My interview with Mr. Joseph Marsiglia

This is a paper I wrote in school. I'm not sure which grade (maybe college?). In any case, I thought it would be fun to share. We had to interview someone that lived during The Great Depression. My paper got ripped to shreds for grammar, lol.

The person I interviewed was Mr. Joseph Marsiglia. Mr. Marsiglia was born on September 30, 1920 to his parents Mr. Guesippi Marsiglia and Mrs. Dominico Marsiglia. He became the youngest of their twelve children.

Mr. Marsiglia grew up in a three story row home in Baltimore City. He remembers the bedrooms were on the third floor and that he had to share a bed with two of his brothers. The furnace was in the basement and the basement had a dirt floor. One of his chores was to shovel the coal into the furnace and to clean up the ashes. He also remembers having an icebox. He said that everyone had a sign in their window that had either five, ten, or fifteen cents written on it. When the ice man came down the street, he would look at the signs to see how much ice to chip off. He said there was a tray where the water went when the ice melted and you had to keep it empty because if you didn't - it would overflow. The icebox couldn't keep things fresh so they would have to go to the market everyday to get eggs.

Mr. Marsiglia's father and brothers worked at the Lexington Market selling produce. Since it was their own business, they didn't have to worry about losing their jobs. All of his brothers and sisters were pulled out of school as soon as they could read and write to work at the market or to help at home. Mr. Marsiglia was the only child allowed to finish school. He did say that sometimes he would help his father at the market after school. His family always had food on the table. They didn't eat a lot of meat but they had plenty of pasta. Sometimes when he had money, he would go to the pet store and buy a pigeon as a pet for fifteen cents. He would only have it for a coulple of days and then it would disappear. He never knew what happened to them but now when he thinks back, after the pigeons disappeared, they had squab for dinner. "No wonder my parents didn't mind me buying them."

Mr. Marsiglia said that the Depression didn't affect his family that much. They could have made more money at the market and his father did lose money in the banks but they were doing a lot better then some people. Mr. Marsiglia remembers that one day he went to the bank to get change for his father but the banks were closed. He told me that was when FDR had closed the banks. Most of the people in his neighborhood had jobs so he never really witnessed poverty first hand.

When I asked him what his family did for entertainment, he said that his father and his brothers would go to work early in the morning and come home around 7:00. Then they would eat dinner and go to bed. Sunday was the only day they had off. They would go to church and then went to visit relatives. The men would play cards while the women talked and the children played. They also had picnics. That was what he did with his family but he said he played a lot with his friends. There were a lot of kids in his neighborhood and they would get together and play football and softball. They could buy a softball at the store for about ten cents. It wouldn't last long before it would fall apart and they would wrap it up with tape to keep it together. They would also go fishing and crabbing a lot. He said that you could ride the street cars all over Baltimore for only a nickel. they also had neighborhood gangs. He told me that if you left your part of the neighborhood by yourself, you were usually chased.

It seems that Mr. Marsiglia spent most of his time playing with his friends. He kept telling me about all the games they used to play. He went to the movies every Saturday with his friends. After the feature film they showed the serials and every week the hero would end up in a crash or fire but they would never die or lose their hats. His family had a radio but he told me the only good program was The Shadow. Another thing he remembered doing as a kid was to find two old cans and jump in the middle of them so the sides would fold over his shoes and stick. Then he would walk all around with cans on his shoes.

When I asked Mr. Marsiglia about blacks and prejudice in general, he told me that the street cars would not run in the black neighborhoods and that if blacks wanted to ride the street cars, they would have to sit in the back. He also went swimming with his friends and some of the pools they went to prohibited blacks and Jews. Mr. Marsiglia siad that sometimes they wouldn't let him in the pools because he had curly, black hair and they thought he was Jewish. There were also no blacks at the school he attended. He told me that one of his friends was robbed by three black boys. They had a police officer with them when they found the three blacks and started to chase them. They caught two of them and beat them up real bad and the police officer didn't even try to stop them.

Mr. Marsiglia's family didn't own a car. He told me that there were about eighty houses on a block and you were lucky if you saw twenty cars on the whole street. Everybody's clothes were old and most of it had holes. He remembers when they would get holes in the bottom of their shoes, they would cut a piece of cardboard to fit inside.

I had fun writing this paper and interviewing Mr. Marsiglia because I wasn't just talking to some old man, I was talking to my grandfather. I learned a lot more about him and his generation and I really began to imagine what it was like during the Depression.

Another thing I remember my grandfather telling me was that his whole neighborhood was Italian. Everyone spoke Italian and even though he was born in the U.S., he didn't learn English until he went to school. I'm not sure why I left that out of my paper.