119 years, 2 months and 5 days after Giuseppe first arrived in New York on the S.S. Citta di Tornio, I walked through the streets of his and Giuseppa’s hometown of Melilli yesterday. It was a strange feeling driving into the town our grandfather had talked about but never been himself. I remember as a child trying to find it looking at a globe, and then an encyclopedia and having no luck. It was always somewhat of a mystery, though we knew it existed as the sister city of Middletown, CT which had a large population of Sicilians from Melilli.
Approaching Melilli, the rolling agricultural lands outside of Chiaramonte Gulfi had changed to a mix of woodland, farmland and rocky hillsides with scrub. Olive trees, while still abundant were not as concentrated as they had been. The focus of the eastern skyline was now Mount Etna, visibly spouting steam. I had set my GPS to Basilica San Sebastiano, Melilli but in the excitement of arriving in town, took the first parking spot I saw, which was about .3 miles from San Sebastiano’s. My first impression was that it was very clean, similar to Enna. My second was, “where is everyone?”. The streets were quiet, and most of the shops were closed….
I will continue adding to this post and the photos
