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Interview with Mr. Carl A. Bastiani , 2011

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Interview with Mr. Carl A. Bastiani , 2011 Library of Congress Interview with Mr. Carl A. Bastiani , 2011 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project CARL A. BASTIANI Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: February 25, 2008 Copyright 2011 ADST Q: Today is the 25th of February, 2008. This is an interview with Carl - middle initial? BASTIANI: Middle name is Anthony. Q: And Bastinia. BASTIANI: Bastiani, pronounced as in Italian. Q: B-A-S-T-I-A-N-I. And the Carl is spelled with a “C.” BASTIANI: That is correct. I was actually baptized “Carlo,” which is Charles in Italian but my parents got bad advice from a neighbor about the English equivalent, so I became Carl. Q: Okay. And you go by Carl? BASTIANI: That is correct. Q: Well, let's start at the beginning. When and where were you born? Interview with Mr. Carl A. Bastiani , 2011 http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001681 Library of Congress BASTIANI: I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, southwest side, on March 8, 1928. Q: Alright. You were born in the year of the dragon. BASTIANI: Is that right? Q: Yes, I know, because I was born in 1928 too. BASTIANI: Okay. Q: So, let's start, get some background. Can you tell me something about your family on your father's side first? BASTIANI: My father was an immigrant. He was born in Italy in 1892. Q: Where in Italy? BASTIANI: In the area called Ascoli Piceno. It is northeast of Rome on a national highway, known as the Via Salaria since ancient Roman times. “Sal” means salt; the Romans used to bring their salt from the Adriatic along that road. My father immigrated into the United States in 1913. He went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, because he had a relative there, a sister married to a man named Monti. He was trained as a coppersmith. Have seen those hammered copper pots from Italy? Q: Oh yes. BASTIANI: That was his trade. He had a little shop right on the Via Salaria in my mother's home town, Acquasanta Terme. With this skill, he got a job with National Casket Company in Pittsburgh making copper ornaments. He was drafted into the American army, served in California but never went overseas. Through his military service, he became an American citizen. Congress had passed a law granting citizenship to aliens who had served in the U.S. army. Then he went back to Italy with his stake, bought a three story house in the Interview with Mr. Carl A. Bastiani , 2011 http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001681 Library of Congress center of the village of Acquasanta Terme - the name means holy water baths. There are mineral baths in use since ancient Roman times in the Tronto river valley below the town which is literally perched on the side of a mountain. There he married my mother and brought her over in 1920. He intended to return, but never did. He died young, at the age of 50, in 1942. Q: What sort of education did your father and mother have? BASTIANI: Both my parents had the required minimum education in Italy at the time, five years of elementary schooling; that is all. And while they grew up in an area with a dialect, Marcheggiano, spoken in the region of Le Marche, they learned the national language of Italy in school which is based on Tuscan, the regional language of Tuscany where Florence is located. However, the Marcheggiano dialect is very close to Tuscan. Q: Some of the dialects - I was in Italy, I was in Naples at one time - some of the dialects can be very far away from standard Italian. BASTIANI: They can be totally incomprehensible to anyone who learns standard Italian. I had a maid in Naples and used to drive her and her friend who worked for a colleague back to their homes at night after babysitting. They would carry on a lively conversation in the back seat of the car. I never understood a single word - not a single word. Q: Did you get much from either your father or more probably your mother, about life in the old country and all that? BASTIANI: Indeed I did. Not so much from my father because I was only 14 when he died, but my mother was always telling us how things were done much better in Italy. I got tired of hearing it. All I wanted to do as a child growing up was identify with my environment, my American environment; I even preferred the, you know, that mushy white American bread to the crispy crust bread that my mother baked herself. Interview with Mr. Carl A. Bastiani , 2011 http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001681 Library of Congress Q: Wonder Bread, as I think it was called then. BASTIANI: I am one of six siblings and we kind of got tired of hearing her tales, until she finally she returned to Italy for the first time in 1963 or 1964 during my first tour overseas in Naples. I took her up to her home town to see her sisters - she was one of six sisters and an older brother; only one other younger sister had immigrated to the United States. All of these sisters had married and had families. I was amused to observe her lecturing them on how things were done so much better in America. In fact it was that visit and, formally, my application to enter the Foreign Service which finally made an American of her. Earlier, when she learned that I had applied to the Foreign Service she jumped through all the hoops to become a citizen, because she thought that would help me accepted. Q: Well now, you grew up in Philadelphia. BASTIANI: No, Pittsburgh. Q: Pittsburgh. Did you grow up there as a kid? BASTIANI: Until the age of 14, yes. Until then I had never been farther than 75 miles away from home. I went to the local parochial school. My mother revered the Church and education, and insisted on sending us to the parochial elementary school, despite the family's limited income. Q: Well, let's talk a bit about what your life was like as a young kid there? BASTIANI: Well, I remember going to a public kindergarten briefly, because the parish did not have a kindergarten. About all I remember of that experience is the school's big red brick building which I survives to this day. I had two very close friends; one was a cousin who lived across the street, another who lived on the same street, of a family of German origin. We were crazy about sports, especially softball, baseball, and football. Baseball Interview with Mr. Carl A. Bastiani , 2011 http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001681 Library of Congress was my favorite; I am still an emotional Pittsburgh Pirate fan - in fact I used to get down on my knees and pray for them to win. Q: That's your parochial education coming out. BASTIANI: That certainly was part of it. We had pickup games all the time after school. We walked downhill a mile to school and uphill a mile back, and my mother, being a great believer in education, would accept no excuses for not going to school. On really cold days she used to line us up and give us each a spoon of anisette, which is a liqueur made from anise. The more commonly known anise liqueur is the French Pernod which strikes me as less strong than the Italian Meletti she dispensed, made in her own region of Le Marche. That would really warm you up on its way down inside. And then, you know, if it was there was snow we would have snowball fights, now and then with other “gangs.” We also pretended to box. Q: Well boxing, of course, everybody followed the heavyweight championship fights on the radio. Joe Louis was the... BASTIANI: Indeed, indeed. At that time we had Billy Conn from Pittsburgh; he was a light heavyweight who challenged Louis for the heavy weight championship in two bouts, but got knocked out in the first round or early round of the rematch. Of course, we were really rooting for him. Q: Well, just to get an idea about the neighborhood, how would you classify the sort of the neighborhood in which you grew up? What was it like? BASTIANI: I would say working class. It was certainly not affluent, on the poor side economically, although we lacked for nothing in terms of food. My father at times used to walk five miles to work just to save some money. Q: Well, what we are talking about is that you were a child of the Depression. Interview with Mr. Carl A. Bastiani , 2011 http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001681 Library of Congress BASTIANI: No question about it. I was a child of the Depression that was still on throughout my childhood. But we didn't think we were poor. Our days were full and pleasurable. Between school, regular meals, listening to the radio, talking sports, and playing pickup games, our days were full. We played tackle football without a bit of equipment. We all had roller skates and bicycles. Helmets were unknown and we somehow survived the excursions we took on busy streets with no bike lanes or sidewalks. And there was a city recreation area nearby at which we spent a lot of time playing ping- pong and board games besides sports. We also played the board games we got for Christmas at each other's homes.
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