ProetryPlace Blog 33: SOLDIERING Part 7
Spaghetti, Spumante and Scemenza
The year 1953 saw momentous historic events unfold. An Englishman, Edmond Percival Hillary, and a Nepalese, Tenzing Norgay, were the first men to climb to the summit of Mount Everest. Watson, Crick and Franklin elaborated the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. And the Korean War ended in July. I wondered if the half of my training company assigned there had all survived while I fought Army paperwork in France and toured Europe.
“How much leave time do you have coming?”
I wondered what Marty had in mind. I said, “At least two weeks, I think, but I’m too broke to use it.”
“I was thinking of a trip to Italy—Pisa, Rome, all that? We could save up and go in a month or two.”
I liked the idea, a big adventure. “I want to see Pompeii, the ancient ruins and Vesuvius. Maybe we could rent a car and cover the whole west coast.”
Weeks later, we boarded a train to Nice intending to spend a few days there and in Monaco, then rent a car and drive along the Mediterranean coast to see Pisa and Rome with a final destination of Naples and Pompeii far to the south before returning by undetermined route.
The first day, we explored Monaco. I clicked away at the casino, the Rainier castle and the picturesque harbor with my newly acquired Leica 35 mm camera. At dinner we overheard a discussion in English at a nearby table and became acquainted with three American coeds in Europe on an exchange program. We told them our plans for Italy, and they told us they had just returned from there.
“You have to try the Asti Spumonte. It’s great.”
“Asti what?”
“Spumante. Champagne from the vineyards in Asti. You have to try it. Are you coming back this way? You could bring us some.”
They said they would be in Nice for the next month and asked if we would bring them four or five bottles when we returned.
“No problem. We have plenty of room in the car. We’ll look you up when we get back.”
We rented a “vintage” Peugeot convertible the next day and our journey began. The drive south through the Alps along the Cote d’Azur and the Italian coast was spectacular. We looked straight down hundreds of meters to the sea below from narrow, unguarded straightaways and hairpin turns. Now and then, small groups of white buildings with red terra-cotta slate roofs hugged the mountainside above the waters of the Mediterranean. The sun shone down upon us. The car ran well. Life was good.
About 200 kilometers distant we arrived in Genoa, the seaport city where the boy, Christopher Columbus had played in the streets 500 years before. It was around dinner time, and we decided to find a place to eat and spend the night there before proceeding through any additional mountainous terrain. Before departing in the morning, we purchased five bottles of Asti Spumante and stowed them in a large paper bag in the back seat. Then on to Pisa, the leaning tower and relatively flat roads.
Construction of the bell tower for the cathedral of Pisa began in 1173, and almost from the start it began to lean. It took 199 years to complete, slowed by a series of city-state wars and obviously a number of different architects. We visited the leaning tower and climbed its lopsided staircase just a decade before it was closed pending possible collapse, almost 800 years after its inception.
Leaving Pisa, Marty took the wheel and we sped along to our next destination—Rome. Some one hundred kilometers down the road, I warned,” Watch this turn.”
A sharp dogleg moved the road over a railroad crossing. Marty steered sharply right. “Ease up a little.” The squeal of skidding tires and the screech of brakes drowned out my comment.
“Slow . . . .” I never completed the sentence.
We skidded at an angle to the tracks that were elevated slightly above the crossing grade. The tracks caught a tire and flipped us with the rag top resting in the middle of the crossing. Bottles of Asti rained down and broke on the pavement. We managed to crawl out of the overturned vehicle in time to see the bright light of a locomotive waggling with menace some distance down the tracks.
With the help of a family of excited Italian farmers, the Peugeot was righted and moved from the tracks prior to the arrival of the afternoon freight. The car stood like a knock-kneed teenager with front wheels bent in opposite directions, clearly too out of alignment to be driven. The Italian family waved their hands and rattled off something that may have been suggestions or perhaps just berating the stupidity of the two young Americans who stood shrugging their shoulders helplessly before them.
Situation hopeless, but the gods had not totally forsaken us. A resident of the nearby town of Fallonica who spoke English quite well happened by and arranged for the crippled vehicle to be towed to a garage for repairs. We loaded our bags and ourselves into his car and followed the tow truck into town where we took up temporary residence nearly 500 kilometers short of our planned destination. Our leave time and reserve cash ebbed away while we lunched and dined on spaghetti every day and idled away hour after hour, day after day, waiting for essential repairs on the car to be completed.
At last we limped back to Nice in the badly aligned and abused little car. Frigid air blew in through the tattered top at the higher elevations, and the rear end had a tendency to want to move up front on the sharp mountain turns. At the rental agency we grudgingly accepted the loss of our rental deposit and were left with barely a lira or franc in our combined pockets.
We found the Asti-loving American students. “Oh, hi! Where’s the Spumante?”
“You did what?” The three exchanged glances, looking extremely skeptical when they heard our tale of woe and even more so when we asked to borrow the equivalent of $20 or $30 to get back to the base. They were devastated by the loss of their expected Asti but less than totally sympathetic about our automotive misadventure. After considerable discussion with our most sincere assurances, they finally came to the aid of their countrymen, and we managed to arrive back at Sampigny Chemical Depot two days later with minutes to spare before being AWOL.
A postscript to Italy: Aside from the tale just told, there are three things I remember most about Italy —fresh pasta, that I could still eat daily
—Asti Spumonte, that my bride and I drank on our honeymoon in Chicago many months later and on many special occasions since, and
—the beautiful sound of the lyrical spoken tongue. Even the chatter of those fiery farmers was music to my ears.
(To be Concluded)
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