A Man of Honor: The Autobiography of Joseph Bonanno

BOOK I

The Odyssey

1

My earliest childhood memories are not of my native Sicily, but of America.

When I was three years old, my father, my mother and I (their only child) moved from our hometown of Castellammare del Golfo to the United States. We settled among other Sicilian immigrants in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where we lived on North Fifth Street and Roebling, not far from the East River.

Across the river was a place called New York City. Down the block was the elementary school where I would begin my education. We spoke English there. At home, we spoke Sicilian. Other ethnic groups lived around our neighborhood—Jews, Poles, Armenians. The cops were Irish. The beer vendors were German.

The Sicilians all complained about the cold weather. Back home, it was almost always warm. In America, we saw snow and slush for the first time. You had to burn wood to keep warm in the winter. If a horse-drawn fire engine trundled down the street, I would follow it to the fire and collect scraps of wood to bring home.

The reason for my father’s departure from Sicily in 1908 has always been something of a mystery to me. A story I later heard from relatives was that my father left to avoid prosecution. The case against him was eventually dismissed, but by that time, we had already moved to the New World.

In Sicily, a place that had not yet entered my young consciousness, my father was known as a man of honor—words that meant nothing to me then but were to become the touchstone of my life. He was the head of the Bonanno clan—the leading family of Castellammare. That responsibility, which he could not escape, placed strict limits on his life in Castellammare. So I imagine that as proud as he was of his tradition, he at least partly welcomed the move to America.

The Castellammarese immigrants remained a tight-knit community in the New World. They had come with energy and high hopes, but everything they owned was in a suitcase. They had to look out for one another and cooperate. For example, if an immigrant needed money he could not expect much help from a conventional bank. Most Sicilian immigrants could not show any credit or collateral for a loan. However, they had what they called the Italian bank. Some of their own countrymen had money to lend them, if no one else would, and these men acted as neighborhood bankers. Their interest rates might be higher than the establishment bankers charged, but at least you could do business with your own people. They did not give you the cold shoulder. You had to pay up on time but that’s true of everything. Even so, with the neighborhood banker you could get an extension on your loan, perhaps by doing him a favor. Everyone has his talents.

The Williamsburg neighborhood also had something called the Italian lottery. It was a cheap game that offered a big jackpot. For a very small bet you stood to gain a thousandfold if you were lucky. It was incomprehensible to most immigrants and other poor folk that such a lottery was illegal. If you were rich and could afford to bet money in a gambling casino, or if you played the stock market, you were safe from the law. If you were poor and bet a penny, it was illegal. It was a strange country.

Americans were difficult to fathom. Drinking beer and whiskey was okay, but drinking wine, which Sicilians made in their basement stills, was considered the exotic habit of foreigners. We couldn’t imagine that someday they would be so foolish as to prohibit the drinking of alcoholic beverages altogether!

*   *   *

Since he was a Bonanno, my father’s reputation preceded him to America. The Castellammarese immigrants in Brooklyn looked up to him, as their relatives had in Sicily. Downstairs from our apartment, my father opened a pasta factory to satisfy the neighborhood demand for fresh macaroni and spaghetti. Across the street from the pasta shop, he opened a tavern. In the rear of the tavern was a small kitchen. Customers could always count on a big pot of stew bubbling with potatoes, green vegetables, pig’s knuckles, tripe and maybe even some lean meat.

They referred to my father as don Turridru. In my language, Turridru is an affectionate nickname for Salvatore, just as Peppino is a nickname for Giuseppe. Don is equivalent to the English sir.

I remember being told a story of the relationship between my father and his friends at the tavern. One evening a Castellammarese brought a friend, who was Italian but not Sicilian, to don Turridru’s tavern. The customers already in the tavern guessed the man was not Sicilian because, upon entering, he did not pay his respects to don Turridru. The Castellammarese, however, immediately made his way to don Turridru and asked for his blessing.

The Castellammarese and his friend sat at the bar. They drank all they wanted. The Castellammarese put a check on the counter. Don Turridru picked up the check and deposited it in the big old cash register behind the counter.

The puzzled stranger asked his friend,

—Aren’t you going to ask for the change from your check?

—Don Turridru knows best, the Castellammarese said stoically.

—But you have change coming to you!

—And what do you expect me to do? That’s the way it is around here.

The seemingly high-handed conduct of the tavern owner rankled the stranger.

—What if you had come into the tavern with just a few coins instead of a big check? the non-Sicilian asked.

—Then we could still have drunk here all night.

—And what if you came in here with no money at all?

—Ah! said the Castellammarese. It wouldn’t have made any difference. We could have still drunk here all night. You see, don Turridru is my friend. In the winter, when I often don’t have any checks because there is no work, I can come here to drink and to eat all I want from the big pot. Don Turridru pays for it then … that’s the Sicilian way.

*   *   *

When I was seven years old and in the second grade, my father would take me to the nickelodeon to watch Neapolitan moving pictures. He would tell me stories. He told me the inventor of the telephone was not Alexander Graham Bell, but an Italian named Antonio Meucci who used to live in Brooklyn as we did and was an owner of a candle factory across the bay in Staten Island. In that same candle factory worked Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian liberator, who was in political exile at the time.

—Garibaldi came to the New World just like us, my father would say.

My father said that while in the New World, Garibaldi also went to Uruguay and helped liberate it from Brazil. When he was in the United States and the Civil War broke out, Garibaldi sent a letter to Abraham Lincoln, offering his services to the President.

My father would talk about America, of how rich it was and of how much more time it would need to mature and to be truly great.

—Perhaps in another hundred years, this country will be civilized, he would say.

Like everything else he said to me at that age, I would only partly understand. The full significance of his words became clear to me later in life.

One evening, my father had a long talk with me. He said we were going back to Sicily. He looked serious, and it was because of his grave face rather than the announcement itself that I cried. He held me sympathetically, but was in firm control of his emotions. Even when I was a seven-year-old, my father addressed me in a dignified manner. He said,

—You are a Bonanno. Be proud.

His voice soothed me, and I stopped crying.

*   *   *

Castellammare del Golfo is situated deep inside an emerald gulf at the western tip of Sicily. The name means castle by the sea, and there is an ancient castle in the center of the town’s waterfront.

I was home again in the land of mezzogiorno—the land of midday, where people sang in their misery and their joy, where the sun was your constant companion and the hot and dusty sciroccos blew across the sea from the Libyan desert. In the wind, you could smell grapefruits and lemons.

I had lots of exploring to do. I would walk up to the top of the ancient castle and look out at the open sea, green toward the shore and blue in the distance. Playing hooky from school to go swimming was a constant temptation. One day, after missing school, I came home looking rather disheveled. My mother told me to take off my shirt. After I stripped to the waist, she licked me on the shoulder.

—I taste salt! she said. You went swimming, didn’t you?

Then she spanked me. Naturally, I did not like being slapped, but I never resented the spankings from my mother. The more she spanked me, the more I loved her.

On the way home from La Playa, the town’s main beach, I would linger to hear the fishermen singing while mending their nets. If a fisherman on the beach needed a bucket and ladle to empty the bilge-water from his boat, he would make a lilting aria out of it:

—So-oome-body bring me the bu-uuu-cket and la-aa-dle, ple-eee-ease!

The peasants who worked the hills behind Castellammare spoke a totally different dialect. They sounded lyrical even when talking to their donkeys and sheep. The fishermen and the farm peasants could barely understand each other; and if you went to a neighboring town, yet another dialect would tickle your ear.

I had some difficulty at first speaking solely in Italian. I must have impressed my new schoolmates with my English, and I must have taught them slang words, such as swell and okay. But after a while, English words slipped out of my vocabulary altogether.

My new friends called me Peppino instead of Joe or Joey. I told them all about my trip across the ocean, and we played many games. The top of the castle was the deck of our ship, and it seemed natural for me to take command. I knew about ships. I ran a tight ship, too; strict discipline aboard. I swore to go down with the ship, if it sank, all the way down to the bottom of the sea, where the fishes could enjoy me.

*   *   *

The reason for my father’s return to Sicily was vague. But I later learned that he was needed home because the old rivalry between the Bonannos and the Buccellatos, the two major factions in town, was festering once again. This ancient family feud had molded my father’s character and had framed his life.

At the end of the 1800s, the Bonanno House was preeminent in the Castellammare region. The family owned land, cattle and horses. In comparison with other families, the Bonannos were well off. They wielded vast influence.

The family leader was my grandfather, Giuseppe Bonanno. My grandfather had four sons. All of them would inherit part of his wealth, but only one of them—the one with the necessary qualities—would assume his power and position. He would lead the family.

Giovanni, the oldest son, showed little inclination for this role. He moved to Tunis, where he became a very successful farmer and rancher. Among his vineyards and Arabian horses, Uncle Giovanni probably led the most peaceful life of all the Bonanno brothers.

The second son, Stefano, was a quiet and devoted family man. Upon his father’s death, he promised his mother that in order to take care of her he would never marry. Uncle Stefano had a calm and modest disposition, and he acted as adviser to his younger brother, Giuseppe.

Giuseppe, the third son, had the necessary inward resources, coupled with a natural extroverted charm that made him popular. Uncle Peppe was a leader of men, and the family’s mantle of power fell on him.

One of the stories I remember about Uncle Peppe involved his indoctrination of a young disciple. One day he abruptly and without any explanation ordered the young man to take off his jacket and shirt, for he was going to get a beating. The order stupefied the young man, because he had done nothing to provoke my uncle. What could it be? What had he done to deserve a punishment? Confused though he was, the young man dared not disobey my uncle. He dutifully stripped off his clothes and kneeled. My uncle then repeatedly thrashed him over the back with a plaited bullwhack.

—Not a sound, not even a peep, my uncle admonished while administering the beating.

When it was over, my uncle told the young man to wash. He helped to gently towel-dry the young man, and then smeared lemon juice on the welts raised by the whiplashes. This stung sharply but it prevented infection. My uncle didn’t appear to be at all cross with the young man.

Before the young man had a chance to ask about the nature of his wrongdoing, he beheld my uncle blithely taking off his own jacket and shirt.

—Take the whip and give me twice as many lashes as I gave you, my uncle instructed.

—Mind you, my uncle added when the young man hesitated, if you don’t whip me as hard as I whipped you, I’ll give you a second beating.

The young man whipped his master, and afterward helped to dress his wounds.

—You understand how it is? the older man asked the younger. It’s one thing to say you’re never going to talk against your friends, but it’s quite another not to talk when someone is beating you. I wanted to see how well you took a beating.

As for the youngest son, my father, Salvatore, his future was mapped out largely by his mother. He was sensitive and intelligent, and his mother wanted to spare him intrigues, vendettas and feuds. It so happened that one of my grandmother’s first cousins was a monsignor. The church was an accepted and certainly the safest form of social advancement. Clergymen held power in their own right. My grandmother, therefore, sent her youngest son to study at a seminary so he could become a priest.

If the Bonanno family was the dominant power in the Castellammare region, the Buccellato family was the rival power. The Buccellatos were trying to expand their sphere of influence, and this inevitably set them at loggerheads with the Bonannos.

Feuding played a large part in Sicilian culture not because people relished it, but because they were fighting for their very survival. Centuries of overcultivation have depleted Sicily’s soil of its richness; most of the island has been deforested. There is not enough rain. It is hot and dry most of the year, and arable land is at a premium. Sicily was stripped of its natural resources by conquerors, who also took the choicest land, leaving the scraps to the natives. Since there were more mouths to feed than there were scraps, the natives often fought among themselves to get their share.

Sicilians have come to look upon poverty, scarcity and death as constants in their lives. The have-nots will do almost anything to escape this misery, and the well-to-do will fight in order not to sink back into it. In some respects, the feuding resembled the range wars among cattle barons in the American West. In western Sicily, as in the American cowboy frontier, men fought over cattle because cattle made a man rich. The sons of a longtime ranching family were easy to distinguish in Sicily. They ate more meat than the general population and consequently grew to be taller than the rest. For instance, the Bonanno brothers were all six feet tall or better.

In the countryside behind Castellammare, there was not enough good grazing land. Ranchers could not afford to fence in their property, so they had to let their cattle feed on common pasture used by other ranchers. These conditions almost invited rustling, and thefts of cattle resulted in retaliations. One skirmish brought on another, foray followed foray, confusion abounded.

If the Bonannos did not find a natural explanation for an event, they blamed the Buccellatos, and vice versa. For example, the Bonannos and their supporters were never willing to believe that the death of Stefano Bonanno was purely accidental. One day as he was winding his way up a narrow mountain trail on his mule, Stefano came upon a bend where a rockslide had made passage impossible. The startled mule must have skittered and reared up. My uncle’s body was found on the side of the mountain. Who was to say that the Buccellatos or one of their cohorts had not intentionally arranged the rockslide beforehand, knowing that Stefano Bonanno was going to ride up the mountain that day? No one could prove it, but suspicions persisted.

The chief ally of the Bonanno family was the Magaddino family, headed by Stefano Magaddino. At one point in this struggle, Felice Buccellato, the patriarch of the Buccellato clan, orchestrated a scheme which resulted in Peppe Bonanno and his right-hand man, Stefano Magaddino, being sent to jail. The case against them succeeded because of the collusion of a bribed law officer. For a time, Peppe and Stefano were sentenced to house confinement on a prison island off the coast of Sicily.

After their release, Stefano Magaddino did not put anything beyond the guile of Felice Buccellato. The Bonanno ally said that Felice was not even beyond hiring criminals and bandits to fight his battles.

—His name should be ruination, Stefano Magaddino would say of Felice, whose name in Italian means felicity.

*   *   *

One night, Peppe Bonanno was awakened by one of the caretakers of his house. My uncle was in the second-story bedroom and the man was calling him from the ground floor, part of which was used as a stable. The caretaker shouted for help in disengaging two fighting horses. When Peppe went downstairs, a rifle boomed. When the rest of the household hurried down to investigate, they found Peppe Bonanno dead.

Uncle Peppe’s murder caused my father, who had grown restive with seminary life, to reexamine his plans. His Latin and Greek studies, his musings over The City of God, suddenly seemed frivolous exercises. He heard the call, the ancient call, both dreadful and enchanting—the call to action. The siren call of the old Tradition beckoned him.

Salvatore had the choice of thinking only of himself or of taking care of others. Since he was studying for the priesthood, he had a perfect excuse for shunning the grimmer duties that awaited him. He could have remained in cloistered selfhood and gone on to become a rosy-cheeked pastor. He could have been more self-centered, placing personal tranquillity over sacrifice. Instead, he chose to help his family. If we were to ask a man such as my father who he was responsible for, he might answer, as I would answer, For as many people as need me.

*   *   *

My father, then only twenty-one years old, devised a brazen plan that would dissolve his obligations to the church and bring him home, regardless of his mother’s objections. He showed up in Castellammare in possession of a gold candelabrum which belonged to the monsignor. The monsignor wasted no time in expelling him from the seminary.

Salvatore had come home, but he was inexperienced in the affairs of men. His father and older brothers were not at his side, so the role of guide and counselor to the fledgling fell to Stefano Magaddino, the most stalwart and most feared of the Bonanno followers in Castellammare. A gruff, burly and uncomplicated man, Stefano Magaddino had been one of Peppe Bonanno’s closest friends and was known to friends and foes alike for his toughness and bluntness.

Not long after Salvatore Bonanno returned home, two members of the Buccellato clan met their death. The people of Castellammare had their own idea as to who was responsible, but they kept it to themselves. Salvatore was seen more and more, in the town square, in the social clubs, in the fields. He had grown into a fine-looking man with deep-set eyes and a rakish handlebar mustache.

In 1903 he married Catherine Bonventre, a girl educated by nuns in a convent. Catherine’s mother was Stefano Magaddino’s sister. Thus the marriage solidified the bonds between the Bonannos and the Magaddinos.

After I was born, on January 18, 1905, my father, in a bid for lasting peace, asked his archenemy Felice Buccellato to be my godfather at my baptism. Buccellato agreed, and the villagers called me the dove of peace.

Three years later, my father left for America. While my father was away, Stefano Magaddino became the leader of the Bonanno faction. Felice Buccellato resented the Magaddinos’ rise to power, which he felt had come at the expense of his own family. Tension rose. Relatives and friends implored my father to return to Sicily to accept his ancient responsibility. The social order was disintegrating.

2

I used to love to ride my pony to the Greek temple at Segesta.

This magnificent Doric temple, about ten miles out of town, overlooked my family’s farm in the hill country behind Castellammare. The temple roof is missing, but all its thirty-six columns are standing. The side lintels and the front and rear pediments are also intact.

The color of the temple would change with the progress of the sun, from a soft gold at noon to a bronze at sunset. Swallows nested inside the temple, and green lizards darted in and out of the masonry cracks. Orange poppies grew on the hillside. You could hear the bleating of sheep and the lowing of cows. On rainy days, I would roam through the temple grounds foraging for snails, which my grandmother fried in garlic.

The temple was built on a lofty spot in the countryside in honor of Demeter—the Greek goddess of agriculture. The goddess’ altar is missing from the temple; as throughout the entire island of Sicily, conquerors and invaders have come and gone through Segesta with devastating regularity. All that remains of the Greek town itself is scattered stone blocks. Grass and shrubs cover the dead city.

Although it is easy for outsiders to list Sicily’s foreign invaders, it is difficult for them fully to appreciate what this perpetual turmoil did to the Sicilian character. It is one thing to understand, and yet another to feel. But let us just run through the list of invaders: Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Saracens, Normans, Angevins, Aragonese, Bourbons, fellow Italians and the Allied army during World War II. No wonder that Giuseppe Tommasi of Lampedusa, the Sicilian author of The Leopard, called Sicily that America of antiquity. The island has a stew of races. Wandering through Sicily you will encounter not only people with raven hair and olive skin, but also blonds and redheads, people with the palest of skin and people with tawny skin, Latin faces, Asiatic faces, African faces and Celtic faces. The latest additions to this diversity are the black-skinned children that American GIs left behind during World War II.

Sicily has been buffeted by foreign influences for well over two thousand years. The Arabs alone, for example, remained for about three hundred years—a full century more than the United States of America has been in existence. It is obvious that without a genius for survival, Sicilians would have long ago lost their identity. Greek genius built the temple at Segesta, but Sicilian genius made it possible to endure subjugation and to survive long after the Greek town fell to ruin.

Out of necessity, Sicilians put all their talents and energy into creating a life-style of survival, a peculiar and distinctive way of life that over the years became Tradition. Prevented from participating in the rule of their own land, Sicilians withdrew all the more into their own families. Everyone inside the family was a friend, all outsiders were suspect. Unable to understand the many strange customs and languages foisted on them by their conquerors, Sicilians took comfort in their own parochial dialects and customs, developing their own shibboleths or investing common words with double meanings. Exploited by colonial laws and cheated by greedy public officials, Sicilians developed their own folk laws and their own business practices. Frustrated and angered by the inequities of state justice, Sicilians adopted a personal sense of justice which placed the responsibility of conduct and punishment on the individual and the family. This subcultural system of justice did not overthrow the official order, but existed alongside it. In an unjust world, it was necessary to create one’s own justice.

A Sicilian of the old Tradition gives his highest allegiance to his family. Outside of that, however, he’s proudly independent. He knows how to look after himself. As the Sicilian proverb says, The man who plays alone never loses. Above all, he is intensely aware of himself, like a stallion in the wild.

On my family’s farm downhill from Segesta, we used to keep a stable of spirited Arabian horses which we would obtain from my Uncle Giovanni. Those Arabians were our pride. I had my own Arabian stallion as a young man. Probably the highest compliment you can pay a man’s horse in Sicily is to describe the horse as mafioso. As an adjective, the word has many connotations, but all share the same general import: spirited, brave, keen, beautiful, vibrant and alive.

Let us say two Sicilian wagon drivers happen to meet each other at the foot of a hill. One might say to the other:

—Let’s race up the hill. I’ll show you which horse is mafioso.

A horse may be said to be mafioso; so can an apple or a woman. So can a man.

*   *   *

Not long after my father returned from America, he became enmeshed in a problem unrelated to the feud with the Buccellatos.

A rancher who owned land near the Bonanno property had been murdered and my father was accused of conspiracy to commit the crime. He was innocent, but the prosecution’s principal witness was a man willing to testify that he had heard my father talk about the murdered man in unfriendly terms. It was a tenuous case which could have gone either way. In the absence of hard evidence, the outcome of the trial would depend on who made a better impression on the witness stand.

The witness on whose testimony the case hinged was another neighbor rancher by the name of Vetrano, who had a wife much younger than he. She was pretty, and he kept her in virtual seclusion on his ranch, playing a suspicious Othello to her innocent Desdemona.

I remember my grandmother taking me across the mountains to Trapani, the capital of the extreme western province in Sicily, where my father’s trial was being held.

My grandmother told me that she went to talk to her son in prison during the trial. He told her the outcome of the trial was uncertain. He admitted that he might be found guilty if his lawyers did not impeach Vetrano’s testimony.

—My lawyers are useless in this matter, my father said. Vetrano has it in for me.

—But why? my grandmother said. Why does he hate you?

My father told her that jealousy had turned Vetrano’s mind. When my father came back from America, he had made it a point to visit the nearby ranches and reacquaint himself with his neighbors. When he visited Vetrano’s ranch, he did not find the owner home and so he chatted amiably with his comely wife. Who knows how she later spoke of the charming young don Turridru? Who knows how her suspicious husband interpreted her words?

—You mean Vetrano thinks you and his wife …

—What else?

—What are we going to do, my son?

—We are going to fight deceit with imagination. Please do as I say. Speak to the midwife in Castellammare. She is your friend. We need a small favor from her.…

In those days, midwives would visit married women to examine them, check on their pregnancies, and administer to their periodic needs. It wasn’t surprising, then, that donna Crocifissa, the midwife, should show up at Vetrano’s ranch to examine his wife.

—Just routine, nothing to worry about, the midwife assured Vetrano’s wife. Suppose you lie down and let me look at you.

After the examination, donna Crocifissa went directly to see her good friend Vita Bonanno. The midwife described the young wife’s private anatomy. My grandmother then relayed the vital information to her son.

The following day Salvatore Bonanno requested permission to address the court himself.

—Your Honor, my lawyers have done the best they can, my father said. They are the two best lawyers in Trapani, as Your Honor well knows, but the infamy against me is so great that even they cannot help me.

My father’s lawyers were just as amazed as the spectators and the judge at this pronouncement. Both lawyers were capable professionals, but they did not know what was on their client’s mind. If they had known, they probably would not have gone along with my father’s risky idea, for it involved unorthodox methods and absolute panache in execution.

—Your Honor, I ask the Court’s forgiveness for having held my tongue so long, my father said, rising to his feet. I confess that I never thought this sorry business would get this far. I thought the infamy against me would have been cleared up by now. I can assure this Court, and every man here, that if it were not for the outrageous lies spoken against me, I would ordinarily rather face death than say what I have to say.

It was his duty, the judge told him, to bring forth all the evidence.

—Out with it, the judge ordered, in less flowery language.

—Very well. I have remained quiet up to now because I did not want to compromise one of the fairest flowers in Sicily, if not the whole world. This woman is the wife of my accuser, Vetrano.

My father pointed to Vetrano and stared at him for dramatic effect. Then he continued:

—The reason for this man’s perjury against me is very simple. He hates me because his wife has cheated on him.

The courtroom swelled with hubbub. The judge kept rapping his gavel. Vetrano kept banging his fists on the railing, red in the face and slobbering at the mouth. My father looked serene.

—This is v-very serious, said the flustered judge. And ir-re-regular.

—For my indiscretion with this lady, my father continued, I am fully accountable to God. But I do not see any wisdom in allowing myself to be vilified and sent to prison for what is, after all, a common occurrence between men and women.

Suddenly, my father turned around to face his accuser, scoffing him.

—Look at Vetrano now. Why, he cannot even bring himself to speak coherently.

It was true. Vetrano seemed to be in the throes of an epileptic seizure.

—Signor Bonanno, the judge snapped, he is not on trial, you are.… Can you prove you went to bed with his