Totowa Book of the Dead -pg. 3

     My grandparents' immigration from Italy was a treacherous journey across the Atlantic.  Their hope was the sight of Lady Liberty.  Mine was the drive two exits up Route 80.  Hope was the sight of an indoor shopping mall.  We had, like many other urban dwellers of the sixties, taken part in a mass exodus to the suburbs.  We moved from the Riverside section of Paterson to its neighboring borough called Totowa. 

At the turn of the 19th century, Paterson was a major industrial center and attracted laborers from foreign lands who had little education or skills.  I am the grand-daughter of fruit peddlers and bootleggers.  My grandparents, made the transition from a rural background in Italy to city life and watched their children grow up as Americans.  This first generation, our parents, struggled to survive between old and new worlds.  Daughters were geared towards marriage and motherhood.  Sons climbed out of low-skilled jobs but were still destined for manual labor.  Hardly anybody went to college.

     My friends and I entered the picture as second generation Americans.  We're the ones who grew up in the working class suburbs and assimilated to mainstream, white ethnic status.  My girlfriends still clung to fantasies of a happy marriage.  The guys wanted to take over their father's businesses and dreamed of becoming rock and roll stars.  Success was being able to start your own landscaping business.  I think that the difference with my generation is that, as children, we were disillusioned by the Vietnam War, graduated with Nixon's resignation and came of age in the 80's on the tail end of Reagonomics and a deep recession.  Money seemed to be everywhere but not in our pockets.  Even if we worked ourselves to death like our cigar smoking, brick laying, house building, hands-like-stone fathers had done...we still could never get that down payment together for a house.  It was hard to top our parent's goals and take their dream any further. 

            Totowa was the land of eternal teenagers.  We joked that it must have been something in the water.  Even well into our twenties, no one moved out of their parent's house.  The typical move was into a parent's finished basement.  If you were lucky enough there was a separate entrance behind the house. People I knew had jobs by the time they were sixteen.  Some were working earlier than that with paper routes or with their dad on weekends.  Everybody I knew reached a point early in life where they had to help their parents pay bills.  Most kids opted to buy new cars instead of moving out of their house to pay rent.  Being able to ride around Passaic County with a great car stereo system was considered a success.  Having your own car meant autonomy.  It was like having an apartment on wheels.  Driving was freedom.