Enochenza and Margaratte Venza, came over from Gibellina, Sicily about 1900, and they opened a small grocery store in Beaumont where they also had a butcher shop. About 1905, Sam and Frances Tramonte and their son, Jasper Tramonte left Gibellina, came to America, and Sam and Jasper went to work for their friends from the Old Country, the Venzas.
After they learned the butcher trade from the Venzas and enough English to get by, the Tramontes moved to Galveston, opened a butcher shop, and with the help of the black market, stevedores, and the business from loads of small Italian corner groceries that were sprinkled throughout the city and the county, they built a multi-million dollar meat processing business, High Grade Packing Co.
With his new wealth, Sam sold out his interest in the business to his son, Jasper, divorced his wife, moved back to Gibellina where he bought a big castle, and lived the remainder of his life in the style of a Sicilian Hugh Hefner.
After World War II, the packing company started having its ups and downs as Jasper's sons were finishing their formal educations and began being integrated into his business. Oddly, new competition arose and business at the High Grade started to slip.
Through some rather long and involved fluke circumstances, Jasper learned of a well-thought of man, Cecil Smith, who had a reputation of being able to make packing companies that were at best limping along, very profitable.
And over the next twenty-five years, he and Jasper desperately tried to learn to mix Jasper's old country style with Smith's American style. They had their ups and downs. Smith would quit, move elsewhere, and before long Jasper would call to make peace and invite him to come back, and he'd come.
And then Jasper's son Sam J. died, and Jasper couldn't believe it. Sam's wife, Ernestine went back to teaching school to earn the money necessary to pay the family bills and educate her four sons.
After a few years, Ernestine's boys - J.E., Sammy, Vallory and Darryl - decided that enough time had lapsed, and that Ernestine needed a husband and they needed a stepfather. So without consulting her or getting her permission, they picked Cecil (Smitty) Smith as the prospect, and they began their campaign to get them to date. The easiest way, the boys figured, was to invite their mother and Smitty to double date with them.
The plan worked. Smitty and Ernestine fell in love and married.
Meanwhile, Jasper died and a few years later, the High Grade Packing Company closed for good.
In honor of all of this, Darryl Tramonte has opened a web store that markets many of the products that the High Grade was famous for, as well as recipes that Miss Ernastine cooked up for Sunday dinner. If you do nothing else, get yourself a couple of bottles of ERNA'S SUNDAY SPAGHETTI SAUCE. You're going to love this.
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