Valley of the Moon Lodge #1959

ALMOST FOLKS!

June 15 our California Governor says we can remove our masks....is that a time for celebration? Are we to be cautious? Can we hug again? We will be able to resume our dinners? Hopefully soon!

MISSING EACH ONE OF YOU! For sure WHEN we can be together again it will be a joyous occasion!

JUST IN CASE... Are you wondering..? I am no longer attached to Duolingo... It was over 2 years... The words are in my head... just not sure I can put them in order...go ahead and laugh!

TIES TO THE HOME LAND S. Stino Di Livenza 1961 This time of isolation has caused me to think about the times I visited Italy...The first time was in 1961...everything was as it was when my grandmother lived there... over 60 years ago ,many of her relatives were still alive, her sister, brother, sister-inlaw, and many cousins. We visited them all!

The gas stations didn’t have rest rooms...when asked to use the restroom you were pointed to the back of the station... yep!

The pension we stayed in when traveling in our rented Fiat...had chamber pots under the beds.

When visiting my Nonna’s brother, Dominic and his wife Genoeffa and his family...the kitchen table and a hutch his son made in high school was the only furniture in the great room.

The water in the kitchen area was drawn with a hand pump.

The outhouse was in the backyard...with two flat boards for your feet at each side of a hole in the ground. A surprise for me at age 17. The bed had two parts...a straw mattress under the feather mattress, and a feather comforter. We were certainly warm enough.

My nonna’s sister-in-law, Genoeffa, would bring in coddled eggs for our breakfast... my nonna had been away 50 years...she and I , both, had a little trouble eating the eggs...

The plucked chicken meant for dinner would hang over the kitchen sink to drain. Our dinners had the whole chicken including head and feet in the soup pot. While we were eating my relatives would toss the bones on the tile floor for the cat.

The bedroom I shared with my nonna had only an outside entrance...so wanting a short cut I would exit the low window nearest the kitchen door...one of the times I twisted my knee. That resulted in them taking me to a local person that ‘fixed’ people. She popped my leg... and they wrapped it in an ace wrap.

She also chuckled at my shaved legs...at that time, ladies didn’t shave their legs... actually neither did my dads sister.

Thus when we visited the leaning tower in Pisa I was not able to climb the stairs to the bell tower...but I have a photo of my nonna standing by the bell.

When we visited one of my dads cousins that appeared to live in what we would call a “pickers cabin”...she went next door and borrowed a tray and glasses...and served us homemake wine. She had red hair. Later when we went to Venice my dad picked her up to come along with us. Even though Venice was probably less than 40 miles from her home, most folks didn’t travel. Most of those we visited at that time had only bicycles or Vespa’s. Only one of my dad’s cousins had a Fiat, her husband worked in Saudi Arabia.

My mother outfitted me with wash and wear clothes for our trip. One incident was a shrunken Koret outfit that Genoeffa washed at the artesian well next to a well worn wood table where she scrubbed the clothes. ...It appeared to be the place where others washed their clothes as well.

While there we watched them harvest the sheaves of wheat and toss them in the threshing machine, The woman working in their dresses and hats or scarves on their heads.

Twice a day Dominic would bring the cow or ox out of the barn to the water trough. We watched them spray the grapes with oxen pulling the cart with the tank of spray. When we left my relatives I was grieved. I fell in love with the people, and way of life and the many relatives we visited.

My next visit would be 40 years later.