I had an attack of comment spam last weekend -- a barrage of comments from fairly vile fake email addresses that ended when Six Apart, the maker of this Movable Type software, sent an email that it had automatically banned the Dutch IP address that had spewed too many comments in the last 200 seconds.

So I was not in a receptive mood Monday when this comment arrived:

Go to my site

the-coppas.net

Because the author's email address was local, I sent him this note:

Bill, this is comment spam. Please don't use my blog for this purpose. If you have a legitimate site with content of interest to Rhode Islanders, tell me about it.

And got back this reply:

Sheila, My site is a story about a Rhode Island family migrating to Federal Hill in the 1920's.

I went to Bill Coppa's site, Ischia to 155 Ridge Street and was utterly charmed from the moment I read this line:

This is a memoir, an oral history; it's not journalism, and it's not politically correct. It's a family saga that begins in Italy and comes through Ellis Island to Federal Hill, looping back and forth.

Ischia is a small island off the coast of Naples, Italy near Capri. The island has been called the Island of Pines, The Emerald Island, The Island of Dreams, and even Paradise.... Mama’s father and brothers were landowners in Forio D’Ischia. They were producers of grape and wine and became successful and wealthy....It didn’t take too long for Papa to like America. Mama was always home sick. Her first impressions were terrible. She had to live in tenement houses cramped for space. While in Italy she lived in a nice one family house with plenty of open space. The vineyards, the beaches, the fountain in the piazza, and all the churches were within walking distance from her home. She missed her father and brothers immensely. The Island of Ischia is a paradise. Federal Hill must have been a nightmare to Mama.

Along the way it lays out, with great humor, some of the history of Prohibition in Rhode Island, tension between the Irish and Italians, and the customs of a neighborhood that's changed a lot over the decades.

...All of Papa’s customers from General Fire were coming to the house to get their MOONSHINE. Not only MOONSHINE. They would stay for a shot and a sandwich. Then Papa started to make HOME BREW. He converted the kitchen and living room into a Speak Easy .The customers were ordering a SHOT AND A BREW AND A SANDWICH.

A piano, chairs and tables were brought in. An Irishman would play the piano and Mama would sing …SANTA LUCIA… AVA MARIA… O’SOLO MIA……RETURN TO SORRENTO…..MAMMA….O MARIE…. Mama had a beautiful opera voice. I loved it when she would sing for me. The basement of 103 Ridge Street became a distillery and a brewery. Profits were coming in hand over fist. It became very obvious what was going on at 103 Ridge Street. Too many men were staggering on their way out!

The Providence Police raided Papa’s SPEAK EASY. They never checked out the basement. Papa was fined one thousand dollars. That fine was well spent. Papa started to get some new customers at his Speak Easy. They were the Irish Providence Police and on occasion the Irish Judge that fined him one thousand dollars would stop in to say hello and get a few free drinks. After all, Papa was just trying to feed his family! My fathers booze tested to be of very hi grade and quality. The courthouse was good advertisement for Papa.

And there's a very modern marketing tale in here, too:

...I remember Zio Salvadooda for the big half dollars he gave to me and the flat straw hats he wore in the summers. (Zio Salvatore was called Salvadooda). After prohibition, Zio Salvadooda, I believe became the first person to ever package spaghetti sauce in jars in 1933. The label read ROSA’S SPAGHETTI SAUCE and had a picture of Mama dressed in white and a large red rose next to her. The sauce and business did well. His product sold in most of the food stores in Rhode Island. Uncle Salvatore died in his late forties from cancer in 1941.

Uncle Venonzio, (Papa’s oldest brother,) took over the spaghetti sauce business and also was doing well with it. Until the LA’ROSA Spaghetti Company claimed that they owned the rights to the name ROSA OR ANY NAME THAT SOUNDED LIKE ROSA. The name and label was changed to Mary and John’s Spaghetti Sauce with a picture of Uncle Salvadooda wearing a white chef’s hat. The magic of Mama’s picture with a large red rose on the label was missing. The sauce lost its marketability. Mama really was, MAMA ROSA! For Uncle Venonzio that was a stroke of bad luck because five years later in the early fifties spaghetti sauce in a jar became America’s number one food product....

Visit here when you have a chunk of time. The saga is long, and you don't want to skim it. Bill Coppa is a fine storyteller, and every few paragraphs a new tale begins that could be a short story of its own.

The slide show takes a long time to load -- it's loading 83 photos and Connie Francis singing Mama -- but you can click on tiny thumbnails on the photo pages to see large images at your own pace.

Do you have a family site you'd like more people to see? Let me know about it in comments or email me by clicking on the envelope icon below. We'll start a collection of Rhode Island family histories.