Here is what your folks have been eating, every day, four weeks a month, since your family sold the pigs and chickens they didn’t want and got off the boat from the old country.

They became cops, fireman and gangsters and ate well.

The Irish (my ancestors) only ate pork, pasta and pots of potatoes, except during the English occupation that lasted for forever, until my ancestors formed the IRA, got guns and started to take back the saloons.

You can check the movies: Warner Bros. will bring you up to date.

Their movies were full of the Irish who came to Hollywood to play them, like Cagney, O’Brian and dozens more. We tried to get the details from the great fiction writer Gerry Boyle, but he was so busy counting loons this morning, we were unable to find him.

The Italians, of course (you know them), boats full of opera singers, farmers, saloon owners and gangsters, tell us that they ate only pasta in its many forms, and consumed various tomato sauces for generations, much like the Sopranos and Corleones, who loved, beside killing one another, eating fattening stuff such as pizza, pasta (like spaghetti and lasagna), risotto, tiramisu and gelato.

The Germans? Well, we know that the Germans, like Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre and Billy Wilder, who fled and made Hollywood history in the early film days, loved a bevy of really heavy foods with funny names like sauerbraten, schnitzel, bratwurst and wiener schnitzel, pretzels and spätzle and strudel. Funny, Lorre and Lang were so thin.

The French? That’s easy, because, according to my French wife, most Jolys headed right for Waterville after all the fighting in the seven-year battle in Canada. You could look it up.

In Canada, the French primarily fought against the British during the Seven Years’ War (The French and Indian War in North America; I Iooked it up it for you.)

In case you didn’t notice, the French, with huge families, settled all around you in central Maine, and because the mills didn’t pay much, they could not afford all those French dishes, such as bouillabaisse, boeuf bourguignon, croquembouche and ratatouille, at the pricey restaurants, so their mamas made their own and voila, they hung out their own signs.

Not that the French enjoyed high-class dishes like those while hanging in the infamous Bastille, that stinky medieval fortress that became the go-to state prison where dogs and pigeons were the dish of the day.

Oh! Let us not forget our beloved Lebanese, who migrated here with their tabbouleh and baba ghanouj, falafel and shawarma. Who can forget the delicious hummus, like the late Layla Joseph served in her cafe. Waterville seemed to have drawn thousands of Jabars, and, according to the late great Al Corey, Elies, Charbels and Josephs.

Hundreds of thousands of Josephs, it seems, flourished here for centuries. Of course, if you want to buy a house where the most Lebanese settle, move to Dearborn, Michigan, where they are 40% of the population. I counted a lot of Jabars, Josephs and Coreys. Not to forget their tabbouleh. Enjoy.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.