More Things Italian

Italian Sized

Greetings from not so sunny Italy.  We are experiencing wind and light rain for the second day.  The blossoms white and purple have been blown away and now are replaced with green sprouts of leaves.  Next week we will have more rain.  I think the Brits have sent this to us,  maybe they have our sun.
This morning within two hours I have heard two cars go by our home.  Perhaps they are out for food or meds.  There can be no other reason.  My wife went out two days ago.  The butcher was allowing only one customer at a time in, and he wore a mask.  This shop is always clean and tidy and so I have confidence that he has made an effort to keep his customers healthy. 
The food shop did not make an effort to keep only a few people at a time entering and the aisles are now wide.  You can imagine what this is like.  Not good.  Our municipality rules say that we cannot go to a larger market in the next town over, so we are told to shop there.  I am not happy about this rule, and we plan to defy it and drive further when we have to go out in a few weeks.  Better a fine than to be brushing shoulders with many people.  That is how I look at it.

We sit and watch the birds come to our feeder house we bought in Austria.  We have two black birds, two finch and two doves arriving constantly, seemingly taking turns.  The reality is that the bigger doves bully the others away.  The smaller ones wait on the roof nearby for their turn.  Relating this to you makes me feel like my grandparents, who did the same, but also with squirrels and also neighbors.  I am glad I have painting, a piano and a squeeze box to keep me from being  sedentary and feeling old.  Perhaps I should pick up my trumpet and trombone and wake the neighbors up a bit. 

Mitch Miller

Lately is has been nice to see, on the internet, many Italian neighborhoods that would stand on their balconies and sing old songs together.  Remind me of the 60's when they had this kind of show on television.  Sing Along With Mitch.  Remembering even further back I remember a man and a woman with accordions playing and encouraging people to sing along.  Both shows were in black and white, no one had color televisions then.  We had dial phones, party lines, radio shows with a plot, moms worked at home, and around then my neighbor put in a bomb shelter in his back yard.  I remember a heavy metal door, supposedly to protect from the blast, and inside a carpeted floor.  It was very cold inside and dark. 
Later on we found that if the Russians dropped an atomic bomb on our city there would be a huge crater where that bomb shelter would have been.  I guess this shows how we waste money that could have been put to better use.   In school we had to endure a drill to drop under our school desks. 

My Super Hero, the Duke

We also, during school,  got to watch baseball's World Series if some kid had an extra television to bring to school.  Not many families had more than one television in their house.  One year the Brooklyn  Dodgers soundly beat the Yankees, a team I still despise.   New York has always had the money to buy a winning team!  My Dodger moved to Los Angeles a few years after this.  This was all before people had to pay to watch a baseball game on home television. 
The grade school that I attended had a house on the corner of the school where the custodian lived.  He raised chickens for food and I saw my first chicken caught and sacrificed with a hatchet.  That chicken kept running around without a head, shocking for a 9 year old city kid.  Later the school district tore that house down, and made the custodian find his own lodgings. 

I was in kindergarden when we saw the our television program.  We were out to buy a pair of Buster Brown shoes, and the store next to it had a television in the window that was left on.  We stood outside and peered into the window to watch such a spectacle.  There it was, like a movie, talking and such action from that rounded screen.  My dad said to us, "We have to get one of those."   At that time radio was still big, there were a lot of shows that people listened to.  My favorites were the Lone Ranger,  and Fibber McGee and Molly.

Saturday mornings the movie theaters would offer two movies and several cartoons.  This was a way for parents to get a break from the kids.  Families were bigger back then and it only cost 25 cents to go.  Popcorn was 10 cents, snicker bars were 5 cents, and sodas were 10 cents.  Most of the movies were shoot 'em up cowboy shows, turned out in the Hollywood Movie factories.  Roy Rodgers, Dale Evans, Gene Autry were my favorites.  Roy's horse, Trigger is now stuffed and sitting in a museum outside of Los Angeles.  Gene Autry went on to buy a major league baseball team.  There were more than 5 different Lone Rangers, so I am not sure they stayed rich and famous. 

A few years later in the school newspaper that most schools received called Weekly Reader they discussed how someday people would have phones with a screen to view whom we were talking to.  That took a few years to happen!  Right about this time families were starting to move away from each other to have a better job, etc.  We lived 3 hours from my grandparents and I wished I could see them when we called each week.  Maybe putting men on the moon was more important.  A lot of technology went in that direction.  We had to win that race. 

Below The bridge is a 3 story brick fort, This is the view from there.

The Weekly Reader also discussed how the government was dumping sealed barrels of radioactive waste off the coast near the Golden Gate Bridge.  Those barrels were encased in concrete to stop leakage.  Unfortunately, many of them are now leaking, but we don't hear much about it.  Governments are good at keeping knowledge about their screwups from the public.  As long as we have those big screen televisions and cell phones and consumer items everyone is happy, right? 

A painting I just finished, Old Guys

If you know an older person that has a computer or iPad I suggest that it might be interesting to connect with them.  They have seen and experienced a lot in their lives.  Who knows, maybe you will find an adventure in sharing some time.  In my own life I regret not sitting longer with my ancestors and talking. I had an uncle that I discovered had been in the army and went down to the border of Mexico to fight Pancho Villa.  I would love to pick his brain right now, so many questions to ask.  I also had an uncle that fought in France in the First World War.  It was a real surprise to me to hear him tell me he was there.  I should have sat down with him a lot longer and asked so many questions about his soldier days.  My grandmother lived in Dodge City where the cowboys would bring cattle from Texas to be transported to Chicago by the railroad.  She told me how the cowboys would pick her up with one hand and let her ride behind them around town.  Her mother ran a bakery to support six kids after her husband died.  You readers, I write this to encourage you to reach out and take the time to hear these kind of stories. 
Right now, we all have a lot of time on our hands. 

You need those snacks with those movies

I wish you all good health and safety.  Pray for our medical workers who are risking their lives for others.  They are our modern heroes and deserve respect.  Thanks for reading, and if you want you can comment. 
Ciao.