by Rose A. Valenta

Created on: June 20, 2009

Felice Giorno del Padre: An Italian Father's Day Tribute

I'd like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to one of the great men in my life, my Italian grandfather, Alfonso Ulissi. This was the guy who put me wise to the double standard.

I'd like to make this a heart warming and sensitive human interest story. One that would bring a nostalgic tear to anyone's eye, but let's get real here. Hearts and flowers are for incurable romantics. Me, Norman Rockwell, and Virginia Hill all have a lot in common - realism.

I only had one grandfather, as the other one died before I was born, so Grandpop Ulissi and me had a private joke: As he was sternly meting out discipline to his kids, especially the girls, he was also enjoying the power of being in a position of authority. I caught on to this, as I was the second oldest grandchild, a girl; and for some reason he never yelled at me, but would wink in my direction when he reamed one of my aunts.

As an Italian, he was more than a little strict with his daughters about such things as cussing and smoking in public. He forbade them to smoke at all, saying that it didn't reflect well on their individual character. One of my aunts, who could have given Al Capone a run for his money, was once evicted from the house for an entire summer for saying "wap" (his English wasn't good enough to translate some of her other words), while smoking a cigarette. I think she was also hooked on old Bette Davis movies at the time.

She is 84 years old now. She quit smoking when she was 78 for health reasons.

It was a normal routine for my family to chip-in and take my grandparents to the Jersey shore every summer for a month. Then, aunts and uncles would alternate vacation days, so the house could accommodate everyone else for a few days at a time.

One night I was up on the boardwalk and there was this game being played for packs of cigarettes. I didn't smoke at the time, but the game looked like fun, so I played and won about 10 packs of my grandfather's brand of tobacco.

Needless to say, I became his best friend for the rest of his life. He even shared an ounce of his homemade wine with me to celebrate this friendship. I was only 12.

Every time I went up on the boards, he'd slip me a few dimes and say "Don'ta tella you mom." I always came back with lots of cigarettes. The game hawker even knew me by my first name.

You have to understand that all the women in the family locked themselves in the bathroom to smoke, so he wouldn't catch

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