What Does 'Americanata' Mean?

Life with Harriet and Franco was delightful and exciting – they were so outgoing with a very active social life.  They were a good-looking couple – Harriet was small, about five foot, three inches tall, with brown hair and alert, intelligent blue eyes.  Franco was about five-ten, well-muscled, and dark with his black hair slicked back from his handsome face.  Their bright minds made them especially attractive to people and it was little wonder that they had made so many friends of all nationalities.  Harriet’s Italian was perfect — she was able to pass as a native during the war, and she was also fluent in French and German.

​

Franco spoke English beautifully, with only a slight accent.  He was the son of an Austrian-Italian father and English mother.  He was educated at the Italian Naval Academy and served in the navy as the interpreter for the fleet commander in Shanghai.  When he got out of the navy, he got a job with the Walter Kidde franchise in Italy which was owned by Admiral Compario.  This man was an honorary admiral, given the rank by a grateful Navy for his contribution as an industrialist.  

Compario was a wealthy man but extremely tight-fisted.  His wedding gift to Franco, his right-hand man, was a box of cookies!  Still, he seemed to love Franco and made him the manager of the business.  Among many other endeavors the Walter Kidde Company still makes all kinds of firefighting equipment and installs sprinkler systems in buildings and ships. In 1930, Franco was sent to New York to learn more about the business, and it was on the ship going back to Italy that he met Harriet.  

​

Blossom and I saw Franco as sort of a “wheeler dealer.”  He always knew what he wanted and how to set about getting it.  He had tipping down to a fine art.  When he traveled on an ocean liner, and the state room had two beds, he tipped the purser to remove one of them so he would have more room.  At the theater he bought the less expensive seats and tipped the usher to seat his party in the best seats.  When he was sent a card telling him to register for military service at the time of the war between Italy and Ethiopia, he simply wrote “deceased” on the card and sent it back, trusting the Italian bureaucracy to accept this as a fact.  Which of course, it did.

​

Franco wanted us to take part in all aspects of Italian living.  Learning Italian was a top priority, but it was difficult for we were with English-speaking people a great deal of the time.  So, Franco would send us on errands with specific things to do.  For instance, he sent us to the “Duomo Square,” on foot.  We had to find our way, find a certain hunchbacked man selling lottery tickets, and buy two.  It was considered good luck to buy from a hunchback.             

​

One time when two Italian boys asked us to go tea-dancing on the roof garden of a large department store across the street from the Duomo, I wore hat and gloves as was the custom.  It was a lovely place and as dusk was falling the floodlights were turned on the Duomo.  This was the big attraction of this particular roof-top restaurant.  We were having a great time, but with every dance the feather on my hat got in my partner’s face.  So, I took it off.  Well to my horror, a waiter came over and said I had to put it back on.  When I got home and told Franco, he was livid.  He said, "Becky, the next time something like that happens to you, point your finger at that waiter and say 'YOU! are here so serve me and not to tell me how to dress!’"  

Franco was proud of us and the way we looked, with our American clothes and silk stockings. We must have looked different somehow, for strangers on the street would call us American as we passed.  

​

Franco told us one time, “You might as well do whatever you want to no matter how crazy, for no one will think much about it, they will just say 'Muh, Americanata!’"  We asked, “What’s ‘Americanata?’" and he said, "If someone gets out in the middle of the intersection, wearing a red tie and dancing the jitterbug, people will say, ‘Americanata!  What can you expect?’"   

​

There is no doubt that I am an extrovert.  I always have been one and I cannot apologize for it nor wish myself to be any different.  But there must be some national trait that makes Americans all seem somewhat exhibitionistic to the Europeans.  We Americans carry our culture with us and, perhaps because of the freedom that we take for granted and the relative prosperity that we have always known we are never quite able to set it aside.  This has led to a complex relationship with the rest of the world, especially the Italians.  I learned on this first encounter with them on their territory, that we Americans are viewed with a wide variety of attitudes from adoration to condescension to hostility.   I think it has to do with our free-wheeling style.  After all, we are from a young country – less than two hundred years old, walking on streets well over two thousand years old.  Perhaps we unconsciously display the shiny, new confidence of third graders who don’t quite appreciate the superiority of their elders.

​

Another time Harriet warned us against feeling that all Italians wanted to live in America.  “They are perfectly content here and have good, productive lives.  It is only those who are discontent who flock to Ellis Island.” Looking back now from my much older perspective, I see what an important lesson Franco and his countrymen were trying to teach me. I was so young and happy then, barely out of my adolescence, and I had not learned yet to be aware of my overweening pride and how I come across at times when I like how I look, or charm someone successfully, or see my country’s flag. I may still commit these errors, but when I am able to live a little more humbly, I thank the Italians and hope they can forgive an extrovert for being an “Americanata.”