21.Archaeological Dig

 

When I was a high school lad in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we Bulldogs (Go Bulldogs!) owned a ruined Indian pueblo on the west bank of the Rio Grande a few miles outside of town. There was enough interest in the science of archaeology for the school to hire a teacher and conduct one class and I was one of the lucky students in that class.

It was fun to learn about the way to dig old stuff up and think about the culture which had produced the artifact. We took a field trip or two to our Indian pueblo and I even helped find some bone needles buried with the remains of a body beneath the floor of one of the little rooms we excavated--just like Indiana Jones though he came years later!

So when I was at Il Poggio I was wondering if the Old people had left anything under the grass for me to find. 

I was walking up to the main building one day with a spade in my hand after doing some gardening  and just for fun I took a couple of shovelfuls of dirt out below the bank of the access road. 

Holy Cow! There was a cool tiny glass bottle--very old--at the bottom of the hole!

That is the ONLY hole I dug and it was only a foot or two deep. 

I know you don't believe this story but its true.

I gave the bottle to Elisabetta and she displayed it with some other prized objects in a glass-fronted case in the dining room.

 

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20. Florence Alone

I thought it would be interesting to see the famous city of Florence by myself so early one morning I took the local bus from San Vicenzo a Torre into the old City of Flowers.

The day was a Sunday--my "day off" at Il Poggio and it was high summertime--what I didn't know was that Florence would be jam-pack-sardine  crowded with tourists and Italians. 

To me, awfully, miserably crowded after my free and easy, quiet and spacious life at Il Poggio. 

The city was interesting. The cathedral--huge--awesome construction and the other famous chapels and buildings--more than interesting--but horribly  crowded.

I happened to walk by the famous Uffizi gallery--the place that contains Michelangelo's David and some other totally famous pieces of sculpture--but the crowds packing the entrance and the price of admission was really too much for a country boy like me so I took a pass and I think you might as well too since you can see copies here and there or look at the nice, quiet picture books in your local library without getting elbowed by the sweating crowds.

Maybe it would be better on a cold, rainy winter day.

I got tired and discouraged early in the afternoon but couldn't find my way back to the San Vicenzo a Torre bus stop so I asked a black-robed priest for directions. To my absolute astonishment he gave me a tongue-lashing like I have seldom ever had.

My Italian was not good but I caught his drift very clearly. He despised tourists--especially English-speaking tourists who could barely speak a word of correct Italian--and ME in particular!

We should all GO back to wherever we came from, or to Hades, and STAY there!

I guess what shocked me most was that he was a priest. In fact that is why I asked him--because I thought he might give me a more polite answer perhaps  than one of his harassed countrymen--and maybe he did.

But instead of searching for the bus stop any more or asking anybody else for directions, I just hiked back to Il Poggio. I was used to walking. 

Walking always did me good.

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19. Florence Shopping

Il Poggio B+B was about eighteen kilometers south of Florence, Italy.

There was nothing urban about Il Poggio and it could have been anywhere out in the Tuscan  countryside--there was no traffic and no noise--no rush and no hurry.

Several times during my stay Elisabetta took me shopping with her into the city.

The drive to Florence with Elisabetta at the wheel of the old company van was a totally enjoyable experience. She was a competent and careful driver and as the traffic increased close to the city she was only more competent and careful--no rush and no hurry.

I was her only passenger and we were going on a shopping trip  to visit a couple of old friends' warehouse-style antique shops. 

This trip to Florence seemed to be the only kind of shopping trip Elisabetta ever took. She seemed totally uninterested in buying anything modern and everything else she needed she had delivered.

She had furnished Il Poggio herself--every last corner of it--with practical, unique antique items.

Her method of shopping was also unique to my experience. Her contacts would call her when they had something very old new and she would drive in to take a look.

While she was in the shops she would also prowl around eyeballing the other merchandise. She knew what she needed and what was not a part of her plan and no amount of salesmanship would sell her anything she didn't need or want--but if she saw something she liked she would get it with fierce determination.

This day she wanted to look at a table the dealer had called her about. We left without the table but with some very used "fire dogs"--the iron things which go in an open fireplace to hold cooking ware up out of the flames. By very old I mean used until they were burned thin, but still useful. Just the thing for her kitchen.

All the way in and out she talked quietly about the countryside and the city--how it had changed--what was what and what was where. She was a marvelous tour guide and seemed to know everything--answering my few questions before I asked them. I really liked that.

We left before noon and were back before dinner since she wanted to help cook something for her guests.

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18. Battle Scars

Fiori was a family man who worked as a handyman almost full time at Il Poggio and lived with his wife and kids in San Vicenzo a Torre.

He was a nice little guy--literally. He was only about five-foot two. 

He liked  to make conversation and didn't care if I didn't always understand every word.

There was a small forest of fairly old trees surrounding the main buildings of Il Poggio as I have said and there were very few older trees anywhere else in the vicinity and one day he told me why.

"There was a terrific battle here in World War Two." he said.  

"The Germans were in the stone buildings stoutly defending them to the death. The Italians were in the cellars drinking the wine stored there and you Americans were advancing up the hill slope. It was a terrific fight--such a terrific fight that the trees were all shot to hell with lead bullets and that's why they are still standing--because after the war when all the other trees around here were cut down for firewood, those trees near the buildings were so filled with lead bullets that when the woodsmen tried to cut them down their saw blades were damaged so bad that they let the trees stand."

Another time Fiori (the name means "little flower") pointed to the ceiling of one of the stone outbuildings. When you looked up, the wooden slats the ceiling was made with had mortar shell manufacturing marks printed on them in English.

"That wood is from crates made in the your country to hold your soldiers' artillery ammunition. Of course it was pretty high quality milled wood so the farmers here used it to re-build with after the armies passed through. One bad thing about it though, some of the wood had bugs in it that infected the cypress trees around here and that's why so many of them are dead."

This conversation took place more than half a century after said battle.

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17. Duck Pond Lesson

Well.  It's true even at Il Poggio. 

Not all is beer and skittles.

I was caught off my guard and told a bit of humiliating truth after I helped  drain and clean the Il Poggio duck pond.

The truth teller was a young man, maybe eighteen years old, by the name of Giovanni.

Giovanni helped out at Il Poggio on a once in a while basis. He was not a regular, but when he was around we sometimes worked together--usually on sort of dirty physical projects--gardening, cleaning and whatnot. 

My Italian was improving a little so we could communicate in a very basic way.

Cleaning the duck pond was my idea.

Ducks don't seem to care what kind of unpleasant muck they slurp and paddle about in and this little pond was only about fifteen feet around and a foot deep. Water for the pond came from a nearby outdoor spigot with twenty feet of plastic hose attached. The pond did have an unpleasant odor to it if you got very close but since it was in an out-of-the-way place-- kind of behind one of the stone outbuildings--I probably the only person who noticed the stench.

Anyway, I had the help of Giovanni and explained the project to him.

He didn't see how I was going to drain the pond though to me it seemed a simple matter.

The pond was on a hill. Just take the water hose--stick one end in the pond and carry the other end downhill. Suck on the downhill end being VERY careful not to suck too long and you had a siphon situation. The water would flow to it's lowest level through the hose and out into the nearby garden.

To Giovanni this seemed like a magical trick.

Well, I demonstrated the siphon technique and the pond was drained and we shoveled some smelly stuff out and the ducks had some clean, fresh water for a few days-- but Giovanni got something off his chest by confronting me thus:

"You Americans." he said bitterly, "You think you are so smart. You are so well educated. Italians like me stand no chance! You know things like how to drain a pond with a hose and I don't know anything! No wonder I can find no work and have to to stupid things. You can do anything you want and go wherever you want. It is so unfair!"

That's something I learned about human relations from cleaning the Il Poggio duck pond.

 

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16. Memorial Bees

Elisabetta arranged for one or two highly trained young women potters from Germany to be working at the Il Poggio ceramica studio all the time.

I don't know what bait she used--free rent in her splendid old Tuscan villa maybe--maybe some cash too--I never asked--but there they were happily at work every weekday in the ceramica studios of the place.

I learned a lot about clay work looking over the shoulders of these nice young women--and they enjoyed my untrained free and easy clay work style too, I think.

One of these--shall I call them girls?--had a cute idea. She showed the rest of us how to make little clay bees and every day we cranked out a few just for fun.

She threw a clay hive which held a couple of dozen bees at a time and all these bees and their hive were duly dried, bisque fired, glazed and final fired again and we used the bees as gifts for the guests of the B+B and the very rare shoppers who visited the ceramica.

They reminded me of the little green fired clay scarab beetles which are so popular in Egypt.  All the tourists pick up a few very cheap on the street and the museum guards at the big Cairo museum are forever whispering and showing you their "Psst! Rare, precious and expensive..." antique fakes.

I expect--I hope--a few of these cool little Il Poggio Memorial Bees are still flitting around the world.

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15. Pizza

Pizza. 

The national gastronomic delight of Italy which has conquered the world.

How was it served by Master Cook Elisabetta? 

In two words: it wasn't. 

Every Friday evening all the guests of Il Poggio and all the staff who wanted to join the party scrambled into the company van or into willing guest's cars (Everyone arrived at Il Poggio by car--there was no reliable local public transport except for occasional buses in the nearby village of San Vicenzo a Torre.) and we all drove to a respectable old pizzeria in the slightly larger village of Montespertoli about six miles distant.

Elisabetta had made an arrangement with the owner of this pizzeria  to be prepared for an invasion of hungry guests every Friday evening and he was a jolly and reliable host--no matter the size of the group--but always from ten to thirty  people--there was always  plenty of hot, fresh, scrumptious pizza.

And, of course, the ever-welcome classic Chianti wine produced by the surrounding vineyards was also plentifully present. 

So the Il Poggio kitchen staff had the evening off and the guests had the fun of dining in a real, honest-to-God Italian village pizzeria!

This was all paid for by Elisabetta--for the B+B guests it was a part of their regular fee and for the staff, it was a weekly free party.

Well remembered!

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