Zenith City: Stories from Duluth

Uncle See-See’s Secret?

the fifty-year marriage of my great-uncle See-See was our family’s elephant in the living room. References to the marriage were infrequent, veiled, and never discussed. While See-See resided in my grandparents’ tiny house for more than four decades, neither my father nor his eight siblings ever laid eyes on his wife, Maria, or saw a photo of her. Everyone, including my grandfather, called him See-See, though his name was Pasquale. I’d been told as a boy that “see-see” was something of an Italian diminutive, an affectionate term referring to one’s uncle. I learned years later that this wasn’t authentic Italian but came from the dialect indigenous to the region of Calabria at the toe of Italy’s boot—a mélange of Italian, Albanian, Greek, Saracen, Norman, and Spanish. My father’s family pronounced the word for uncle, zio, as “see-oh” instead of the correct Italian “tsee-oh,” and when referring to their Uncle Pasquale, shortened it to just the first syllable but saying it twice. When I said “Uncle See-See,” I was, in effect, calling him “Uncle Uncle-uncle.” See-See was a man of few words, and though he died in  when I was six, I distinctly recall his presence in my grandparents’ kitchen. Each Sunday our large extended family would gather in the house at Duluth’s western end for a ritual meal of antipasti, pastas, meatballs, sausages, and dolce (sweets) prepared by my nonna. The affairs were boisterous, with everyone gesturing, shouting, and laughing as food was passed and enjoyed. But when the Fedo clan squeezed around the dining room tavalo, See-See chose seclusion in the kitchen. Toothless, with a brown poor-boy cap pulled low over his hairless head, he’d sit on a white wooden chair in the middle of the room beneath a bare uncle see-see’s secret? 97 98 | Uncle See-See’s Secret? lightbulb that descended from the ceiling on a cord. It was a scene reminiscent of Booth’s New Yorker cartoons without the presence of demented dogs. I retained a fondness for See-See, though I can’t recall a single exchange of words between us. Perhaps my affection stemmed from the time he stopped my father from disciplining me for some boyish infraction. As Dad began to remove me from the kitchen, See-See hoisted his cane, menacing Dad, who acceded. in the summer of  three Fida brothers sailed from Naples to America, escaping the cruel poverty of Rosarno and all of Calabria. Uncle See-See, the eldest and only married brother, stayed behind. Giuseppe settled in Bridgeport, Connecticut, while Salvatore and Giovanni moved to Minnesota’s Iron Range. Upon learning that two brothers had secured immediate employment in an Aurora, Minnesota , iron mine, Pasquale packed up his two oldest sons, Francesco, twelve, and Beniamino, eight, and joined them. See-See left Maria and their two-year-old son, Pasquale Jr., in Rosarno. Apparently the plan was for See-See and the boys to find jobs, send money home, and eventually save enough to bring Maria and Pasquale Jr. to America . None of the American Fedos ever brought up the subject of SeeSee ’s wife and third son until a decade ago. A few months before his death, my father began to speak of his immigrant family. He disclosed that three of the four Fida (feeda ) brothers received the name Fedo (fee-doh) from immigration minions at Ellis Island in . In the course of saying he knew very little of their lives in Italy, or even much of it after their immigration, Dad broached the long-unmentionable issue regarding his uncle Pasquale. A few years earlier, my brother David had discovered the existence of cousins back in Rosarno. I asked Dad about the connection. “They’re See-See’s people,” Dad said and sat forward, his elbows on the kitchen table, large hands cupping his jaws. It was a pose he assumed during the later years of his life when he wanted to impart a story—a contrast from his aversion to them for most of his ninety years. We’d grown closer in the five years prior to his death, and now Uncle See-See’s Secret? | 99 he found pleasure in sharing yarns about his growing up in Duluth’s Little Italy neighborhood. As he went...