John Molinari (who would become a state Supreme Court justice), or that bright Siciliano, Joe Alioto.

  Giuseppe DiMaggio never talked about his boys “going far.” He talked about them going onto his boat, to learn their trade, to work hard, so they could sleep in a house with a roof. He talked about them bringing home money, so they could eat. They were not to waste time—for instance, playing that baseball. That was buono per niente—good for nothin’—except wrecking shoes.

  And Giuseppe had his way; his lessons took—at least with the first boys, Tom and Mike, who’d mostly grown up in that village on the flats of Martinez. In a good Sicilian home, you didn’t question. You had no right to say your father was wrong. And Giuseppe’s first boys were good Sicilian kids. Tom, the elder, was small like his papa, and just as quiet. But he had a precocious wisdom about him. You could go to Tom with a problem; he’d listen intently, and then, with just a few words, he’d sort it out for you. Mike was a big, husky, rawboned kid. They used to say he could hit a baseball harder than anyone else in the family. And he had a temper. You didn’t want to get on Mike’s wrong side. Both boys learned to fish on their father’s boat, from the time they were nine or ten years old. Sometimes they’d be out all night, napping on the floor planks, while the tide drifted Giuseppe back to his nets . . . whereupon they’d wake to help haul in the catch, and make for the Wharf in time for school. By eighth grade, both boys had left school, and Tom, confirmed in his father’s trade, got his own boat (though he was New Worldly enough to pick one with a big hull for crab and salmon). Mike was supposed to work his father’s boat and train Vince, the next in line. (If Giuseppe had a dream in life, it was to own a big boat, with all five sons aboard.)

  But that’s where Giuseppe’s bad luck started, with the third son, Vince: a city kid, a playground kid, a thoroughly American boy. Vince was good-looking—he took after the Mercurio side—and forward. He said what he thought. In fact, he talked all the time—sometimes loudly, sometimes profanely—and when he didn’t talk, he sang. He had a love of music and a beautiful voice. His dream was to be an operatic tenor, or maybe a singer with a big band. And that was the problem: not the music but the dreaming. Vince had the crazy American idea that he could be whatever he wanted to be.

  He’d hang around LaRocca’s Corner in the evening, and offer to sing a few songs for the patrons. He thought, if they liked his music, maybe they’d give him a couple of bucks. Or maybe someone would give him a singing job—that could be his big break. Or he’d hang around with his friends, playing baseball (Vince could hit the ball a mile, like Mike), and think, maybe he could be a great ballplayer. That was his second dream: big-time baseball. Where he wouldn’t hang around was Fisherman’s Wharf, waiting for his papa, to help with the nets. And the real problem was, Vince was never penitent: he wouldn’t hang his head and promise to obey. He’d just say: “Papa, I was in a game.” In Giuseppe’s household, that made Vince a rebel.

  Today that seems the mildest noncompliance. Vince still sold papers, and brought the money home. There were some days he did go out to fish with Mike, so Giuseppe could stay home. He didn’t hate his dad—or the boat, the sea, the work. But all that was Papa’s life, not his.

  Even then, at Fisherman’s Wharf, there were fathers who spoke proudly of their sons who were learning new trades, making their way in this new country. Maniscalco’s boy, Louie, had his own bakery business. And Pat, the firstborn, was enrolled in a college. But not Giuseppe DiMaggio: he never talked much about his sons, and never with pride. His sort of Sicilian feared envy like the evil eye. If you didn’t show yourself, you could never be judged. (And if you talked too much about your business, someone might come and be your partner.)

  The sad truth was, Giuseppe had no idea what to do with Vince. They fought bitterly. When Vince got an offer to play ball in the Lumber Leagues of Northern California, Giuseppe told the boy he couldn’t go. Vince was underage, and Giuseppe refused to sign the contract. Vince appealed to his mother, but she wouldn’t make the fight. “I’m going to go,” Vince said. “Do you want me to go with your will, or against it?”

  So Vince faked his age, signed for himself, and ran away to play ball. That was bad enough. But when word came back that Vince had met a girl up North—he wanted to marry!—Giuseppe hit the roof. It was the son’s job to work and bring money home, to support the family—not to run off and make his own family, more mouths to feed. And before he’d even made a dime! And refused to do a man’s work—he played with a ball, like a boy on the playground! Magabonu! Of course, Giuseppe forbade the marriage. When Vince refused to break off with the girl, Giuseppe would talk no more. Vince had disobeyed. He was not welcome at home. Giuseppe had lost a son.

  And so the father’s wary eye fell upon the fourth son, his namesake, Joe. He was two years younger than Vince and, in his father’s view, had at least one foot on the same slippery road to perdition. True, Joe was quiet, he didn’t openly disobey. And girls—no worry there. Joe was so shy, he’d run out of the house whenever his sisters had their girlfriends over. But he didn’t learn in school. And he couldn’t keep a job. So, okay . . . Joe would fish. Giuseppe would make the boy fish.

  And he might have, too, if it hadn’t been for Rosalie, his wife. She’d watched Giuseppe with Vince—and she’d held her tongue. But she wasn’t going to lose another son.

  “Il é bonu, Lasce sta’,” she told Giuseppe, in flat and final intercession.

  “He’s a good boy. Leave him alone.”

  THE OTHER ITALIANS used to say, “I Siciliani—si voi cambiare la mente, bisogna tagliare la testa.” (The Sicilians—if you want to change their minds, you have to cut off their heads.) But they were mostly talking about the men. As every Sicilian boy knew, if you wanted something, or had a problem to talk over, you went to Mamma. And in the DiMaggio household on Taylor Street, Rosalie, the mamma, wasn’t just consigliere, but chief.

  She was the everyday discipline in the children’s lives—although the worst thing she could say was, “Wait till your father comes home.” Then you could really be in the soup: you had the wild card to deal with. Mostly, even that was sham. Giuseppe would sit the errant child down in the living room, and he’d order gravely: “Rosalie, you go back to the kitchen.” But of course, she’d already told him what to say.

  Rosalie was slightly taller than Giuseppe, quicker in her movements, sweet-faced and modest in deportment. She was always in the Taylor Street flat, either in the kitchen, or on the service porch behind the kitchen. On the porch stood the galvanized tubs for washing, and the ballataro, th
e washboard. She washed by hand for the family of eleven. She ironed next to the stove, at first because the iron had to heat on the fire, and later because there was a light that hung down there, and she could plug in the heavy electric iron over the bulb. She cooked three hundred and sixty-five days a year, baked the family’s bread, scrubbed the wooden floors on her knees, sewed and darned clothes, and made the down mattresses, which lay everywhere in the four-room flat. Late at night her children would hear her, still in the kitchen, cleaning up. And they’d wake to the scent of chicken-feet singeing on the gas fire in the morning, as Rosalie began the soup for that day’s dinner.

  She was source of all tenderness in the household, and faith. She used to tell the little ones stories at night, to soothe them into sleep. They were simple stories, maybe from the Old World, or maybe she made them up herself. They were often about the Madonna, and want. There was one wherein the Madonna visited a family so poor that the children had no clothes. There was not enough fabric to make anything—just a scrap of cloth. But the Madonna began to sew with the scrap, and as she sewed more cloth appeared. As she finished one shirt, there would be just a bit more fabric . . . and she began to sew again—and again—and by miracle, by faith . . . there were clothes for all. There was another tale of a family that had no water to wash, but the Madonna poured the tiny jug of water they had . . . and by miracle, by Her Grace, there was water for all.

  The reality of miracles, of intercession, was a given, a concommitant of Rosalie’s faith—like fish on Friday. In cases of special need or trouble, most North Beach women would visit the neighborhood witches, black-garbed crones who’d mix up some oil and water, chant the old words that even Sicilians couldn’t understand, and call down blessings, curses, or prophecies (“Beware of the one next door!”) . . . after which, they’d be paid a couple of bucks, and you could go home with your mind at ease. But as with featherbeds or loaves of fresh bread, Rosalie took care of this herself. If one of her kids had woe or sickness, she’d sit the child on a chair in the living room on Taylor Street (it had to be the front room, for this was a formal matter). She’d put a dish on the sufferer’s head, pour oil and water onto it, and read the skim of the oil on the water. Then she’d chant the ancient words she knew from her girlhood, and lift from her troubled child the evil eye.