{"id":500,"date":"2016-06-07T15:37:44","date_gmt":"2016-06-07T15:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalboston.bc.edu\/?page_id=500"},"modified":"2016-07-27T17:50:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T17:50:00","slug":"lena-scolles-poleo","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/globalboston.bc.edu\/index.php\/home\/ethnic-groups\/italians\/lena-scolles-poleo\/","title":{"rendered":"Lena Scolles Poleo"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\">[vc_row][vc_column]<style>.vcex-heading.vcex_69e4767c1a4a2{font-size:36px;}<\/style><div class=\"vcex-heading vcex-heading-plain vcex-module wpex-heading wpex-text-2xl vc_custom_1469641759151 vcex_69e4767c1a4a2\"><span class=\"vcex-heading-inner wpex-inline-block\">Working Women: Lena Scolles Poleo<\/span><\/div>[vc_column_text css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1469641714332{padding-right: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;padding-left: 30px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}&#8221;]<em>One of ten children, Lena Scolles was born in 1910 in East Cambridge to Italian immigrant parents. Her father, who worked as a polisher at Johnson Marble Company, died in his fifties. In this passage she describes her and her mother\u2019s work to support the family, showing how important credit was in ethnic communities. But she also remembers\u00a0her own efforts to resist parental control over her wages and her choice of a husband.<\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_727\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-727\" style=\"width: 394px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-727\" src=\"https:\/\/globalboston.bc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Anna-Scolles-1956-2.jpg\" alt=\"Lena's mother, Anna Scolles, in front of her store in 1956. Courtesy Cambridge Historical Commission.\" width=\"394\" height=\"293\" srcset=\"https:\/\/globalboston.bc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Anna-Scolles-1956-2.jpg 394w, https:\/\/globalboston.bc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Anna-Scolles-1956-2-300x223.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 394px) 100vw, 394px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-727\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lena&#8217;s mother, Anna Scolles, in front of her store in 1956. Courtesy Cambridge Historical Commission.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cI was born at 26 Winter Street [in East Cambridge]. My mother had nine girls and one boy. It was not an easy life. My mother had a grocery store in the front part of the basement of our house. The kitchen was right off the store. She kept a book [the cuff list]. As we grew older, we listened to different things the customers said to my mother. \u2018Mrs. Scolles, you\u2019re charging an awful lot for a certain thing,\u2019 whether it was a box of crackers or whatever. \u2018We can get it cheaper at the First National right up Cambridge Street, you know.\u2019 I listened to that so many times that one day I said, \u2018Look, my mother has to wait a whole week for you to pay this bill, and you\u2019ve got the nerve to ask her why she doesn\u2019t charge what the National does. Try going up to the National now. You\u2019ll find it closed.\u2019 It was closed at six o\u2019clock, and my mother was open until ten o\u2019clock. She\u2019d open sometimes at 6 am because they\u2019d want to come down and get milk and bread for the kids\u2026.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen my future husband Charles first looked at me, he had no eyes for anyone else after that. My father wouldn\u2019t let us out on a first date. I said to my mother, \u2018 Ma, you know him,\u2019 She said, \u2018You can\u2019t go, you didn\u2019t tell your father he is a night watchman.\u2019 The next time Charles asked me, I didn\u2019t tell my mother, and I snuck out. My sister told me that when she went with my brother-in-law, my mother said, \u2018You\u2019re not going with him, you\u2019re going to marry him.\u2019 I said, \u201cWell, you kind of liked him, didn\u2019t you, Mary?\u2019 \u2018Yeah, I did,\u2019 she said, \u201cbut what if I didn\u2019t?\u2019 I said, \u2018I want to see if I like this person enough to be with him before I do anything like that.\u2019 My father went all the way to the West and North Ends of Boston to find out about Charles\u2019s family. He was satisfied to learn that Charles came from a good family. That\u2019s how I was able to go out with him. We had a courtship for three years, off and on, but I couldn\u2019t go out alone. He would come to my mother\u2019s. After the first year, he gave me a friendship ring, and then I was able to go out to the movies. We went to see <em>The Big Parade<\/em>, starring Rena Dory and John Gilbert, at the Loew\u2019s State Theatre in Boston. I\u2019ll never forget it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was fourteen, and I don\u2019t think I finished the first year in the high school, and I had to leave and go to work. Then I had continuation school, a half a day a week, and I went back to high school at night. I graduated from there. It was hard, but my mother had it rough. My father was very sick. He was only fifty-four when we lost him. That left my mother with all us girls and one boy. I went to work to pay a macaroni bill that my mother owed in the store. I worked at Prince Spaghetti on Commercial Street in Boston. I did most everything: I packed, and I ran a box-making machine. I got tired of them taking my pay and not giving me anything. Finally, one day I told my foreman, \u2018Look, Mr. Murphy, I\u2019m tired of signing my check over and giving it to you. You should at least have the decency of letting me take my check home and be able to take the money to my mother in the store.\u2019 But it didn\u2019t go that way. I didn\u2019t want to hurt my mother either. That\u2019s the way it was.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>From: Sarah Boyer, <\/em>All in the Same Boat: Twentieth Century Stories of East Cambridge<em> (Cambridge Historical Commission, 2005), 51-52.<\/em>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1469641714332{padding-right: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;padding-left: 30px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}&#8221;]One of ten children, Lena Scolles was born in 1910 in East Cambridge to Italian immigrant parents. Her father, who worked as a polisher at Johnson Marble Company, died in his fifties. In this passage she describes her and her mother\u2019s work to support the family,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":227,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-500","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry","no-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Lena Scolles Poleo - Global Boston<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/globalboston.bc.edu\/index.php\/home\/ethnic-groups\/italians\/lena-scolles-poleo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lena Scolles Poleo - Global Boston\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1469641714332{padding-right: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;padding-left: 30px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;}&#8221;]One of ten children, Lena Scolles was born in 1910 in East Cambridge to Italian immigrant parents. 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