Michael Bilello, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Luke Kelly, April 17, 2001: Saving the legacy tape no. 223

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BIL L 0 17 h n I a living th re ther was ami tur of J wish rman nd Iri h 1 in ur n ighborhood which was call d Ridgewood Brooklyn mostly. ut lik I a I m d r und lot in the city. LUK: Tell us a little bit about growing up in your family. MIC: I was the last of six and we came from immigrant parents. They migrated from Italy. Actually, there were four sisters who came to the U.S. together, around 1905. I had three aunts that were living close by, so there was a lot of family activity in the city. We had one aunt, the youngest one, who was the one who, mostly kept in contact with their folks back in Italy. I had an opportunity to go back to Italy on my job, and I saw the relatives. And it was quite an experience. When you speak of roots, that experience of going back was great. It was a business trip, but I was able to take some time off and spend it with my folks family in Southern Sicily. LUK: Oh I was about to ask what part of Italy? Sicily? MIC: Uh huh. In a little town called Menfi. There is a lot of history in that area. It was a major experience for me, because I got to hear some of the music that I heard when I was a youngster. The Italian that I spoke, when there was a dialect from the tum of the century, with a lot of Brooklynese included into it. It was pidgin Italian to them, but they caught a lot of the old Sicilian that was now seventy-five years old. And when I got to talking my crazy Brooklynese I Old-Sicilian, it was like bees to honey. People would come over, and they'd hear this crazy old Sicilian tongue. It was quite an entertaining visit. LUK: Did you enjoy school as a youngster? 3