Zenith City: Stories from Duluth

The Hill

duluthians do not have adversarial relationships with their hills. Hills are simply there, like the lake, and provide no undue cause for concern—even in winter. The exception is one western end peak that bedeviled several generations of Italian Americans. During the years of my father’s growing up and well beyond, my grandparents, Sam and Amelia Fedo, lived at  Seventeen-andone -half Avenue West. This street is scarcely more than one block long, but it is situated on a heart-breakingly steep slope. In those pre-salt-on-roads winters, it was insurmountable by auto and in icy conditions required herculean efforts to ascend on foot. Sometimes the hill resembled a Matterhorn summit as crews of neighbors attempted to scale her heights. Tugging, pushing one another, grown men and women on hands and knees inched their way up the hill, hollering encouragement now and again or cursing in frustration as a foothold was lost, sending one cascading down on his back, feet flailing in the air. Often the slide didn’t end at the bottom of the hill, which butted against West Third Street. This too, was a terrifyingly long hill, dropping down another quarter mile until it intersected with Piedmont Avenue. Part of the hill’s history belongs to my great-uncle Franco Fulci. He migrated to America from the perennially impoverished Italian province of Calabria, and with no residence of his own, he stayed with my grandparents and their nine children. One morning he hopped on a bicycle and started a slow descent down Seventeen-and-one-half Avenue West. Suddenly the chain slipped off, and he found himself plummeting down the hill at frightening speed. Somehow he managed to negotiate the turn onto Third the hill 77 78 | The Hill Street, but instead of turning left up the hill, which would have brought him to a stop, he angled right, whipping around the corner and quickly exceeding forty miles an hour. His terror-wrought shriek dropped neighbors’ jaws and elicited signs of the cross from women on the hill. He continued down, demonstrating remarkable dexterity as the bike battered onto the streetcar ruts and rails on Piedmont, pitching him forward onto the bike’s crossbar. Those witnessing the ride said at that point he was ashen, his eyes narrowed with pain. The harrowing descent continued another mile before he came to rest near what is now Wheeler Field in West Duluth. The bike withstood the hammering better than he, and when he returned home, he refused to discuss the misadventure. Some said a man with lesser biking skills would never have survived. Franco was not interested in plaudits, however, and only wanted assurance that he was capable of fathering children. Several weeks later he was on a boat back to Italy, never to return to America or the peril of her hills. Another time, perhaps twenty years later, my father stepped out the door one evening on his way to a symphony rehearsal and slipped off the steps, releasing his French horn, which rapidly clattered down the hill. Giving chase, my father remained about a half block behind the instrument, which neatly rounded the corner at Third Street (as had Uncle Franco) and clanked its way toward Piedmont. Dad was now managing only two or three steps at best before performing belly and back flops; he righted himself and repeated the process until the instrument plowed into a high snowbank, and he caught it. It was relatively undamaged, though its case was nicked and gouged. Dad suffered injuries mainly to his pride and derriere, and, excellent athlete that he was, charged back up the hill, got into his car, and wasn’t even late for the rehearsal. My grandmother, a sturdily constructed Calabrese, thought nothing of the hill and uncomplainingly hauled her weekly groceries , purchased in the West End, up both the long Third Street climb and Seventeen-and-one-half Avenue West. Her children often carped though, especially if they’d returned and were told to go back for something else. Two trips like that could consume the better part of a day. The Hill | 79 Some years later, about  or , after Grandma had died, my dad’s sister Mary and her husband, Dominic Lombardi, came to live with Grandpa in the speckled brown-shingled house at the top of the hill. Dominic stepped out one morning after an overnight sleet...