It was a long journey, and it was evening when they got to the big station, flanked by tall brick buildings. The conductor called out “Cay . . . tow! Ca-ato . . . this way for Cato,” and they recognized the sound. They could see by the length of the station platform and by the marble columns of the station itself that it must be a large and fine city. The station was very grand and it was filled with well-dressed people. And among them were Giovanni Muzzi with Domenico Saccà.

“Eh, Longobardi!” the shoemaker called out cheerfully, and they embraced loudly and tearfully. The long journey from Castagna was over.

15. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Bleecker Street in Cato, like Bleecker Street in New York, was named for the same wealthy upstate Dutchman, Rutger Bleecker. There the similarity ended. In Cato the street was a wide thoroughfare, a handsome business block of prospering tradesmen inspired with civic pride. The Italians of Cato had settled just east of Bleecker, and bordering on it.

When the Longobardi family arrived, Cato had the same boisterous confidence and bravado of any other nineteenth-century American town or city; progress seemed unlimited, optimism unrestrained. First settled as Fort Herkimer before the Revolution, Cato got its name from a slip of paper drawn from a hat at McTaggert’s Tavern after the War of Independence had ended. Buildings went up and then were moved, turned about, or torn down before two generations had passed. The old was supposed to be succeeded by newer, finer buildings symbolic of growth and expansion. Wagon and blacksmith shops were replaced by churches, and churches by new business enterprises; carriage factories, tin and stove stores, flour and feed stores all thrived.

The open market and old state armory had been on Bleecker Street; likewise the town lockup and the social hall, the New American Hotel, the YMCA building, John Owens’ marble shop, several saloons, a butcher shop, a druggist, a brass and bell foundry, a tobacco factory, a crockery concern, and a furrier. Then parts of that jumble were replaced by the Arcade, only a decade old and still grand when Umbertina and Serafino first set eyes on it. Cato was richer by far than the part of New York they had known.

A whole area of the city, south of Rutger to Pleasant Street, bordered on the west by Oneida Street and on the east by Mohawk Street, was still known as Corn Hill from the cornfields that had covered the whole area in midcentury and still remained on a good portion when the Longobardis got there.

From the beginning Umbertina liked the tree-lined streets, the bustle of business, the nearness of canal and railroad and farmland, the invigorating northern air, and the frame houses and brick warehouses of Cato. She even liked the name, Cato, though she couldn’t nasalize the a-sound as the Americans did. It sounded to her like the dialect word for cat.