He came to New York City believing the streets were paved with gold and opportunity waited for all.
The year was 1950. He stepped off the train from Baltimore and looked around at the bustle of the crowded train station—he had finally made it to New York. He walked through the station towards an employee, and in broken English, he asked for directions to Coney Island. The uniformed man scoffed, looking down at the 16-year-old Italian boy. To get to Coney Island, he chuckled, you to get to New York first. The boy gave him a puzzled glance.
Salvatore Feola, thought this was New York. He followed the man’s pointed finger and saw a sign reading “Newark Pennsylvania Station.” The boy grudgingly walked back to the platform to await his train.
He never intended to move to America. One untimely decision changed his life.
Feola was one of 12,454 Italians to immigrate to America in 1950, but he didn’t have the same intentions as many of his counterparts in search of a new life.
Feola’s first moments in America, originally settling in Coney Island, were wrought with challenges to assimilate.
“It was lousy,” Feola said, raising his arms up and shrugging.
“I was working on the boat inside the kitchen helping the chef,” Feola said.
He worked on a container ship that made multiple trips between Italy and America, docking in Norfolk, Virginia.
Salvatore Feola in his Astoria Apartment
Immigration officers interviewed the crew, granting shore-leave, a pass allowing crew members to venture onto dry land, instead of staying aboard the ship, to a few of the workers.
“They come on the boat and ask if you would like to live in America. I say no, I want to go home to my mother in Italy. So they give me pass to leave the boat for a few hours,” said Feola.
He stepped ashore with a friend from the ship and walked around town for a few hours. When they arrived at the dock, they saw the ship had already departed; they were stuck in America.
After an exhausting bus ride to Baltimore, a train ride to Newark, a second train ride to New York City and a subway ride to Coney Island, Feola made it to his friend’s house, where he slept on a dirty, bare mattress.
“He was a stinking drunk. The place smelled,” he recalled.
Soon after, he moved in with his uncle in Corona, Queens. Feola struggled to find a job. “Nobody will hire you with no working papers and not speaking English,” Feola said. He eventually found work at the former Silvercup Bread Company, now a movie studio in Queens.
Feola spent years living in small houses, sharing a room with five or six other Italian immigrants. He wanted nothing more than to go home to his family, but going back on his own was not something he would do easily.
“I didn’t want to go back with no money. I leave here with less than what I came with. I was ashamed.” The only feasible way home was deportation.
“Every week the immigration officers came to the house with the picture of the guy [they were looking for] and I would go get him and tell him the officer was there.”
Every time the door bell rang, Feola would hope it would be for him but it never was. “I always go to the room and put my pants on and get my stuff and the officer look at me and say ‘what’re you doing, we’re not here for you.’ I kept waiting but it was never for me.”
Feola, desperate and longing for home, traveled to the INS office to turn himself in. He told the officers that he had been living in New York illegally, but to no avail.
“They give me a piece of paper and they tell me to go home and when the officers come for me to give to them.” They never came.
His oldest daughter, Ginny, said Feola always struggled in New York. “It was never easy for him here. He was homesick, didn’t speak English. He was just a kid at the time. The years of work really took a toll on him.”
After years struggling in America, trying to get deported Feola found his reason to stay: his wife, Mary. She lived across the street from him and shortly after meeting, they married. “I moved in with Mary and her aunt Kate, who helped me to pay the bills.” Salvatore was now a citizen of the United States.
Feola bounced from job to job to help make ends meet. Because of the difficulties he faced in attaining a full-time, steady job, he decided to open his own business. Using the money he saved from his previous jobs, a small bank loan and an offer from the seller of a small store and two-story private house, he moved his family to Astoria and opened “Sal’s Pizza.”
“The guy who owned it liked me was selling his house with a store, he offered it to me for only $15,000 upfront and I could pay the rest to him little each month.” With that, Feola was a business and home owner, and the family moved to Astoria.
The “Sal’s Pizza” sign is still mounted outside of the store. The new store owners leave it mounted out of respect for the former business.
His other daughter, Cathy, remembers her father working hard to provide for the family. “It was apparent he was never very happy living in America. He would always talk about how things were in Italy. We all knew he wanted to go back.” Cathy says she and her siblings were the only thing keeping Feola in America. He didn’t want to leave the family he had here.
“The house took a long time to pay off but it was worth it. I am still here. I have a place to live here. I own something,” Feola says. After living in Astoria for 41 years, he achieved the American dream. He had a business, a house, and a family, but it still wasn’t home. He still longed for Italy. “It will always be my home. If I could go back in time, I would not get off that ship.” Since then, Feola has traveled back to Italy to visit his siblings, but always returns back to New York, where his children and granddaughter reside.
