Michele Parenti from Italy
My name is Michele Parenti, I spent the first twelve years of my life in
a small town, in the Vomano district, in Abruzzi. Born in October 1940, I’m the
eldest of four children . Three sisters followed me: Maria in 1944, then Anna
and Rosa respectively in 1949 and 1950, after our family emigrated to
Venezuela, but more of this later.
Before the war, until he was called up into the Army, my father was a
contractor, mainly active in road-building, dams, housing renovation. Mom stayed at home, where she was always
very busy with all the household chores; besides, he cared for her old mom, who
couldn’t walk anymore. She
never left her room. Of all
the comforts of modern times, we only had electricity, but this was touch and
go, with the war and its aftermath so we routinely used lamps and candles.
I don’t remember much
about the war, as the Allies fought their way through the peninsula from 1943
to 1945. The Allies arrived
in our district in summer 1944, and we were lucky that the front moved quickly
through from South to North, the Germans finally stopping the Allies progress
100 miles North before they could penetrate into the Po Valley. I know of other villages or towns not
far from us which were not so
lucky. One was bombed by Allies
aircraft, as it was thought to be a German stronghold: hundreds of civilians
died. Other were
“liberated” by French colonial troops from North Africa, with
terrible atrocities towards women.
I remember people just hinting at this, when we children were
around. I didn’t understand
what “rape” could mean, only that it was something terrible.
My sister Maria was still a
baby at the time when the war came, and Mom had a lot of milk, so she
didn’t go hungry. We, too,
had reasonable quantities of food every day: we had a garden, and in such a
small community, even in difficult times, nobody really starved, as people
helped each other. We didn’t
have to flee our village, as our community was left undisturbed by the fighting
armies. But we were very, very
poor, without my father. He had been taken prisoner in September 1943, and
forcibly sent to Germany, like many other Italian soldiers, so Mom could keep
us fed only with help from close relatives. Many goods were scarce, like food,
others just weren’t available at all . Warm clothes, or shoes, for example,
simply could not be had almost at any price. In Abruzzi winters are very cold: I
remember we had snow on the ground for many months on end, a sheet of ice
covered the steep roads and alleys, and in the harsh winters of 1945 and 1946 I
trampled on it with home made shoes, with rubber soles made out of old
tires.
Luckily, we usually had wood to burn in the stove and in the fireplace, but the sleeping quarters were literally ice cold: we had to break the ice from the basin, to wash our hands and face in the morning. Frankly, we didn’t wash ourselves that much during those war winters, it was so complicated and uncomfortable to do so!
In 1946 my father finally
came back home. I really did not know him: I used to call “dad” my uncle, and this
would make my father sad and angry.
He was out of a job; consequently he stayed at home all day, he was
shocked and depressed (I understand this only today, not then), and to cap it
all, he was much stricter than mom.
This meant trouble, for me
(my sister got away lightly, as she was still very young). I soon became wise enough to run like
hell in a crisis, but couldn’t avoid to go back home when hungry. I knew that he tended to calm down
somewhat by that time, but he was not consistent: there were times I was
punished, other times I was not, as he seemed to have forgotten the matter. His
unpredictable behaviour resulted in my resentment when he randomly (or so I
felt) punished me. I was struggling
to learn to love him, but these incidents put the clock back in our
relationship. I was always afraid of him, while I was very close to Mom and
sister, and to my uncle, too.
On 1 October 1947, I was seven, I started my second year in the primary school. I was a good student and an avid and
precocious reader. I started
borrowing books from the small school library: “boys books”, like
those authored by Jules Verne or Emilio Salgari (an Italian author of pirates
and buccaneers novels), and I was looking forward for more. But it was not to be. In that year, acknowledging that
things weren’t getting much better in our part of the world, many
Italians started emigrating. The
“lucky few”, with relatives already there, went to the USA, the
other ones went to other places overseas.
In our district, many people left for Venezuela, which at the time was a
fast developing country welcoming European migrants with open hands. A neighbour wrote to my father to join
him. He wanted to go alone, but Mom
didn’t want to be left again with two kids, such a short time after dad
had come back home. I still
remember them disputing, and quarrelling, in the evening, after we had gone to
bed. At the time, it was customary
for men to emigrate, leaving their family behind, but Mom was not to be ordered
in any way. We all had to go together: otherwise, no one would go.
In a short time she
won her fight. Mom succeeded
in keeping the family together, but at a price. She hoped that this would happen
while staying at home, not with the
whole family crossing the ocean to get to an unknown and reputedly backward
country. But as much as she felt
sorry, Mom knew she had already obtained a lot from her husband and gave way,
even if our departure would mean leaving her mother, possibly for good. I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I looked forward to a
wonderful adventure in a new and mysterious country; on the other hand I was
enjoying my life there, and probably I’d relish the chance to become
again the “man” in the house, a role I had been so proud of during
my father forced absence.
I hadn’t the time to dwell upon these thoughts. In a matter of weeks, we were leaving on
a big white ship from Naples to La Guaira, Venezuela. It must have been difficult to find
place on the ship, as this was one of the first of such journey after the war.
After an uneventful week or so, the four of us were welcomed in the port by my
father’s friend, who immediately drove us away. For a moment, judging by the
big American car we were in, I
thought he, and by extension, we, were very rich by now, but it was not
so. The car was old and
rusty, and my father’s friend
wasn’t the owner; nevertheless, it was an impressive welcome,
coming from almost car-less and poverty stricken post-war Italy.
The trip was long, and tiring, as we climbed over the mountains, then
down into a plain. We stopped overnight and slept all together in a rented
room, then we drove again to the place where we were going to stay, which was a
settlement near to the main road to Colombia, not far from the border, many
miles from the coast. And finally, we were there. We saw the main street, with
some concrete building, many houses scattered randomly all over the place, a
few barracks, and a shanty town, made of huts and cabins. My father started working immediately in
a gas station. It had a car repair
area, much needed considering the roughness of the roads, the ripe old age of
the motor cars people used to drive, and the paucity of knowledge about all
things mechanic in that remote part of the country.
The settlement was medium sized, not a village, nor a town. With less
than half the people native or
mixed-race, the rest was a bunch of Venezuelan-born people of European stock,
immigrants who had settled before
the war and people who had just arrived, like us, from different parts of war
torn Europe : Poles, Germans, Hungarians, Jews, displaced persons. There were several Italians, too, most
of them single men and a few couples who had left the kids home: we were the
only complete Italian family living there at the moment. More women and children would
arrive in the next few years, as some of the men were joined by their intimate
families. Most Italians were not
thinking of themselves as settlers, rather as temporary migrants struggling to
amass before leaving Venezuela for ever what money was needed to buy a house
back in Italy and set up a small business. I don’t know if my parents had
such plans at the time: in the following years, it never crossed my mind that
we would go back to Italy, nor my parents ever seriously talked about
this. So we were here to stay, or
at least that’s what we believed.
The place was pretty rough, to say the least, in the middle of nowhere,
with the jungle not far away, and the weather was very hot in all seasons: the
air was humid and sticky, and only very light clothing could be tolerated. With grunting pigs and naked kids
running around in the equatorial environment, even parents of European stock
had left behind any pretence of manners. I still remember the first day we
arrived there: two beautiful fair-haired girls of three or four with incredibly
dirty faces and dresses scampered up, sticking their fingers into their mouths
as they came near to have a look at us, the newcomers. They wore no panties, and their thin
dresses barely covered their fat bellies. Judging by their look, they
obviously had been playing in the dirt all day long. Children lived free outdoors, and
there was no parent or older sister in sight. I thought they had to be the children of
the poorest people in town, maybe the children of beggars; next day I
discovered they were the daughters of a German, who was one of the founders of
the settlement before the war, had a big construction business, and owned half
the place with the best house in town.
These girls would soon become close friends with my sister, who from day
one followed their example. She was four years of age when we got there, and
she would not own a new pair of shoes until her twelfth summer. I, too, soon learned to walk
through the fields barefoot all the year and
everywhere. I still remember how the warm, soft sandy soil felt good
between my toes, but I also appreciated paddling barefoot along the tiled halls
during childhood check-ups in the nearby town .
All this freedom was surprising
for me, as in Italy mom would always insist on us wearing appropriate clothes
and shoes, at least when going out. But if that was the local custom, so be it,
and Mom took no time at all to adapt to the new environment, accepting that
when in Venezuela, we should do as the Venezuelans do. She, too, enjoyed her
newly acquired freedom: she started to wear shorts, which would have been
unthinkable in our small Italian town.
She took to smoking (another No No for real ladies, back home), worked
in the garage helping with the car wash, drove the cars back to their owners
(without a licence!), talked with all the people who would stop in that remote
frontier town: certainly, in Italy she would not have done any of the
kind.
With both parents busy
working all day, we enjoyed a lot of freedom after the school hours. Mom hired
a local girl of twelve or so to help cleaning, cooking and minding us kids. Her labour came very cheap, but
she was a lazy cleaner, an
indifferent cook and an almost nonexistent child-minder. Mom was horrified when, one of the first
days we were there, coming back from the garage at lunch hour she found the
maid out of the house talking with a handsome boy (they start early in the
Tropics) and no child inside. She
went almost barking mad before finding me and, half an hour later, at the other
side of the village, 4 year old Maria wading through a dirty pool which the
tropical rain had turned into a quagmire of ankle deep mud: a dangerous place
by any means. She sacked the girl,
but her cousin who substituted her behaved no differently, so Mom slowly
accepted that different standard applied
and grew more philosophical (or fatalist) about risks. Our young maids were no more expected to
care for us, and we fell into line with everybody else.
Children as “old” as
my sister were not expected to be minded by anyone: on the contrary little
girls of her age were
“caring” all day for a younger brother or sister. Which did not amount to much: small kids
went about bare bum, so there were no diapers to change, food was ready
available as some snack could always be easily provided by passers-by or just
gotten by asking a neighbour.
Mom had another child in December 1948, Anna,
and exactly twelve months later Rosa was born. They were so near in age, that in a
short time they started to spend all the time together, doing the same things,
and to be perceived by all of us as twins.
They were true Venezuelans, who would speak Spanish as well as the
Abruzzi dialect we spoke at home (in Italy, I spoke Italian only in
school). They were left free of any
responsibility, not having a younger brother or sister to care for, and so
enjoyed every opportunity to grow up like real tom boys. I can see them again:
they’re coming back from school, on the other side of the field, in the
same tattered dresses every other little girl wears, they walk on prickly
weeds and pebbles and run past the white
farmhouse, speeding up to cross the sticky tar main road, too hot for comfort
at midday, to get back home for lunch, only to get out again immediately after,
on some mysterious assignment of their own . The only strict requirement for
them was to come back home again before dark and stay there. Usually, they were
reasonably on time. If they
weren’t back yet at dusk, I started my search, having only a short time
for the task, as near the Equator the sun sets suddenly and the sky gets pitch
black in a few minutes. When they finally were retrieved, if they were really
late, Mom would yell ferociously at them, menacing the direst physical
consequences. As with any other
misdemeanour, often action followed her words, and she would grab the culprit, throw her over her knee,
and deliver with her strong right hand or, worst, with the much dreaded paddle,
a sharp but thankfully short spanking on her behind . Other times she would impose a time out,
or would go on rebuking, or, again, would not give a
lot of attention to the negative behaviour. Mom’s response was very emotional,
and varied a lot according to her whim.
I and/or Maria were
usually not held responsible for the little girls, but in some circumstances
(which we never learned to detect before) we were: as parents use to say to
their eldest, we should have known better, being older. I was coming of age by now, so I
wouldn’t be spanked (but Maria was).
Nevertheless, I, too, could be sent to bed immediately, with an empty
stomach.
Looking back, this was
inconsistent Mediterranean parenting at its best, or worst, depending on your
viewpoint. It was an attitude
which would leave our German Lutheran neighbours aghast, as they methodically
gave out punishment to their three kids according to well thought out
regulations: in short, one spanking for every year of age as a basic rule, but
then alleviating (rarely) or aggravating (often) the punishment according to
circumstances.
What amazes me after so many years, is that BOTH such different
attitudes seemed to work well! We
all loved dearly our parents, and respected them, regardless of the fact that
they were strict disciplinarians or not.
We, the Southerners, didn’t become young delinquent, but normal
adolescents and well- adjusted adults, and as far as I know the same can be
said about our Northern friends, with whom we stayed in touch for many years
after leaving Venezuela. What really mattered was probably that in both
families parents loved their
children, distinguished between Right and Wrong, were honest people who worked
hard for their families, so teaching by their example, who did not pamper their
children, making them responsible from an early age .
It was a lovely place
for children to grow up in. I’m tempted to call it a child’s paradise, if you mean by paradise a
place where one can live without a worry, with children running wild and free.
There, I developed a feral love and respect for nature. I went to explore in the woods, climbed
trees, and brought back some acorns , fresh ones, and came back dirty and
happy. My father best
friend, who had become like an uncle for me, showed me bugs and plants and
weird looking trees. For a time, my favourite thing was to find bugs. I wasn’t afraid of snakes, and I
kept an iguana as a pet for a few months.
Yes, we all were a bit wild, and my younger sisters more so, having
spent all their life there.
They would run barefoot on the rocky paths. They would show off their pet toads
. They would run and play freely
all day. They would climb in and
dig through the dirt pile outside and then splash into a puddle. When they finally came back home, they
were wet and muddy, their face, arms and legs were covered with dirt and black
dust, and at least one of them had bruised her knee. For us, this was just normal
little child behaviour. Sometimes,
it was impossible not to laugh at the excited and deliriously happy face of
these kids, when they came home all dirty, still displaying a big grin. Sometimes, we all laughed at their look,
and Mom never worried about this sort of things: what gets dirty can be washed,
be it human flesh or clothing.
Remarkably, they were never seriously
ill.
During those years my imagination
soared. With a natural tendency to daydream, I spent my afternoons dreaming
about exploring untamed forest and glens.
My father business was going well, my mother was happy in helping with
it, and she felt so good, appreciating to be much more free than in her native
town. We learnt Spanish very
easily, as many of its words are exactly the same in Italian, and spoke it with
the German children, too. At home
we spoke our dialect. School was of
a pretty low standard, it must be said, no heavy homework as it was customary
in Italy, as my parents told me .
Sadly, there weren’t many books to be had: I had brought a few of
the old ones, but new books were really hard to come by in that place. I had to read “girls
books”, like “Little Women” and its sequels, and much to my
surprise, I enjoyed them a lot.
But come 1958, our adventure
in the comparative wilderness of inner Venezuela suddenly came to an end. It was not deliberate, the outcome was a
matter of unfortunate contingencies, at every level, family, work,
society. On the political level,
Venezuela was torn apart at the time by a short but harsh revolution, which
brought about a change of regime, with the attendant violence and
uncertainty. We heard some shooting
during the night, and dad feared that we would be attacked, by revolutionaries,
by the supporters of President Jimenez or by bandits, it was a thin line
between them all . This did not happen, but I still remember my father
preparing his rifle, and giving me a pistol! Nobody came, but two or three people got
killed in our street. Then a period of uncertainty followed, which my parents
as immigrants felt very acutely. My
father thought we were in a fragile position, as that political change in an
unsettled country could easily bring on us the hostility of the populace.
If this weren’t bad enough, my father and my mother were worried
about Maria, who had just turned 14, and was not well. She easily tired, was very thin, had frequent
fever. Doctors could not agree on the causes, but a very well known (and
expensive) doctor in Caracas was sure that all that Maria needed was “a
change of air”: away from the tropical heat, she would thrive in more
temperate climate. Fine, we could
just stay in the country and go to the highlands, where the weather was much
nicer. My father anyway wanted to
go to the Caracas area, as he had planned to use the small fortune he had
gathered in ten years of hard work for starting a new and bigger business in
the capital city. But, alas, the
plan did not go ahead: his new business partner, a fellow Italian from Naples,
through fraud stole all the money he had accumulated over time. My father was left without the means
even to upgrade the business he still owned, let alone to start a new one. A
few weeks later he received from a neighbour a decent offer to sell his
business. Father was sick and tired
of the situation, was worried about Maria, maybe he was nostalgic of his
country: whatever the reasons, he accepted the offer and sold everything . He was again the prime mover: Mom, and
I, didn’t want to emigrate ten years before, and didn’t want to
leave our new country now: but we did just that.
With us leaving the tropics, Maria
health needs would be met and dad was convinced he would start anew at home,
somehow. In a few weeks we packed
everything and went back to Italy, Abruzzi, but we didn’t come back to
our small town in the mountains, rather we settled on the coast, where it
seemed that my father would find more job opportunities . With the money he got, father would just
build a new house in Italy with five apartments, one for them, the parents, and
one for each of us children as a help to settle into adult life. Soon, he bought a new car,
with the money left after buying the house, and became a taxi driver. But his
dreams of becoming a successful businessman were shattered, and his income was
and would be barely adequate to maintain his large family . We had to be very careful with money,
and expenses were much higher: we could not go on as the half-naked savages of
the savannah we were before.
Besides, in the Italy of the so- called “economic miracle”
there were so many new and appealing consumer goods to buy… A few years later, one of the
apartments was sold to help me to go to
College, and another one would go when it was the younger girls
turn. All of us children graduated
from College; I liked that place and life, I stayed on, became a professor, and still teach.
So our life changed completely in a matter of months. It was not easy to
resettle in Italy: for example, I had to relearn the language. I could read more books, it is true, but
I missed sorely, and still miss, my tropical adventure.
Captions
for pictures
Children+Priest - This is an early Fifties
picture: almost all the children were gathered around the new catholic priest.
I’m the boy in the first row, on the right. My sisters are in the crowd.
Maria
- Maria is the tall girl on the left .
Michele+Rosa - The Good and Caring
Brother is pictured here, in 1951, giving
a drink to the little one.
Note that an alternative drinking device was available on the table.
Should the need arise.
Michele+Trucks - I am the
teenager on the left. 1957 picture, I’d guess.
Our New House - This picture was taken
in 1956. The house was sold with
the business two years later.
Rosa + Anna
- A nice picture. It has to be a Sunday, as
the girls are spot on, with clean dresses
Schoolgirls
- Anna is on the right, and
Neighbours
- It was an important day for our Venzuelan neighbours: the girl second on
the left had the holy communion in the morning
German Neighbours - Granny with
three grandchildren who lived down the road
Grunting Pigs - See text, page
3
Naked Kids - See text, page
3. The girl is Anna, the boy one of her friends
