The Malta Independent on Sunday
A brush with the past
It seems to me that as we get older we become nostalgic for the past but especially for people we have known and loved; people who have shaped us. Sometimes we even glorify them, now that they are gone. Pat Salomone’s My Pizza and
Toffee Apples in the 1950s starts at a brisk canter and continues so to the end. In it Pat records many details of household and family life as well as a lively social life. Her mother was an Italian from Taranto and judging from the photographs alone she was very attractive and stylish, qualities which have evidently rubbed off on Pat. Style, that indecipherable quality which few Maltese have picked up from our neighbours the Italians. Pat says that her mother stood out, at the school gates: ‘a picture from the movies, elegant, pretty, coquettish, a film star, so outstanding that my school friends still remember her more than half a century later.’
Looking at the photos in this little book, whether of Anna Salomone’s wedding, her daughter Pat’s First Holy Communion I too begin to feel nostalgic. As the author writes at the end of the book: ‘I know that readers of my age have felt involved because my story is their story too….history is not only made up of great deeds of Kings and Queens but of the small lives of common people – the forgotten voices of those who made little noise but had so much to tell.’ In these reminiscences Pat takes us into the heart of life in Malta in the ‘50s so that we can almost smell and touch it.
She recalls how the ships from Taranto, her mother’s birthplace, brought not only wedding souvenirs with sugared almonds but also the first Panettone di Milano at Christmas time. I, too, well remember the first Panettone we ate at home brought to my parents, beautifully wrapped, by a Signor Peyra who came from Milano to do business in Malta. We felt very privileged. How times have changed. There is now Panettone everywhere at Christmas time. Somehow our first Panettone tasted better.
Every page of this little book demonstrates values and habits that are alien today: ‘divided skirts’ and not revealing shorts for sports; Bonello’s kiosk at the Sliema Ferries as a meeting place. Gzira and Strait Street, Valletta were, naturally, taboo. ‘Even more ‘taboo’and for dif- ferent reasons,’ Pat recalls, ‘there were taboo subjects, especially forbidden by the nuns at school – sex, birth and even death were not spoken of or only whispered about perhaps behind closed doors.’ ‘Why so much forbidden ground’ in my childhood’, Pat asks. And so ask all of us. Autres temps, autres
moeurs I suppose. Most women did not have jobs outside the home so they could spare the time to visit friends and chat over a cup of tea while their children played. Here are characters as varied as the details of a vanished era. All are brought to life.
Pat recalls having met her first boyfriend at the age of 16 and wanting to remain in Malta instead of going to Italy for the summer holidays, as had been the habit for her family. What, leave a daughter on her own? ‘But no amount of nagging would convince my parents to leave me behind. I was still their child and as such subject to complete obedience of strict, unbending rules. The family had always gone off to Italy in the summer and nothing was going to change this particular summer…’ Yes, strict obedience was expected and no amount of crying and locking herself in some dark room was going to change anything. Haven’t we all experienced that rigid attitude, especially towards daughters? Moreover, Pat had reached an age, 16, when families looked forward to a girl’s settling into marriage. Her Italian grandmother began choosing embroidered sheets and tablecloths for Pat’s dowry. This word must have died with our generation for who talks about a dowry these days?
There are many gentle anecdotes in this book and emotions are never held at bay. It is authentic and at least some of you, like me, will smile and perhaps even weep with recognition.
Make a cup of tea and enjoy it.