The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-05-22

WHENEVER I think of Rocco
w Antinori I have the feeling of
understanding little better what it
is that makes some foreigners be-
come citizens of the United States.
Not just technically, with papers
and everything to prove (which
I guess doesn't matter much one
way or another--but deep down in
where they live, which matters a
lot, both to the United States and
to them.
I'm interested in that because its
my business. My name is Philip
Denton, and I'm United States
naturalization examiner.
was working in the Washington
Office, but L belonged out West,
where I am now. I like going to the
different county seats out here and
standing up in open court and ask
ing questions and then making the
recommendations on the basis of
which the district judges grant or
deny citizenship.
1t was during the war that I was
in Washington. Rocco Antinoris
shoe repair shop was on my way to
work, and I passed it every day
twice. He was a little, common
place-loolIing middle-aged Italian.
The reason 7 began to notice him
was that one day his naturalization
papers passed through my hands
down at the office. I wondered why
he had become citizen.
He didn't seem that much inter
ested. I wondered after that when
I passed by his place how he got like
that, with all the life drained out of
him.
NNE day I took him some work
~ and was surprised to find 'aat
the life hadn't drained out of him.
1t was all in his eyes. Everything
else about him had whipped look,
but there was a lot of purpose of
some sort in his eyes, Something
well, fine and unconquered.
I got interested. I used to go
into his shop and try TO make him
talk. But he had a reserve that
shut him in like the wall of old
shoes he sat behind. He was good
workman, and people brought him
more than he could do.
I knew they taught cobbling in
the prisons in Italy. 1 thought
maybe he had been caught by some
legal trap, and when they let him
out had come to this country hoping
for a new chance, and hadn't got
much of one.
Sometimes his wife would be sit
ting there, too. She was a heavy,
Smoky-eyed, bitter-mouthed woman,
with wide shoulders and hips and
lot of black hair that had usually
slipped down into a big, loose knot
on the nape of her neck.
Sometimes she had boy with her
about years old. She sat in the
bright light from the big electric
bulb overhead and looked at her
husband in a way that made me
think she hated him. .-
MY landlady found out what it
1VI was that had happened be-
tween them, from a woman who
lived over in their part of town.
"She blameS him for the death
Of her sister," Mrs. Mulhare asid.
"She was killed by a runaway horse.
Antinori could have saved her, APP
parently, if he had seen her, and
tried. He says he didn't see her.
and everybody believes him except
his wife. He saved an old Negro
man named Felix, who is half
paralyzed and sells papers.
He pulled his wheeled chair out of
the way in the nick of time. The
horse plunged on into the sister and
killed her. Nobody had liked her.
She and Mrs. Antinori quarreled all
the time. but now that she's dead,
the Antinori woman can't live with
out her"
I suppose there was more to it.
I suppose Antinori and his wife
hadn't got along and the sisters
death made it worse: but don't
know. Mrs. Mulhare told me,
though, one reason why he had to
work so hard; he went on a friends
note, the man couldn't pay, and he
had to.
And that's all + found out in the
way Of facts. But-when it comes
to that-what are facts, anyway?
I went on walking past his shop
and few times more went in for
something or other, but I didn't
see that look in his eyes any more.
and my thoughts about what put it
there wouldn't have come to any
thing If I hadn't run into him about
a year later, or a Sunday after
noon, at Boiling Field, and had
glimpse of what it was that lay
behind the facts.
THAT year in between had been
Il an important time for me. I
had been transferred back West, and
had married--a western girl, who
sees things the way I do. was in
Washington IN official business, but
/ had brought her with me.
Everything in the East was new
TO her, and she was eating 1t up. I
took her to see my old landlady be-
cause AIRS. Mulhare had been good