My father’s father immigrated from Italy when a young man. They are spaghetti with spaghetti sauce and meatballs to us. Pasta wasn’t even a word I heard growing up. I never heard it called gravy inside our family and only found out a decade or so ago that some people in New England call it gravy. To me, gravy will always be flour and meat drippings.
Okay, just learned that calling it gravy is not an Italian tradition, it’s an Italian-American tradition for some. Italians came over and were trying to assimilate quickly and the word gravy involved meat and sauce, so some opted to use gravy thinking it was more American. I know my grandfather told my father something like, you’re in America, you speaka da English. His accent never disappeared, but he spoke English and made sure his pack of children did too.
Gravy and clam chowder do NOT have tomato in them. Tomatoes are anti-American.
“I know my grandfather told my father something like, you’re in America, you speaka da English.”
That was the same case with my German Oma und Opa. They arrived from Danzig in 1927 with their three young kids at Ellis Island. Since WW I was only nine years in the rear-view mirror, they got beat up a lot in the Bronx. But Rule #1 was You are an American now, speak English. Opa was successful in the elevator business and all three kids were very successful.