" To Remember and Understand"
Hartford, CT
ppirrott
Let me explain about the weather in southeast Sicily. We get two or three months of cool and rainy weather between November and January. By February, spring is in full bloom (I can still smell the zagara, the flowering almond trees) and we are blessed with warm and dry weather until June, when summer comes and it gets really hot! With Sicily not far from the North Africa coast, we are also exposed to the scirocco, the hot winds from the Sahara that from time to time reach our shores and make even breathing difficult. We had no air conditioning; it really was not needed as we could always find a cool spot under a tree or inside our homes. Homes were built of concrete, blocks, marble, etc., and were always cooler inside. Nor did we have heat in winter, for that matter, other than the conca, a round copper container about 50 cm in diameter with a sunk-in center, where we deposited coal to burn and keep us warm. Eventually we graduated to an electric heater! Our house had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room and a bathroom. It also had a courtyard with a huge jasmine plant that in summer spread its unique fragrance for days on end. My grandmother's house next door (connected indoor to our house, as I've mentioned) had a bedroom, dining room, kitchen and bathroom. It also had a very nice terrace with a small room and a terrific view all the way to the volcano Etna while I lived there. (Unfortunately, now the folks across the street have built up and blocked the view.) I spent a lot of time up there enjoying the views, and on occasion we even arranged dance parties up there, especially in the summer evenings. Custom was back then that if you were a student you did not work. Not that we had many possibilities for summer jobs, which were basically nonexistent. But the point was that your class status as a student demanded that you did not work. My parents, even after we came to America, were proud to recount to anyone who would listen that I had never worked a day in my life! There was one exception: I worked in a barbershop from ages 10 to 12. One summer my mother got so tired of me that she took me to this barber and somehow convinced him that I should work there after school and during summers. I never learned to cut hair or shave people's faces; rather, I was limited to foaming people's faces for the real barber to shave and to cleaning around the chairs. However, I did learn two important lessons: I became, and still am, an okay checkers player and I learned all kind of dirty jokes. Indeed, this was the place where I learned about the birds and the bees, for certainly neither of my parents ever breached that topic! I stopped working when I started high school and summers returned to a more traditional schedule: soccer, beach, girls, arguing politics, religion (or lack thereof), cards, movies, music and theater, ping pong, the Villa and the Piazza, and SMOKING, mostly in hiding so some relative wouldn't report it to my parents. (How they didn't smell the tobacco I'll never know—or maybe they did and chose to ignore it!) We had a four-month holiday and we had to find things to do. Fortunately, many of us kids were in the same boat, so finding friends with whom to pass the time was never a problem.
I will talk on a more detailed basis about soccer later, but let me tell you what my typical day looked like in summer. Sleep until 9 or 10 am; go to the bar to order a granita con amarena (almond or lemon ice with raspberries) and a brioscia, a warm croissant. Spend a couple of hours or more sitting under the huge ficus trees that dominated the Piazza and that were a blessing in providing shade as well as a curse for the many birds that made their nests in those same trees and that were known for the deadly accuracy of their bombings. It was not unusual to find, say, ten or fifteen kids sitting under a tree arguing about politics or soccer while smoking away. Lunch around 2 pm usually consisted of a panino followed by l'ura i cauro, the peak heat of the day, which we would pass at home or inside a bar. Around 5 or 6 pm, life would restart and the Piazza came back to life with kids and people of all ages. At this point we started our passeggiata, the traditional walk back and forth along both ends of the main street, or sometimes we walked to the villa, the town's local public garden and the other major point of focus for social life. Most of the time we walked with male friends, having fun about who-knows-what, pointing to girls we may have been interested in meeting. At times we joined a group of girls and walked together but that was somewhat unusual, I guess depending on the age and seriousness of the relationship. I had dinner sometimes at home with my mother (almost never with my father, who worked all kinds of hours and rarely was home other than on holidays) or more likely I bought an arancina (rice ball filled with sauce, boiled egg and peas) or a slice of pizza and ate at the bar. Bars were very important to our social life. I should explain that they were not really a place where one would go to drink, especially for kids. They served espresso, granita, gelato, pizza and arancini; we could play cards there, listen to music on the jukebox, watch TV (we would always watch important soccer matches on TV as a large group, especially the games that involved the Nazionale, Italy's national soccer team), and yes, we could smoke in those places without as much fear of being caught by our parents or grandparents. We had several bars in our town and people formed an allegiance to one or two, so you could count on finding the same people at the same bar. A local entrepreneur had the bright idea of opening a summer restaurant just outside of town, and that was a big hit. I remember walking there to eat watermelon with my friends or to have a pizza. The local movie house was also an important social place. We had two movie houses in our town, run by the same family. (Would you believe I married a relative of the owner in the U.S.? Talk about a small world.) One movie house was indoors and ran in the winter and one was "open roof" for summer showings. The winter place had two floors, a couple of side rooms and two small balconies, almost like an opera house, while the outdoor place was one large room without a ceiling. I went to the movies a lot and loved Western cowboy movies, war movies, movies about old Rome or mythology. Best of all, we always tried to sneak into the theater when the rating said you had to be 16 or 18, which of course guaranteed some nudity! Problem was that in a small town like ours everyone knows everyone, so it was tough to sneak by or to lie about your age. The seats in the indoor movie house were comfortable but the outdoor seats consisted of steel construction with only half the back support filled; it was easy for your derriere to slide in that open space and become quite uncomfortable. We managed to survive, especially since we had no other choice. As we grew older and some of my friends got cars or Vespas (the two-wheelers), our options increased and we could go to Siracusa for a movie or near Noto for dinner. I never had a car or a Vespa and did not learn to drive until I came to the States, though some of my friends had begun to show me how to drive. The age for a driving license in Italy then was 19 years of age, and I left Sicily around that time. A car or Vespa allowed us to go to the beach, too.Although we could use a public bus, they often were just too crowded. We were blessed with one of the most beautiful beaches in all of Sicily in nearby Cassibile: Fontane Bianche. My early recollection of this place mirrors pictures of the Caribbean Islands, in terms of water color and clear sand, the water always tabletop calm and warm. The crowds, of course, swelled to the point that getting a piece of sand you could call your own required a trip very early in the morning to plant your flag, in our case a super-large beach umbrella. I liked going to the beach but never learned to swim, and that, I am sure, tempered my love for these trips. I would say I went to the beach twenty or thirty times a year, and yes I would go in the water, which was shallow for quite a stretch and allowed me to bathe without too much fear. At times we stayed late, until after the crowds had left, so that we could have a soccer match on the sand. At times we went to the beach at night, close to midnight when the water was actually at its warmest, and take a night dip. Anything to break up the boredom! I recall one day deciding to go to the beach by bicycle, a 16-km ride each way. Going was no problem: we were not tired and it was mostly a downhill trip. Coming back, of course, was just the opposite: We were tired after a day in the sun and the road was uphill. I recall being so tired but managing to get home anyway. Then construction took over, and while the beach has retained most of its allure, the nearby areas were so over-constructed as to destroy the natural beauty that originally surrounded this beach. Arguing was our favorite pastime, arguing about politics and soccer above all. Now remember, these were the 60s and even the most conservative of that decade would be considered radicals now. We were socially conscious and leftists. We protested against the Vietnam War and racism in the United States; we listened often to China and Mao and Russia; we were idealistic to a degree that, in retrospect, was unrealistic and based on false assumptions of what China and Russia would represent to the future of the world. Even within Italy we had a lot of conflicts, primarily labor related, as unions flexed their muscles to obtain better working conditions, wages and benefits for their members. One such protest in nearby Avola resulted in the death of two protesters who were shot by the police. I recall going to Avola one or two weeks after the event as part of a busload of people organized by our town Socialist Party, to which I belonged. I also participated in strikes in Siracusa, as described earlier, to protest the lack of classrooms. But I was never a real radical, never participated in any violence, never believed in violent confrontation with the authorities or anyone else. Actually, some of our arguments about soccer were more violent. Every child in Italy grows up playing this sport. Mostly you pick a national team from the Serie A, the top league in Italy, and live and die by their exploits on the soccer field. Back then, and probably now as well, three teams dominated in terms of their percentage of fans: Juventus, Inter and Milan. I happened to select Fiorentina as my team, probably because the more I read about Florence in the history books the more I loved the city. That selection made me somewhat marginal from the standpoint that Fiorentina was not one of the dominant teams (it won only one scudetto, Serie A championship, while I was in Italy) and so most people looked at me condescendingly. But the fiercest arguments were about local soccer: we had two teams in town and rivalry was fierce, even if the oldest entry was clearly dominant. Then we had the local summer championships, which also provided fodder for arguments. Once in a blue moon these arguments actually resulted in fights, but mostly it was screaming and yelling. Ferragostomarked the end of summer, and still does. Literally translated, it means "August iron" or "August steel" and refers to what may be the hottest day of summer, August 15th. Ferragosto brings the summer season to a close and many people go to the beach or the country to celebrate. For us students it was a reminder that summer would soon be over and in a short month and a half, school and all its tribulations would begin again.
Summers in Sicily in the 1960's as a student meant no work, late nights, endless arguments about soccer and politics under the huge trees lining the Piazza( no longer), passeggiate at the Villa ( local gardens) looking to meet and possibly stroll with your girl and trips to the beach!
Hartford, CT
ppirrott