After Donald Trump became unhinged during the September 10 debate with Kamala Harris, he ranted that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing pet cats and dogs and eating them.

This wild accusation became a Republican talking point days earlier, intending to use it against Kamala Harris, blaming her for these immigrants being in the United States in the first place. Trump also claimed "millions and millions" of dangerous people were coming into our country.

These were two of the many lies told by Trump during the debate, and if there is any real importance to these question-and-answer sessions, then Trump ought to lose the election by 40 million votes. (However, I don't think presidential debates are as significant as media people and political "experts" seem to think they are, but hope I am wrong about that.)

Trump's pets-for-dinner accusation took me back to my childhood in Solvay, New York, a village that borders Syracuse. In the early 1900s it attracted many Italian, Austrian, Polish and Irish immigrants because they could find jobs at the Solvay Process Company, a chemical plant that, in the early 1900s, was the largest employer in the Syracuse area.

Solvay was a perfect example of our country's melting pot, but the melting didn't come easily. Having the most difficult time were Italians, picked on by everyone, especially the Poles. The Irish looked down on everyone, and the Austrians were often mistaken for Italians.

One unfortunate accusation leveled against Italians was they ate cats. I don't know how this idea got started, but it hung in the air for years. My memory was jogged months before the debate through emails from a woman who was researching an uncle who served in World War Two. He was from Solvay and had sent several photos to his family during the war, and the woman who contacted me was nice enough to share some of them.

She scanned the backs of photos if there were any writing on them. In one photo, a fellow soldier was identified as "a cat-eater from East Solvay." (Residents tended to divide the village into East and West, but the designation was unofficial.)

Over time and through marriages — such as the one between my very Irish father and my very Polish mother — residents of Solvay became members of an extended family with one important thing in common: they were all Americans.