Marriage

I was 20 on October 9, 1925, and we got married on October 31, 1925, after keeping company for two years. It was Halloween Day. We rented a hall in the center of town. About 200 people attended our wedding. I had a maid of honor, a best man, four bridesmaids and four ushers, two little flower girls and one pillow boy. I had one of Tony's cousins named Cora as my bridesmaid when we got married. She lived across the street from us. We were good girlfriends. She would come to visit me and I would visit her. She was one year older than I. When she got married I was her maid of honor. When my second son Tony was born she and her husband were the baby's godparents.

When we walked down my front steps, many people were lined up on the sidewalk to see us walk to the bridal car. My wedding bouquet was the center of conversation. My husband's employer, Mr. Totty, bought two white orchids for me from Twombley's Estate. They were very rare at that time. Then the bouquet had white roses and stephanotis streaming down. Mr. Totty gave it to us as a wedding gift and $50.00. We received many beautiful gifts and money. Much later, some of the wedding gifts I gave to my children as heirlooms.

In those days, the fellows paid for the wedding outfit and the reception. The girl's parents paid for the wedding cake and the band. We did not have a sit down dinner. The food was hard rolls filled with a mixture of cold cuts, such as salami, provolone, boiled ham and other meats. The night before the wedding the family would get together and fill these rolls up and then wrap them, each one separately to keep them fresh. We also had two large trays of wedding sweets and all kinds of drinks. Everyone ate and drank all they wanted. We also had music for dancing. When the ceremony was half over, they would take two chairs and put them together and make us both stand on a chair, then kiss each other. Everyone would clap and wish us good luck. Everyone had an enjoyable time, young and old. They gave us money in envelopes as gifts or lovely wedding gifts. We received about $500.00 in money and a large number of gifts. $500.00 was a lot of money 50 years ago.

We went home to the house Tony fixed for us [6 East Street, Madison, NJ]. There were four new rooms, a bathroom, hot water, and coal and gas stoves combined. That was a big improvement. My parents bought us red and blue velvet drapes, reversible, for the dining room and living room. I had the blue side in the dining room and the red side in the living room. We also had a large open space between the two rooms and we hung the velvet drapes there also. All the furniture was new. My husband worked hard and saved his money. He had paid for all the furniture in cash, which was unusual. The place looked beautiful. Many people came to visit us.

Early next morning we went to New York City to spend a week honeymoon. Two half-brothers lived in New York City. We visited them and had supper with them. Everything was new to me. I had only been in the city a few times. We just used to go as far as Dover, Morristown, Chatham, Summit and Newark with a trolley. The smell of the fumes was terrible. We went to see a show on Seventh Avenue. One day we went to a place called the Hippodrome. The place was fantastic. It held many shows and art galleries, bones of prehistoric animals, all under one roof.

While there, we saw a show called “Get Hot Mama, or Poppa Will Freeze.” It was a lovely show. There was one exhibit I will never forget which we enjoyed very much. They had a midget village complete with little houses, railroad tracks and small trains. They actually lived their own lives there. We saw midgets nursing their babies, sweeping their front porches and walking around. Some sat on rocking chairs on their front porches. Some were taking walks pushing their baby carriages. Mailmen were delivering mail. All this was going on in this very large building.

We went to different restaurants for our meals. My brothers were thrilled that we spent time with them. We had a grand honeymoon. After the week was over, we went back to live in our own apartment and start our lives together.

My maid of honor was my cousin Connie. She got married one day after Tony and I got married. So, of course, I couldn't attend her wedding. We were very close. We started school together. We stopped school the same year. We even had our first babies on the same day. Her baby was named Jimmy and mine John. There was sort of a joke about that; she got married one day later than I did, and her baby was born in the morning of August 23, 1926, and mine in the evening at 11:30 pm. My son was named John, after my husband's father. My husband's best friend Philip Ricci got married one week after us. We did attend his wedding to Rose.

My mother-in-law, Philomena, lived downstairs with her unmarried daughter Louise, who is six months older than I am. Rose and Antoinette were already married. Tony and I lived on the second floor. Before my husband built the second floor to the house, his mother had the cottage appraised. Then my father paid off his sisters. His mother gave her share to my husband, so he let her live on the first floor free with her single daughter. We used to heat our homes with coal stoves. I had to carry ashes to the first floor and then outside, fill the pail up with coal and carry it upstairs.

We scrubbed our clothes on scrubbing boards. We did have a white, enameled sink and tub. That was a great improvement from my mother's time. She had large tin transferrable metal wash tubs. She used to boil her clothes to make sure all the germs were killed. All their clothes had to be hung out of doors or in the basement. Dryers were unheard of. After I got married Clorox came out; then I stopped boiling the clothes.

The refrigerators used to have ice in them and needed about two blocks a week. We had a drip pan under the refrigerator to catch the water. If you didn't get there in time to dump out the water, you had a mess to clean up. We have come a long way since then. We had chickens, so we had our own fresh eggs. We also had a pig that we killed in the month of October.

Everyone had a large garden with tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, string beans, swiss chard, lettuce, and many other vegetables. We ate from the garden in the summer and we canned everything for the winter. Between raising animals, taking care of a large garden, cooking, cleaning, and raising children, the ladies did not have much time for themselves. We loved our husbands and children, we did all this work happily. Believe it or not, on the weekends we found time to visit our relatives and friends. We kept in close touch with each other.

My mother-in-law was a big help. She was 66 years old and very active. She used to make bread twice a week; she would punch about 25 pounds of flour and make large loaves of bread and many pizzas. Sometimes she would also make an endive pie. A neighbor of ours had an outdoor brick oven. She would rent it for 25 cents. We used to keep the bread in the cellar until it was time to use it. The canning we used to keep in a different section of the cellar. We also had a wine cellar. We made our own wine. My husband was good at all kinds of work. All in all it was not an easy life, but we did not mind because we knew no different. Our parents did it before us. At the same time, the men and women were always busy doing their chores. We had no time for divorces.