DCML Digest Issue 33

[Don Rosa]

> From: "Dyer, Sonia" <sonia.dyer at hp.com>
> Subject: Inspiration for Scrooge
> And yet Carnegie was very much driven by the European model you mention.
> Biographies of him show that once he became wealthy, he took his old
> mother back to Scotland, and drove her up and down High Street of the
> town they had left in a big fancy carriage, waving for all their old
> neighbors to see, and then he bought the local castle, and a flower
> garden he and his family were never allowed to set foot in when he was a
> child.  Whether it was Andrew Carnegie or his mother driving these
> actions, they were acknowledged to be blatantly intended to generate
> envy from their former European neighbors.

Interesting! So, this is an "Old World" style of reaction to getting rich in
America?
I don't remember my Italian grandfather (the original "Keno"), he died when
I was 5, and nobody ever told me much about him. I think he might have been
a cranky old guy. Or dull, or something. I don't recall anyone speaking
fondly of his memory. But I was told that he came to America as a teenager
from a small town in northeast Italia called Maniago. He was the illiterate
son of a laborer, never had any education and knew the opportunities in
America were his only chance to improve his life. He got off the train here
in Louisville because this is where he ran out of what money he had. I'll
never know any details, but he started his construction business and built
it up for about 10 years until he was a major success (he's said to have
bought one of the first trucks in the state, that's about the only detail I
know), and then went back to Maniago about 1909 to flaunt his wealth in his
hometown. To brazenly show off how well he had done despite his lack of
education, they say he went after and married the daughter of the
aristocratic principal of the local school, had her dash off a bunch of kids
(naming one of them America Rosa) and returned to his life in Louisville in
1913. (Perhaps he'd spent most of his time in America during those years and
moved his family here in 1913?) Thereafter, I believe he returned to Maniago
every year for long visits to play the Big Shot, apparently by himself since
my father never went back to Italia after he was brought to America as a
child. I guess after escaping the European culture where you could never
rise above your caste, Gioachino ("Keno") was flaunting his success  with
all these trips and behavior back to his hometown?
I think he also bought homes for the remaining Rosas in Maniago... they had
been female and had married into the Mazzoli family for one. Anyway, none of
my Italian relatives are named Rosa to my knowledge. And that might explain
another tiny mystery -- in recent years Duckfans in and around Maniago have
contacted the remaining Mazzolis who are still living in this house or
houses. I've visited many parts of Italia for comic fairs but never the
northeast, otherwise I certainly would have gone to Maniago. These friends
have given the Mazzolis my name and contact info so that I might communicate
with them, my only relatives left on earth. But they won't respond.
Maybe they fear that, as the last of the Clan Rosa, I own all their homes?
Or... maybe they just plain hated the guts of the American Rosas? Would part
of a European model be to hate the relatives that made it big in America? I
know many older Europeans/Italians feel that their countrymen who fled to
America were "trash". I've had a few smiling, friendly old Italians tell me
that during my trips, as if it was simply common knowledge and I already
knew my grandfather was dirt.