The strange

diary of Sam

by Salvatore (aka Sam) Di Bella

The nickname Sam was given to me by my wife because in Australia Salvatore is

pronounced Savvitòuree.

This strange collection of memories and thoughts

is especially dedicated to my niece Zina,

my guardian angel of these latter

critical years, but also to all my

grandchildren and nephews

with immense love.

Foreword by Professor Anthony Russo

At the ripe old age of 93, Sam Di Bella has decided, in line with the spirit that has animated all his life, not to put his brain to rest, and, like all great old men, has found a new activity for his days: writing! Given his age, it is obvious that the choice fell on a memoir.

To be precise, it is not an absolutely new vocation, because as a young man he loved to write poetry, receiving encouragement and admiration from a man who was to become a scholar himself, Professor Gigi Parrinelli. And he must have cultivated this passion to write reflectively throughout his life, albeit irregularly and without a professional commitment. In fact, in his short work, a richness of interests and cultural knowledge can be seen, a remarkable ability to describe and represent vividly. This can be found, for example, in the self-irony with which he speaks of his "nineteenth century despot", his "master of the ironworks," the "cardia" that for three years has seriously affected his life. He does this too when reflecting on Italy, adding with great humor, comments of an esophageal Berlusconi “the archenemy of the democratic Epiphany." For Di Bella to tell the story of his life succinctly, means to insert it into history with full force, opening up excerpts of the historical past. He not only writes of a few dramatic and salient episodes of World War II, but also speaks of a post-war period ravaged by poverty, which instigated young people to emigrate under precarious and poor conditions. In his pages we are told of the dangers immediately after September 8, the great humanity of Giuseppe Milazzotto who saved Totò (as Sam was called by his friends when he was a boy), at the risk of his own life. Di Bella still remembers him as the most generous person he's ever met in his entire life. Obviously, an important place in his story is occupied by love: from youthful adventures to marriage and separation in his advanced age – a separation which was consensual and civilized. His first girlfriend, Alfonsina, died after falling from a wall when she was five years old: though this was a childhood love of long ago, Di Bella nevertheless keeps her tender memory alive. Of other women (Pinuccia, Lina) he has, however, a memory that is associated with guilt, so much so that in his writing, almost railing against himself, he uses the expression, "abominable act of cowardice " - his manner of making a strong personal condemnation of his youthful behavior intended as compensation on a moral level, even if only symbolic and too late. Arriving at the age of 92, full of years and experience, Di Bella knows how to distinguish between real time and psychological time. It is not difficult to see how in his youth, when he was anxious to assert himself and his soul yearned for the future, the months and the years seemed endless, but now the seasons seem to vanish in a heartbeat. For this reason he tries to stop blessed time from marching on by writing – by giving new life to the past, even if only on a moral plane. We wish him well as he continues his work. May his life become more enriched as he develops what has been written up to now.

A.R.

Memory

This is the usual story that repeats itself continuously. I say it every night and every morning: "I should begin to write all the stupid things that come to my mind." And there are many.

My brain is like a volcano erupting continuously ideas, thoughts, memories and similar other stuff, but after a minute I forget what I was thinking and find it hard to remember.

I do not think that it is Parkinson’s lurking, but it certainly has something to do with the ageing process. When I was young, I had a formidable memory. I could read any triplet of the Divine Comedy, and, closing my eyes, I could read it again with my eyes closed from the last word to the first.

It made me feel important with my classmates who did not understand how I could, with eyes closed, still see the triplet that I had just read. This capacity however, did not help me at all in my study.

In fact, I studied very little, even if I could convince my professors that I was always prepared because I could remember, for a few weeks, what they had explained.

I realize that mine was a kind of a narcissistic complacency with my extraordinary memory that I had inherited from my mother. She was small and round like a little ball, but she was also infinitely more intelligent than my father.

I realized this when I was about 14 years old. My father had extraordinary empathy. He liked dances and parties, and he was a great one for telling jokes. Having said that, he also had some strange peculiarities. When we had to decide something important in the family, he claimed that the final decision was made only by him.

My father was the owner of the municipal slaughterhouse and some butchers had asked him to increase its space and add a section that could be used solely for slaughtering pigs.

Carmel and Alexander Di Bella

For this photo my mother must have got on top of a chair as she was small and round like a little ball.

Standing, she would reach only a

little over my father’s elbow.

He was not in favor of this idea. Rather, it was my mother who wanted these additions. But cleverly she kept on saying to my father: "Do not get persuaded by anyone to do these additions..."

And my father answered, "Whether I decide to do it or not, it is none of your business..." and immediately decided to call the builders and begin the work.

I was 14 years old and realized then how my little mother could maneuvre my father without ever offending his pride.

10/07/2013

Rosetta

How many years have passed. I am now almost 93 years old. I really cannot believe it. My mind is full of memories - millions of episodes of my extraordinarily long life crowd my memory to the point of confusion.

When I was young I used to write many poems:

Endless nights and brilliant of stars are these, Rosetta..

Thus began a long sonnet I had written at 18 years of age when I was in love with a girl who was 14 or 15 years old. She had come from Naples to study in Bronte.

She was extremely blonde and all the high school students were in love with her.

During that time it was enough to touch your hair while looking at a girl and if she also touched her hair indicating a response, it was enough to put you into raptures.

I did not keep any of my poems. I don’t think it was a great loss. Only one of my old classmates, called Gigi Parrinelli who died a long time ago, appreciated my poems and used to comment on them as works of great cultural value. Later on, he became a man of great culture and a principal at an important school in Reggio Emilia.

As a boy I had fallen in love with the communist ideology. At sixteen years of age, reading the manifesto of Marx and Engels, I had the impression that this was the true gospel, and for a few years, tried to convince my friends that communism was the only way to achieve true social justice and much coveted equality.

It took my witnessing the many atrocities committed by the communists in Milan the 25 of April, 1945 to change my mind and convince me that that ideology, like all unrealizable utopias, is diametrically opposed to human nature. In workers it destroys the wish to work, or at least to work in a productive way; it incites hatred and envy, impoverishes the nations and opens the door to illogical and indecent protests.

12/07/2013

Alfonsina

My first girlfriend was 5 years old, like me, and lived a short walk from my house. Her name was Alfonsina. She was very sweet. We liked each other very much.

But one sad day in early spring - it was the first week of May, 1926- with a friend of ten or eleven years old, she, climbed on a high cliff near her home to pick flowers and prepare the small altars for the Virgin Mary’s feast.

Sadly, she slipped and fell on the street from a height of about 8 metres. Falling, she must have hit her head and died instantly.

I happened to be playing close by when I heard women screaming and I went to see my little Alfonsina, inert, like a rag doll soaked in blood. I went running to Alfonsina’s house and told her mother that the child had fallen.

I will never forget the desperation on the face of that poor woman, however, I must not have realised the seriousness of the case and for months after it happened, I still thought Alfonsina could come looking for me to play together as we always did.

16/07/2013

My crazy cardia

Today I was not able to eat. It seems that my cardia, that independent valve that doctors had defined incontinent, has gone completely mad. I cannot even hold down water. It seems that only rest calms it so I have to do that and treat my condition with care and respect. It became so touchy about three years ago when I was only 90 years old. From that time, I have been able to only eat and drink what my cardia wants and when my cardia deems it appropriate. I do not know how it could have become such a slave-driver. My cardia is a kind of esophageal Berlusconi.

For goodness sake, I don’t want to talk politics. The situation should not be worsened. We have a great president and a great pope. Let us settle for that!

22/07/2013

Beppe Milazzotto

Today I remember Beppe Milazzotto. The great Beppe Milazzotto, the shoemaker who in Milan was a central point of contact for all chaps from Bronte that, for various reasons, were there with no other acquaintances.

I met Beppe during the war. That was one day which, for me, I thought could have been my last. I had escaped from a military prisoner’s camp in Tuscany and gone to a country town called Merate. One of my aunts, sister of my mother, married to a sergeant of police, lived there.

The Government of the Republic of Salò had issued an edict whereby cadet deserters would be shot, when and where found, together with their protectors.

Soon after I had arrived at her home, my aunt told me: "My son, you have to understand me. I can not accommodate you. I can not risk the life of my husband”

In that moment, I saw the melting of my only hope of salvation, and said, "Okay, Aunt, I’ll leave right now", and made my way to the train station. I was wearing the uniform of officer cadet sergeant which had been given to me when I was arrested and put into the prisoner’s camp.

I was now in a desperate situation.

I had never been to Milan, and when I got off the train and exited that huge train station, I saw many trams with various numbers, which I imagine, represented the destinations. I chose the number 2, not because it meant anything to me, but perhaps because it was the closest.

The tram went on for quite some time and then began to cross an area full of many trees. Without knowing where I was, I decided to get off and walk for a while. The name of the street in which I was walking was via Panfilo Castaldi.

I felt empty. Numb.. and walked like a zombie.

In the entrance door of a building there was a man watching me intently. I did not know him. But he kept looking at me and when I got close, he asked me: "Excuse me, are you not the son of Don Alessandro Di Bella?"

I almost fell to the ground in amazement. I hugged him, almost crying, and I briefly told him what had happened to me, asking if he could help me to join the partisans in the mountains.

He said, "Look, I would not know how to help you, but if you go up to the third floor of the stairs you will find Mr. Milazzotto. I think he could do something for you.

When I knocked on Mr. Milazzotto’s door, he opened it and looked at me surprised. He was not expecting a visit from a soldier in uniform. I said, "I'm Totò Di Bella from Bronte." In those days everybody called me Toto.

He said, "Ah u figghiu du zu Lissandru" (Ah the son of Uncle Alexander), and hugged me. I was quite embarrassed and told him that I did not want to endanger anyone, that I had escaped from a military camp and wanted only to join the partisans in the mountains. He looked at me for what felt like a long time and said, "You stay here with me. As long as we have a small loaf of bread we will divide it, half for you and half for me and when the fascists or the Germans come to pick us up I’ll yell: "Fire."

I cannot avoid becoming emotional when I remember these moments. I get goose bumps and the hairs on my neck stand on end. I felt that I had come through a terrible nightmare that had lasted weeks. I have never known a man more generous than Beppe Milazzotto.

25/07/2013

Pinuccia

During my second year of university in Catania, I had met a Venetian guy whose name escapes me. He was six feet tall and was attending the same course as I was attending at university. He had a very pretty girlfriend to whom I was introduced. She was also a student and was called Pinuccia.

This young man, believing himself to be very witty, used to make smart comments about my short stature. I was a good 6 inches shorter than him. So one day I said to him: "Look, I can be as short as you like, but, if I want, I can steal your girl."

He laughed in disbelief, but a few weeks later he had to go to Calabria for a month, where his father, a wood entrepreneur, was cutting a forest.

I began to go out with Pinuccia to the point of getting her to invite me to her house. She, the daughter of a mediocre lawyer, had a music teacher who was teaching her to play the piano. I was then able to play anything on the piano but only with my right hand, while she or her teacher used to play the accompaniment.

I composed a song for her with music and words. It was my only musical composition, and I called it Sweet Fable. The teacher orchestrated it and we used to sing it together. I don’t think it would ever win any competition but it had completely won over the girl.

In fact, after 2 or 3 weeks she wrote a letter to her boyfriend, telling him that it was all over between them, as she was in love with Toto. The young Venetian soon returned to Catania and would have surely beaten me up if not for the help of the friends of our group. After a few months he left the University of Catania and moved, I think, to Padua.

I continued to see Pinuccia and, at the time we were reading novels by some Hungarian authors who preached free love and the abolition of marriage. One day she said to me: "Since we may never get married why don’t we make love now?"

So we began to make love, and being naive, as we were, we did not take the proper precautions.

Pinuccia, in her spare time, worked as an assistant at the pharmacy of a relative in via Umberto I.

One day she noticed that her period was late and tried to prepare appropriate medications to eliminate a possible pregnancy. The pharmacist noticed it and, while she said that she was preparing those things for one of her friends, he hastened to inform her family.

It was the holiday season and I was in Bronte when I was delivered a letter from a lawyer Albanese of Catania. This letter stated that I was required to go to him, as soon as possible, for urgent communications.

Struck by panic, I told the whole story to a lawyer friend of mine. He advised me to go immediately to Catania, get in touch with the girl and get her, in some way, to write me a letter in which the following sentence was contained: “My relatives think that I could be pregnant and that I have made love with you. I know that this is not true as you never touched me ... etc.. etc..”

I went to Catania and, through a neighbour, I contacted Pinuccia and told her that I was waiting for her at the central post office in Catania. After an hour or so of waiting, she arrived, and I could tell that she had confessed everything to her family. However, I told her: “Look Pinuccia, you know how much I love you. But my mother is an old-fashioned woman. She would never let me marry a girl through blackmail or anything like that. Now, if you write me a letter showing that you are really in love with me and are a stranger to any form of coercion towards me, she will have no objection to our marriage”. So I began to dictate the letter that she wrote on the counter of the post-office.

After that we kissed affectionately, she went home and I went directly to meet the lawyer, Albanese.

As I entered, he said: "I know your father. He is a true gentleman, you should be like him."

"Lawyer, what are we talking about?"

"About what ?" he said. "About Pinuccia ...."

"Look, sir," I said, "about my relationship with Pinuccia. I am engaged to her. But now I am hearing all these stories and I'm changing my mind. She wrote me a letter that I shall read to you ... "

And I read that letter with the famous phrase that my friend had suggested to me.

The lawyer exploded: "This is impossible! Diabolical! The girl confessed to me that she has had sex with you ... "

"Lawyer, do what you like, these are the facts and I'm leaving." As I went out the door of his study, the lawyer was stunned.

Not satisfied with this, I went to Pinuccia’s house to see her before returning to Bronte. Without realizing that the lawyer could have called to warn them that I was in town,. I realized immediately that Pinuccia was pretty cold. Immediately she asked me, "Where is the letter I wrote to you?"

"I don’t have it"

"Show me your wallet!" she said almost shouting.

I started to go down the stairs while she was screaming: "Coward! Coward! ... "

After a few months I was called to military service but that cry: “Coward! Coward!” has haunted me for almost my entire life. This was the most abominable act of cowardice I've made in my life. Moreover, while for years during the war, I had no news of my family, and promised myself that if, at the end of the war, I would have found all my family safe and sound, I was going to look for and marry Pinuccia, even if in the meantime, she had become a slut.

Instead, back home and having found everything in place, I never went to look for her again, or to find out what had happened to her. As for cowardice, I consider myself to be a professional well above average.

26/07/2013

I love Summer

This month is nearly over. Days and weeks, for me are becoming increasingly shorter. I realise this is just my personal impression. The passage of time, in fact, is always the same. However, the perception of it has changed for me exactly the opposite of when when I was a child. Then, one year seemed like an eternity. Now, I seem to go from one season to another in an instant. Although, in recent years, it seems that the seasons have become just two: Summer and Winter. Spring and Autumn have almost disappeared from the calendar.

I love summer especially for the quantity and variety of fruit that you can find everywhere. What I wanted to do twenty five years ago, was to come with my wife to Italy in April and stay until September.

In October we would return to Australia to stay there until the next April. To skip all the winters for me would have been like living in an artificial paradise.

My wife did not share my desires. That's why we broke up and I came to live in Italy. I thought I could come here to spend the last couple of years of my life and instead, I have been here for twenty five years.

Fortunately for me, my daughters and my grandchildren come to visit me almost every year.

And, here in Italy, I have had an extraordinary niece that, especially in my last and fragile years, has given me all the possible care that goes beyond any love of a daughter

How much time do I have left to live? I don’t think a lot. Meanwhile, I continue to write whatever comes to mind. I also continue to play chess whenever I can.

Next month my grandson Thomas, the son of my daughter Sandra, is coming here to visit. He’s a little unconventional but he has many features that I had when I was his age. He likes to paint, play and sing, but has not decided where his talents will take him. I believe that eventually he will find his way and become a man of success in any area in which he wants to engage.

27/07/2013

Lina

Another strange situation happened to me in Milan in the year 1944. On another floor of the same building in which I lived with Milazzotto and other friends, there was a particular family in which my little Lina belonged.

She was seventeen or eighteen years old but very small. Not unlike my mother she was also passionate – and extremely jealous. But she was also full of so much effervescent intelligence and “joie de vivre”. I never understood why she had found her Prince Charming in me.

Every day she brought me a loaf of bread prepared with butter and jam that I often, shared with Milazzotto. At the time, the bread, in Milan was a highly valued commodity, and was very difficult to obtain at any price. But Lina’s mother, a real expert in smuggling, had all the contacts to get hold of anything she needed.

I could not look at another girl in the building. If I did, Lina would immediately start whining for entire evenings, telling me that I did not love her enough.

We used to make love several times during the evenings, but she was insatiable, sometimes leading to violence. When people asked her mother, "Where is Lina?" she replied: "She will be somewhere making love with Toto."

The small Lina saved my life twice in Milan simply through her intuition. Often the Germans were raking around in the buildings where there were many military deserters. Twice she dragged me into the cellar of the right building other than where I wanted to go. When le war ended I went home and to my studies. She used to write me a letter almost every day. She wrote so well.

One day my mother found a number of her letters in my desk. After reading them all, she said to me: "If you don’t marry this girl, the Lord will punish you."

But I already had a new lover in Catania and I never tried to find out what happened to little Lina. I have to admit it. Sometimes I have been a real bastard.

28/07/2013

The joke

Some memories make me sad others do not. A recent memory is that of my 90th birthday. We celebrated at the restaurant Casolare delle Balze of Maniace. There were many of my friends and family in attendance and there was also a talented entertainer who sang and played great music for dancing and to listen to.

My grandson Thomas Fitzsimons, who had come to visit me from Australia, was also there. He made a little speech in English, very much applauded, and there was also the lawyer Mimmo Azzia of Sicilia Mondo. He made a long speech about my alleged cultural and entrepreneurial ability, a panegyric of compliments absolutely undeserved. Finally we arrived to cut the cake which had been prepared by my niece Nunzia Gulino, the main fillettiera of Bronte.

On one of the cakes was a picture of a beautiful girl half naked asking me if this was not the time to know each other better. Maybe, I said, but now it's too late. A woman whispered in my ear that it is never too late. “Now there is the Viagra”, she said.

Meanwhile, some voices were shouting: “Speech! Speech!” So I told a dated joke I had heard recently. It was about an old man of eighty or eighty-five years of age, who had gone to a chemist shop and asked the pharmacist: "Give me four viagra pills divided into four."The pharmacist replied, "My dear sir, with a quarter of a pill you can not get an erection.” “Excuse me,” the old man replies, "and who wants an erection? I am eightyfive years old. I just want it to come out a little bit so I don’t pee on my shoes!"

Everyone laughed except my grandson Thomas who, not knowing Italian, wondered why people were laughing so much.

30/07/2013

The two faces of my first gransdson

Thomas Fitzsimons

The quadrumvirate

When my friend Nunzio Ponzo and I decided to emigrate to Australia, our friends were asking us: "What the hell are you going to do in Australia? Only farmers and craftsmen go there. Are you completely insane?"

These were the words that Bruno Minissale and Aldo Mauro repeated continuously. Bruno had been my classmate from kindergarten through to university. Aldo and Nunzio were related to us from a relationship that went beyond a normal friendship. All other students of the Capizzi College used to call us the quadrumvirato. We were always together.

I was a communist, Bruno a fascist, Aldo liberal and Nunzio a Democrat. Despite our ideological differences which pushed us to endless discussions, we liked each other a great deal, and we were always ready to do anything to defend our small group. When the day of our departure arrived, Nunzio and I went to embark in Messina, on the ship Surriento.

We had booked our places in a cabin for six people, but could never sleep in it as the other four occupants, coming maybe from Calabria, had God knows what in their suitcases. The smell of feet and cheese in fermentation in that cabin, was absolutely unbearable.

The trip lasted about a month and it was awful. The food was so bad it made you want to fast for ever.It was absolutely inedible, sometimes disgusting. After a few days of travel a lot of us young people rebelled and the chap in charge of the food on the ship decided to feed us cheese and pickle sandwiches instead of cooked food. For nearly a month, that is all Nunzio and I, and many other young people, could eat.

However, on that ship, I met one of the best friends of my life. His name is Fred Lax, a Polish engineer. He is a year older than me, and still lives in Sydney with his wife Alberta from Rome. Fred graduated in Italy and spoke almost perfect Italian. But he also spoke Russian, Polish and enough English to become my personal interpreter during my first months in Australia.

04/08/2013

Fred and I after a couple of weeks in Australia

Aiuattist?

My first job in Sydney, or to be more precise, my second job, as I had worked for a few weeks in an Italian shop that sold fruit and vegetables, was in a large factory that produced many metal products. I was assigned to the section that made tin boxes for pipe tobacco. In that group, except for me, they were all Australians. At noon we stopped an hour for lunch and I, after eating my sandwich in the first five minutes, not being able to talk to anyone, used to open a notebook and try to draw something or facial caricatures.

There was a middle-aged woman who was continually asking me something that sounded like: "aiuattist?".

And I kept saying, "No understand." It was all the English I knew then. After a few days I met a Calabrian fellow who worked in another department of the same factory. He spoke English and I asked him to come and see what this woman wanted from me. During the subsequent lunch he came to our department and after talking with the woman he said: "She wanted to know if you are an artist and if you know how to shape things with clay, because her brother in law has a mannequin factory, and is looking for someone who can do this work."

As a boy, I had played a little with clay. I had modelled the head of Mussolini, some flowers and stuff like that, so I told her that I was able to do these things. She gave me the address of the factory and the following Saturday, my friend Fred and I, went to see the man who made the mannequins.

It was a small factory which employed about ten people and one of them spoke comprehensible Italian. The owner showed me a woman's hand made of plastic and asked me if I was able to model a hand like that with different finger positions. As I nodded yes, he gave me that hand as a model and a package of clay.

The appointment was for the next weekend. I could not tell you how hard I worked that week, but every afternoon, returning from work, I found almost all the fingers loose from the hand or otherwise deformed by the damp cloth that I used to put over it. Finally I rolled all the small bits in a sheet of newspaper and the next Saturday, accompanied by my friend Fred, went to bring everything back to the mannequin factory.

As Fred explained to the owner that I had not been able to model a hand like the one he had requested, he examined all the broken fingers of clay, and noted the detail with which I had copied the nails and the back of the fingers. He began to laugh. He took a piece of wire and began to make a skeleton of the hand and told Fred to tell me to try again with that.

After becoming aware of my naivety and inexperience, I tried again and was able to make an almost perfect copy of the hand that he had given me.

I realize that this story is getting too long and boring.

I just want to add that the owner of the factory told Fred that he would give me four guineas (four pounds and four shillings) for each pair of hands that I would model for him.

Now, considering that, in my work, I was earning only seven pounds a week, that seemed a fabulous offer, as, to model a pair of hands, took me no more than five or six hours.

As a result of this, I left my job in the factory of boxes for tobacco, and became a modeler of mannequins. In fact, after the hands, I also modeled heads of children, women, youth and even small animals, rabbits and koala that were sold in the stalls of the fairs.

05/08/2013

The sentence

The situation in Italy is getting too complicated. In the court of Cassation they condemned Berlusconi, not only to four years in prison but he has also been barred from his candidacy. It seems clear that the judiciary sentenced him for tax offenses probably committed by his companies, but, to permanently eliminate him from the political scene.

This is very serious because Silvio Berlusconi is still the leader of the party that is ruling Italy along with the Democratic Party. It is not clear how you can get out of this impasse. In October we don’t know what to expect. Meanwhile Grillo wants to save Italy by using bad words.

The Letta government is doing pretty well, but in small, almost imperceptible steps. It should take more courage to correct the many vices of the Italians. The rot is not only in politics, the judiciary and the public service. It is everywhere. We need to reform the mentality of the Italians. They have to relearn what is needed to become industrious, productive, competitive and less talkative. Let's stop feeling brilliant and superior to others. If we really are so smart, let us prove it by creating our own jobs. And let’s ban political recommendations.

I am very old now and fortunately my children and grandchildren live in a totally different country from Italy. But, I love Italy. I love it to the point of leaving my family in Australia to come and live here my last years. Only a real pacification between the two major parties can save Italy from the disaster of its a real sutuation. The many members of the Democratic Party should try to become truly social democrats and not just antiberlusconians. Maybe this is the time in which, even in Italy, a real alternative to the government of the country to solve the many problems that afflict it, can be realised.

07/08/2013

The fruit shop

I am unsure what to write today. In my mind there are too many things in field. I could blame both the ruling parties, who instead of making the right laws that could put poor Italy back on track, continue to be concerned with the fate of a senator, even if his name is Berlusconi.

I'm tired of the constant chatter on television of so-called journalists and political hacks who talk, talk, talk, often contradicting themselves, always attacking someone or something, not realizing that Italy needs facts and serious reforms, not small talk.

However, it’s none of my business. At my age I don’t give a damn about politics.

In fact, now I'm remembering what I was doing during the first months of my arrival in Australia. My first job was in a store of fruit and vegetables, in the commercial center of Sydney. That was one of the most famous fruit shops in the city. It belonged to a Mr. Donato, considered then, perhaps wrongly, to be the richest Italian in Sydney. This shop was particularly famous for the excellent fruit salad, produced and put on sale at noon for the many workers who were employed in nearby buildings.

During lunch breaks, the store became very crowded, especially with girls who came to eat the fruit salad that I had helped to prepare.

During that hour, I was behind the counter washing dishes because, not knowing English, I could not serve. A boy from Messina, who worked there, used to say, in English, to the girls: "You see that young man who washes the dishes? He is a doctor!"

Some girls came to ask me something and I, not knowing how to respond, used to say: "No understand."

After a few weeks I left that job to find one where no one spoke Italian. I thought that would be the only way for me to learn English.

In reality I started to learn English by going to the cinema. I used to listen carefully to the words, without following the stories. And after a while, I began to distinguish the meaning of some words and, later on, when I started to express myself in English, many people used to ask me if I had been in America before coming to Australia.

Evidently, through the many American films that I had seen, I had learned many words and a little of the accent.

One of my great joys, after ten years of residence in Australia, was when, one day, while playing bowls and talking with an Australian fellow, he said to me: "Sam, I know you are Italian, but you were born here, right?".

Not bad, considering that I had started to learn English when I was thirty years old.

08/08/2013

In Italy to stay and my favorite cars

In 1987 I went to Italy, not as a tourist, but to stay. I wanted, once again, to become an Italian citizen after nearly forty years of Australian citizenship.

No records regarding my name could be found at The Town Hall of Bronte. It seems that a fire had destroyed the original local archives and when it was rebuilt, they had forgotten to add my name as somebody who had immigrated to Australia. I had some problems, but finally in the Council, They found everything needed to release me an identity card and an Italian passport.

I went to live in the house of my brother Peppino, which now belongs to my niece Zina, where I live now in an apartment that I built on the second floor of the house.

When I arrived in Italy, Simon, the third son of my nephew Sandro, had just been born and his parents asked me to be his Godfather. I pointed out to the priest that I was a secular non-believer but he said that it was not important and even gave me communion.

Now Simon is the tallest of his brothers, is a very intelligent guy majoring in engineering. He is respected and loved by everyone.

In Italy I met Dr. Nunzio Meli who soon became my best friend. With him, his wife and my niece who drove the car, we went to spend a couple of weeks in Montecatini every year. Each morning they would enjoy morning treatments and in the afternoons we all went to visit the most beautiful places of Tuscany. With them we also made long journeys in Spain and other European countries with a Mercedes Benz 3000 that I had bought in Switzerland as soon as I had arrived in Italy.

I've always been a fan of Mercedes Benzes. I had bought my first car of this brand in Sydney when I was 42 years old. At the time, my wife and I were at the opening of a new sales office of these cars in Rose Bay, a suburb near my house, and there were many beautiful cars on display there. I said to my wife: "One of these days I'll buy one of these beautiful cars." My wife said, "If you do not buy one now you will never do it." I, then, behaving a bit like my father when he had to assert his authority, approached a vendor and bought a huge limousine in a bright blue color that was a marvel.

I used this Mercedes for many years until I decided to buy a Mercedes Benz Pagoda, which was then the leader in the German Mercedes car production.

With this car I, my wife and my daughters, who were then seventeen and fifteen years old, spent a year in Italy and visited almost all of Europe. We even wanted to go to Russia through the Ukraine when an officer at the border said: "Are you crazy wanting to go to Russia with this car?”.

This made me change my mind and we went back to Italy. That year away from school was very beneficial to my daughters since it gave them a lot of self-confidence and freed them from the provincialism typical of young Australians.

Going back to the Mercedes, I have bought five of these cars, three in Australia and two in Italy. The last one I bought was for my niece Zina and we use it only to go to Catania or anywhere outside the perimeter of Bronte.

08/14/14

At the party, of Sandra and Steve

A vivid memory that always comes to mind is that of the party that my daughter

Sandra and her husband Stephen held to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and their fiftieth birthdays in Italy, and specifically in Montecatini.

This party was attended by many Australian lawyers and their wives, mostly colleagues or friends of my daughter Sandra and her husband.

The festival was celebrated in the magnificent Villa Rospigliosi of Lamporecchio.

I cannot find the right words to describe the beauty, the splendor, the indescribable magnificence of this great palace built by the will of a pope and designed by one of the most architects of the Italian Baroque period. I was fascinated by the charming frescoes, sculptures and furniture of the great halls.

The only people to attend from Bronte were my nephew

Sandro with his new bride Graziella and I.

All of the other guests, as I have already said, were colleagues of my daughter Sandra, and many friends and colleagues of her husband Steve. In addition to the fabulous and delicious dinner in the halls of Villa Rospigliosi, the next day we were all invited to participate in a wonderful long lunch on the premises of the Medici Farm of Monsummano Terme.

15/08/2014

The armistice

In July 1943 Mussolini had been arrested and on September 8 an armistice was declared. King Vittorio Emanuele, along with General Badoglio, the new head of government, fled to the south of Italy, already occupied by the Americans, leaving the army and Italy in disarray. Meanwhile, Mussolini, freed by the Germans, had founded the Italian Social Republic with its capital in Salo'.

I then belonged to the second company of cadets and found myself in Tuscany, in a small town called Fornacette, where we had gone to complete the course.

In fact, in Fornacette I stood for my last exams to become a lieutenant; exactly on the 7th of September, the day before the armistice. I remember the rather ridiculous episode that happened on the ninth of September.

On that day, the commander of our company was a Lieutenant called Santangela. I don’t know how to define him except to say he was a Neapolitan and particularly silly. Our task was to disarm the Germans, our new enemies. Our commander took us to an area of an old, desecrated church, which had been turned into a stable. Above the donkey’s manger, there was still a fresco of the Madonna with Child. All the cadets were lying on the grass outside, with bullets in the chamber of muskets and, ready for a hypothetical battle. I, being the only vedette (person on look-out), was hiding behind the wall while the lieutenant was inside the stable.

At one point, on the road, appeared a car from which a German soldier came out and walked straight to the stable. He saw me and asked: "Where is your commander ? "

I called the lieutenant and told him that there was a German who wanted to say something. The German told him to immediately put down the weapons. Our brave lieutenant told him that we were only cadets in drills and immediately offered him his gun. The German took all our rifles and broke the butt of each one knocking it down firmly on a big rock that was in that garden. All the guns had a cartridge in the chamber, so we expected that, at any moment, a shot would kill the soldier, who grabbed the guns by the barrel before tossing them on the stone.

Instead nothing happened. One soldier brought our entire company on the road as prisoners. The other German soldier never came out of the car. However, most of us fled into the surrounding woods and ended up at the huge pine forest of Livorno, at the center of which there were many fig trees. For days we could only eat the skins of the figs left by the birds that had eaten the fruit.

In a farmhouse, on the edge of the pine forest, a Tuscan farmer, in exchange for my uniform, had given me a pair of terribly ragged pants, a ripped shirt and some boiled potatoes. With these, I had made up my mind to reach Sassuolo, where I was renting a room and had decent civilian clothes.

The trip was a nightmare. At every stop there were Germans on duty, who gathered all soldiers in uniform. When we arrived in Modena, I saw many Germans on the sidewalk of the station. I walked towards the end of the long train and, after getting off, I walked in a lane, on the outskirts of Modena. At the end of it I saw a German soldier, so I rang the door closest to me. A young lady opened and asked me what I wanted. I explained my situation and begged her to help me.

She made me enter and prepared me a cup of milk with magnificent Emilia bread of which I will never forget the taste. While I was eating that divine food, she mended my pants. More than a lady, to me she looked like an angel.

After having fed me, she showed me how to get to the railroad for Sassuolo, where I arrived a few hours later and, after a wonderful refreshing shower, put on my civilian clothes that I had kept in the room since the beginning of the course.

24/08/2013

Mr Talamo

After the armistice, thousands and thousands of former southern military were disbanded in northern Italy and unable to reach their families for lack of means of transport. There were no trains or buses. Nothing worked anymore.

In Milazzotto’s apartment it was incredibly cold. I do not remember having felt so cold in my entire life. With me and Milazzotto there were also two other shoemakers from Bronte, also military who had remained in northern Italy. One was Salvatore Trischitta and the other Nunzio Prestianni. I do not know for sure, but I doubt that they would be still alive. We had a small space heater for coal or wood.

We burned many things into it: all superfluous chairs, baseboards and frames of doors and windows of all the rooms, and a small amount of coal that the mother of my girl, Lina, had helped us to buy. In the evening, before going to bed, we used to wear balaclavas and everything we owned. Between the covers, we used to put lots of crumpled paper of newspapers supplied by my little Lina.

Often a Mr. Talamo came to visit us. He had been living in Milan for a long time and was the brother of a dear friend of mine, Gennaro Talamo from Bronte. He was a representative, I do not know exactly of what, but he helped me a lot by bringing me first some leaves of tobacco that I would wet, roll with patience and with the help of a tool, made by me, which contained a razor blade, I sliced those rolls to make pipe tobacco that he sold, thus making me earn some money.

I was also taught by him to make models of women's shoes. With the help of cardboard cutouts that he had given me, I could design various styles and add many decorations. I made lots of them, of all types and for all seasons. Mr. Talamo could sell them and he gave me most of the money he could get.

25/08/2013

Liberation

I lived with Milazzotto from the winter of '43 until May of '45. Then I had a fake ID and my name was Joseph Cataldo, from the province of Trapani and born in 1911. The mother of my girlfriend Lina, who had all the right contacts in the Milan underground, had procured it for me.

While in Milan, I belonged to the brigade Garibaldi where I met some important members of the Italian Communist Party.

On the 25th of April 1945, the day of liberation, a revolution broke out in Milan. The partisans had come down in the city and the Germans were surrendering everywhere. Even from the building where I lived a small group of young people left in a van. We had no real weapons. I had an emptied hand grenade that belonged to a neighbor. It was a relic from the great war. Another had a small real gun. The others had some shotguns or fake pistols.

With those weapons, partly false, we attacked a big truck of Germans who immediately raised their hands and gave us the vehicle that was loaded with all sorts of good things. We went immediately to deliver all at a collection center, close to Piazzale Loreto. We later learned that many of the so-called honest partisans often took possession of nearly everything confiscated from the Germans.

The disorder in Milan was total. A few days later we heard the news that Mussolini had been captured, killed and hung, by his feet, in a service station in Piazzale Loreto. Nunzio Prestianni and I went to see. It was a hellish scene. The body of the leader hung on to the remains of a roof of a demolished service station still wearing a German coat. Next to him was also the body of his mistress Clara Petacci. She was hung by her feet and her skirt was stopped by a coat hook a little above the knees.

The crowd around was going absolutely crazy.

I remember an elderly woman who took a gun from a partisan and fired three shots to the body of Mussolini shouting the names of his three sons who had died in the war. I remember the pick-up on which Achille Starace was brought, wearing gymnastics clothes. His eyes were bulging. He was terrified. They knocked him off the car, on the ground. He was trying to attach himself to the legs of a huge partisan who pushed him away with a kick and discharged his machine gun on him. It was creepy. They tied his feet with wire and hung him next to his beloved leader while his body was still moving in the process of death.

For several days I had these things in front of my eyes and I found it hard to eat without the wish to throw up.

Performing all these horrible crimes were the much-glorified partisans, our so-called liberators. A large number of them, the most bloodthirsty, were communists. This started to change my mind about the ideology that for years I had followed with so much fervor.

29/08/2013

Syria and Chemical weapons

The situation in Syria is becoming extremely hot. With the use, more or less proved, of chemical weapons, Obama wants to start an armed intervention to punish Assad, the king of Syria, who, for years has been fighting a revolutionary movement assisted by Al Caida.

America, with these unwise interventions in Europe, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, etc. tries to export his beloved democracy in countries that often, with a democratic political system, become absolutely unmanageable. I hope that the U.S. Congress will reject these despicable cravings of Obama, as did the British parliament.

Our Pope Francis is absolutely against the initiative of Obama, an initiative that could lead to a world war. I agree with him. To have true democracy, if this really exists, we should arrive at that point with the maturity of the people, not by coercion or war.

30/08/2013

About Malthus

Finally, this month of August is gone. We still have nine days to the fateful date on which the revocation of Berlusconi's political freedom will be voted. Whatever happens, I do not think that the Letta government will fall even with a possible negative outcome of this vote in the Senate.

Berlusconi contradicts himself. He says that if the Democrats shall vote against him, the government will fall. At the same time, he also wants it to continue with the reforms that Italy urgently needs. I really do not understand what is going on.

Strangely, I'm thinking about the theories of Malthus of a couple of centuries ago. I think the Malthusian catastrophe, wrong because it believed it was impossible to produce enough food for a growing population, now seens valid because it is becoming increasingly difficult to find work for the immense and ever-increasing number of unemployed people worldwide.

When I was about forty years old in Australia, I wrote a letter to an Australian parliamentarian. I asked him to suggest to whoever was responsible in the ONU, to distribute to all the poor girls from age twelve in Africa and other poor regions of the world, a few dollars a month, until the day of their first pregnancy. The gentleman, perhaps outraged, never answered my letter.

However, I still think that if something like that had been done fifty years ago, many problems of today's world would be more easily solved.

In Italy, it is naive to think that, even if a strong recovery in industrial and economic activities would happen, it might be possible to occupy the hordes of unemployed, especially the young and the many migrants who flock to our shores. There could never be sufficient unemployment benefits for our numbers of unemployed. The future of any government, with or without broad agreements, is uncertain. The problems are huge and it does not seem that there are any truly plausible solutions.

01/09/2013

Linoleum tiles

While working in the factory, in the block of flats where I lived, I met a Maltese chap who spoke a little Italian. He spoke enough Italian for us to establish a conversation. He was an applicator of linoleum tiles, in homes, especially in kitchens, and I had gone a couple of times, during my free Saturdays, to help him in his work. So I had learned, where to buy tiles, glue, and Masonite, to be fixed on the wooden floors, and on which to attach the tiles.

Now, in Sydney, Italians ran most of the fruit and vegetable shops. Every Saturday morning I went into one of these stores and began to praise the owner for the exposure of his fruit, asserting that it was a wonder to me, and was absolutely superior to the exposure of fruit in Italy. However, I used to also point out that the wooden floor was terrible in comparison and I showed a few tiles of linoleum that I had in a bag.

The reaction was usually the same: "Yes, but who knows how much this would cost."

"I'll tell you right now", I replied, and after measuring the area of the shop, I presented the cost, always around thirty, and never over forty pounds.

"That would be fine," they usually said, "but we are open every day."

"No problem," I repeated, "if you give me the shop when you close, on Saturday night you can re-open at nine or, at most, ten o'clock the following Sunday."

Closing the deal, I used to propose, to one of the guys who worked in the same store, to give him five pounds for one night of work with me to cover the floor. Normally they accepted and I, except for the cost of the material, which was between nine and twelve pounds, plus five for the help, was able to earn at least fifteen pounds for one night of very hard work. Considering that in the factory I was earning only seven pounds a week, I felt I was doing very well.

01/09/1913

Bronte insieme

A few months after my arrival in Italy, not on vacation, but to stay, I realized that in Bronte, very few people were using the computer, or at least they were able only to do simple accounting or writing tasks.

I had begun to use it when I was 60 years old and I could do many things with graphics and creating websites.

Additionally I could already program simple applications with the use of a MacIntosh.

I wanted to make a website for my countrytown and I had thought to call it bronteonline.it. At the same time I wanted to form a group of young people to be taught how to do these things and deepen their knowledge of computer science in general. My partners in this initiative were Nino Liuzzo and another four or five young men. We used to meet at a local property that belonged to one of them and I taught them how to prepare and upload web pages.

However, after a few months, the initial enthusiasm for this work began to wane, and many of my students no longer wanted to remain part of the group. Eventually, only Nino Liuzzo, a retired banking man, decided to stay with me and he continued to help in the construction of the site. One day he said to me: "Why don't we call this site bronteinsieme.it?"

I liked the idea and thus was born the site that has become very popular with Bronte's people living out of Bronte, in Italy and abroad. Of course, the learned contribution of the librarian Franco Cimbali and the many other contributors who have added a larger content on the site, are the architects of its success.

However, we must acknowledge Nino Liuzzo, who has managed Bronteinsieme from the beginning and is still president of the non-profit organization of the same name. The really winning move was to extract from newspapers all the news regarding Bronte and publish them on the site. This has exponentially increased the visits to our pages.

I have translated the essential content of the website into English and am proud to have provided an opportunity to the children or grandchildren of many of our fellow citizens living in America, Australia and other countries, to know a little history of their country of origin.

04/09/2013

Chess

I have always been an avid chess player. I started playing when I was about eighteen. A classmate of mine in elementary school who had been studying in a religious school, wanted to teach me to play chess. He was not very good at it, but loved this game immensely. When he was teaching me the moves of all the pieces, usually he played with me without the queen. After a few weeks I was beating him even with equal pieces. At that time, the Bronte's Circle of Culture had shifted to a building in front of the Capizzi College and was called Public Employment.

In those days, there were many members who loved to play chess. I remember the brothers Guastella, the Santangelo, Professor Lupo, Dr. Ponzo and many others. Until our departure for Australia, Nunzio Ponzo and I and were the best players.

When I decided to return to Italy to stay, I thought I could find a lot of people here to play with, but at the Cultural Circle of Bronte they play only cards. When they elected me President of the Club, I tried to revive the desire to engage in this game that is definitely much more intelligent than trump or broom cards. For this I even purchased five new large chessboards and chess sets.

But it did not work. Most of the members of this club don’t like to play chess even if they know the game, as it requires too much concentration.

Only two of the members, the bar manager Nino Saitta and the current president, architect Lorenzo Capace, play chess with me. Saitta, especially, who has played with me for many years now, has reached a level almost similar to mine. The president, who plays a lot with him, has also reached, more or less, the same level.

05/09/2013

Pendle Hill

After about two years of residence in Sydney I began to understand what people were saying and I could express myself in just understandable English. My mother used to write to me often: "If you haven’t enough money for a ticket to return home we shall pay it from here."

But for me it was not a question of money, as I had already earned a lot. My English was still inadequate and I wanted to really learn it.

Among my Italian friends that I used to see, there was a certain Peter Garofano, a builder who was not successful in his trade for his many vices.

He had a contract to do renovations to a convent of Italian Franciscan monks in Pendle Hill, a suburb quite far from the center of Sydney.

He suggested to me to go there as supervisor of his workers, offering me a wage which I considered adequate for the service. In the convent, the superior was a young monk who was a few years older than me. We soon became good friends and, in my free time, I painted for him some pictures of sacred images.

I also informed him that I was a non-believer but this did not affect our friendship at all. In fact he told me that he had many doubts himself before accepting the priesthood.

However, he had managed to keep the faith through prayer. The work went very slowly due to lack of materials. The builder used to send me masons without the bricks. It was an affair truly disorganized.

In Sydney I had met a beautiful girl to whom I proposed to get engaged with a phone call from Pendle Hill, and in the end it was my friend, the Franciscan monk who married us a few months later.

06/09/213

In Australia with my wife and my two young daughers

The Buildings

Now I'll tell you how I became a builder of houses and apartments in Australia. Towards the end of the year, 1954, that is, when I was already married, with all the various trades that I had done up to that time, I had accumulated enough money to buy a house. Though it was in one of the better suburbs, it was in very poor condition. I knew two Italian guys, one from Messina that could do a bit of everything in construction work, and a Tuscan, who specialized in all types of plaster. With the two of them, and my help as designer and laborer, with this house, we managed to make a comfortable and very attractive home. At that time I was producing and selling fluorescent lamps and acrylic neon signs, but these two guys asked me to form a partnership specializing in renovations of existing building that required to be modernized.

My job was to get the jobs and provide all the necessary equipment and materials, while they would carry out the work. It worked well for a while and we renewed many homes and buildings mostly belonging to Italians. One day, as we were giving the final touches to a very nice house, in a suburb called Mascot, out of a huge Mercedes Benz comes a distinct Australian gentleman. He was very tall. I arrived just above his navel. He asks, "Who is the boss here? "

I felt a bit intimidated and said:

"You can talk to me if you want. What can I do for you?"

"You have done a great job with this residence. Who was the architect?"

"Actually, for this house we did not hire an architect. We did everything by ourselves."

"Congratulations!" he said: "I know what a terrible state this building was in. Congratulations indeed. I would like to show you a house that I'm thinking of buying. Could you spend half hour with me and give me your opinion?"

"Of course," I replied, and we both got into his big car and headed toward Vaucluse, the most elegant and exclusive suburb of Sydney. The house of which he had spoken to me was, in fact, a sumptuous villa in the middle of a very large garden with wonderful views over the bay of Sydney.

The building was noble but in very poor condition. He told me that the asking price for it was 25,000 sterlings. I, not having the slightest idea of the value of the property, advised him to offer them 22,000 and gave him my address and my phone number.

After a few days, he, very excited and happy, told me that the offer had been accepted and that he wanted me to undertake the renewal of the villa. I did not know which way to turn. I did not believe that I would be able to complete a job as challenging as that. I told him that there was still need of an architect. He replied that he had total confidence in me and I could do whatever I thought necessary.

Since my partners did not speak or understand English, I had to use an Italian carpenter for many years in Australia, who could also serve as foreman. My partners did not like this situation, and after a week they told me that they preferred to work only for Italian customers. Thus, I had to liquidate the partnership with them, and founded, with my wife and my first child, a new company called: Di Bella Constructions Pty. Ltd.

07/09/2013

Money for the boys

The gentleman to whom I had renovated the villa in Vaucluse was called Fred Fitzpatrick. Not only was he very happy with the result of our work, but had also become one of my best friends and, for the most part, the purveyor of countless other jobs that I obtained through his recommendations. On the cost of the renewal of his villa I, in agreement with him, was adding 10% for my company, as well as the salary for my personal contribution to the work. I remember that when the work was completed, there remained a balance of 300 pounds he owed me. He asked me if he could give me that amount in cash, I said yes and he began to count the money with ten pounds notes and while he counted, was going from one hundred and eighty to one hundred and ten, and so on. When he had put on the table five hundred sterlings instead of three hundred I said: "Fred, you’re making a mistake, these are five instead of three hundred sterlings." He began to laugh and said, "No, I am not making any mistakes. I'm very happy for the great work you have done and I want you, with these two hundred sterlings, to have a party with your employees."

Without any doubt, my encounter with this gentleman was at the root of my success in the construction industry. After the renewal of his villa in Vaucluse, followed renovations to some of his men's fashion stores, spread out over many suburbs of Sydney and the construction of my first block of apartments.

07/09/2013

Time for reflection

Tomorrow the junta of the Senate is expected to vote the probable decline of Berlusconi's political activities. The risk of the fall of the Letta government as a result of this vote, is substantial, but I do not think the gonerment will fall. The consequences would be disastrous. Without any doubt, the toughest part of the PD wants to get rid of not only Senator Berlusconi as soon as possible, but I believe the many senators of the Democratic Party, that are not antiberlusconians, will need to think twice before voting on his decline as it could have deadly consequences in the interests of Italy.

Right now, while we begin to see some tentative signs of recovery, our beloved Italy could fall again into the chaos and uncertainty of a few weeks ago. This would be all for the sake of revenge. Some members of the left refuse to accept peace between the two major parties, which could really solve the problems, which have faced Italy for many years now. Berlusconi is not a saint. Nor are the majority of Italians.

The full-blown virtue of the working or white-collar class not to evade taxes depends solely on the fact that it is impossible for them to evade them, not because they would not do it even if they had such opportunity.

Berlusconi is a man of exceptional ability. But he is also a man who, perhaps unwittingly, arouses great support in people who listen to him, up to an inexplicable adoration, and also an aormous dislike in large numbers of voters. That fact can generate a devastating hate that does not seem to be based on valid reasons. Many people even want him dead, but if you ask them why they hate him so much, they cannot give a valid and convincing reason. The same applies to those who worship him. They too are without any plausible answers.

At the head of the government I prefer a guy like Enrico Letta. He is a moderate. He is competent without the complications of the charismatic leaders who often create deep sympathies or antipathies, responsible for most hateful divisions of people.

08/09/2013

Bank’s suggestions

For some years I had built villas in the most prestigious areas of Sydney and several blocks of apartments for doctors, lawyers and various investors. One day, when I invited the manager of my bank at Bondi Beach, (famous as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world), to have a pizza with me, he says: " You know, Sam, you're making a lot of people rich while you are satisfied with the crumbs? "

"With the crumbs?" I reply, "I gain 10% on the cost of all the things I do."

"Yes” he said, “but those are still crumbs. Why don’t you build apartments on your own?"

"And where am I going to find the money to buy such expensive land in the areas in which I work?"

"And what are we here for?" he said.

To make it short, the bank offered me a loan of seventy thousand sterlings with which I bought some land in the Vaucluse area and built twelve elegant apartments, six with two and six with three bedrooms. When the construction was almost completed, I invited real estate agents of the area to visit the apartments and put them up for sale. My cost for a unit of two rooms was around twenty-two thousand sterlings, and for that of three rooms, around twenty-five thousand.

The agents calculated prices ranging from ninety thousand to one hundred and thirty thousand. I was stunned and said: " But where could you find buyers who pay so much money?"

They told me not to worry about it. A few weeks later, while the painters had not yet finished their work, the apartments were all sold. I was in disbelief and amazement. Effectively you could earn even too much money.

Then the taxation in Australia was reasonable and it had never crossed my mind to evade it. An additional incentive to remain honest was that in Australia, when they catch a tax evader, they don't put him in jail but they confiscate absolutely everything he owns.

In Australia, all expenses are deductible, even those that are made for improvements. To reduce some of the huge amounts of taxes I had to pay, I bought a property of one thousand eight hundred acres, so I could deduct from my taxes what I spent there for improvements.

Why are these systems not copied in Italy?

06/10/2013

The pick up truck

About six months after my arrival in Australia, already speaking in English, albeit sluggish, I could figure out a good portion of what people were telling me. Having accumulated enough money, I decided to buy a second-hand means of transport. My choice fell on a pickup truck of English manufacture: Vangard. The body of the truck was quite presentable, but everything else was in a state that would be an understatement to call it disastrous.

I had to take a tin of water with me to be added, from time to time, to the radiator because, after a few kilometers, everything was boiling and puffing like a locomotive of past centuries. However, with this machine I showed up at a company that made fluorescent lamps and was looking for people who would sell them. I was hired to earn fifteen pounds a week with a commitment to sell at least fifteen lamps at the price of twelve pounds each. I never managed to sell more than ten or eleven in one week and I felt terribly guilty about it, but the boss was overjoyed. In fact, as I later learned from one of his English workmen, a lamp cost him two pounds and a few shillings.

One day he asked me to exchange my pickup truck for his van that, for some reason was difficult to start. The van was like new and I warned him that my pickup was not as good as it looked. He still wanted to make the exchange, with 100 extra pounds that I could give him in two installments within three months. I signed two post-dated checks, we exchanged the documents of the machines and completed the deal. After a few days he sent one of his employees, with the truck loaded with fluorescent lamps, to a town near Sydney. The vehicle's engine melted due to lack of water.I can’t tell you how angry my employer was! I then had to leave that job but I had previously convinced his English worker to come and work with me in a garage that I had just rented, where he had to mount the lamps after having bought the components, and I would sell them. We made quite a lot of money in this endeavour and afterwards we had to engage many other sellers, as, by now, I had started to make and sell neon signs with letters and a body made of Plexiglas with fluorescent lamps inside. I had called this new activity Vivalight Co. and used to put this name, with my phone number, on all the many signs that I was selling. I remember, a very strange thing about this. Many years later, when I had stopped working even as a building contractor, I still received calls from builders of commercial buildings as the architects who had designed the projects had ordered: Plastic lettering to be supplied by the Vivalight Co.

12/10/2013

The Queen in Australia

In 1952, the young Queen Elizabeth came to visit Australia with her handsome prince. We are talking about sixty two years ago. At that time I was doing models for the mannequin factory and at the same time, I had started another business. I applied a product called flock to sacred statues and statuettes that, after the procedure, appeared to be dressed in clothes of velvet. For this process, I had obtained a provisional patent for a period of nine months. The visual effect was spectacular and when I submitted samples to the largest distributor of sacred statues in Sydney, the managers of the company were thrilled. However, the orders never came through as they guessed the way I was getting my product and began to make appeals against my patent. When this expired, they begun to produce statues with my system. However, the initiative was not successful and after a few years the sacred statues with velvet suits had completely disappeared from circulation.

I continued to apply this product on animal figurines, rabbits, koalas and the like, which appeared covered with hair, and we were selling these things to operators of stalls and shops of toys.

A few months prior to the arrival of the young queen, I had bought a medallion made of plastic, which depicted in bas-relief the image of the young Queen. I proposed to the owner of the mannequins factory where I worked, to reproduce that medallion in plaster. I would have the medallions colored and treated with my Flock, and I said that we would equally divide the money made from sales. He agreed to the idea. and we prepared several hundred of these medallions. My partner had a representative for the sale of its mannequins and he also asked him to sell our medallions.

This gentleman, a real crook, gave us less than one pound for each medallion, but he sold them for eight or ten pounds each, so he was selling very few of them.

Then I said to my partner that I would have bought and sold all of them by myself.. And so I did. Every morning I used to fill my van with medallions and went to the shopping centers in nearly all the suburbs of Sydney to sell them at four or five pounds a piece, emptying the van, often during the morning only. When the queen arrived I did not have a single sample left of that medallion that I had enriched with the color of the face and the clothes of the queen and with that extraordinary background which looked like an extremely brilliant red velvet.

I'm sorry not to have retained at least one copy of that blessed medallion. However, with it I made quite a lot of money.

15/10/2013

Antonietta

During my first year at university, one of my good friends was Gigi, who commented on all of my poems and all that I used to write. One day, walking through the corso, we saw a very tall lady wearing a black shawl that covered her from head to knees, and next to her there were two girls that reached her shoulders.

After having passed us, one of the girls, a unique beauty, turned and looked at us with a strange insistence. I, at first, thought that they could be my relatives or Gigi’s, completely unknown to us. However, we decided to follow them through to the church of the Capuchins and sit a few rows behind them. The girl continued to turn and look at us intensely as before. At the exit of the Mass we still followed them up to their house which was close to the Maugeri Coffe shop. I then took a piece of paper and wrote: “Baby, I do not know who you are but I'm crazy about you. Toto Di Bella.”

I then went alongside the door of her house and when she appeared, I showed the note that she accepted and ran away. I went back to the bar, where Gigi was waiting for me and I was somehow disappointed.

The following Sunday the story was repeated with all the details and I said to Gigi, "Maybe this girl is more interested in you than in me.” So Gigi went to buy a sheet of paper at the tobacconist fronting the College, and began to write a polished and long love letter with references to classical figures of Botticelli, Raphael and others. Then he took what had written to the girl who accepted it as she had done with me.

Gigi was absolutely over the moon or perhaps much higher. The following evening we were still at the Maugeri’s cafe and Gigi went to see if the girl had given him an answer. He was in a state of extraordinary excitement while I was sitting at a table a little incredulous and somehow disappointed. After a few minutes he comes back to the cafe walking like a man under a load of trouble. I ask him what had happened and he gives me the letter he had written the night before, saying: I have mail for you! Behind the paper in which he had written with such fervor was: “I 'm fond of Toto Di Bella. Many kisses to Toto Di Bella. Antoinette.”

I did not know how to comfort my friend Gigi, to whom I was so very close. So I promised him that I would not continue any relationship with this girl that looked as beautiful as she seemed stupid. After a few weeks I went to Catania and I did not see that girl again, but, after the war I learned that she had married an accountant named Di Bella

16/10/2013

What do Italians want?

Berlusconi has fallen. Good. Berlusconi goes to social services. Good. Berlusconi decides to give a vote of confidence in the Letta government. Good. But when will this left stop to talk about Berlusconi? To hear the deafening chatter of television these days, despite the fact that in Italy the economic problems, continue to multiply, we still talk, almost exclusively, of Berlusconi.

I am not aware that the Italians are so interested in whether the Alfaniani, the Fittoniani or any other ani, shall prevail, but the Democratic Party, should stop talking about Berlusconi and care, while he has the power to govern, for the implementation of those reforms that the country urgently needs. The only way to put things in place in Italy is to cut all the unnecessary spending. Since we have a mouthy and unproductive parliament, Letta should govern by decrees, so to bypass on all those obsolete state structures and bureaucratic procedures that hamper the performance and the smooth running of our enterprises. Even medical care, in my opinion, should be deeply reformed.

To let all Italian doctors become civil servants who write only prescriptions and order, mostly useless blood tests, or other tests, (often just as useless), has been an unforgivable mistake. This, certainly made many pharmacies very wealthy, not to mention pharmaceutical companies and analytical enterprises, but also made the Italians a nation of hypochondriacs.

Up to the age of 48 years I was also a hypochondriac. I used to read many articles on medicine and was convinced that I had symptoms of many diseases. I was submitting myself to frequent checkups and often I was really ill. One day, at the bowls club where I belonged, a retired professor of the University of Sydney who had taught medicine all his life, joined the club. I was always asking him questions related to my ailments, and one day he said to me: " Sam, if you want to get really well, stay away from doctors and, above all, from pharmacists. When you don’t feel well, sit in a comfortable chair, close your eyes, think of something that gave you much pleasure and you will see that, after ten or fifteen minutes, the illness disappears. Remember that the best doctor in the world is your own body."

I have been following this advice for 45 years and, oddly enough, I'm still here, not only that, but I can still play chess, surf the internet for several hours a day and even find the time to write this nonsense.

18/10/2013

My father in America

In 1968 my father was 86 years old. I had come to Italy to visit and I did not find him in good health. The loss of his wife a couple of months before, had, in some way, weakened his normal good humor. He seemed even smaller, though he was six feet tall and was very sturdily built.

When he saw me and hugged me, he said: "Thank you for coming, but, certainly, I will not see your brother Zino again". " And why not? " I replied, "If he does not come here, we will go to see him in America."

He smiled incredulously and said: "You're always joking..." But I was not joking at all, and in the following days I got a passport for him, issued by the City Council and booked a flight from Palermo to New York for my father and me. Arriving at the airport of Palermo we got on the plane and while we were waiting to take off, my father, tired from his journey in the car, fell fast asleep. The airplane left and, after about an hour, my father woke up and asked me: "When are we leaving?"

I told him that we had already been flying for about an hour, but he said: "You're always joking. Why don't we go down for a while to stretch our legs?"

All the young flight attendants wore miniskirts that were then beginning to be all the rage. When one of them came close to my father to check the seat belt, my father told me: "These girls have rather high skirting, don't they?"

My brother and his wife were waiting for us at the airport. After the usual hugs, they took us to their house, where my father, who still could not believe he was in America, wanted to go to bed to try to make sense of what was going on.

The house of my brother Vincent consisted of 2 floors plus an attic that my brother had leased to a rather nice middle-aged lady who lived alone.

After several days a stream of sympathy was established between her and my father. The lady, almost caressing my father, used to say: "What a lovely old man!" And my father would reply: "(Vossia fa cascara l’occhi marati) Your beauty hurts my eyes.”

Meanwhile he had already forgotten that my mother had died, and, from time to time, was asking me: "When are we going back home? By now, your mum...”

Many people in Bronte knew my father, and when word spread in Brooklyn and Long Island, among the people from Bronte, that Don Alexander was in America, my brother's house became the pilgrimage center where all these villagers came to pay homage to my father.

He absolutely did not know any of them, but he welcomed them all, with his natural warmth, asking them news of their relatives in Bronte and so on. But when the visitors left he was asking us: "Who were these people?” He had not the slightest idea.

After a few weeks I had to return to Sydney for work commitments, but my father remained in America with my brother for about three years. I was told that when he returned home, he would look for his wife. When he was reminded that she had died almost 4 years ago, he, weeping, kept on asking "But why no one told me… "

Since then he never recovered. I again went to Italy to see him before his death, but he did not recognize me. He looked at me for a long time and asked me: "Excuse me, who are you?" -

My father was a great man. He was well liked by everyone for his goodness, fairness and kindness towards everybody.

19/10/2013

Productivity

I confess I do not understand much of the productivity of the Italian workers. However, I did observe some cases that may shed light on the reasons why many Italian workers might seem unproductive.

During my travel to Australia I met a mason who, in his own country town of Sicily, was considered an excellent craftsman, and was very good at his job.

Well, when he arrived in Australia, he was a guest of his brother in law who was building some appartments and hired him as a bricklayer. He had brought a small trowel from Italy and could not, in a day's work, lay more than three or four hundred bricks. In the evening he was very tired and used to complain about how hard he worked.

One day his brother in law said to him: "Look, my friend, you do not earn even the water you drink." God help me! The mason went on a rampage and said: "If you find someone who can do more than me I will work for you gratis for a month." The brother in law replied: "I'll give you that satisfaction."

The next day he engaged three local masons, one Italian who had been in Australia for many years, and the other two of Irish origin. These people had trowels about 40 centimetres long, and, on continuous walls, could lay up to two thousand bricks per day, perfectly aligned and without even getting tired.

The Sicilian mason was stunned and, with that team, he was used only as a labourer. But when he went to work with them permanently, after some months he also could lay, on continuous walls, up to two thousand bricks per day.

I had a similar experience with an extremely good cabinetmaker of my country town and of my same age. When this craftsman arrived with his family in Australia, perhaps around the late sixties or early seventies, he came looking for me and asked me for a job. At the time I had a carpenter from Friuli who was finishing the installation of doors, windows and baseboards in a block of flats that I had just built. I thought it proper to make him work there to overcome language problems.

After a day of work, the carpenter of Friuli had installed six doors, in a workmanlike manner, while my villager had installed only one. The reason was that he did not know how to use all the supports available and suitable to speed up the operation. In fact, his expertise was not that of a carpenter, but strictly that of a cabinetmaker. Afterwards I asked him to make much of the furniture in my house and in this field he proved to be a competent and absolute master. The low productivity of the workers, especially in southern Italy, in my opinion, is not because they don’t want to be productive but because they don’t know how to be.

21/10/2013

Cecily Freezers

When I stopped building and devoted myself only to buying and selling properties, my brother in law came to ask me to have a look at a property that he was thinking of buying in company with one of his friends.

The property consisted of a considerable number of refrigerating chambers and offices in a very large site in Leichardt. The property belonged to an American company that produced and distributed cakes and other sweets.

The condition of the refrigeration section was not good, and from the condenser element ammonia fumes were leaking out and disturbing all the neighborhood. I had recommended to my brother in law to buy the complex immediately as it was very promising, but after two or three weeks, when I learned that he no longer wished to acquire the site I told him that I was willing to buy it.

I went to see the American manager of the property and I asked him what was the last price he would accept. He told me, almost shyly, 250,000 dollars.

Without thinking twice, I gave him a check for twenty-five thousand dollars and we continued to finalize the sales contract as quickly as possible. As soon as I came into possession of the property, I called refrigeration experts who advised me to immediately change the ammonia’s capacitor which was terribly old and rusty and was leaking small amounts of gas that caused all the problems with the City council and the neighbors.

With one of the technicians I went to buy a more modern but second-hand condenser. I purchased one in excellent condition for 2,000 dollars.

A collector of old iron demolished and took away the old capacitor and in the same place we installed the new one. This single operation eliminated all the protests from the Council and the neighborhood.

However, I continued to carry out all necessary repairs to the refrigeration plant and the complete renovation of the electrical system.

To make a long story short, I spent a total of about 70,000 dollars to put the property in order and, with the help of one only employee, after having rented all the refrigerating chambers, for the following three or four years this property was giving me an excellent annual income.

When I decided to come to Italy to stay, my son ln law sold this property for a million and two hundred thousand dollars that I invested in Italian shares assuring me an adequate income for all these years.

22/10/2013

The stability

The Letta government seems to be entering again into fibrillation due to this new law of stability that has managed not to please anybody.

The unions were quick to proclaim a mini general strike. What this may serve, to me, is absolutely incomprehensible and even ridiculous.

On television they talk of anything and everything, and this new dispute between the Fatto Quotidiano and President Napolitano is becoming the joke of the month.

The President made some reference to the tall tales of Fatto Quotidiano and Mr Padellaro, director of Fatto Quotidiano, saying that tall tales are told only by Napoletano. So the Italians waver between one faux pas and the other.

Between Fitto and Alfano there is bad blood and the situation of the Letta government is likely again to shatter.

Personally, I do not know with whom to place my allegiance. This threatened split in the PDL can have deleterious consequences on the future of our Italy.

On the other hand, the PD, which has several fractures, with the four presidential candidates and with the countless currents with different interpretations of its doctrine, remains mired in a series of ideologies ranging from Christian democracy to communism.

In the other part of the government, the Scelta Civica of Monti, many incredible things are happening. Monti has resigned accusing the most important members of his party of treason. Mauro and Casini don’t know which way to turn, and all other components of Scelta Civica have such different ideas between them, to practically eliminate any common political line in that group of MPs.

The Grillini finally begin to express themselves in some of the many television programs of a political nature, but, up to now, they don’t seem to know much and they talk, or rather, gossip about Berlusconi or Napolitano. What do these new occupants of parliamentary seats do? Not much. Perhaps it would be much better if they would keep quiet.

At this point I can only say : poor Letta!! And poor Italy!!

23/10/2013

My first job in Italy

As soon as graduated, I immediately went back to Milan, where an official of the Corriere della Sera had promised to employ me as a proofreader. Of course, I went to live in the apartment of Beppe Milazzotto, and I kept calling this official almost every week, asking news about my assumption that, fortunately, never materialized.

I say fortunately because this would have completely changed my life, and I'm so much in love with my life that, if I could relive it, I would not change a single comma of it.

One day one of our countrymen, a police officer in Milan, came to visit us and told me that there was a company that engaged only graduates as his representatives in the purchase of scrap iron and sale of rebar and sheet metal of all types.

It was the O.F.E.I. (Organizazione Forniture Edili Industriali). My police friend convinced me to go with him to meet the director of this company, the accountant Contorni.

This gentleman did not ask me too many questions and after a few minutes of conversation he told me that he would give me 15,000 lire per month plus a few cents on each kilogram of scrap iron that I would be able to buy in Veneto, from Verona to Trieste, and finally asked me when I could start.

I informed him that, most likely, I would not have been able to distinguish between a piece of wood and a piece of iron, but he said that did not matter. He asked me to get a season ticket for all trains from Milan to the Veneto and gave me a long list of addresses of companies that collected or possessed scrap iron and with whom I had to confer.

After that we said goodbye, but going away, I did take numerous sheets of paper with the letterhead OFEI, which showed branches of the company in almost every region of Italy and through this letterhead, I was presented as being particularly important.

In Milan I got the next letter typed and sent it to all the companies whose addresses Mr Contorni had given me:

Dear Sirs, We are pleased to inform you that in the coming days or weeks, our Dr. Di Bella is going to visit and offer you a possible business relationship between our companies. Please cordially welcome him and he will outline our proposals.

We thank you very much and enclose our best regards,

For O.F.E.I ........ and the usual doodle.

So when I went to knock on the door of one of those companies, they, not only welcomed me with kindness, but I was taken immediately to speak with the principal of the company. To him I proposed to buy not only the scrap iron they had available then, but also any quantity they would have in the future. Somehow, from the first meeting, I was able to establish a friendly relationship with these people and that allowed me, with inexplicable ease, to purchase all of their scrap iron available then and in the future.

Our company, I learned later, had an exchange contract with the Electric or Falks Steel Mills, I have forgetten which. For five kilos of scrap, in exchange the company would receive one kilogram of iron for construction and could get similar exchanges with various other types of ferrous products.

In a very short time I was able to increase the flow to the OFEI site wagons and wagons of scrap so that my commissions grew up to about one hundred thousand lire a month. For the accountant Contorni I thus became his preferred representative and when there was some problem in one of his branches he usually sent me to solve it.

27/10/2013

Murray house

There were five of us in the office of my construction company, an excellent accountant, two employees who followed the works and conferred with our site foremen, a young Indonesian majoring in construction sciences, dealing particularly with feasibility plans and contracts, and I as General Manager.

One day, a realtor in the area of Bronte, a rather seedy neighborhood of Waverley, came to propose the purchase of an old wooden house in Murray Road, in Bronte, which, according to him, could be a good deal for us. I told him that I was not interested and sent him away.

The next day he came back and insisted that I go and see what he proposed and I, to get rid of him, sent him with my Indonesian young employee who returned soon after and actually forced me to go and have a look at the land which contained the old house. I went with him and saw a huge piece of land, a little steep but with views of Bronte's beach and obvious development opportunities.

Since the price was more than reasonable, I immediately bought the site and removed the house. Afterwards I transferred part of the land to the municipality of Waverley in exchange for permission to build eight floors of apartments and two floors of parking space on the site. I prepared a sketch of the plan and I gave it to an architect for whom I had built many villas, and asked him to draw the plans for the town hall and to improve the sketch that I had given him. After two weeks he told me that he could not find a better layout than what I had prepared.

We then began to build the block entrusting the supervision to that young Indonesian who had convinced me to buy that property, and he turned out to be capable and efficient. The block consisted of sixteen apartments with three bedrooms and great views of the sea and the beach of Bronte, and sixteen with two bedrooms. All units had ample kitchens, facilities and a large living-dining room with balcony. It was a pity that my Indonesian young employee was not able to see the work completed because his father, an industrialist in Singapore, had called him home. But he continued to write to me for a few years and made me know that, in company with his father, had started to build skyscrapers in Singapore and neighboring towns.

Meanwhile, I rented all the apartments through the realtor Salvatore Paino, for whom I built the Gemini Hotel of Randwick and I could very well pay off the debt with the bank and also get a sizable annuity.

However, stupidly, I've done a lot of stupid things in my life, after a few years, I had still a debt with the bank of about three hundred thousand dollars and this bothered me, so somebody convinced me to sell the property as a block, because that way I could take advantage of a law that exempted me from taxes. I sold it for one million eight hundred thousand dollars. A tidy sum in those days, but crumbs as my banker friend would have said.

And I’ll tell you why. About twelve years ago, as I was coming down from the terrace of the Cultural Circle, a gentleman unknown to me said: "Hello, Mr. Di Bella." I say, "Do you know me?" He tells me then that he used to live in Murray Street, right in front of my property and that he used to see me nearly every day during the construction of the flats. He finally informed me that one of the apartments of two bedrooms, with no particular views, had just been sold for a million dollars.

Most likely my block of flats in Bronte was one of the reasons why all land and homes throughout that area, have become as expensive as the more sought after areas of the city of Sydney.

31/10/2013

The secrets of life

A very dear Australian friend of mine, a girl I knew when she was a child and used to play with my daughters of the same age, asked me to write something about the secrets of life. Beautiful request! To tell you the truth I'm unsure where to start. To me, life is one of the results of the continuous and relentless transformations of nature, the essence of which can not be other than an eternal and almighty power.

I believe that the mover of the universe may be something outside the possibility of what we are able to conceive with our limited intelligence. All founders of religions on earth have given human characteristics to their creators. The earth is only a little grain of dust in the infinite universal space and I find it rather presumptuous to put ourselves at the center and in control of the universe.

I also believe that before scrutinizing the secrets of life we should ask ourselves what life is. On our planet it is an aggregation of organic cells that make up living things in the fauna and flora. No one really knows what could have developed this process that we call evolution and no one knows if processes of this kind may exist in planets of other stars. I have often heard it said that everything that you can imagine is also possible. Is it true? We say so many stupid things on this planet that even this could be accepted as incontrovertible truth.

In the course of my long life I have always considered the importance of curiosity - that unquenchable desire to discover the reason for our existence, and of all things; to find out what we are and where we are going and if there is a specific reason for going towards a future of which we perceive the essence as only a dream.

Possibly it was my curiosity that determined my own psychological profile. As a boy I read everything I could get my hands on and I loved to experiment on anything. Already at the age of twelve I had started to paint pictures creating my colors with the things that I found in the shop of my brother Nunzio. I used to mix colored powders with glues or linseed oil and even olive oil or any other means that I could find. I painted on small scraps of plywood, small landscapes, terrible figures of dogs, donkeys, birds ... the design was terrible but the color match was such that the excellent sculptor Simone Ronsisvalle, who for years worked in my brother' shop, told me one day: " Turillo, if I had your eyes I would have become a millionaire "

He was a master at drawing and sculpture in wood. With a few strokes of gouche, he could change a piece of wood into a marvelous decoration with roses that were almost alive. But it was not good at putting together colors. For me, instead, it was a spontaneous thing that no one had taught me. I also was experimenting with clay to model rather strange things and I had a mad wish to do things with electricity. When, in the hot summer afternoons all my relatives used to go and have a rest, I went down in a room that we called the warehouse and, there, I was working with wire, wires for electricity, etc. Almost every day I was blowing up the life-saving electrical switch of my house, often several times a day. I had made up my mind to try to invent a magnetic field that could reduce or eliminate the force of gravity.

Of course this is a dream that undoubtedly has involved several generations but I am still convinced that in the future someone will be able to realize this dream. I'm beginning to get tired of this cheap philosophizing.

Of one thing I am sure: death, which in my case, proves to be a rather latecomer. However you look at life, it is normally a pleasant experience, but when you are sick or when you are suffering from this damn senile pruritus that turns every night into a continued nightmare, one could frankly do without. Of course this is a strictly personal thought.

07/11/2013

At Sassuolo

In February of 1943 I was called to military service. Four of us left from Bronte: Nunzio, Peppino, Gregory and I. At that time in Bronte I used to play a lot of poker with some older members of the Circolo di Cultura and I'd won so much that I had a wallet full of money. While we were at the train station ready to leave, my father and my brother Nunzio, unaware of my winnings, were still giving me money.

We were headed to Modena and Gregory, seeing how much money I had in my wallet asked me, "Are you going to the fair to buy beasts of burden ?"

Once in Modena I proposed not to report for a few days and spend some of my money in hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues, cinemas and the like.

We really had lots of fun, but when we showed up we were all punished and poor Gregory had to peel a huge amount of potatoes.

We were assigned to the Maida barracks of Sassuolo and to a Sicilian sergeant who was nasty beyond belief.

At Sassuolo I had rented a room with a local family who had a daughter named Mafalda. She was not a great beauty but was quite willing and some of us began passionate love affairs with her.

I could not bear that demoniacal Sicilian sergeant and, as soon as possible, I changed the company and joined a new unit commanded by an excellent officer who, as a civilian, used to write children's books and was a sweet and very sensible man.

In that new environment I was happy, and when in the battalion it was decided to stage a show centered on the song “Polvere di Stelle”. I suggested calling it “Polvere di Stellette”, and participated in the writing of the script. To this I included some stories of one of my countrymen, a fanatical ex soldier that used to tell this story: we were in the trenches against the Austrians when I felt somebody touching me from behind. I turned around and it was His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy and Emperor of Albania and Ethiopia!. I snapped to attention and said: ‘Command, Your Majesty!’ And he said to me, ‘Crouch, Cosimo, or they shall see you.’

Someone said: "Don Cosimo, this story is too big to be believed!"

He replied: "Ah, you don't believe me? Go and ask my dear friend the late Don Gaetano Russo, who was in the army with me."

"But he is dead!"

"Arranciatevi! (Do your best) Was, Don Cosimo’s anwer.

There was a Neapolitan cadet who seemed born for the stage, he could act and tell jokes with an incredible naturalness. The show was a great success. It was also shown in a theater in Modena, in the presence of bigwigs of the military hierarchy of the time.

At Sassuolo, during my periods of leave, I saw that generally the inhabitants of that countrytown were good and generous, and I had the opportunity to meet and get friendly with a great many of them.

08/11/2013

The pitcher or Sicilian Bumbulu

When we were kids, I could have been eight years old and my brother Zino only ten, we had a friend, possibly twelve years old, whose name was Salvatore Androico. After school, he used to come to my brother Nunzio’s carpentry shop to learn the craft. But, really, he was only coming to play with us.

In the same shop worked a tall, thin man, who to us, was terribly obnoxious. If I remember correctly, he had a very strange name - something like Crusifix or Christopher.

He had a whitish pitcher in which he kept fresh water, and from which he used to drink letting the water come through a small hole he had made in the upper part of the container.

This man was very disagreeable to us because he would not let us children play, as we would have liked, with the carpenter's tools and scolded us constantly, sometimes with profanities, telling us to go home to annoy our mothers.

One day, Salvatore, suggested that we pee in Mr. Crusifix’s pitcher, and we did it to avenge the mistreatment that he was serving us at every opportunity.

When Crusifix went to drink from that pitcher he began to shout: "These sons of bitches, have put salt in my bumbulu. "

I also remember that Salvatore and my brother Zino, as children, were very cruel. They had taken a small mouse from a trap and, after having nailed it to a wooden board, with a boxcutter they were making small cuts to it and were putting alcohol in its wounds. I went immediately to tell my mom about it and she scolded them severely.

How many memories come to mind right now of my childhood. Maybe I was three or four years old when I had found out that my mother kept coins in the drawer of her bedside table.

I, almost daily, took a nickel, with which I used to go in the shop of Mrs. Sposato, very close to my house, to buy four beautiful candies that I ate before returning home.

At that time a new silver coin worth five lire was put into circulation and it was about the same size and color as the nickel. One day, instead of the nickel, I took one of these new coins and went to Mrs. Sposato to buy candy. She immediately asked me if my mother had sent me and I said yes.. She poured a mountain of candy over the counter and put it in a large paper bag. I thought she had gone crazy. But I took the candy and went at the back of my house eating as many of them as I could and hiding the bag still nearly full of candy in a hole in the wall by placing a stone in front of it.

After that I went home as if nothing had happened. But my mom was there waiting for me with a rod in her hands with which she wanted to beat me up. I went crying to hide behind a chest in my sister Rosa’ room My aunt the nun, was saying to my mother:

"Leave him alone, he's just a child." But my mother said: "He is not a child, he is a thief, and now, when the gypsies come here, I'll give him to them who are also thieves!"

I cried and cried inconsolably. I did not want to go with the gypsies. Since then I never went to open the drawer of my mother’s bedside table.

10/11/2013

My arrest.

Between my many friends in Sassuolo, I had the good fortune of meeting the Casali family. With me there was also my old comrade Nunzio, who had also been a former cadet in the barracks of Maida. We used to go together to many country houses of Sassuolo looking for some work in exchange for food.

When we went to the large farm of Mr. Casali, a big man more than seven feet tall and weighing more than a hundred kilos, he not only made us eat the best he had, but offered us the opportunity of going to live there with him. This was not so much to work, but to be together. He loved to listen to our adventures, and, I think, he considered us, two small Sicilians, as aliens. He laughed at a lot of my jokes and used to ask me in his strong Emilian dialect: "Ti vo danar?" (Do you need money?).

I had become quite popular in Sassuolo and had many friends and girls who bought me gifts and things to eat. There was a large number of us former cadets in Sassuolo and one day that lieutenant Santangela who commanded my company in Fornacette, appeared in our group and said: "Guys, the raids by the Germans and the Fascists are beginning to worry me. Maybe it's time for us to go to the mountains and join the partisans." I said: "Okay, as thou has commanded us as military, thou can also command us as partisans." I noticed, however, that he did not really like the way I had addressed him.

Several weeks later Mussolini's soldiers really arrived to Sassuolo to rake in all the deserters and also came to the Casali's farm looking for me. Clearly, somebody who did not like me had given the soldiers my name.

I was not at home then, and, later on, I met Casali’niece who crying told me that the military had come to look for Salvatore Di Bella and not finding me had taken her uncle.

I asked her to lend me her bike and went straight to the police station. The military were there and I introduced myself to a lieutenant called Stanzani telling him: "Lieutenant, I heard that some of your soldiers were looking for me, I am Salvatore Di Bella. What do you want from me?”

He looked on a list and said: "Yes, I find here that you are a former cadet." I just laughed saying: "No, I was just the barber of the second company. But I have been telling the Sassuolo girls that I am a student just to put on airs.” The lieutenant had almost believed me, except that another officer sitting next to him said: "Wait, if he says he was in the second company, we have the lieutenant Santangela here who commanded it. He'll know if he was the barber or a cadet. I'll call him right away." Meanwhile, Mr. Casali was released and I was there waiting.

When Santangela came I approached him whispering: “Lieutenant, I was only the barber." But he went straight to Stanzani and asked: "How can I help you?" Stanzani said: "I'm sorry to bother you, but there is a certain Di Bella who claims to have been the barber of the second company."

"No, no", replied Santangela."He was a cadet and I wondered why he has not joined the army yet."

The lieutenant Stanzani looked at me and said, "Well, I have to arrest you."

11/11/2013

The split

After long deliberations within the Popolo della Libertà, the separation between Berlusconi and Alfano has finally become reality. The day before yesterday the leader of the right has officially re-founded Forza Italia to which Angelino Alfano and his parliamentary group including his five government ministers and a conspicuous number of senators and MPs of the fallen PDL, did not join. If the incident is a point of strength or weakness for the government of the so-called broad agreements, depends on which point of view is taken.

The speeches of Berlusconi and Alfani which were rather accommodating, give rise to the suspicion that this separation is something that was agreed upon between the two leaders, in order to be both in government and in opposition. At the same time the various political movements that make up the Democratic Party often seem one step away from possible separations. The profiles of the candidates for the presidency, especially those between Matteo Renzi and Gianni Cuperlo, are so distant that it is difficult to imagine a possible coexistence after the Congress of the eighth of December.

Meanwhile, the Letta government goes on, rather timidly, and continues to make the usual promises that do not convince the people who still await more action and more effective cuts.

In Italy we need to rethink the shape of our democracy. Regions, provinces and municipalities are largely useless duplications of an effective administration. Perhaps it would be enough to elect mayors only in large towns of Italy and they should appoint state employees, specially prepared to handle the administration of their provincial countries. I believe, this could be much more effective than lord mayors and councils who, to be elected, distribute favors and fixed seats in exchange for votes. In addition, if an employee does not rise to expectations, could be immediately fired and replaced. Replacing a mayor or a president-elect would become much more problematic. The exponential growth of municipal employees throughout Italy is, in large part, due to this problem. The hordes of unemployed should be put in a position to leave the big city and return to live in the countryside and get used to a healthier and more productive life. The exacerbated race towards industry and the research of so-called permanent positions has destroyed the nature of men. The craftsmen and peasants of the past, who were the salt of the world, are disappearing, and with them disappears the well-being, the creativity, the independence and the pride of being the managers of themselves.

11/18/2013

In Modena

After the arrest in Sassuolo they led us to Modena and imprisoned us in the cells of large military barracks. The cadets raked in Sassuolo and neighboring countries, were about twenty. Twelve or thirteen of them joined the Republic of Salò’s army and were immediately freed and enrolled.

Eight of us, all from the South of Italy, had agreed not to join and agreed to remain prisoners. Lieutenant Stanzani who had arrested us and who seemed to be a good person and not a fanatic fascist, tried to convince me to join the new army of Mussolini because he thought that if I joined, more than likely, the other seven or eight young men would follow.

But I remained firm in my decision to remain a prisoner until the end of the war that, now, seemed to be almost imminent. One day the lieutenant told me that the colonel wanted to talk to me and led me to him. This officer who was in command of the entire department received me with kindness and asked me the reason for my refusal to enlist. I explained that I was Sicilian and most probably General Badoglio was enlisting my brothers to fight against the Germans and that I did not want to be put in a position to fight against my own brothers. I explained that personally I wanted a possible victory for Germany, but that I did not want to participate even further in this war.

The colonel began to get irritated and told me that these were excuses and that I was a coward and a traitor.. I pointed out that I could not be called a traitor if I did not intend to deny my original oath. Without realizing it, I must have accused him of being a traitor. The colonel became livid. His chin began to tremble with rage and said to me: "You know that I'll shoot you in front of the entire military barracks?" He called one of his subordinates and told him to prepare a firing squad and to bring me next to a wall in the large courtyard of the barracks. I was terribly confused. I did not think that I would be really shot. A large number of soldiers were deployed in the yard. In the meanwhile, I was preparing myself to say something if they wanted to proceed with the execution. I was terribly scared but I never saw the firing squad.

After about half an hour they took me back to my cell and I began to laugh without being able to stop. It was a nervous laugh almost painful. And while I laughed I was thinking that maybe I was going crazy.

After a few days they made me wear a uniform of cadet sergeant and took me to Tuscany, near Florence, in a concentration camp of military soldiers that formed a kind of regiment with officers and soldiers, all ex-deserters, who were prepared to be sent to work behind the German armies in Russia, Poland or wherever.

20/11/2013

In 1948 in Turin

One day, while I represented the company OFEI in Veneto, the accountant Contorni asked me to come back to Milan. There he told me that he wanted me to go to Turin where his agent was doing, unbeknown to him, operations quite contrary to the interests of the company.

He wanted to dismiss Mr. Caretti and put me to manage the Turin branch. So he asked me to find someone to replace me in Veneto.

In Milan at that time, there was a dear friend of mine, a graduate in chemistry who was seeking a job, named Nunzio Pozzi. I presented this young man to the accountant who immediately employed him under my responsibility.

In Turin I found all the contacts of Dr. Caretti who was not sorry to break away from OFEI as he already had an office from which he sold ferrous products from other sources. We even became friends.

In Turin I was fortunate to find a large number of villagers including a Mr. Ciraldo who introduced me to a large number of important people in Turin’s industry. I had an office in via Bogino No. 9, a few steps from Piazza Castello, and I lived right on the corner of Piazza Castello and Via Roma. I sold a lot of pickled sheet and other ferrous products to different companies working for FIAT and other car manufacturers out of series known as Pininfarina, I also sold rebar for reinforced concrete used by many housebuilders of Piedmont.

Through Caretti I bought wreckage of ships that were demolished by a company in La Spezia. As a rule, the material that arrived in Turin from that company, was checked by me before proceeding to Milan, and was of excellent quality.

But after a few transports I stopped checking most of the goods that went straight to Milan and one day I received a phone call from the angry accountant Contorni telling me that he had received a load of rust instead of scrap.

Evidently Caretti was returning to his old tricks, and had cheated. When I went to complain I was practically thrown out of his office.

I was very angry and told one of my employees, named Barone, what had happened. He told me not to worry. He would find a way to fix this scoundrel. In fact, he sent two fake buyers who proposed to him that they wanted to buy a huge amount of iron at a very advantageous price.

For this order, Caretti bought a lot of iron, priced well above market value, thinking that he could have made a strong gain, but was unable to contact those buyers who had given him false addresses. In other words, he found himself in a situation - almost bankrupt - and even sent his wife into my office to ask for my help that I did not grant.

Aside from that, I have wonderful memories of Turin. I lived a couple of years in that beautiful city that has remained in my heart.

21/11/2013

The end of the line

Berlusconi is no longer a senator. His term of office has ended. He was literally done in by a Democratic Senate that could not be more democratic than this. Berlusconi thanks them.

The left has not yet understood that continuing to rant against Berlusconi as they have done for twenty years, makes him an icon, a Christ nailed to the cross, a martyr to be worshiped. The more these judges of the left rage against him the greater his consensus, and the adoration of his followers.

This time he had lost six million votes and was almost out of the picture, but an absurd conviction of a judiciary that was obviously biased, and the idiotic gesture of the left who wanted to, in their words, “enforce the law”, put him back in the big game. This fake separation between Alfano's party and Forza Italia may put the Cavaliere back in the saddle. I would not be at all surprised if, after all that the left has done, Berlusconi could be back in Palazzo Chigi again. We will see what will happen on the feast day of the Immaculate Conception.

On this day, strange things always happen. Even I was born on the day of the Immaculate Conception 93 years ago and my aunt, a nun, wanted to call me Immaculate Concetto. If they had done this I would have gone down in history as the man who had destroyed his family.

Now if Renzi is elected and has the capacity to really change the mentality of the Italian left, perhaps we too will one day have, a regular alternation in government – an alternation between political opponents and not between bitter enemies in a war that has lasted for twenty years. Instead if someone else wins we shall happily continue to tear ourselves apart as we have done until now.

30/11/2013

Portland street

In 1959 I lived in Rose Bay, one of the elegant suburbs of Sydney, but in a part of the suburb that was neither central nor possessing any views of the sea. One day my wife told me that she had seen a house for sale at 13 Portand Street, Dover Heights, a suburb that over-looked Rose Bay. During one of the following afternoons we went to see it together with our small daughters, Sandra, who would have been about three and a half years old, and Marilyn who was about two years of age.

This wooden house belonged to an old lady who lived there from time immemorial in the sole company of two dogs. When the owner died, the dogs were also taken away, but in their kennels they had left an indescribable amount of fleas. Our little Marilyn, at a certain point, began to scream and cry. She was literally covered with fleas.

We immediately ran away from the place, but we noticed that the land on which this miserable structure was built had wonderful views of Sydney Harbour and was close to new and expensive luxury homes. I decided to buy it immediately and, after demolishing the existing structure, put my home in Rose Bay up for sale. On our newly purchased land, I began to build an elegant two-storey residence with a small garden with colorful azaleas in the front and a very spacious back yard. We lived in this house happily for many years, until my daughters had already graduated and partly left home.

I remember so many things about this place, but especially the parties that we held downstairs in the huge rumpus room that was dedicated just to entertaining. When my daughter Sandra was thirteen or fourteen years old, she was also studying music and I had bought her a grand piano on which to practice. Well, every morning, while I was still in bed, she used to play the same piece of music: "Für Elise" by Beethoven. My little dog Timmy, a black dachshund endowed with an extraordinary intelligence, used to howl in resonance with the music.

After several weeks of this torture I told my daughter that I wished to give that piano to the nuns at her school and they sent two men to pick it up. The sisters thanked me very much for my generosity. I thought that should have been up to me to thank them for having delivered me from my daily, early-morning nightmare.

02/12/2013

In prison at the Casa del Fascio

When I was eighteen and living in Bronte, I engaged in my regular pre-military exercises with some of my peers. These took place, every Saturday afternoon, on the premises of what was then the sports field of Bronte called Colleggetto.

One day, during a pause in the exercises, I, my friend Nunzio Pozzi and another student called Trazzera, laid our muskets on the ground and, sitting alongside them, we started to play with the pebbles. Our commander, a complete idiot and a fascist, accused us of having abandoned our weapons. When we returned to the town he got us locked into a small cell of Bronte's Casa del Fascio with seven or eight young men who had probably committed some other ‘improper’ act.

After sending all the cadets home, the officers led by the Comandante don Attilio, our political secretary, went to the movies. Some boys who remained in the room, started mocking us through the cat flap and one of the youths kicked the door to scare them. The kick broke a small sliver off the old and frail door.

The boys then ran to the cinema saying that the prisoners had broken the door and wanted to escape. The Comandante, came running to the room with all his heroic helpers, took out one of the young men and asked : "Who kicked the door? " When the young man replied that he did not know, the Comandante hit him several times with a whip and after having ordered him to go to a corner of the room, called out another young man. The Comandante asked the same questions, gave him a thrashing and continued to do the same thing with all seven young laborers and artisans who were in the cell with us.

Finally he called out my friend Nunzio and asked the same question. Nunzio did not answer and looked at him indignantly. The Comandante, now really enraged. hit him in the face with his whip. At that point, I came out of the cell as angry as a wild cat. My eyes were bulging, I grabbed a chair and, shouting like a madman, said : "Don’t you dare hit me .. you understand? Don’t you dare!”

The Comandante said to his aide: "This one is really a fighter”, and the other replied, "and they are family."

Meanwhile, the other young men who were in a corner of the room had all taken a chair in their hands and were ready to attack if necessary. The Comandante ordered everyone to go back to the cell. Then, one at a time, he called out each of those young men, saying that he did not like to beat people, and did so only for their own good. He gave them a cigarette each and sent them home.

Now only us three students were there. He called us out together and began to recite the usual lecture. Nunzio and Trazzera did not open their mouths. I said, "Listen, Don Attilio, I've held you in high esteem, but you surround yourself with a bunch of idiots who, blinded by an incomprehensible military zeal, do crazy things. I have not yet understood why the three of us were punished."

"But you have abandoned your muskets. In a real army action, that would involve shooting", he said.

"And do you think that sitting on the ground with our muskets beside us means that we have abandoned our arms?" I answered.

The Comandante changed the subject, offered us a cigarette and told us to go home. These were the things that were happening during the period of fascism and that was why I was then an anti-fascist.

04/12/2014

Burraga

While I was building apartments in Sydney and earning a lot of money, I used to pay in taxes some truly indecent amounts. One day, my tax advisor told me to buy a farm property as the charges for improvements made in it could be deducted from taxes. Soon after, he sent me a real estate agent who proposed several rural properties to me, all within three hundred miles from Sydney. I chose a property of nearly two thousand acres at an equal distance between Oberon and Blainy and about 200 km from Sydney.

The property belonged to a former merino sheep farmer who had sold his cattle and sheep and had retired. On the property there was a house and a huge shed where there were all the tools for shearing sheep and treating wool. The terrain was hilly, quite similar to that of my country in Sicily, about 800 meters above sea level, and a significant number of acres had been cleared, fenced and planted with grasses for grazing. It contained two dams with natural springs and a stream that ran through almost the entire property. Forests of eucalyptus trees and various hardwoods covered the rest. I was really in love with this wonderful and private property and I went there often with my friends to hunt rabbits and wild pigeons. I got some local workers to prepare about thirty acres of that land on which I was going to plant chestnut trees but I did not continue with the plantation as the company that had to supply the plants has quadrupled the price of them from what he had originally quoted me. Just as well, because a few years after a fire destroyed everything, including the house. On the property there were herds of kangaroos and every so often my friends killed some, though I was not able to shoot even one of them.

My neighbor had over three thousand sheep and an undetermined herd of cattle, which often grazed on my land. So, one day in agreement with him, I bought a hundred angora goats, and two expensive rams, purebred Angora, with the idea that he would look after my animals to grow in compensation for his free grazing. But this gentleman proved to be neither reliable nor honest. After a couple of years, I asked him how many goats I now had. His reply was: "Maybe thirty.”

"How come," I said to him. "Two years ago there were more than a hundred!" "Yes," he said, "but many have died." Indignant, I did not speak anymore with this individual and a few months later I came to Italy to stay.

I had given the property, in equal shares, to my two grandsons but they never even went to see the property and several years ago it was sold by my daughters without my knowledge.

05/12/2013

The triumph of Renzi

Matteo Renzi has virtually cut down the opponents in the primaries of the Democratic Party. Finally the obsolete icons of this party, which were democratic only by name, have been torn down and, hopefully, with this young and determined new secretary, may finally result in the rebirth of a modern and European Left Party. Hopefully, this new party will no longer be based on hatred of its opponent, but will be a party willing to collaborate in the creation of a modern and efficient state that can give Italy the role that belongs to her. Renzi is firmly in possession of all necessary qualities for a real revival of the party of which he has become the undisputed leader.

All the people who voted for him have shown definitively to be fed up with the various Prodi, D'Alema and their companions who for twenty years have been able only to demonize the opponent without being able to present a credible alternative proposal. It is apparent that the right is unable to make those much-needed reforms in our country, to put it back in a condition in which it is productive and competitive, in line with the rest of the world. Renzi may be the last hope. Let us hold that hope very tight in both hands! Right and left together should seize this last chance for a real pacification of the two major parties that, in accordance with the modern European states, can bring Italy to greater efficiency and put an end to the various populist movements that are dangerously capturing attention and have the real capacity of worsening the situation.

10/12/2013

The adorable Timmy

Timmy was a small black dog with a shiny coat. I think I've already mentioned him. Of the many dogs I've had in my life, this has been the one of which I was really fond. In English they call them sausage dogs because, if you think about it, they have a long and round body like a piece of sausage and four little legs that, though small, allow the dog to move with unimaginable speed. Timmy had an absolutely extraordinary intelligence.

Sometimes I did really think that he could read my thoughts, or at least that was the impression he gave me as he could perceive an order given to him, even when given in a very low voice. His bed was on the ground floor of the house, on the garden level where he spent most of his time. He was also fond of a far corner of the garden where he would cover his poo with the surrounding soil.

When I lived in Portland Street, I usually came home from the office at about five o'clock and after drinking my daily glass of water, made a little longer with a finger of whisky, I’d just whisper to him: "You ready boss? ". He used to come like a bolt up the stairs, tail wagging furiously and ready for our afternoon stroll. If my wife or someone asked me to do something and I’d lost a bit of our walking time, Timmy used to touch my leg and with a nod of his head, beckoned me to leave.

When he was out he had a bad habit of chasing cars, and one day the predictable disaster happened. A car smashed his right front leg. I immediately took Timmy to the vet who sedated him and after applying two small wooden sticks bandaged the leg.

While I was bringing him back to the house Timmy looked at me with an air that was so sorrowful and contrite. Poor thing. He was terribly unhappy and somehow wanted to tell me. After a few days he began to walk with three legs without forgetting to show everybody his little leg in a cast.

When Timmy’s leg was perfectly healed and the vet had removed the bandages, he began to run merrily as he always did and when, rarely, I wanted to scold him for something, it used to put up his little leg in the same position as when it was in a cast, and he looked at me in such a way that I could not resist picking him up to pet him.

Timmy wasn’t chasing cars anymore, but one sad day, while crossing the street, a car hit him and killed him instantly. Can you cry for the death of a dog? Well I cried and my daughters were inconsolable. I buried him near my house and I did not put a cross there because it was not Catholic, but I put a banner with the inscription: ‘Here lies Timmy, a dog almost human’.

16/12/2013

Wallangra Road

After selling my house in Dover Heights, I had gone to live in a new house that I had built in a suburb called South Coogee. It was a good place and the house was very nice but I missed the views and the Dover Heights environment. A real estate agent in the area informed me that there was a house for sale on the corner of Dover Road and Wallangra Road that belonged to a university professor who had retired in the countryside, about one hundred miles from Sydney. I went to see it and it was a good house in an excellent location with great views of Sydney Harbour. I bought it without thinking much about it, but the house, despite being more than reasonable, was not what I wanted, and in its place, rather than a renovation, I thought to demolish it and rebuild the house that I wanted.

In the opposite corner lived a Polish builder who, when he saw the bulldozer that demolished my house, kept on saying to all the neighbors: " Someone said that this new owner is a builder but I think he must be absolutely crazy.”

On the site, I designed and built a two-storey house, which was extremely nice. The entrance was from Wallangra Road through a small but charming garden that ended with three steps leading to to a marble portico.

The house contained three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a large kitchen with space for breakfast, a sitting room, dining room and a large terrace accessed from the living room and the kitchen. On the lower storey, there was the laundry, a huge rumpus room for parties, a double garage accessed from Dover Road and the rumpus room. An adequate swimming pool occupied the rest of the land.

How many memories attached to this house come to my mind. I remember that when the house was completed, we invited all the neighbors, as is the custom in Australia. There was also the Polish builder who, after seeing the new house, came to me and said: "When you were demolishing the old house I was telling everyone that you must have been crazy, but now I realize that the madman was me who spent a lot of money to renovate my house and now, what I still have is an old house”.

While I lived in this house, I also met many Italians who lived in the area. I met Captain Roberto Palumbo, an Alitalia’s aviator, who lived, with his wife Carla and his daughter Robertina, in my own street. I remember the day when Carla was bathing in my pool holding her daughter by the hand, and when she let her go, the baby began to cry and, out of the water, she went hiding behind a large earthenware jar saying: "I will not talk with anyone, anymore."

17/12/2013

The confusion

I don’t know what to talk about today. Maybe my mind is in tune with the general confusion that invades almost all television programs dealing with politics. The things you hear from commentators of the right and the left, both journalists, parliamentarians, economic gurus or even philosophers, show that they are becoming confused or incomprehensible.

They are absolutely blind to the real Italian, European or global situation. Globalization has brought us to compete with the so-called emerging countries. It is not humanly possible to bring our workers to the same condition in which people are working in countries like India, China, Korea and many others countries.

Our laws, unions, the myriad of things that jam our productions and those of many other European countries will never be able to compete with those countries. It makes a nice little saying: Quality and Made in Italy. How many people can afford the designer goods made in Italy? Everything now is made by machines and their buttons can be pressed by Italians, Germans, Indians, Moroccans, or anyone.

To the robots, it makes no difference. And with the advance of technology, soon there will not be even the need to press buttons. Then how could you support the enormous and ever-growing mass of unemployed not only in Italy but all over the world?

According to the laws of nature, the disproportionate growth of men, animals and insects were controlled by war, disease and natural disasters. We rightly reduced most of the wars, we have invented a myriad of drugs to combat disease, we are working to prevent earthquakes and floods, but never think to prevent a disproportionate number of births in undeveloped countries.

As for Italy you could start by abolishing all health care. This would solve the problem of public debt in a few years, would bring doctors to be practitioners and not civil servants, reaccustom Italians to heal in a normal manner and not to worry about so many diseases that are largely imaginary.

In America and many other countries who do not have health care, people live with less concerns for their health and die at the same rate at which people die everywhere. The quality of life depends on one’s overall well-being not by the quantity of medicines or by the number of hospitals.

Think, my friends. Think again.

21/12/2013

Exams of Private Law

Back home after the war, I could not wait to return to Milan, but my father told me in a rather peremptory manner: "If first you do not graduate you’ll go nowhere!"

When my father spoke in this way, there was no way to contradict him, so I decided to graduate in the shortest possible time. I had almost six months before the exams of the eighteen subjects I needed to graduate and I began to study seriously and continuously throughout the summer of 1946.

I studied mainly on summaries of the various subjects on which I had to take exams and went through eighteen exams in one session. I was promoted in all of them, naturally with many eighteens, but also with a thirty, a twenty-one, one twenty-three and one twenty-four. The more difficult matter was Institutions of Private Law. I was told that the professor of this subject at the University of Catania was ruthless.

The textbook of this matter was so big as to be frightening. and I had only read the introduction to this volume and a minimum compendium of the rest. A friend of mine, studying law, who was to sit for the same exam asked me to go over the material together and asked me some questions that, for me, were absolutely incomprehensible. He had worked on this subject, in this huge book for about two years and he seemed to me to be really prepared.

In the preface, I had noticed that there were two schools of thought on this subject. One was the Roman doctrine and the other I can not remember the name of.

When they called me to the examinations the professor asked me if I had studied the subject well. I told him that I had tried to do my best, " But”, I added, “I would like to know if you follow the Roman school or the other." The professor, surprised, said: "Why do you ask that?"

"Because I would agree more with the Roman but I’m not entirely sure ... "

The professore then began a long disquisition on the theories of the Roman that he was following and I would just nod from time to time giving him the impression that I understood perfectly what he was exposing. So passed about a quarter of an hour, and then he asked me something about real goods to which I replied in a somewhat hazy way. He said:"I was expecting a more precise answer, however, can see that you have understood something". And he gave me a twentyfour.

My friend who was waiting outside could not believe it and thought that the professor had gone mad, and that if he had given me twenty-four he certainly would have gotten a thirty and an academic kiss. I decided to wait for the results of his examinations and after about half an hour you could hear the professor shouting: " I don’t know how long you have drudged on this book, but you did not understand a thing." and gave him an eighteen.

My poor friend came out in the hallway with his ears redder than the Pachino’s cherry tomatoes.

19/12/2013

My cousin, the Baron.

When I was in my first year of university I was attending with an illegitimate son of a cousin of my father whose name was Salvatore Di Bella, like me. Everybody in Catania knew him as the Cavalier Di Bella. I do not think he was really a cavalier, I think he was a fixer who had become a millionaire many times and as many failed. His son took the surname of his mother and had a mania for nobility.

He had even invented a noble family of the Barons of Valasquo to which he claimed to belong and in his business cards and letterhead had this emblem with five balls.

I remember one day we went together to the post office, then run by a distant relative of mine, Tano Di Bella. When he saw the five balls on the envelope, he said, "Wow, five balls! "And my cousin said back to him: "...and two seven. All at your disposal."Poor Tano did not add anything.

At the time, I used to paint a lot and my cousin had asked me to paint a coat of arms for him with a cruciate shield and a rampant lion as the ensign for the house of the barons of Valasquo. While we were doing this work, one day my cousin’s father came in and said: "Instead of the shield and the lion there I would put a fuscella of ricotta and a dog herd. We are simple shepherds!"

This cousin of mine, attending events held by all the nobility of Catania, had introduced me to many of them as the son of the biggest landowner of Bronte. He could bullshit with a naturalness unheard of, and could make people believe impossible things. Even if illegitimate, he was a true son of his father.

I lost sight of him during the war. And I don’t know if he is still alive, but someone told me that during the war he got married in a small town in Tuscany, and returned to Catania, had married the widow of a baron of Catania, for which he seems to have been convicted of bigamy. I do not know if this is true or false. I was told that as hearsay. I would not swear to the veracity of these facts.

12/20/2013

My first pair of shorts

You could ask yourself: Can a man of ninety three years of age remember when he was three years old? Well, I do remember. And I remember very well. In those days male children, up to three or four years of age, were wearing small women's dresses.

When I was three and a half years old my mother made me a pair of blue shorts with pockets - pants similar to those worn by men. I wore them and I was proud to be able to put my hands in my pockets.

I decided to go out to the street and let everyone see my new shorts. Outside there was a tinsmith who had lit some charcoal in a corner of the street, and was tinning a large copper cauldron. There were a lot of people milling around and I went with hands in my pockets, hoping that someone would notice me.

No one noticed anything - absolutely no one! I can still clearly remember the disillusionment and disappointment I felt at that age when I returned to the door of my house that I had left open. I was about to climb the stairs when I saw my sister Linda, two years younger than me, then just a toddler and only beginning to walk.

Suddenly she came tumbling down the stairs. I rested my elbows on a step and waited until she reached me, though by this time she was screaming like crazy. My mother thought that it was my fault as, when coming down those stairs, I had not closed the gate that prevented my sister from falling down them.

At the time, my sister was called Clorinda, and it was me who had given her the name of Linda when I was twelve or thirteen years old. I had learned that in Spanish Linda meant clean while Clorinda, the name of our aunt who had baptized her, was a name I did not like at all.

24/12/2013

English for children

As I have mentioned earlier, I started to use the computer when I was sixty years old with an Apple II, and I quite quickly learned how to do some things with i

TWhen, in 1984, Apple invented the MacIntosh, that little magic box with which you could really do so many things, I think I was the first owner of that object in Sydney, at least that’s what I was told by the supplier from whom I had ordered it as soon as had just been released in the United States. I had even brought this Macintosh to Italy with me

when I came here to stay, and I gave it to my grandnephew and godson. Though an old relic, it still works.

With that device I did many extraordinary things. With the help of the program ToolBook I had even begun to put together a program called ‘English for Children’ which consisted of a long series of drawings, below which,

I used to label each photo in Italian and English. Clicking on the name you could hear the English or Italian pronunciation of the object you had touched. It was a very simple thing but twenty-seven years ago meant something.

I had given this program to my daughter Sandra who had installed it in her computer. I was told that my first grandchild Sarah, who was then two and a half or three years old, would use it when they sat down to breakfast. She used to go into her mother’s study, click on the picture of the horse and then go back into the kitchen saying, "Cavvalo". Now, many years later, that same adorable granddaughter has a degree in environmental informatics, is married to a very tall and charming mining engineer and lives happily in a town near Sydney.

02/01/2014

Mitch and Sarah

At Anne' s wedding.

I have a niece, my sister's Rosa daughter, who, poor thing, was named Emerenziana Romeo. Now, Romeo as a surname is not too bad, but you have to be straight-out irresponsible to give a child a name like Emerenziana. Luckily we have always called her Zina and the problem has been somewhat resolved, but when she has to sign legal documents the problem arises again and they are bitter pills for her to swallow.

Having said all of that, this Zina had two children for whom she chose brilliant names - Richard and Annamaria. Why I am telling you these things is because some thirteen years ago, Annamaria got married.

Miss Rosetta Costanzo, her nephew John, my niece Zina and I attended Annamaria’s wedding. For this we had to go to Australia on the opposite side of the world. The wedding was in Liverpool, a suburb of Sydney where my niece Zina (Emerenziana) lived with her brother Sandro, an excellent painter of beautiful flowers, and owner of four dachshunds of a particularly glossy black.

The house was big enough to accommodate all of us. The plane ride was rather long, and John very much enjoyed listening to the jokes that I kept telling.

On arrival, we met the boyfriend of Anna, a young Australian of, from memory, Germanic origin. He is very intelligent and has a very pleasant appearance.

John quickly made friends with Richard, Anna's brother, who was about the same age. I must start by saying that when my sister Rosa and her husband Angelo were still alive, I would go, at least once a week, and stay and eat with them, so I had known little Anna since she was a little girl and I watched her grow up and become a woman. She is a very intelligent and beautiful girl, and she wrote really well. I had suggested to her that she choose a career in journalism. She undertook this course of study and enjoyed considerable success. In fact, I remember that during the wedding ceremony, which was attended by many colleagues and some newspaper editors, they congratulated me for having suggested to Anna to choose Jornalism as a carrier. She now has two beautiful children that I have seen on Facebook.

I hope to see them soon on Skype just as soon as I can connect with my attractive great grandniece.

To Annamaria’s wedding

A few weeks after the wedding, Rosetta and John decided to return to Bronte for school commitments of the young John, and I and my niece, after spending some time with my daughters and participating with them to several unforgettable lunches and dinners at some of the best Sydney's restaurants, went to stay for a couple of weeks, in a luxurious apartment at Main Beach in Queensland.

If I remember correctly, we were guests of my daughter Marilyn.

After that we decided to return to Italy, but we stopped for a day or two in Singapore, where I was able to show my niece some of the wonders of these areas of the world that are greatly surpassing the development of European countries. This trip was definitely a pleasant one, though that was my last visit to the land that was for me, a true second homeland.

3/1/2014

Professor De Cavicchi

When I was in high school attending Capizzi College, I had a professor of history and philosophy named De Cavicchi. He was tall and robust, serene, unruffled but with certain personal characteristics that made him unique and memorable.

He had a manner of doing things that, sometimes, could appear to be strange and incomprehensible, however, he was very pleasant to all of us.

Every school day, he came into the classroom with the newspaper La Sicilia. After greeting us, he would sit in his chair and often called a student called Bruno Minissale saying, " Let's hear what you have studied today. " As Bruno spoke, the Professor would read the newspaper.

Poor Bruno was not always prepared, thus he would often stand next to the chair without saying a single word. After about five or six minutes, the professor used to say: " Louder, please! I can’t hear you!"

Minissale shrugged but kept silent. After several more minutes the Professor folded up the newspaper, sent the student to his place, without saying a word and began the lesson that, if I remember correctly, was always polished and very learned.

This happened every single day but we were used to it and no one was surprised. Another thing that he would often say, turning to me, was: "Now we’ll hear Di Bello."

I clarified that my name was Di Bella and he asked me: "Are you female? "One day in class I said, "Excuse me, Professor De Cavicco …. " He replied, “De Cavicchi, please." And I said, "Are you two?" The professor thought for a moment and then said, "Point taken". From that day on he did not call me Di Bello ever again.

05/01/2014

My brother Nunzio and not only ..

Someone pointed out to me that I never talked of my brother Nunzio

in my collection of memories. He was the first born of my parents and was twelve years older than me. To tell you the thruth, when I was nine or ten years old, a reproach from him troubled me more then one from my father.

When he saw me out in the street, completely immersed in one of my many games, it was enough for him to ask me: "Have you done your homework?” I lowered my head and I went straight into the house without a word or a blink. I had him in such awe that I almost reverend him, but I loved him so much. I felt a deep mixture of affection and respect that I did not feel for my other brothers.

Growing up, I realized that we were like twins but born twelve years apart. He did not want to study but was endowed with a unique and eclectic, extraordinary intelligence. He new how to do lots of things, and had great and extraordinary entrepreneurial qualities.

At just eighteen years of age my father opened a carpenter’s workshop for him that, after a few years, had became a little furniture’s factory, equipped with all the machinery to build furnishings at almost industrial rather than craftman’ standard.

He had a phenomenally inventive mind. When, I would sometimes, propose some of my wacky ideas that went through my head, he used to tell me: " No, this is impossible." But after two or three days, he would say: "You know that idea you asked me about? Maybe can be done”. And many times he turned i tinto reality.

Without any doubt, he, more than anyone of us, had inherited and probably exceeded the intelligence of my mother and was a wealth of innovative ideas. In his job, as a furniture maker, had also invented a myriad of procedures designed to speed up and improve the production of the same.

And his mind would not stop at that. In any field he could distribute tips and advice to anyone who asked. He is best remembered for having invented the machine for removing the smallo from pistachio that even some companies of the far Iran have come to buy at Bronte. But who personally knew my brother remembers him as the perfect gentleman willing to help anyone in any situation. I was one of his greatest admirers, and when I left for Australia, for me separating from him was worse than being separated from myparents.

Unfortunately, he contracted a nasty disease which killed him at 56 years of age, leaving two children: Nicola e Sandro of 14 to 16 years of age.

I was distraught, and I almost felt the desire to adopt his children. In fact what I feel for Sandro and Nicola is not the love of an uncle, but the love of a father, and their children are like my own grandchildren. The extraordinarily beautiful daughters of Sandro and Graziella,

Federica and Andrea,

when they were little, would often call me grandfather and I also feel like a great-grandfather for the children

of Nunzio and Francesco and of the latest arrival, beautiful Tea, daughter of Elisa.

I have not spoken much of the other members of my family, yet I also retain vivid memories of my brothers.

Peppino and Vincent, called Zino.

I must confess that I had a certain envy toward my brother Zino, the best looking of my family. Perhaps because he had grown up to my father’s height while I remained a lot shorter.

Of my sisters

Rosa and Linda

Rose was eight years older than me and had for me an almost maternal love. Many years ago, she had moved with her entire family in Australia and I used to go and visit her almost every week and have lunch with her entire family. Among all her excellent qualities she was also a great cook. She died in Australia and I cherish her ​​very tender memories.

Linda, on the other hand, recently widowed, and ninety one year old, still lives alone in our father's house and I feel the regret of not being able to visit her more because I can no longer climb the stairs of her house.

12/02/2014

The fall of Letta

Finally, the Democratic Party has found the strength to impeach Prime Minister Letta, who, in about a year of government has been able only to disappoint the majority of Italians. When the so called government of broad agreements, that later became of smaller agreements was established, many of us were under the illusion that a spring of change and serious reforms could finally be realized. However Letta, despite having all the skills to do it, did not have the courage to face the forces of conservative public administration and politics which were the ball and chain to our recovery.

It’s all occurring at a snail's pace, with the government becoming completely mired in a state of absolute stillness, sweetened only by unconvincing and self-exculpatory speeches. Quagliarella, the Minister of Reforms, has not reformed anything and with all other ministers, regarding the IMU, collectively they have only been able to make a mess of things.

Now we have Matteo Renzi in the field. The snail who was Letta, makes Renzi look like a greyhound. He seems to have all the qualities necessary to change not only the party of which he has became secretary but also the habits and mentality of all Italians.

This is a very complex and difficult undertaking. We believe, however, that he has the intelligence, courage and determination to accomplish the purposes for which his office is intended. We wish him success with all our hearts.

15/2/2014

Carmelo Genovese

One day, back in the thirties, my father was at Randazzo buying some wine that he had no intention of drinking, but rather, he liked to keep at home to offer to any visitors and especially to the farmers who worked on his land.

The seller of wine presented him with a boy of ten or eleven. This boy was terribly frail and undernourished, and my father was told that his poor family was unable to keep him, and looking for someone to take care of him.

His name was Carmelo Genovese and he looked at my father with eyes that were so pathetic and pained that my father said, " This child is starving! If his parents agree, I’ll take him to Bronte and there he can play with my children who are the same age."

The wine merchant immediately got in touch with the boy's parents and they did not know how to thank my father for his generosity. Carmelo was my age and we quickly became friends. He ate everything given to him, and after a few weeks he had completely recovered and even got a little fatter.

By this time, he had also regained his good humor and in our house he was happy. I have a million memories of Carmelo. He only spoke in the Randazzese dialect, and when he tried to say something in Italian, it was always tinged with his strong accent. I soon learned to talk like him and I could imitate the Randazzo accent almost to perfection. At that time my father had a horse used only by my brother Joseph, who was in charge of our agricultural properties. He also had a donkey which was used to transport the meat to various butcher shops in the country.

After staying about a year in our house, Carmelo had literally taken over our ass with whom he had established a kind of symbiosis and gained a mutual respect.

He spoke to the donkey and was convinced that it understood him. And this was probably true as, when it was attached to the closed four-wheeled wagon for the transportation of the meat, Carmelo said to it:"Amuninni" (Come on), and the donkey started moving. When he said, "Ferma"(Stop), it stopped.

He had taught that ass a lot of tricks and it knew by heart where the various butchers shops were on the main course of Bronte.

A strange thing used to happen between the first and second butcher shops, both located in front of the College Capizzi. Le road there is slightly downhill so the ass spread his hind legs to stop and, when Carmelo told him to go ahead, it would then close its legs and let the wagon push it down to the second store, where it stopped again by widening its rear legs.

This was a sight that was dear to me, to my brother Zino, and to almost all of our classmates for whom that red painted wagon was an important element of our games.

Carmelo, with his strong Randazzo accent, was always the center of our games. He stayed with us until he left for military service in Liguria. From there he never came back to Sicily and during and after the war we never heard from him.

18/02/14

Mr. Yong’s large restaurant

These days in Sydney there are many gigantic Chinese restaurants, but I built the first Chinese restaurant which occupied two floors and could seat more than four hundred people.

As mentioned earlier in my writing, the Di Bella Constructions Pty. Ltd’s office employed a young man from Indo-China. He was majoring in construction sciences, and had many friends in the Chinese population of Sydney. Among them there was an important Chinese architect who had obtained a commission to design the renovation of a huge two-storey building in the city's commercial center.

This property, (originally used as a store of merino wool), was bought by a Chinese Mandarin, Mr. Kim Yong, to transform it into a Chinese restaurant similar to those found in Hong Kong and other Chinese cities.

My Indo-Chinese clerk introduced to me this young architect. Together we agreed on the restructuring and development of this great project to the complete satisfaction of my company and Mr. Yong (who later on also became a good friend of mine). For this work we had to import a lot of items from Hong Kong particularly all the decorations. When completed, this restaurant was an absolute marvel.

The thing I remember most vividly was the grand staircase leading to the upper floor where the railing was made up of a long and valuable Chinese dragon carved in ebony. It was a true work of art.

On the day of the inauguration of the restaurant which was attended by many leading Australian personalities amongst others, there was also the N.S.W. Minister of Labour who gave a polished speech, praising and thanking Mr. Yong for donating this wonderful complex to Sydney. In his speech he pointed out to everyone that in order to achieve his dream he did not use Chinese or Australian builders but, he added, an Italian builder.

I must add that for many years, in this restaurant you could enjoy truly extraordinary Chinese specialties, and this was the place where over the years, my family and I discovered many new and wonderful dishes and flavors with which we fell in love.

19/02/2014

Carmelo and me

When we were about twelve years old, one day Carmelo and I were going to the country on the packsaddle of the donkey. I was in front and Carmelo was behind me. At one point, on the road there was a puddle in which probably a she-ass had urinated.

Our donkey, which in another life may have been an womanizer, stopped there to smell the mud and was going into ecstasy unaware of my jerking the bridle as I tried to get it going. He began to recede against a very low wall that served as a railing between the road and a public square three or four meters below.

In that peculiar position, the donkey lost his balance and fell in the square below making a complete turnaround and landing on his feet. I threw myself into the void not to end up under the ass, while Carmelo had clung to the saddle of the donkey and landed on the back of it. I slammed my bottom on the cobblestones of the square, and when a gentleman who was working nearby came to lift me up, I had the feeling that half of my body had been left on the ground.

When we arrived back home, the doctor, who immediately came to visit me, said that there was nothing broken but that it would take a long time for me to get back in shape. Immediately my aunt, the nun, said that it was a miracle. According to her, the Madonna had picked me up in one of her veils and weakened my fall that could have been mortal.

The donkey died after a few days due possibly to internal bleeding; when it had fallen it had also slammed its belly very hard onto the ground. Carmelo walked for a few days with his legs spread out, complaining of severe pain in his groin.

I could not walk for more than a month and for about a year I could not run. Maybe this fall was partly responsible for my short stature. At ten years of age I was one of the tallest in my class at school and nearly the same as my brother Zino, who was two years older than me. Many people used to describe me exclaiming: "This will be a new Don Alexander!" Instead, my brother grew up to be six feet tall, while I remained more or less at the same height as I was at age twelve.

20/02/1

Waiting for the summer

We are already well into March. In recent weeks my health seems to have somewhat deteriorated. Even my desire to write is gradually dissolving into the infinite sea of ailments that are making my life less pleasant.
As I write these words, I think of the young Matteo Renzi – kicked into a sea of trouble! After a few weeks as Prime Minister, the man who was to be the youngest and most beloved Prime Minister of this unfortunate Italy, finds himself literally under attack from all sides.

Some honeymoon! The huge phalanx of journalists, trade unionists, gurus, comedians, commentators, philosophers, historians, television presenters, politicians, and so forth, unload on him the usual collection of: “He is good, but... He is very intelligent, however…”
Along his path he is accompanied by the usual nonsense of those who can not do anything but speak ill of those who really want to do something concrete to pull poor Italy out of the doldrums.
I want to talk about something else. My daughter Marilyn told me that she will come to visit me in May. I can not wait to embrace her again. We talked for a while on Skype. What a wonderful thing this new technology is. When I think of my family who is on the other side of the world and that I can talk to them and see them as if they were inside my computer, it's something so amazing as to be astounding.
And, personally, I think I was very lucky to live so long and to have had the opportunity to witness the many wonders arising from the brains of many scientists who are only now beginning to discover a microscopic amount of the infinite powers of nature of which we are an extremely small part.
Spring is almost here,. now only a few days away. A lovely young lady doctor friend is trying to reactivate the muscles of my legs, now partly atrophied. She assures me that this summer I will be able to walk better than before and, in the meantime she destroys me with absolutely grueling physical therapy exercises. However, I am starting to walk better even now, (inside the house, of course). When the summer arrives, I might even try to run. Don’t ask me though to participate in marathons. I’m not even thinking of that possibility. The desire to enjoy my 94th summer is still with me, meanwhile, and ghough who don’t believe it, I want to enjoy my daughter’s visit and that of my dear friend Diana and her learned companion Gaetano. And for today, we end up here.

8/3/2014

Greetings to my readers

This is the last piece of this collection. I'm pretty satisfied to have arrived at this point. At times I really believed not to be able to do it. I must apologize to many of you for not having the strength to continue.

The episodes of my long life, if efficiently reported, could fill several books but I, obviously, decided to write my memoirs rather late.

Maybe I should have thought to write them at least a dozen years ago, when I was still in possession of all my strength. However, I hope to have given you an idea, with these meager and disorganized ramblings, of the life I have lived and enjoyed in full on the two opposite parts of the world.

For better or for worse I am not only satisfied, but absolutely proud of my moderate successes and those of my daughters and their families and many of my nephews and relatives.

When the day of my departure arrives, I shall be ready, but there's no hurry. I think I can still put up with the annoying senile diseases that pose some problems. I'll go ahead undaunted.

My loving niece Zina takes full care of me beyond belief. She has made me the reason for her existence. And there are no goods in the world with which I could ever repay her for the care she takes of me.

I also wish to thank you all for having had the patience to read my words, sincerely hoping that my poor pages may have given you a few moments of pleasant reflection.

The End

Sam at eightyeight years of age