- I Nonni {Tuesdays with Tina, part 1}
- Vincenzo Migliaro, famous painter {Tuesdays with Tina, part 2}
- {Tuesdays with Tina, part 3}
- Vico Canale {Tuesdays with Tina, part 4}
- It’s a girl! {Tuesdays with Tina, part 5}
- Working with the Americans {Tuesdays with Tina, part 6}
- Anna’s story {Tuesdays with Tina, part 7}
- School and Work {Tuesdays with Tina, part 8}
- Life in the Tailor Shop {Tuesdays with Tina, part 9}
- Life before television {Tuesdays with Tina, part 10}
- Sickness and health {Tuesdays with Tina}
- Celebrating Holidays {Tuesdays with Tina, part 12}
- Life in Naples in the Late 50s, Early 60s {Tuesdays with Tina, part 13}
- Celebrating New Year’s in Naples {Tuesdays with Tina, part 14}
- Meeting my dad {Tuesdays with Tina, part 15 }
- Meeting dad continued {Tuesdays with Tina, part 16}
- Going on Dates {Tuesdays with Tina, part 17}
- Going to the Chapel…{Tuesdays with Tina, part 18}
- The Honeymoon! {Tuesdays with Tina, part 19}
- Honeymoon in Germany, continued {Tuesdays with Tina, Part 20}
- First Comes Love; Then Comes Marriage; Then Comes… {Tuesdays with Tina, Part 21}
- Then comes baby! {Tuesdays with Tina, Part 22}
For this installment of Tuesdays with Tina, I interviewed both my mom and dad to get each of their perspectives on how they met. If you are new to this series, you can go back and catch up.
Part 1 Part 11
Part 2 Part 12
Part 3 Part 13
Part 4 Part 14
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Me: Tell me how you two met.
Tina: Through my friend, Bernarda. She used to go out with your father’s friend, Eddie Horn. The three of us would go out and I guess you can say that he got tired of having to go out with this other girl too.
Me: Did he pay for both of you??
Tina: Well, we didn’t do much that required money. Most times we would just go for a walk. Sometimes we would go to Eddie Horn’s apartment.
Me: And your father knew????
Tina: No way…! {laughter}That’s where I met your father for the first time. I remember he wore a white pair of jeans and a red shirt.
Me: Oh!! I always though you met him at Bernarda’s house!
Tina: No, no…No one brought American sailors home. Only “bad girls” were “friends” with Americans! I was embarrassed to say I had met an American sailor since I wasn’t “like that”! It looked bad! It was “hush hush”.
Me: How did Bernarda get to know Eddie Horn?
Tina: No, this I don’t know.
Me (to dad): Do you know?
Hugh: No. But Eddie Horn was the plane captain on the yard bird. A yard bird at that time was a C118 for the one-star Admiral and the two-star Admiral had another plane.
Me: So you worked for him?
Hugh: No, no. He was a friend of mine. He was about my same age. Both of us were second class. Both were mecs. He had this Plymouth – I don’t even know what it was now – but he would go away on the yard bird sometimes for a week.
Me: He would go because he was the mechanic and if something happened to the plane he was there…
Hugh: Right. So when he would leave, he would give me his car. I didn’t have a car. I hadn’t been there too long…
Tina: He arrived in Naples in July and we met in September.
Hugh: We would hit the bars together downtown, looking for the girls. So he said, “I’m going with this girl and she’s always got this other girl tagging along. How about coming along and taking her off my hands?” I said, “No thank you, I’m fine the way I am!”
Tina: He was 25 years old!
Hugh: He said, “Look, if you don’t take her off my hands, the next time I go TAD, my keys are going with me!” So I said, “Oh, well, that’s a different story!”
Me: {laughter} Oh, a little bribery, huh?
Hugh: Eddie Horn lived over near the NATO base…anyway, I’d started going whenever they’d go out and it got to where I liked this ol’ girl.
Me: So you were in Eddie Horn’s house when you first met daddy…
Tina: Yes, it was in his apartment. I thought it was more downtown though. I don’t know if it was Bagnoli…
Hugh: Yes, yes…Bagnoli!
Tina: For me it was different…I was going into an American’s house. All these strange things, all these little cans. He was a single guy. I was looking for something different. One time, Bernarda and I went with Giulio Gervasio’s sister to the NATO base because she worked there and she got us in. I was fascinated when I went in the bathroom on the base and I saw the toilet paper…it was so soft! Back then we used newspaper. I don’t know if toilet paper existed but we certainly couldn’t afford it if it did! So yes, it really impacted me, this soft toilet paper. It’s been more than 50 years and I still remember that! We’re talking 1965. Everything was new to us! We only knew about American things from films.
