Writing Competition Runner Up
PRINCE ALBERT AND PAGLIACCI
by Dorothy Hill Baroch
© March 2023
Characters: Sal, known to me as Pop Pop—my maternal grandfather
Dotty—me around 8-10 years old
Great-grandfather—Sal’s father
Francisco, Sal’s brother
The smell of Prince Albert tobacco wafted from my grandfather’s well-used pipe, as he settled into his comfortable recliner and I pulled my little stool up to the old-fashioned, floor model radio.
“Turn it on, Dotty. It’s time.”
That request was the clue that Pop Pop was ready to listen to the Italian Hour. I watched him put fresh tobacco in the bowl of his pipe, tap the tobacco down with his finger, and light up. As the delicious fragrance from his pipe filled the room, he told me to move the radio dial to the right station, and together we would listen to Italian opera stars sing in his native language.
This ritual happened on the Sundays that my mother and I travelled from the country to visit her Sicilian parents in Baltimore. Mom and her mother worked in the tiny kitchen, preparing a meal or making home-made spaghetti sauce, using tomatoes from the small garden plot in the back yard. Pop Pop and I shared the living room. It was a special time for me; the only time my grandfather and I spent alone.
The Italian hour began, with the sound of Pop Pop’s beloved classical music filling the room. I had no idea what the Italian words meant, but that wasn’t important. I was transported, along with my grandfather, to another time and place, as we both remembered the stories of his youth in Palermo, Sicily, the stories he had shared with me.
Sal’s father paid a barber in Palermo $.50 a day to teach his youngest son the trade, in the hope that Sal’s wages would help to stabilize the family’s income. For a time, the young man honored his father’s wishes, working at a local barber shop and contributing a portion of his earnings to his parents. But—rather than spend the remainder of his hard-earned cash at the local tavern like his friends did—he used some of his money to purchase tickets to the opera. The rest was secretly tucked away for his dream adventure—a move to the United States to live with his brother, Francisco, where he would make his fortune. On those special nights, Sal would dress in his best outfit, travel from his home in the village of Carini to the big city, and with his mother-of-pearl handled cane, strut in elegant fashion to the Palermo Opera House.
As we listened to the Italian Hour in my grandparents’ living room on the East Coast of the United States, I often wondered where his imagination took him. Did he see himself on the stage of the Met, costumed and singing the lead role in Pagliacci or Figaro? He never complained about his simple lifestyle as a barber in the United States; the two of us just relished our time together on those long-ago Sunday afternoons—a little girl and an Italian immigrant who might have been another Caruso.
