Local author writes to preserve Agawam's Italian history

July 27, 2018 | Jordan Houston
jordan@thereminder.com

AGAWAM – Martin Balboni, a retired Chicopee Comprehensive High School history teacher with family ties to the Balboni Bakery, recently self-published the third edition of his memoir, “The Opera on King Street.”

The non-fiction autobiography chronicles the social dynamics of North Agawam’s Italian-American community in the 1950s and 60s. Although Balboni was born in the United States, his family emigrated from Italy in the 1890s. His childhood was filled with memories of wandering around the King Street area, a tight-knit community in which neighbors would relax on their porches and conversations were the ultimate form of entertainment. However, as time passed, so did the neighborhood’s Italian character.

Balboni wrote the book in an attempt to preserve the “tragedy and comedy” of the Italian experience in Agawam and West Springfield, he explained.

“The Opera on King Street” covers topics such as the interactive consequences of Italian immigrants blending in with “melting pot” America, the examination of the Italian social structure (especially the family) and race relations within the community.

In order to learn more about the author, and the history behind Agawam’s Italian-Americans, Reminder Publications conducted a short question-and-answer style interview with Balboni. The following is a lightly edited version.

Reminder Publications: In your own words, how would you describe a brief summary of your memoir?

Balboni: First, I’ll tell you about its inception. As with a lot of things, weddings and funerals are when you get to see long lost people. One of my buddies – his mom died and I went to the wake. I was talking with him, and four or five old guys from the neighborhood turned up. We were talking about old times and one of the conclusions we had is that North Agawam has totally changed, there’s nothing like it when we were kids. So, my idea was, ‘I want to preserve it somehow in hard copy for my kids and whoever else wants it.’ I began to take some notes and jot things down. It gradually came together. A lot of people have said that I do capture the roots of our existence back then – there are some good things, but I didn’t gloss over anything, there are some bad things. So, I touched on some of those issues as well to try to give a little comparison and contrast to what it was like back then and now. I also covered a lot of family history in there. My family is the proprietor of Balboni Bakery. My grandfather started it in 1912, and then my father and his two brothers carried it on. When my father passed, my brothers and myself carried it on. After we retired, my brother’s son, Marc Balboni, took over. He is running it now. He’s the fourth generation.

Reminder Publications: Can you walk me through both your family’s background and Agawam’s Italian-American background?

Balboni: My father – and the whole Balboni thing – came from Cento, which is a town near Bologna in Northern Central Italy. My mother’s people were from the West in a city named Liguria. The interesting thing about Italians in North Agawam is that we didn’t get there from Boston moving west. The Italians in North Agawam came from New York and up the Connecticut River Valley. That was our route for the settlements. My grandparents came over in the 1890s, which is when the biggest influxes came over. They began to establish their businesses and communities. The foundations for the communities were the Italian clubs and the Catholic churches. The paper industry along the river was also a main attraction for the Italians. They came to work at the paper industry because it required unskilled labor. They had work for both male and females. The males ran the machines and the females worked in the ‘Rag Room.’ Back in those days, good paper was not made out of wood, it was made out of cloth.

Reminder Publications: You mentioned earlier that your book covers the topics of “The interactive consequences of Italian immigrants blending in with ‘melting pot’ America;” “How the area changed from a small town, culturally-cohesive community to an impersonal, modern community;” and “How race relations impacted both the community and the author while growing up.” Can you elaborate on these subjects?

Balboni: As far as the “Melting Pot” topic, North Agawam was kind of like a laboratory. The North Agawam Italian-Americans still spoke Italian. We had the Italian clubs and the Italian idea of families. I cover the fact that the Italian family is not the nuclear family, it is the extended family. I used an example of when my eldest aunt kind of took over the matriarchy of the family when my grandmother died. I got a bad report card one time and she walked into the house and demanded that my mother make me quit baseball until my marks came up. I used that example when I taught sociology in high school. I said, “How many of you kids could see an aunt coming into your house and demanding you quit baseball?” and they were all shocked. I just had to accept it though. The changing to a modern community is what I really tried to convey in my book. It was a situation – before television was a thing – where people were out on their porches and were outside on the street. Everybody was together. My father used to sit on the front porch and just watch what was going on, and that was his entertainment. Everyone knew each other, and then, gradually, things began to change. The big supermarkets replaced the little corner stores and people moved in who weren’t Italian. By the time it hit 1985 and 1995, the old Italian-American culture was pretty much gone. The [Balboni] bakery is still there, and I think that’s the last business. The race relations started out in North Agawam as zero. There were no minorities of any type and the popular epithets that people used to use – I didn’t realize the “N word” was offensive until I got to high school. There wasn’t a single minority student in my elementary school or junior high school. So, the race relations – I can’t say they weren’t bad because . . . they just weren’t.

Reminder Publications: Was this book a first effort for you? What was the writing and research process like?

Balboni: Yes, this was a first effort. I haven’t written books in the past. I found writing to be the easiest part. The hardest part, of course, was the editing and going back over and rephrasing things. The ideas seemed to come pretty well and easily; I didn’t have any trouble doing that. It took me about eight months to write it the first time, and then it took about a year to revise it and keep going over it – that’s when I did all of the research and documentation. All the research is organized into a bibliography in the back of the book. It’s annotated and I use it to explain how I used all of the sources. My first copy I made, I didn’t have any documentation. For this new one, I said, ‘I better start backing myself up with things.’ The first was just for friends and family. I just gave everything away for the heck of it. But then, a lot of people started saying, ‘I want a copy,’ so I did a revision – that was for the second and third printing.

Reminder Publications: Tell me about the title of your book, how did you decide on “The Opera on King Street?”

Balboni: My mother loved opera, in fact, she sang in the Springfield Symphony Opera. She sang with it, and I know a lot about opera – I like opera. I was thinking about the operatic metaphor – where opera has really horrible tragedy, and some very hilarious comedy – it has all of these elements. I said, “That’s what life on King Street was like, it’s like an opera.’ So, I used the title “The Opera on King Street,” and throughout the book I use a musical piece as sort of a signature to introduce every chapter.

Reminder Publications: What about the painting of the house on the front cover?

Balboni: That’s the house that my grandfather was born in, in Italy. We went to Italy and I saw some relatives over there. They took me to that house. I took a couple of pictures, and one of the pictures had me standing in the doorway. Another one had an old junk car parked in front. My friend is an artist, so I gave him the picture and said, “Can you paint a picture of this house without me and without the car in it?” I also told him to make sure he put the apple trees over the door because that’s kind of our family crest. So, he made that and painted it.

Reminder Publications: Is there anything else you want to add?

Balboni: If you want a copy of my book you can write to me on my Facebook page or send me an email. You can find Balboni’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Opera-on-King-Street-591478951213710/. His email is operaonkingstreet@gmail.com. He is also selling copies of the book at the bakery, located at 25 King St. in Agawam, for $15.

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