MARCH OF AN ITALIAN PENGUIN

FAETO: MARCH OF THE ITALIAN PENGUINES

Up early and out the door of the Hotel Margerhita in Praiano along the Amalfi Coast, we hoped the early hour would give us jump on the tour buses that ply the narrow two-lane road and lead to massive traffic tie ups that can ruin everyone’s day.

Being Sunday, we also hoped people would rise later than normal, which would mean fewer cars heading in or out of the amazingly beautiful area. We were on the road before nine and only encountered three buses the entire way. The drive that took us three hours two days earlier, today lasted only 30 minutes. There are so many hairpin turns along this enchanting drive that it made Kathy a bit woozy, first from looking over a cliff to then lurching the other way as I negotiated the tight turns, walking grandmas, cyclists and bikers flying past everyone and cars, behind and oncoming that wanted to pass and speed onward.

As we drove across the central mountain spine of Italy, the weather turned cloudy and rainy. Looking over the richly cultivated farmlands that resembled the Adirondack Mountains in New York, the darkening sky lent a dark backdrop to the fields and tree groves surrounding Italian country villas.

Recalling an earlier post about finding my mother’s hometown of Faiti on a Vatican frescoed map from the mid 15^th century, I found it curious that a city, so hard to find on most maps today, was prominent enough five hundred years ago to be noted by map makers providing the Pope with accurate information about his churchly domain.

We made only one wrong turn today, an improvement, but quickly self-corrected as we followed road signs to Avellino, centrally located, and from there to Faeto, or Faiti as the Pope may once have known it.

Off in the distance I spotted giant, modern windmills churning from hilltops and recalled that during my first visit to my mother’s hometown in 1999 I had first seen them. The giant pinwheels told me Faeto would be located near them.

Sighting the first sign pointing the way to Greci, the next hilltop town over, and to Faeto, we only saw two cars as we drove the windy road that lead us to the town founded in 1326. The story of the town’s founding told to me is that soldiers, many of them French, decided to leave the Children’s Crusade bound for Jerusalem and the Holy Land and start families in the area. I have been told, by my uncle and others, that the dialect of the town, known as Faitar, is a distinct language and is built in part on French, not Italian, which may lend credence to the story of the town’s founding.

As we entered Faeto from the southwest, I spotted two public fountains I had filled water bottles from in 1999 and a telephone booth I had used to call my brother Joe, a retired professor of geography from Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

The stone streets were deserted. Stopping to ask directions to our lodging location, the Pianni di Nij, from the only person I saw, he directed me to ask the same question of the proprietor of the small grocery he was standing in front of. She told me to go further along the road and make a turn to the left. After asking the same question to two more people we saw, we drove into the Bosco [woods or forest] above the town. The man at the front desk, who said he was a Gallucci, like my mother, had listed our reservation simply as “Americans.”

As the only hotel in the area, the woodsy setting reminds me of a state or national park, with its shade trees and chirping birds. Our room has a double bed with an azure blue bedspread, red tile flooring, a white tiled bathroom with a shower, sink, toilet, and we have a TV with five channels in Italian and supper is served between 7:30 and 9:00. All this for the low price of 50 Euros per night.

Watching BBC World Vision last night in Praiano, I noticed the dollar lost another penny in value to the Euro, which now equals $1.29 USD. As a former small businessman, a certified economic development financial specialist and now as a working journalist who has reported on government fiscal and trade policy, I know well the financial mantra espoused by treasury ministers and businesses that a weak dollar is good for trade. Notwithstanding our nation’s out-of-balance trade deficit, I speak from experience when I say it is not good for travelers. The relationship between the British Pound and the American Dollar is not as laughable as the relationship between the Dollar and the Mexican Peso used to be but it appears to be heading in that direction.

A SUMPTUOUS SUPPER OF MEMORIES

Pleased the Piano delle Noci had our room when we arrived, I set out to walk the town located below us. Aside from the dogs lying outside their master’s homes, the old city was virtually deserted. The only people we saw was a group of old men dressed like my maternal grandfather at leisure [mismatched pants and coats and ties looking like old wallpaper patterns] who stood outside a local bar chatting with their hands [as is our custom] to punctuate and animate the conversation.

They spotted us for what we were, strangers to the town; but paid little attention beyond that subtle acknowledgement of our presence. Dinner [la cena] would be served around 7:30 that evening, so to fill the time we drove to nearby Castelluccio, another town whose name I heard often growing up with my maternal grandparents, Giuspeppi and Gina Gallucci. Larger than Faeto, Castellucio, notwithstanding a group of kids playing soccer in a tiny concrete park and a handful of teenagers gathered in front of a snack shop, was as listless as Faeto.

Driving through the town once, we turned around and backtracked to Faeto, passing the same groups we had passed before, who paid as much or as little attention to us as they did the first time.

The lane leading to our hotel was still lined with cars and the small parking lot was filled. We learned later from Concetta, the wife of the owner, Giuseppi Gallucci, that Sundays were often busy as families celebrated baptisms and first communions with meals and drinks. The young children were running, shouting and laughing while their parents and friends, dressed for the occasion in their Sunday finest, talked amongst them or stepped outside on the front steps to smoke cigarettes.

When the crowd left, we were shown to the dinning room to a table laid out just for us. It appeared we were the only guests to be dinning.

There in front of us was a table of food that immediately took me back to my young years when my mother, born in Faeto but raised in America from the age of six until she died at the age of 56 in 1969, routinely dished out similar offerings to her three sons, relatives and friends. Large slices of Faeto bread, stuffed pepperoncini, asparagus, mushrooms, thin slices of sautéed zucchini, tiny white balls of fresh mozzarella cheese and a wooden cutting board filled with slices of prosciutto ham, hard and soft salami sitting next to a carafe of red wine was our reward for arriving from Amalfi.

This, we were told, was the appetizer course. What followed was a plate of delicious lasagna followed by lightly dressed salad and finally pan-fried slices of pork. For desert, a bowl of whole mixed fruit was delivered to the table along with a small flute of Limoncella, the sweet lemon-flavored vodka drink Italy is famous for.

A surprise to our desert was Elisa, the eight and one-half year old daughter of Concetta who we spotted earlier playing with a loose tooth. As she was standing in the dinning room with us – and we were the only ones seated in a room that could clearly hold scores more, I motioned with my hand for her to come over so I could pull her tooth out.

She shook her head no to my offer but she did arrive tableside in a flash. She in her limited but decent English and me with my stumbling herky-jerky Italian made it through a geography lesson of both America and Italy. She was clearly interested to know my mother was born in Faeto and was eager to learn where America’s two Disneyland’s were located. Her younger brother came to collect her for the drive back to Foggia and home. She said she would be back tomorrow and I am looking forward to continuing my Italian language course.

FAETO’s FAILING FUTURE

Faeto, my mother’s hometown that I spotted on a Vatican map dating from the mid 15^th century, appears to be treading the waters of time as it heads out to the seas of history, according to Conchetta. Telling me a story similar to the one I first heard when I first visited the old hillside town in 1999, it appears the town is disproportionately shrinking each year as five times as many people die as are born. Conchetta speculates, with good reason, that as the old die off and the young move elsewhere for jobs, the slow withering and eventual death of the 700 year old town may arrive within the next decade or so.

Hearing no voices or steps of any kind after we adjourned to our room, we sensed we were the only guests spending the night. And the night, especially nestled in the forest as we were, was a tad scary and eerie for us. Had we not kept our bathroom light on, total darkness would have enveloped us. Without another soul present, we felt entombed by silence.

The following morning we heard the reassuring sound of voices and peered through our window at another bright, sunny day. Our breakfast, which again laid out for us, consisted of fresh squeezed orange juice, slices of thick bread, a plate of ham and mozzarella, a container each of Italian style yogurt [thinner than American style yogurt] and strong black coffee with hot milk and packs of taminando sugar.

Our stomachs set until “la cena” later that evening, we made a bee line to the municipal offices, where we hoped to find birth documents for my mother, Jane (Gallucci) Spinelli. Directed to the archival office, I again stumbled through my request in my infantile Italian and showed pictures I had with me as proof that my request was legitimate and the woman who spoke no English would be inspired to help.

After bringing our a small, thick book with coupon-sized pages, she brought our large books, the size of a modern newspaper, we both looked down the pages of handwritten names but found no name corresponding to my mother’s birth year, 1913.

Disappointed with the results, I took Kathy for an impromptu meeting with my second cousin, Michelina Fuchillo, daughter of my maternal grandmother’s brother, Gregory. Remembering where she lived from my visit in 1999, we found her small, narrow two-story home. Giovanni, the proprietor of our hotel, had called her earlier and informed her of our impending visit.

She was ready for us with three different kinds of “biscotti” and tiny glasses she would repeatedly fill with vermouth. Michelina, now 82, looked the same as when I last saw her in 1999. The same age as my oldest surviving aunt in Michigan, Michelina looked far more sun-dried than my stateside aunt but from years of walking up and down the stone streets of Faeto was still likely as fit as a mountain goat. Hanging on her wall was a picture of herself walking with several water bottles balanced on her head. In Faeto, as we’ve seen all over Italy, the water to drink comes from pubic fountains fed from naturally filtered mountain water, not from the taps in homes or in public places. Michelina and others make daily trips to the town water fountain to fill up litre bottles with potable water. In towns and out in the country, we have done the same with no ill affects so far.

Michelina informed me that my mother’s real Italian first name was Vincenza, not Jane, as she called herself after moving to America in 1920. The name Jane most likely derived from an adaptation of her mother’s name, Gina. This key piece of information could make a difference as I try again to find her birth information before heading off for my father’s hometown, San Marcos in Lamis, for the first time tomorrow.

SAN MARCO IN LAMIS – FINDING MY FATHER

Hearing someone snoring in the room next to ours assured us that we were not the only guests in the hotel again this night. Giovanni Gallucci, who shared my mother’s surname, called us the night before to tell us “coletion” or breakfast would be served about 8:30 am. Still full from the multi-course dinner served to us the night before, we were happy that all that confronted us was orange juice, a pre-packaged chocolate croissant, a container of yogurt and cappuccino.

Our drive to San Marco in Lamis, my father’s hometown in the Gargano Peninsula, known to Americans as the “spur” on the boot of Italy, partly retraced our trip to Foggia except that this time we headed north to Lucera and San Severo.

Workers in Lucera were repairing the main drag, which diverted us slightly from our appointed route. As we followed others cars navigating the detour, we drove down streets narrow enough that we could have reached out and touched people selling goods and fresh produce along the way. Lucera, my guidebook says, was a ”once prosperous Roman colony…that was rebuilt in the 13^th century by Frederick II, who populated it with 20,000 Sicilian Muslins.” As tides turned form one strong man to the next, Lucera, once a fortress to stave off attacks by Lombards, was devastated in 1300 by Charles II “who massacred most of Lucera’s Muslim population” and built his version of the Duomo on the site of the Muslim’s main mosque. When we popped out on the other side of Lucera, we saw the long, straight road leading to San Severo from our high vantage point in Lucera.

From San Severo, we turned eastward and followed the road signs pointing to San Marco in Lamis. The road to my father’s hometown of about 15,000 inhabitants took us through the Gargano National Park, which appeared to me similar to parts of Wyoming. Scattered through the peaks and valleys were grove upon grove of olive trees and other crops and wandering groups of cattle and goats.

Arriving in San Marcos in Lamis, I happened upon the tourist bureau where I claimed a street map and directions to both the municipal building and our hotel, which was located in Borgo Celano, a couple kilometers east of the city that appeared to be home to a number of hotels, bars and restaurants.

I found my way to the municipal building, parked the car and entered the building. Entering a room where an official was engaged with a customer, I asked about the birth record office and was summarily directed to another door. Opening that door, I saw a man in a suit and tie to whom I stumbled into my recitation of why I was there and what I was looking for. Handing him my father’s passport, he quietly read it and gestured for me to follow him to another room, where he opened a cabinet and took our a small book, similar to the one I had seen in Faeto the day before, and immediately found the page with my father’s name on it.

I was elated to have discovered this information so quickly compared to coming up empty handed in Faeto with my mother. The man then beckoned me into yet another room of big format books full of birth and marriage certificates and within minutes had again found the birth certificate of my father. Unfortunately, it did not have information about either my grandfather or grandmother, as other documents that had other parenting information stamps on them. The man was kind enough to make copies for me free of charge. I thanked him and left.

MONTE SAINT ANGELO AND MATTINATA

Finding Borgo Celano quickly, we also found our hotel as well. Looking up the street it was located on, I felt a little trepidation about its quality. Parking in the lot directly across from it, I walked to the front door. Daniel, a Romanian by birth who was now working in Italy, greeted me. Upon entering the hotel that looked more like a home than a hotel, I was immediately struck by the modern look of the place. He showed me to three rooms, each with a different configuration of bedding. I chose the “matrimonio” style [a single double bed]. A woman had appeared in the meantime at the front desk. She took information from our passports, which is done now across the country in hotels and in Internet locations.

Having already achieved my heritage aims, we set off to the east and the ocean. Our destination was Monte Saint Angelo, which my Italian guidebook says is the end of a pilgrimage route that starts San Severo and continues through each town in-between, including my father’s hometown.

As in Rome, the business of religion is big business in the Gargano as well. Worshippers and followers of the miracle worker Padre Pio, who is buried in San Giovanni Rotundo, another city on the rosary of faith that ends in Monte Saint Angelo, have spawned a building boom of hotels and restaurants catering to their temporal needs.

Monte Saint Angelo, perched high above the Gargano coastline, impressed me with its whiteness. Because the shops in my father’s hometown closed during midday, we missed lunch. Close to where we parked our car was a “panificio” or bakery, which had a round load of bread larger than my Fiat’s wheel sitting in front of the shop on a tripod. Too appealing to resist, we entered and saw large sheet pans of pizza “Pugliese” [thick, not thin] with tomato and cheese, eggplant and olive. The bottom crust was wonderfully crispy with a thin patina of olive oil on it while the top of airy and light. We bought two slices [priced by the kilogram], an almond studded cake desert with almond and nutella cream inside and a bag of taralli, little ovals of baked herbed dough. We ate the pizza as we walked to a park that overlooked the seashore and the neighboring seaport of Manfredonia. As we drove forward to Mattinata, I bought more pizza for later.

Located at sea level, far below the eagle’s nest that is Monte Saint Angelo, Mattinata is separated from the sea itself by an agricultural tapestry of fruit and olive trees. Tired from our drive from Faeto that morning, we opted not to continue driving north but to backtrack to our hotel, where the prospect of a hot shower, rest and dinner outweighed the need to drive more miles.