by T. Jacira Paolino
Shorts in Italy – Don’t do it!
Fashion in Italy is important. After all, Milan is the global capital of fashion, which is why I embarked on a campaign before our trip to Italy to convince my (now ex-) husband that grown Italian men do not wear shorts; that it isn’t socially acceptable. He acquiesced for the most part, but brought along his favorite Yankees shorts for when he got up in the morning, before taking a shower. But then he forgot that promise.
We were in Positano, along the Amalfi Coast, with breathtaking views and lemon trees everywhere. There was a Pizzeria at the top of the stairway that led to our AirBnB apartment. He ran up the stairs, ordered and waited for a pizza, chatting with the owner and waiters while he waited, and then carried it downstairs to eat it with me. I admonished him for wearing the shorts in public but he said, “Nobody even noticed.”
The next day we walked up the stairs together to head to the private beach owned by the parents of the woman whose AirBnB place we had rented. As we passed the pizzeria, the owner was standing in the doorway, and my now ex introduced him to me. The owner said, “Oh, so your husband does wear long pants like a big boy!”
After that, he promised not to wear his shorts in public during the remainder of the trip.
Promises, promises…
Volturino is a town of 1,700 people, officially, according to the sign from the last census on the outskirts of town. Unofficially, I estimate there are about 500 people who live here year-round. The medieval village is on a hilltop in the southern foothills of the Apennine mountain range that end in Puglia (Apulia in English), about 45 minutes from Foggia, inland from the Adriatic Sea. It is the birthplace of my ex-husband’s grandparents, Vincenzo and Maria Amalia, both of whom emigrated to America in the late 1800s.
The town is surrounded by modern windmills that produce more electricity than the local population can use, because the wind here rarely stops blowing. When it is 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Lucera, the nearest small city 10 kilometers away down in the valley, it is at least 10 degrees cooler in Volturino, and with a blustery wind that makes you walk with a 30-degree lilt, not unlike walking in hurricane force winds back home in Florida. We haven’t been here in winter, but the local residents say it is brutal. It’s like being inside a violently shaken snow globe.
The family home
The house his cousin, Giuseppe “Peppino” has so generously loaned to us for our stay here has been in the family since 1827. My ex’s great aunt Elisabetta, his grandfather Vincenzo’s sister, lived here with her husband. It is located across a narrow street from the town church, just 200 yards from the main square. The bell tower is outside our 2nd story bedroom window, and the bells ring every 15 minutes. Around the clock. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week.
After a short while, you don’t even notice the ringing, unless the normal pattern is broken. On the hour, it strikes the hour, seven strikes for 7:00, 12 strikes for 12 o’clock, etc. Then, on the quarter, half and ¾ hour, a mere second of silence is followed by a second bell tone, different from the first, with one strike for 15 minutes past, 2 strikes for half past and 3 strikes for quarter till the hour, …except for Saturday and Sunday mornings when, at 8:15 a.m. you get a full 30 seconds of constant and very loud, continuous bell ringing – a call to mass. If we thought we could sleep in on weekend mornings, we were so wrong!
The entrance to the house is on a narrow street, with steep steps leading to the front door, one flight up. Every day trash is picked up at the entrance to the street. You just have to put the bag of trash (a grocery size bag) at the entrance to our narrow street so the trash guys, on their three-wheeled trash vehicle, can stop by and pick them all up. You need to put the trash out before 8 a.m. and they come by shortly thereafter.
The wind in Volturino
The first day, my ex, in his favorite Yankee shorts, remembered to take the trash out while I was upstairs in the shower. He opened the front door, walked down the steep steps to the top of the street entrance and set the bag of trash alongside the rest of the residents’ trash. He then turned around and walked back up the steep steps. As he reached the top of the steps, he looked down just in time to see the trash bag blow down the narrow street, away from the rest of the trash pile.
He dutifully walked back down the steps in his Yankee shorts, picked it up and put it back with the rest of the trash. He then turned around and walked back up the steep steps once more. Just as he reached our doorway, another gust of wind blew our trash back down the narrow street, so once more he trudged down the stairway, picked up the trash, walked back up to the main street and put it under someone else’s trash to anchor it.
He walked up those steep steps a third time, and just as he reached the front door, a gust of wind slammed the door in his face. There he was, outside on the front stoop, without the key, in his Yankee shorts, and I was in the shower upstairs with the water running. In desperation he called out, “Honey?”
After a short while he gave up and sat down on the little stool next to the front step and waited. As the locals walked by, they could see this grown man, obviously not showered or shaved, sitting on the front porch, in shorts.
