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Most people don’t think of the American West as a "proper" venue for Italian immigrants, but Italians settled in virtually every state in the union at one time or another. I found Baldi’s Grocery store and other Italian "Ruins" after reading a column in the Rocky Mountain News entitled "Spicy Meatballs Order of the Day" which re-presented the Highlands neighborhood of North Denver as "... where old Italian men play bocce in the park, and where geraniums still bloom in window boxes" (Amole 1983). Following his street references, and signified by the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church (est. 1899), I discovered the "ruins" of the original Italian settlement, which was then occupied by Mexican Americans. Most of the Italians had moved up the hill to a "better neighborhood" where, the vernacular landscape was so unstereotypical that the mail carrier denied that it was an "Italian" neighborhood despite all the Italian names on the mail boxes. |
