Last week, I took my 94-year-old shoemaking instructor to visit the town where he grew up. Asproli, a little hamlet 12 km (7 miles) from Todi, is the place he calls home (despite having left it upon his marriage at the age of 18). We had an absolutely delightful afternoon.
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Asproli is somewhere on the top of the distant hill. This
is taken from a hamlet near his wife's childhood home |
As we drove, we were chatting about how his youth had been. He worked for his father from an early age as an apprentice of sorts, but also went to school and did the things most kids his age would have done. They came to Todi occasionally (by foot or bicycle, and let me tell you...these grades are not for wimps, particularly considering that the bikes didn't have gears!), mostly for business or civic reasons rather than for diversion.
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The church his wife attended; it is even smaller than it looks
in the photo |
Early on in our drive, we came to a fork. He suggested I take the right-hand road, since it had switchbacks. That road did not exist until after the war; until that time, the steep white (gravel) road was the only means of access. None of the local roads were paved during that period, as you'd imagine. The first notable landmark was his wife's family's house. Obviously redone in the 1960s, he said it was virtually unrecognizable...and then he chuckled, and pointed out the corner of the field where he and his (then girlfriend, now wife) used to kiss in secret.
We stopped by Asproli's cemetery to pay respects to his brother. His brother died at the premature age of 52, and Zoppini was clearly moved to be there. We also found his childhood friend there, who had died in his 70s in the 1990s... One of the things about the burial customs here is that they often have ceramic plaques with photos of the deceased somehow glazed onto the surface. It's a lovely opportunity to picture how the person was in life. Interestingly, his parents are buried in Todi's new cemetery, as there was no room in Asproli's cemetery when they died. There appeared to be plenty of vacancies when we visited, though, so either more capacity had been created, or the there had been some renovations in the meantime.
Each hamlet we passed through (and there were about five or six!) had a family home where the youth of the area would come dance of an evening. It seems that dancing was the main entertainment, and they certainly took it seriously! Zoppini and his amour would meet (he on his bicycle, dancing shoes carefully stowed in a bag, she on foot) at the designated locale, and dance the night away. Woe betide him, though, if he arrive home late!
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| Church in Asproli; the attached building to the right is the rectory |
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| Asproli's bell tower |
When we finally arrived in Asproli itself, we revisited his favorite chestnut tree, the places he went asparagus picking, and his friend's home, which is now in ruins, sadly. He took me up and down the most dilapidated-looking, steep roads imaginable, and I confess that at times I was worried we would end up irrevocably stuck in the back of beyond. Spoiler alert: we didn't.
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| The view from the piazza outside the church |
We did, however, see his village school and the church (with its attached rectory), as well as surprisingly running across Angelo, our beloved plumber! We had not at this point actually seen his family home.
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The upper window is
where Zoppini was born |
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His home is the one in the background. There are two others
that are connected on the exterior, but are separate houses |
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The well is the cube in the center of the photo. Rabbits
were kept in a cage to the left. |
Come to find out, Zoppini didn't actually grow up in Asproli, but rather in a clutch of houses well outside the town limits. Perched at the base of a tower that probably dates to 1000 C.E. are five or six dwellings. Three homes are attached together, in a style Americans would call townhomes (ironically, given they're in the middle of the country). The others are separate buildings.
Zoppini showed me the well behind his home, where they kept meat fresh in the summer. Apparently there was something that translates as "straw paper" in which his mother would wrap up any fresh meat they had. They would then put it in the well to keep it cool. It was unclear from his narrative whether it was actually immersed, but he indicated that the wrapping kept the meat dry.
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The tower across from Zoppi's
childhood home. The tower itself
(according to him) is a large room
with an amazing view. You can
just see the exterior staircase to
the left. |
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Zoppini's uncle's house.
You can see where the exterior
stairs connected into the facade. |
His parents lived (and he was born) in the front bedroom, along with his sisters. He shared the other bedroom with his grandparents and his brother, whom we had visited in the cemetery. This brother's daughter now owns the house outright, having bought out Zoppini about 20 years ago. Interesting politics: Zoppini's wife hadn't wanted him to visit because she didn't want the niece to think he was interfering in how she was maintaining the house! Politics were avoided easily enough, though, since she was not present while we were there.
His uncle lived across the narrow road/driveway, in a two-story home that had an external staircase. In sad condition now, it appeared abandoned.
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| View from the base of the tower |
During our time working, we had talked about some of his experiences growing up. One was that Asproli would communicate with Casemasce using fire signals in a prearranged manner from the highest points around. Asproli's location for this was quite near his home. He had a chuckle about remembering something the local sage had said when he was around 12: "I don't know how or when, but in your lifetime, people will be able to cook without lighting a fire." This seemed tremendously remote at the time, but was actually in around 1940. If you think about it, it shows how isolated they really were: gas stoves were widely available and in full use by the 1880s in England (according to a quick internet search), and this was 60 years later that it seemed a distant, science-fiction invention!
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The top of the rise (in the center
of the photo) was the point from
which Asproli signaled
to Casemasce. |
Asking him about gelato and/or whether there was an ice storage house in Asproli (he'd not even realized that there was ice storage in Todi, go figure!), he told me that a fellow rode his specially-fitted bicycle from Todi to all the nearby towns on a Sunday to sell gelato. It was apparently a relatively affordable treat, since it was considered a perfectly normal purchase.
Moving along, to further villages, we continued looking at the buildings where he'd gone to dances, and then we saw the sign for Porzone. It triggered his memory that a friend of his, whom I'd met when the friend had been in the workshop, lived in Porzone and had told us to come for a visit. Did Zoppini know the house? No. Did he know the fellow's name? Nope. No problem, though: we saw another elderly fellow walking up the road, and described the friend. After a few different attempts at description, he realized that we were talking about "il Romano"...so called because he had lived for several years in Rome. No problem! We found the house easily from the description, and Il Romano was delighted for the visit! We had coffee and cake and a tour of the house (which, incidentally, had a wood-fired stove, and a small, portable gas burner), and everything was merry until Zoppini realized the time: after 6:15 in the evening. Sounds okay, but he was due home at 6!
We hurried off, him rather silent in worry about the chiding he would get for being late home.
However, when I saw him the next day, he was perfectly happy, and said he'd told his wife he'd had a lot of work to do the night before!
Love,
Alexandra
