Butler, Pennsylvania, is a long way from Italy.

After a vast earthquake destroyed Reggio Calabria on Dec. 28, 1908, Vincenzo Sanzotti decided to leave his home in Italy and find employment elsewhere.

American steamship companies advertised free transportation to America for workers needed in the coal mines. Vincenzo left Calabria and arrived in the United States on May 14, 1910, on the steamer, Lombardia.

This story is captured by Vincenzo’s grandson, Vincent Sanzotti, in a memoir, “A Kinship Cherished: The Sanzotti Family Story and Recipe Book,” part of the genealogy collection at Butler Area Public Library.

When Vincenzo first arrived in the United States, he joined a large immigrant workforce in the mines of eastern Pennsylvania. Soon, he found out that the mines were not for him.

Vincenzo wanted to find employment that didn’t involve long hours “in a dark dangerous pit” while working for the coal mine industry. He found a compromise with the steamship company: to move west, to Greenville, Pa., where work was available at the Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad.

In 1918, Vincenzo was transferred to Butler to work for the rail line.

Twelve years after his first arrival in the America, Vincenzo’s wife, Sarafina Marzano, and their son, Bruno, joined him in 1920, sailing on the steamer SS Re d’Italia. The family would find a new home and a new life in Butler.

The next generation, Vincenzo’s son, Bruno, and his wife, Flora, would raise two children — memoir author Vincent and Sara Jane — in several Butler homes, first in a house on Muntz Avenue in Butler’s South Hills neighborhood, and later, a house that Vincent remembers well, at 422 East Jefferson Street, “the yellow brick house.”

While the Sanzottis had left the sunny shores of Italy and the darkness of the coal mines behind, they brought their rich Italian heritage, especially their food traditions.

American food traditions were a bit of a culture shock. In his memoir, Vincent explains that while Italians relied on their “bread man, egg man, vegetable man, and our chicken man, to name a few of the peddlers that came to our neighborhoods,” Americans are “peanut butter and jelly on white mushy white bread” and “went to the A & P.”

Food was a big part of Vincent Sanzotti’s life and the Sanzotti Italian heritage.

“Italians live a romance with food,” Vincent said, explaining that the family would always have macaroni and sauce stocked in the pantry.

Another difference between American and Italian food cultures, he said, is their gardens. Vincent says Italian families like everything to be fresh and homemade, and immigrant families like his had a fig tree and grape vines.

Some of Vincent’s fondest childhood memories revolve around food.

“On Sundays, we would wake up to the smell of garlic and onions frying in olive oil,” he said, noting that such a specific smell can bring him a nostalgic feeling. Though they couldn’t eat before Sunday Mass, he said, afterward they knew they would smell meatballs frying whenever they got home.

“Nothing tastes better than newly cooked meatballs with crisp bread dipped into a pot of hot sauce,” he said.

Family was important to the Sanzottis.

“God forbid we didn’t visit our grandparents at least five times a week,” he said. He remembers his grandmother Sarafina telling stories about how she had traveled to America on the boat, back in 1920.

Today, Vincent reflects on how many things have changed. His grandparents' old house in Butler is covered in aluminum siding, and a parking lot is over the spot where tomatoes were once grown and the fig tree lived.

Nowadays, all the family members have children of their own and grandchildren. With growing families, they don’t meet up as often as the extended family used to. When they do meet, it’s “once in a while at wakes or weddings.”

Holidays are also a little different. The great amount of food consumed at each gathering is “no longer good for us,” Vincent said, with too much starch, too much cholesterol and too many calories in the pastries.

Vincent said his children and nieces have been “cheated out of a wonderful piece of heritage” because they were never able to meet his grandparents. But his memoir, “A Kinship Cherished: The Sanzotti Family Story and Recipe Book,” preserves some of their legacy.

Vincent wrote the book, he said, because he wanted his children to learn about their heritage and “maybe they will come to know their grandparents.”

The book includes a family tree and shares a bit of Italian heritage and immigration in the 1900s.

But one of its main gifts is a rich archive of family recipes. Explaining that his grandparents were “Italian Italians,” Vincent shares in-depth, authentic Italian recipes such as fresh bread, pastas, pastries and crepes.

Passed down through the Sanzotti family for many generations, the recipes were contributed by family members including Flora Sanzotti, Claudette Sanzotti, Sara Jane Vero, Vicky Ban and more. These recipes are a part of their cultural legacy.

One recipe shared in the back of the family memoir book is for pasta. It calls for 2¼ cups of flour, 3 eggs, and a dash of salt. The instructions say to “blend, knead a few minutes and roll out and cut or put through pasta machine.”

Italy is a long way from Butler, but cultural traditions came to America with the immigrants of the 1900s. Vincent Sanzotti’s memoir traces the family’s footprints and preserves its rich heritage for generations to come.

Jada Casilio is a senior at Slippery Rock University majoring in multimedia journalism.