I apologize up front that this is sooooo long, but this is an important story for me….
Some of the greatest gifts given to us were our children’s decisions to play sports, then put in the hard effort to develop their crafts, and then be good enough to play in college. In our son’s case, he chose to play my sport, wear my number (as did my daughter), then chose to play college ball near my home in Cleveland which allowed my father to catch the games in person.
When I chose to play football, my first coach in 1970 was also my father’s high school teammate. As if it were yesterday, Coach Vacca said to me, “if you’re half the player (person?) as your father, you’ll be special.” At the time, I was the only 6th grader playing on the 8th grade team that eventually included multiple D1 players! It’s a legacy that I still strive to achieve!
Football is king where I grew up. I didn’t grow up in the “Italian” neighborhoods (my mom’s choice, more below), but I went to the Catholic HS. As neighborhood friends and a few cousins, we were together 364 days of the year; except the day our HS’s played each other.
I can remember blocking against my cousin Anthony on a play and getting up and hearing “How ya’ doin’ cuz?” BTW – every male in my family has Anthony in their name somewhere! Also, adjacent to me on that offensive line was another of Anthony’s cousins, though I’m not really sure if Carmen was also my cousin although I still call him cousin! Boy, the Italian-American families of the 60′ and 70’s!
I’m sure the things I did and said on the field 44 years ago could be illegal, or the very least offensive. But, we’d all gather at McDonalds after the games, all 4 teams from our little industrial “Melting Pot” city of immigrants and descendants of slaves, and chat it out; done and over and on to next week’s game! Things seemed more civil when we swore and used racist terms (I was a dago, guido, guini, or wop) because it was out in the open, versus our PC world. Why can’t we do that today?
My father’s 1945 HS team is still considered one of the greatest teams in Ohio HS football history. Undefeated AND UNSCORED UPON nearly the entire season including playing against teams that had several future NFL stars like Don Shula (he played too).
I had a chance to play on the same fields as my father (and winning twice on his home field against his HS)! I remember my father’s excitement to see my final HS game, on turf (which was new then) in the Ohio HS State Championship Game (I sucked, we lost).
Just imagine….my son’s first college snap was on the same field that I played on in college (a team called the Gators in Western PA! Where’s the gators there?)
An aside…how dumb was I to choose to play near Pittsburgh in the late 70’s as a Browns fan?
Each Friday during our son’s college season, if our daughter didn’t have a game, we’d hike down to my father’s house in Ohio. We’d call ahead to let him know when we’d hit the OH/PA line.
He’d be waiting at the door; always cheerful, and he’d immediately say, “I made pizza and past e’ fazoo.” He genuinely was excited to have cooked (read: provided) for us and equally excited to know that he could bring the left overs to his grandson the following day.
Invariably, his pizza was burned and hard. He’d buy store bought crusts, add tomato and parmagian, and cook. I’m sure my mother turned in her grave with every store bought crust, but I’m thinking that he probably thought that making dough “was like baking, and men don’t bake” even a gentle man like Grandpa Tony drew a line somewhere that said “I’m still ‘OLD, ole’ school'” I guess.
But, his past e’ fazoo…OH THAT past e’ fazoo….I still can taste the last time he made it for me in May 2013….
So, GPA (Great Pasta Search) #2 is my attempt to further emulate my father and make his Past e’ Fazoo!
A long aside…”what’s past e’ fazoo” you ask? It’s pasta and beans. Today’s restaurants call it “Pasta e’ Fagioli.”
BAH FUNGOO….Pasta e’ Fagioli, it’s PAST E’ FAZOO! Period. Exclamation POINT!
A very long aside, from the aside…Bah Fungoo (link to Urban Dictionary). With great regret, I learned little Italian growing up. My mom insisted that “only the poor speak Italian,” and it had been drummed into me that I wasn’t going to be poor, and I was going to go to college. I’d ask why. She simply responded, “so that you won’t be poor too.” I never considered us poor though my father worked two jobs and my mother also worked.
Since I had such good command of swearing in Italian, at first when my children played, I’d swear in Italian during their games. But, typically, by 1/2 time, I’d run out of Italian and wanted to resort to English. As a result, during most of my children’s sports careers, I’d sit alone along the touchline at soccer or endzone at football and swear to my heart’s content.
Unlike me, in 12 years of football (and baseball and basketball) games, my father never said a word during the games, but always stood by himself. I didn’t know why then. I probably know now!
He only missed one game, my final game. It was an away game at Edinboro during the day, during the week. He couldn’t get out of work and drive the 40 miles to get there in time.
In that game, I tore my knee ligaments. The bus ride home was the most lonely time of my life. Your teammates don’t care. They have their own bumps and bruises and besides, we had class the next day. I grew up a lot during those 6 weeks of recovery.
As a result, my wife and I never missed a game. We never wanted our kids to experience that loneliness. Because, getting injured is part of the game and highly likely to happen. A few times, she’d fly out to the west coast or Chicago to catch our son’s game. Meanwhile, I’d stay here to watch our daughter. Or, I’d fly to St. Louis, while my wife stayed behind for soccer. Or I’d fly to St. Louis in the morning, see our son, then fly to Raleigh in the afternoon to see our daughter! YIKES! What you learn is what you do.
Both of our kids were injured while playing college ball, in our daughter’s case twice seriously. We were there.
“Why it’s called past e’ fazoo?” Past is pronounced like pasta with no final “a”.
We (Neapolitans) have no use for the end of words.
Life’s too short to fully pronounce words in Napoli since at any moment Vesuvius can erupt, and dio mi, why should I have to say “pasta” when it’d be quicker to just say “past”…you know what I mean?
And fagioli, forget that…fazoo!
An aside, from the aside…I sometimes think what if my grandfather did that with our last name; 10 letters with 6 vowels, almost 1/2 the alphabet! Just a “Vo” might be enough.
Maybe my HS teammates and coaches had my nickname right as “Voo Voo” or my son’s as “Leri” since the other letters had fallen of his jersey. My father’s nickname was best “Tony ROC.”
An aside, from the aside, aside!!! My last name is not the same spelling of the last name of my grandfather on his birth certificate from Italy AND…..my father grew up with neither of those last names!!! AND, nobody knows where either last name came from given that my grandfather was “essere ceduto alla chiesa alla nascita” (given up to the church at birth)!!!! Oh my, the medigans (what I learned as Americans, see Urban Dictionary) that ran ELLIS ISLAND!
There are more people with my last name in Brazil and Argentina than in the USA which could explain my affinity to Maradona.
Past e’ fazoo is simple, except for the noodle, ditalini. Ditalini are about a 1/4″ long by a 1/4″ in diameter little pipe noodle. I’ve been racking my brain (watching YouTube) trying to figure out how to make homemade ditalini. It would be WAY, WAY easier to get store bought especially since I’m still a weak novice at homemade noodle making.
BUT WHAT THE HECK…Vesuvius might erupt tomorrow, so I’d better learn now!
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