Frank Sinatra Feeding Squirrel on Set

Bill Ervolino has retired, but The Record and NorthJersey.com will occasionally reprint some favorites. This column originally appeared in The Record on May 14, 1995.

We all go through our lives certain that we know our mothers like a book. Then, one day, we find out something that we never knew before: that she once dated somebody famous, or that she was arrested for sneaking into a movie theater when she was 12, or that before the operation her real name was Sidney.

This is sort of how I felt a few years ago when my mother told me that before becoming obsessed with Frank Sinatra, she had a crush on are you sitting down? Benito Mussolini.

Hey, better I heard it from her, than finding out about it on "A Current Affair" or "Rolonda."

Besides, I think it's kind of hilarious. Frankie and Benito? Is it any wonder that my poor father doesn't know whether he's coming or going?

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Actually, if you do a little investigating, you'll find that there were more than a few similarities between these two famous men:

1. Frankie is Italian; so was Benito.

2. Frankie likes pizza with anchovies; so did Benito.

3. Frankie sang "I've Got the World on a String"; Benito declared war on Ethiopia, defied the sanctions of the League of Nations, joined the Berlin-Tokyo axis, and sent troops to fight for Franco against the Republic of Spain.

Of course it goes without saying that my mother's affection for Benito predated World War II. Or, as she puts it, "before he hooked up with that Adolf Hitler." (Fickle isn't she? For the record, her affection for Sinatra actually peaked during the mid-1940s, "before he hooked up with that Ava Gardner.")

All of this Mussolini business came out five or six years ago, after an otherwise uneventful Sunday dinner. I asked my mother if she had been involved in any organizations when she was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, and she said, "No, not really. Just the Fascist Club. Could somebody pass the sugar?"

I'm almost gagged on my zabaglione. So did my father.

The Fascist Club? My mother was a fascist?

I glanced toward my father and immediately knew what he was thinking: "The Fascist Club? My wife was a fascist?"

Hmm...

Roses are red/Violets are blue/Happy Mother's Day/You fascist, you.

"I was about 9 years old," she said. "And everybody in the neighborhood belonged to it. We used to wear these cute hats, and white shirts with black neckerchiefs and armbands. We'd march around with the Italian and American flags. It was like the Girl Scouts."

MY MOTHER WAS A FASCIST?

I closed my eyes and conjured up this picture of her going door to door selling her little Fascist anisette cookies. Or getting together after school with her girlfriends to listen to records, comb their hair like Veronica Lake, and imagine what it'd be like to be married to some cute dictator somewhere.

BENITO: "Honey, I'm home!"

LOUISE: "Oh, Benito ... it's been days."

BENITO: "I'm sorry, mi amore. I was out conquering the Balkans."

LOUISE: "Really? Did you remember to pick up the cannoli?"

"Before the war," my mother explained, "he was considered a great man who was very good to his people. My father even kept a statue of him in our bakery." (Can you imagine walking into a bakery and seeing something like that? "Benito says, 'Try our Kaiser rolls!'") "It was a beautiful statue. You could see it from the window. He was a pretty handsome man, you know."

Yeah, and I'm Rocky the Flying Squirrel.

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"Anyway," she said, "then things got bad between Italy and the United States and my father did something with it. I don't know if he put it in a closet or got rid of it in the middle of the night."

(Now here's an image: World War II has just broken out, it's 2 a.m., and you're driving through Brooklyn with a statue of Mussolini, looking for a dumpster. ...)

It was right around this time that my mother dropped Benito like a hot potato and shifted her attention to Old Blue Eyes. It's an infatuation that continues to this day, although it was more or less derailed in 1948 when her family moved from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn to East New York, and she met and married Emilio Ervolino, an ex-sailor who lived on her block, and whose legs were just as skinny as Sinatra's. Now that I think about it, there were other similarities as well:

1. Frankie is Italian; so is Emilio.

2. Frankie likes his calamari with medium-hot sauce; so does Emilio.

3. Frankie sang "Strangers in the Night"; Emilio married the girl next door and then found out, 41 years later, that she had been a fascist, and had a crush on Mussolini.

Roses are red/Violets are blue/Happy Mother's Day, whoever you are/Doobie-doobie-do.

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Source: https://www.northjersey.com/story/life/columnists/bill-ervolino/2018/12/27/bill-ervolino-columns-my-mother-fascist/2422459002/

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