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XXVI - The pick up truck
 After about six months after my arrival in Australia, already speaking an
English, more or less macaronic , and , albeit sluggish, 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, whose body was quite presentable, but
everything else was in a state that would be an understatement to call it
disastrous.
I had to take with me a bin of water 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've never managed to
sell more than ten or eleven in one week and I felt terribly guilty about it,
but the boss was overjoyed. Infact, as I later learned from one of his English
workmen, a lamp to him costed two pounds and a few shillings.
One day he asked me to change my pickup truck with his van that, for some reason
was so hard to start. The van was like new and I warned him that my pickup was
not as good as it looked. He 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, in a town near Sydney. The vehicle's engine melted due to
lack of water and remained on the road.
I can’t tell you the anger of the master ... I then had to leave that job but I
had previously convinced the 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 have to sell them. We made that way quite a lot of money
and afterwards we had to engage many other sellers as I had started making and
selling neon signs with letters and 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 constructor, I still received calls from builders of
commercial buildings because the architects who had designed the projects had
ordered: Plastic lettering to be supplied by Vivalight Co.
21/09/2013
XXVII - The Queen in Australia
In 1952, the young Queen Elizabeth came to visit Australia with her handsome
prince consort. We are talking about sixty two years ago. I was doing at that
time 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 of Sydney, the managers of the company
were thrilled. However, the orders never came through as they guessed the way I
was realizing 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 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 colored and treated it with my Flock,
and that we would equally divide the money made from sales. He agreed and we
prepared several hundred of these medallions. My partner had a representative
for the sale of its mannequins and gave him also the sale of our medallions. This gentleman, a real crook, gave us less than a 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,
and when the queen arrived I did not have a single sample left of that blessed
medallion that I had enriched with the color of the face and the clothes of the
queen and with that straordinary background wich looked like velvet of an
extremely brilliant red. I'm sorry not to have retained at least one copy of that blessed medagllion.
However, at that time I gained a lot, but a lot of money. 8/10/2013
XXVIII - Antonietta
During my first year at university, one of my good friends was Gigi, who
commented all my poems and all that I wrote. One day, walking through the corso,
we meet a very tall lady, covered with a black shawl that covered her from head
to knees, and next to her two girls that reached her shoulder.
After having passed us, one of the girls, a unique beauty, turned and look 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 follow them up to theyr house which was near 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 went then 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 cafe, 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, which seemed a Charter bun, on the
tobacconist fronting the College, and begins to write a polished and long love
letter with references to classical figures of Botticelli, Raphael and others.
Then took what he 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 are still at the Maugeri’s cafe and Gigi goes on to see if the girl gives him
an answer.
It was in a state of extraordinary excitement while I was sitting at the coffee
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 silly.
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
13/10/2013
XXIX - I was also a hypochondriac
Berlusconi has decayed. Good. Berlusconi goes to social services. Good.
Berlusconi decides to vote confidence in the Letta government. Good. But when
this left shall stop talking about Berlusconi? To hear the deafening chatter of
television these days, despite the fact that in Italy the economic problems, and
not only, continue to deteriorate, we still talk, almost exclusively, of
Berlusconi.
I am not aware that 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 has the power to govern, to help
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 that
often is also harmful. Since we have a mouthy and unproductive parliament, Letta
should govern by decrees, so as to have a profound effect 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 can not do more than
simply write prescriptions and order, mostly useless blood tests, or other
tests, often just as useless, was an unforgivable mistake. All this, certainly
made very wealthy many pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies and analytical
enterprises, but also made of 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 to have symptoms of many diseases. I was
submitting myself to frequent checkups and often I was really sick. One day, at
the bowls club where I belonged, joined a retired professor of the University of
Sydney who had taught medicine all his life. 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 in internet for several
hours a day and even find the time to write this nonsense.
11/10/2013
XXX - 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 condition. The loss of his wife, a couple of months before,
had, in some way, weakened his normal good humor. He seemed even smaller, as he
was six feet tall and very sturdy.
When he saw me and hugged me 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 for him a passport, 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 wakes up and asks me: “When
are we leaving?” I tell him that we were already flying for about an hour, but he says: “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 comes close to my father to check the seat belt,
my father told me: “These girls have a 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
to be 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 of knowledge between her and my father, had been established, as it
were, a stream of sympathy. The lady, almost caressing my father, used to say:
“What a lovely old man!” And my father would answer: “You are so brilliant to
hurt 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 mom ...” 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 spot 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, and, they tell me
that, when he returned home, was looking for his wife and when they reminded him
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. 15/10/2013
XXXI - Trowels about 40 centimeters long
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, in
Sicily, was considered an excellent craftsman, very good at his job.
Well, arrived in Australia, he was a guest of his brother in law who was
building some appartments and hired him as bricklayer. He had brought from Italy
a small trowel and could not, in a day's work, lay more than three or four
hundred bricks per day. In the evening he was very tired and complained of his
hard work.
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, for many years in
Australia, and the other two of Irish origin. These people had trowels about 40
centimeters 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
laborer. 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 made 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. I had then 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 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.
The low productivity of the workers or artisans, 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.
18/10/13
XXXII - Cecily Freezers
When I stopped building and devoted myself only to buy and sell 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 Leicchardt. The property belonged to an American
company that produced and distributed cakes and other sweets.
The conditions in the refrigerant section was not in good condition and from the
condenser element were coming ouy ammonia fumes that disturbed 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 they no longer wished to buy the property 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 technical refrigeration experts
who adviced 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 ment to buy a second-hand condenser more modern
and in excellent condition that I bought for 2,000 dollori.
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 of 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 for me an adequate income for all these years.
20/10/13
XXXIII - Poor Italy!!!
The Letta government seems to be entering again into fibrillation due to this
new law of stability that has managed only not to please anyone. The unions were were quick to proclaim a mini general strike.
To what this may
serve, to me is absolutely incomprehensible and even ridicule. 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
the great Padellaro, director of Fatto Quotidiano, says that the tall
tales are told only by Napolitano.
So the Italians waver between a canard 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 be. 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 congenital to 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, so many
incredible things are happening. Monti has resigned accusing of treason the most
important members of his party. 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 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!!!
23/10/13
XXXIV - My first job in Italy
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, almost
every week, this official asking news about my assumption that, fortunately, did
never materialize.
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 from it.
One day one of our countryman, employed in the Milan police, 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. (Organization Furnishing Edile Industrial). My cop friend
convinced me to go with him to meet the director of this company, the accountant
Contorni.
This gentleman did not make 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 that I would be able to buy in the 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 make a subscription for all trains from Milan to the Veneto and gave
me a long list of addresses of companies that collected or possessed scrap 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 Italiy and was presented as particularly important.
In Milan I got typed the next letter and I 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 offer you a
possible business relationship between our companies. Please welcome him with
sympathy and listen to our proposals. We thank you very much and send 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 that they would have in the future. Somehow, I
could, from the first meeting, 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 forget which. Against five kilos of scrap, would have in
exchange one kilio 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 make flow to the OFEI site vagons and wagons
of scrap and make the amount of my commissions grow up to about one hundred
thousand lire a month. For the accountant Contorni I became so his preferred
representative and when there was some problem in one of its branches he sent me
to solve it.
XXXV - Murray house, in Bronte
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 land and
removed the house. Afterwards I transferred part of the land to the municipality
of Waverley in exchange for permission to build on the site eight floors of
apartments and two floors of parking space.
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 tells me that he could not find a better layout of 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 ampie 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 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
Road, right in front of my property and that he used to see me nearly every day
during the construction of the flats. And 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
XXXVI - The segrets 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 of going towards a future of which we perceive the essence
only as a dream. Possibly it was my curiosity to determine my 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 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 withh 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 gouge
could change a piece of wood in a marvelous decoration with roses 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 mold 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 rest, I went down in a room that we called the warehouse and, there, I was
working with wire, wires for electricity, etc., and 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, 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 (it
follows)
|
Gaetano
and I were discussing our movements on the weekend for
our trip to Italy next year.
