Leilani Pascale and Connie Pascale

00:02 Hi, my name is Leilani Pascale. I am 44 years old today is Tuesday, February 9th, 2021 and I'm calling it from Winchester Massachusetts, Massachusetts. My conversation partner is my father Connie Pascale.

00:20 I'm looking forward to speaking with him today.

00:23 My name is Connie Pascale. I'm 72 years old. Today is February my conversation partner is my daughter Leilani Pascale, and she's wonderful and I'm looking forward to speaking with her too.

00:44 So hi, Dad, hi, Leilani.

00:51 I'm already tearing up cuz I

00:54 Sounding the idea of this conversation very emotional, but I moved past that I know it's going to happen, except it. It's feels like a big deal to

01:10 Talk to you for the purpose of history and it's hard for me to imagine a time when someone would listen to it and you wouldn't be around. So I think that's

01:24 Heart with what I think is an easy question, or maybe it's a hard question to maybe you don't know the answer to that. This one actually comes from Andy your son.

01:35 Brisbane Australia

01:37 Who put the bomp in the bomp shebop shebop?

01:42 I think it was Madame Ruth. She said she's the Gypsy with a gold cap tooth. She has a little shop down on 34th and Vine selling little bottles of Love Potion Number 9. She put the bomp in the Bop shebop. Finally. Who was that man that man

02:11 He made my baby fall in love with me.

02:17 That's a hard question. I know the answer he thought maybe it would clear it up for us. Finally you sang that song to us all the time growing up and blue moon and Secret Agent Man 1814. I took a little trip the new Ipana toothpaste. Jingle. Did someone sing those songs to you?

02:40 They didn't sing no songs to be my mom always sang to me all the time. When I was little in fact is I always told the story that she sang right away and end when I was very little she was singing the song called slow boat to China to me and she stopped for a second and I finished it and then she said she was surprised and I could sing the song even though I have never talked before so I've been singing in the songs in frankly if you were here now because I've been alone for this quarantine time. I'm singing all these songs to myself now. Well the time I sing them

03:26 You don't want to hear me sing a song. I'm so sorry to not have like third parties in a recording. I'm so so so sorry. I know. I'm really sorry about that. You can talk about them, but you text.

03:49 Were they popular songs when you were young in the 60s in the late fifties and early sixties? Those other songs when I got my first radio a transistor radio a little one a square like that in a leather case back around 1958 and and onward I would listen to the radio all the time and and WABC was a big-time rock station in New York and I used to listen to that because everybody listen to that now it's a talk show conservative talk station. Like we used to all this into it. And so I heard all those songs and I would have always enjoyed singing so I sang the songs and I continue to do it but I I basically pick them up from the radio from when I was a kid of the time. Well Blue Moon was originally a song by the gershwins, but it was turned into

04:49 Mob song by The Marcels baba, baba, baba, baba anyway and became a real big do they used to take a lot of the older songs and convert them to pop songs. And that was one of the ones and again, I I still sing it all the time. Yeah. I ain't I didn't know that. It had been an older song and then converted it's funny. I don't I don't think any songs from the 80s to my kids. Like I'm not staying logged on to them, but I sing the songs that you sent to me.

05:31 Why do you think that it?

05:34 Oh, no, you know what the next song. Catching? I don't know nothing about 80s music to know a lot about it. But those songs were catchy songs and new and I really enjoyed seeing them and maybe maybe that came over to you and made an impression at that point, but I still enjoy singing them and I'm so maybe that's it. But you're just catching and they have a lot of life to them. And and so maybe that's it. Maybe that you just that's what you learned then again. I didn't remember a lot of this song by Mom saying about seeing the songs and maybe that came over and made a big impression on you, but it doesn't hurt the same Blue Moon. I'll tell you that's a good song to sing to anybody.

06:32 I'm glad that my kids know it and I know that as a song that you sang to me, so that means a lot to me. I wanted to ask you what if you could tell me what a family dinner was like growing up for me our family. Did you ever see the movie Back to the Future? Right or we got a small ranch? I was kind of like the one you grew up in here where I am now and where I sat was we had a table. We all sat in our seats. My seat was in one part of my dad said here my brother. Is that over there and my sister and my mother said over here, but we got a swivel TV and I'll never forget how excited we were because when that TV turned I was facing directly at it. So when we had dinner,

07:32 Watch TV because TV was new and we were loving TV and and so that was exciting. But otherwise will you suggest?

07:42 We know we talk but mostly we hate cuz we were Italian so and and still are so we can waste a lot of time around.

07:57 No, but you ain't pretty fast to make sure you got as much as you needed and I was pretty fast as a fast meter set with his arm up like this which I showed you and so we would have a great time meeting the food mom made and not talking a lot by eating don't talk eating is like Homer says can't talk eating and so I I did that. Yeah, so we all hate we we loved it. And again everybody ate pretty quickly anyway, because that's just the way it was my dad. Wanted to get to desert desert or whatever cookies that hate. My dad wouldn't need a meal that was known meal without dessert. That's why I even now when I when I first got married when Mom and I first got married when we didn't have it.

08:57 Is there and every meal I said this is we couldn't have a meal without dessert. I mean

09:05 When I eat dinner, I get a couple cookies or something a little sweetness after dinner, but that was common. So everybody had dessert we always had cake we always had pie we always have your mom make those things sometimes but a lot of them were store blocked when I was a kid. I think I told you it was a different world in the sense that every Peddler came to your door at least in the little suburb in Levittown kind of neighborhood. We lived in in New Jersey. So the Dugan. I came he brought on everything. Come every couple times so we can come to your door and he had his case with cakes and pies and cookies and all kinds of things in the bond bread guy would come and he'd have the bread and cookies and cakes. So you could sit at home. The guys would come in to look at all the stuff. They had we buy it the soda man came the fruit guy came in and vegetable a guy in his truck the milk person.

10:05 What are milked the cookie guy came Charles Chips had chips and cookies. They all came to your door. So we always had a ton of snacks to eat. We had a case of soda forever because they all came. I mean we had that's what we had. That's why it was even the bleach guy came and told us homemade bleach. So everybody had, you know, I was like that you need not to leave your house and you can blow it up on a million snack cookies and cakes and we always had them so we never lacked for the ability to have us that doesn't sound so bad smell in my mind knows that Bakery thing that the guy brought in his car is Big tray was like a big Carpenters box and I could still smell it now all the cakes and cookies in their eyes.

11:05 Want to eat cake or cookie? It's making my mouth water.

11:17 Whitey Bulger me know when it's 3. I went from Catholic school. I was in public school for 1st to 3rd grade, you know, when they opened up the Catholic school and church I've lived in in Somerville. And so we were longtime members of that church and we were they they allowed one class from the fourth grade third second person kindergarten. That's how they were going to go ahead and I happen to be going into the fourth grade. So he's perfect or X enroll me in the school. My cousin's friend since they were a little older couldn't get in because yes, we had one class were third in the school was one class 4 grade and first year. I had Mother Superior Who was the

12:02 The principal of this school it was an honest. They lived in the convent right next to the school. And then I had sister Marie Jean.

12:12 454 years in a row 5th 6th 7th and 8th grade. She was the teacher we had and she was a wonderful person but they knew how to diagram a sentence and I can still diagram a sentence and about English and things like that. But the rest I didn't know and frankly, like I said, it was good to have it but I never learned anything about science until I got to high school when I went back to public school cuz my mom thought I should do that. So like I say, I never said never she had said in flared and I thought that that was still the way you said that word in prayer. So instead of infrared. So what they were great and then again, I would I did. Okay, so I got away and they liked me but they didn't like you she had a bunch of kids. She didn't like and they had her for four years in a row it was

13:12 Very hard for them. He broke a lot of rulers on those kids a lot of yard sticks broken on those kids out in the hallway. So great experience. I made friends there. I still like I talk to one after more than 50 years just the other day and it was a good experience, but I can diagram a sentence. I thought I was in freshman year in the public school. I was the only one that could diagram a sentence but when I went to the science class and I I was back in the Stone Age and so they shined in infrared light on me and they knew it was

13:56 All right. We're going to change tax here.

14:03 Let's talk about Mom.

14:09 She died 22 and 1/2 years ago.

14:18 You're a lot like her. She's all of you were a lot like her. She was wonderful. She would Kira when she got in an emotional situation.

14:27 Member that tell her tell me how you met her.

14:34 I met her on a blind date. I had just started to work as a Vista attorney in Colorado were legal services in La Junta Colorado McCown far out in the plains. You could see the mountains on a clear day through the fog of the dust from the plains. There were more cows than people in that area by far and and watermelons anyway, and so I went to the four of us are

15:12 In fact, we were about a quarter of the old bar in the area of La Junta Colorado the Carroll County. There might have been 12 or 15 attorneys and are for attorneys were where a large number of the lawyers in my one of my colleagues arranged a blind date for me with Mom, which is something I was not a person that had a lot of dates. So I was it was it was quite an experience and we met at the place where we had our blind date was a movie of this put on by the Spanish club on what she became the president it was calling to carry. I will never forget it. It was a movie Mexican movie in Spanish about

16:01 The Day of the Dead around Halloween cuz I met her at the date was around Halloween Mark Macario isn't even the movie and I'll never forget it we were sitting there watching us and she was and after that we went out with some friends and I'm not a bar person either but I went and she's always wrote told people afterwards. He didn't know what he was doing there, but I didn't know that he didn't know anything about that. So but then you know who he is and we hit it off which for me was quite amazing. She was wonderful. She was a miracle because I I was pretty close in and she was for the different Lifestyles we kind of had we also had coming back on her parents were like my parents riffic people and she had a close-knit family and

17:01 We hit it off and it was a miracle. I say again was a miracle that have a chance that blind dating 18 tire difference in my life changed my life around completely. I always call her my Miracle even now to myself especially

17:17 Anyway, that's how I met her and it was a wonderful, you know, we had a chance you'd like to read and write poetry and I like to read and do those till we had a good common background, even though we came from different parts of the country. She was to South Dakota and lived in Durango Colorado and I am from New Jersey. There are more people on my block in New Jersey probably then there were in the county where in there but I'm from New York where you gone to law school, so

17:50 What do you think she liked about you?

17:53 I'm not sure. I always say I don't know what exactly what she saw in me.

18:01 I think maybe she saw that I was you know.

18:06 This is the kind of for a little like her dad in a way of person that was committed to the family and the person who was fun when you want to know them and the person that was able to love and be loved like Chihuahuas and

18:21 I'm not again. I don't see why what you saw in me. Other than that I was

18:28 Am I a good person to hang around with him that I was a loyal person and and fun and like I said, I knew how to be loved because I had been loved and so did she so that was an Indian. Oh, she had been married, right and she had Chris her son who became he was 3 when we got married and Christian I got along real well cuz you know I get along real well with little kids and we had a great time playing with his cars and trucks and and I would do a lot of things. So I think she's so I would be a good

19:08 Father too and that I I got along pretty well with Chris and at the time so I think that's it to Terence. Her mom really liked me. So she she I remember she told me and maybe she showed it to me Grandma had written a letter to her afterwards. He's the one Kathy she said so I didn't know how well you are the one so

19:49 Well, it was wonderful. I said although I was a little different from her family to I told you that story about visiting them at Christmas. She invited me to go to the house at Christmas and went and I went there and when I was a kid, you know, I grew up in Italian American family and

20:08 My father we have we always gave our uncles he always gave his uncles and now there's a bottle of whiskey for the holidays because he would get it and it would give it to them and Maddie's mom and dad a bottom, but I didn't realize that they had actually grown up in the strict Protestant churches where you didn't drink or dance originally in Kansas. So Kathy mom told me later. They were a little taken aback. I'm giving him a bottle of whiskey the first time I meet them they understood that was just part of a tradition. I wasn't actually a closet alcoholic who had to get rid of some of my supplies. So it was funny because I didn't know that that's what we did. It would have been such a misapprehension of you since you don't drink it all and never drank it off if they hadn't thought that there was

21:05 Anything meaningful about you giving them that I'm glad they didn't think twice about it is when

21:18 My dad was a purchasing manager for Johns Manville. He had get started then that his wife was he work for the same company for 47 years and now people change jobs every few every few years. So we had a lot of things that they gave the purchasing managers and we had a lot of bottles of whiskey you cuz that's one of the things that we could have opened the bar there, but it was great gift. So in our family was a great gift.

21:54 Tell me about when you got married.

22:00 Well, that was a wonderful day too. We decided to get married and we were going to get married and we had an invitation is it was a small way we lived in a town called a hunter right and it is we had good friends, but there weren't neither of us had much money. We were both working and I got paid $200 a month as a Vista. Wish I was saving 50 and then she was working as a secretary in this agency that help kids which by the way had the same number as the White House but a different zip code and they used to get numbers asking for the president and she so we had a small wedding. We scheduled it for 6 in the evening on August 8th, 1974 and

22:57 My body is took me out the day before and because I'm not a drinker, but they certainly got me in a bad State and again for my bachelor party. That's a funny story.

23:11 Well, I got it. I don't drink but they my so-called friends but we're wonderful friends and deuced me to have they just kept giving me drugs. I had 13 shots of tequila, which they gave me over the wife of the evening and I was running down the road for the neighboring town when they caught me in a truck and brought me home. I was again, I'm not person that the next day we were ready for our wedding. But at that was the day that Richard Nixon announce his resignation after Watergate. So I always say two things happened on August 8th 74. I got married and Nixon resigned and we would postpone our wedding and at least an hour so all of us could sit in the

23:59 And watch it on TV and then that really made us in a festive mood and then we went down to the park. We all walk down to the park where the wedding was going to be in we got married under a tree and there are maybe 40 people there and was wonderful beautiful married in the tree under the parking lot Junta Colorado with kids playing basketball over there in the background and dad a minister wrote a great service would we helped right and then we had a small reception just basically cake and and wine and things like that in the next day. We went out our started on our honeymoon to New Jersey with that's a place to go to for a honeymoon is New Jersey, New Jersey Shore and that's where we went back to where I came from but it was a wonderful day a wonderful event and I'll never forget it for all those reasons. It was just

24:54 It was beautiful and that way she was their dress. She had this was as beautiful as anything and it was just beautiful.

25:02 We should talk about mom for this whole interview.

25:09 But I think I'm going to move us forward.

25:13 Other things

25:15 Can you allela wanted to know was Andy cuz you're doing this in kind of chronological, but I

25:33 By one point we had I've been thinking about it and

25:38 The one thing I would like to comment on about my childhood.

25:43 Was that it took me 50 years more than 50-year 50 years to realize that the childhood I had was the Paradigm childhood that they talked about on someone in the 50s for a white family compared to the delay it I didn't realize that I was living like a wonderful time in the TV shows in everything. They always talk about their 50s being wonderful time. It was a wonderful time if you are a white family, but where I lived was the Paradigm place that symbolized conversion of their country to the suburbs because I lived in a town and we're in central New Jersey the Suburban New Jersey wear when they built the highway system and then they built housing and that all the factories moved out there. We had five or six major Factory's Mack truck.

26:43 Singer sewing machine Johns Manville American cyanamid those jobs are there for the people coming back after the war was the early 50s and and we lived in a kind of a Levittown House near small ranch house on a slab the kind they don't build now because they don't want to integrate end and we lived in a probably five hundred of those and those are wonderful. There were maybe 40 kids my age just in the half of it and we had you know, but

27:14 There were no people of color there and I didn't even realize it till I was older. I had one black child in my grade school and one in my high school and it was because they were barred from living in that kind of Housing and I am a house. I work in housing, right? So that's my field is a legal services housing specialist. I didn't realize that I live that Paradigm example of that that for our family it was wonderful, but all those jobs that people that could have gotten them from the cities weren't allowed to move there because the FHA had a policy of not spending money for that type of Housing and they and they wouldn't let you integrate those neighborhoods. It was considered to impede their collateral. So the federal government at a policy of segregation and I lived in I didn't realize it for 50 years and then I felt so bad because

28:08 Casual racism going up with as common as a cherry pie as I mean we used every word in the book did the n-word was as common in Daily conversation as anything. It was just the way people grew up and the factory where I worked in the Summers. I mean, it was just the way people grew up and I realize now and I understand that, you know that racism that casual racism is in my heart today and I have to think about it and I always think about it and I opened and my colleagues that I you know, I

28:47 When I hear about this time, I'm deeply ashamed of how we lived in but it was just the way it was. Nobody thought about it. And the fact that there were no people of color around with is normal and as everything you ever wanted to think about it so I can communities and and get try to build affordable housing. I understand.

29:17 Exactly why it is the way it is because I I saw it from the other side and I I still don't understand how African American people are patient enough with the society we have because of the way it was then and again,

29:39 Growing up where we did on the street of small house. Is it in Toms River?

29:47 There were no people of color there. They all lived in South Toms River and I went to high school with them just because High School's hat Styles having to be the high school that

29:58 Was the original High School? Yeah. Yeah, it was an intentional policy federal government that structural racism is carried it over and it's funny because you say that and we've been you know, the whole history of Ocean County where I live and I don't want to go into that accept that they intentionally created South Toms River by slicing off the part of Berkeley Township with African-American Community Live, so they wouldn't have to integrate the schools and when they had to integrate the schools according to the Supreme Court, they

30:43 10 minutes left. Wow. Anyway, I have dates they slice North that town intentionally, but I'm sorry I went into that go ask the question Lilo on a disc only one that comment that I said that you had a chance to say that I know that's very important if knowledgement of that history that you live but that you continue to try to let me your life's work has been to try to not make personal amends for that but two

31:20 Try to eradicate the affair, but I want to say I lived it done that a white person's mid-twentieth-century life. That's what they could write my story and it would be the story that they talked about for the four people the way they lived at least a white family in the middle. Twentieth century is exactly what

31:45 Anyway, you can ask me what Lila about but Andy.

31:53 Wanted to know if you had favorite stories about each of us.

31:58 I know that's a hard question just bring on you. But can you think of that a story about each of us? A lot of things we lie? Because she asked that question I think about her.

32:15 Saying when we were little I forget where we were by Chi Chi Pastime gas and then she said her bottom burped my bottom burnt. Then I'll never buy used to say that I still say it. Would you walk up and down the driveway when you were four and three years old I come home one day and there's holes in them. And in the seats you at hammered out holes. I guess you were putting speed holes in your type bikes. But I remember you writing them up and down the driveway and now they had holes in the seats. So we had to hammer that holds for our need to fit in then you got big. Yeah, that's it. You hadn't helped homes for your knees.

33:15 Good idea, and I remember you and your friends playing with your Cabbage Patch dolls. I can see you sitting there. And and I remember Chris and his friend Albert. I made them some wings out of newspaper and they were jumping off the porch flying in the wings I had made for them. I mean, I don't have if I guess if I sat down and thought I'd come up with like funny stories, but I'm not so good. I remember Mike all of a sudden screaming when he was in the basement by himself because he had turned on Freddy Krueger and was watching Freddy Krueger for a while and then he says,

33:58 I just remember how wonderful each of you were and how much I loved all of you being around you I had loved taking you to the supermarket. I love to being around you every place I went it was a it was a joy kept me young and playing with the games and playing all the games. We played and blocks and marching around in our house to the to the music up. Seuss abandoned. I put up obstacles. We March over it. I don't know if you remember that but we asked what we did. Yeah. I mean, that's why I didn't tell me she did that the other day with Benjamin and we'll is marching around with them Sousa music on so again,

34:58 Choice band in the heart of my life being married to Mom and being part of our family and he and your dad is didn't my there's nothing nothing more than life. That's more important than that. It only as a parent now that I recognized.

35:15 What a gift you gave us.

35:19 Because of who you were and how you did

35:22 Honestly, just love playing that didn't you know, I didn't know anything else going up, but now I don't love playing in the way that you do and so it's always been

35:38 More of that struggle to

35:41 Engage around certain things with my kids, but you just generally genuinely loved it and still love it which is why my kids at Leo's kids love having you around. There's just so much fun.

35:58 Zombies Halo playing that game

36:05 Hey, it's alright again, even now I look forward to looking at those cars when I go down. I look finally at my little car. Sometimes I pick him up or call a truck a little bit when I'm working out down there. I enjoyed I still like playing so fun playing was a lot of fun for me life gets harder. When you go along playing with trucks and blocks is a good activity better than try to figure out your taxes.

36:37 I know at one point, I think probably when you were about my age, I was older than my kids are when you were my age.

36:47 But you told me that you felt the same inside then as you did when you were growing up. You're just the same person. Nothing about you had changed your just in a different.

36:59 Situation or not? I totally understand that. It's

37:05 The idea that you're just the same kid inside you're just now doing these different things, but I know that after mom died things change for you, but I was wondering if you still feel that way or if there wasn't I always tell people that if I don't look in the mirror or move, I could still be a little kid the minute I do either of those things. I realize I'm not in Kansas anymore. But I still feel in my heart that I'm either a teenager or younger. I can't shake that feeling. I I sometimes wonder when I'm going to grow up because the taxi but of course it changed after mom died, but still inside of me, I I feel that little kid there.

37:58 And he's excited by a lot of things that I still excited like playing with a new truck or playing with Will likes his garbage truck. I can't wait to see that garbage truck when I can visit again. And there's you know, that part of me is still the same except when I look in the mirror or move then I realized 72 not 7, but it's a blessing I guess in what zone way when do wonder about the world?

38:40 Speaking of the world. What did you think we're doing here?

38:46 What what do you think we're doing here?

38:49 Why were you talking to me what we're doing here people in the world?

38:54 I don't know. It depends on your and on your view if you're a religious person you have one here.

39:01 Well again live you is I don't know. I I kind of had and face. I really good quote that face comes and goes like the tides and so sometimes I have a strong faith, That's what I grew up with and sometimes it's pretty weak and I feel as more of an agnostic or but I feel there's a purpose if nothing else.

39:27 We're here because we're here and life is a precious gift in a universe that's of Untold size that we all went to the beautiful world were on as well as all the people around it to try and make that life as meaning for enjoyable as possible. So I think even depending on whether there's an afterlife or not. We owe it to the afterlife of our kids in the people that come after to both be stewards of this world and also to try and make their lives if nothing else to everybody should have the right to have these thoughts and not be filled with drudgery or have no place to live or have not enough to eat or have not have have this thing say everybody should have a life where they can be as creative as they want to be but also have the chance to ruminate on what their life is and what their hair for they shouldn't be beaten down by thing. So I feel that's what we're here for to try and preserve the ability of

40:24 People tell you exercise those wonderful gifts wherever they came from. I don't I don't have any other way to I think about this all the time myself.

40:37 It's been a real privilege to be here with you.

40:42 And there are so many more things.

40:45 I would like to ask you but I'll just tell you that. I love you so much.

40:51 And I'll always love you so much.

40:54 You can ask me any time and I and I are killing me because I love you with all my heart sweetheart. You are wonderful a wonderful person. You live my life up every day and it's been a joy every day to be your father and I can't say enough about it. It's even now if you're lighting up today for me as you always do just the thought of you just a thought I buy Sweet Leilani as mom used to call you and like I say, I remember the day you were born and I'll never

41:29 That was a wonderful day for us and it will continue to be forever. I'll love you forever wherever I am. I love you. Thank you.