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Marzilli's Bakery by Joanne Parise February 14, 2007 Wall Street is a short, one way street. As you turn onto it, Marzilli's Bakery sits on the left corner, known when I was growing up far and wide as baking the best Italian breads, making unbeatable grinders, torpedoes, and pizza - squares cut from long rectangular pans, and always with just homemade tomato sauce on top. The line of cars pulling in and out during lunch time and for the afternoon's fresh bread was continuous during these hours, the parking stretching well beyond Wall Street, around the corner to Beattie. It was a small brick building then, and the waiting line would extend far beyond their doorway and up the road. In the large beehive ovens, they baked bread twice a day, six days a week. As kids, my brother or I would be sent to buy a stick several times a week, when the afternoon batches came out of the oven at 4:00. Sometimes there was the treat of a box of pizza, although never allowed as dinner. My mom would pick up the phone ... "Hi, It's Rita. I'm sending one of the kids down." And even if the sticks had run out and others were turned a way, or the pizza was sold out, there would be a big smile from Louie or Ray, a greeting as if they had not seen us in months, and a fresh stick of bread in its white bag, or a box of pizza squares appearing from behind the counter and handed over. The bread never made it back home whole. The scent, the warmth, was too much to resist. There was always a chunk missing when it arrived, my mother's disdain to forego, which I now think must have been an act or why would she have kept sending us? Needless to say, out of the dozen pieces of pizza that had been ordered, a few squares of those would be gone, too. The bakery is followed by 4 houses. The houses were built sometime in the early 1900's, are mostly of the two tenement variety with stained glass topped windows, and porches that over look -what else.... but Columbus Park. The Catholic Church ( Holy Rosary) and its large white rectory, cap off the street at the T. Columbus Park. It's only one block in size. There are benches and maple trees outlining the perimeter. There's a basketball court, a playground area, and a ball field. About twenty years ago, the ball field was named in memory of my dad, who started the Little League in the early 50's. While only my brother was allowed to join the League back then, my dad spent as much time throwing the ball around with me as he did him. I never "threw like a girl", and had a great arm. I knew my dad admired my skills. I was already fast as a runner and he turned me into a hitter. I had to be content playing softball, but clearly remember his pride that I made the team at age 12, when all of the other girls were 4 -5 years older than I was. The park was always filled with kids in those days, after school, Saturdays after Catechism and lunch, and every morning, noon and night of summer, at least two basketball games sharing the court, the sound of baseballs connecting with bats, a spinning merry-go-round, a couple of rusty seesaws and metal swings that were pumped ceaselessly through the air. It's different now. Marzilli's is no longer owned by the Marzilli family, but was bought by another Italian family. In addition to the Italian bread they bake, although only once a day now, there is an extensive menu of lunch offerings, deli sandwiches, wraps, even sea food. The building has been expanded to offer a wide waiting /ordering area, some tables and chairs, and fancy coolers and freezers holding meals people can buy to cook or heat up at home. The lines are still endless, the parking still tight, the grinders still the best. The sauce on the pizza is different though, a different family, a different recipe. Or maybe it's that along with the whole picture being different, my palate can't recapture the exact flavor of those days when I could skip in and have the brown box tied with thin red and white string, or the bread in its white bag handed to me, even when others were being told all had been sold out. The trees standing across the perimeter that used to have trunks as thin as poles, now offer more than adequate shade. The rusty seesaws and metal swings have been replaced with a large wooden structure for climbing and balancing. But there are no children in this neighborhood. There may be a couple of siblings playing on the structure at one time, brought by a parent or grandparent, but the neighborhood is void of the sense of life I remember. The generations have aged, passed on, moved on, chosen to leave this way of life behind for one that offers a perhaps, broader perspective on daily living. As I look out across the park at this midnight hour, the glow of fluorescent lights from the X-tra Mart floods the vicinity. It used to be a bocce ball court where men from the neighborhood, specifically the oldest generation, spent hours trying to make balls tap one another, and next to it, a field where grass hoppers, and the occasional praying mantis - about the extent of the wildlife in my youth, could be found as I took this short cut to my friend Deb's house. Ironically the backyard seems smaller, although it's empty of most of what filled it. At least one third of it used to be my grandmother's garden- tomatoes, lettuces, beans, and parsley, which I ate by the handfuls. This rabbit- like behavior somehow seemed to fit well with my family's continual declaration that I "ate like a bird," an animal reference that has continued to suit me in more than one way. There was always the Rose of Sharon which bled huge purple blossoms for one week each August. My parents used to make us rake these, but I never understood. I loved how they looked budding, blooming, fallen and withering on the lawn. I wanted them to spot the ground until they completely browned and decomposed, but there was no appreciation on their part of what would "kill the grass". This is where my brother and I played endless games of baseball, only allowed to use a pinkie as the baseball, least it hit a window. The trash cans were first base, the Rose of Sharon 2nd base, and the round flower garden third base. Home plate was whatever we made it, a sweatshirt, or a piece of cardboard. Hit it too far to the right, and it landed in the Cetola's grapevines. Foul ball. Hit it too far to the left, the Castro's fence line, foul ball. Over the Spardella fence, which we both did with regularity, home run. Over the Spardella house into Tobin Street, which for years only my brother could do, Grand Slam! These one person teams offered me lots of practice stopping grounders, catching pop ups, and pitching into the strike zone. They offered me my brother's attention, which I craved. We fit in these games after dinner, usually when I was supposed to be doing the dishes, before our real plans for the evening materialized. After a half hour or so we would each proceed with our own friends, girls for me, boys for him, without mention of the time together spent with the pinkie. One summer our games just stopped, our arms too strong, my brother's interest in playing with his kid sister waning. I can come back here now and remember all that was right about it. While I never regret leaving and letting the larger world show itself to me, there's an odd comfort in the way the smells from the bakery, sights and sounds of activity from the park, and the permeation of Italian culture shaped me. In the yard void of gardens and make shift bases, the Rose of Sharon still blooms. The church bells, always a constant, still peal. And tonight, through the glow of fluorescent lights at Xtra Mart, the bocce balls tapping into one another are echoing. About the author: I am an educator and mom of a teenage son, living in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. With the passing of time I have been able to appreciate (what I now consider "good fortune") aspects of my Italian-Amercian childhood that I once not only took for granted, but about which I felt embarrassment. Maturity is a good thing. | | | |
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