Before I say
Possibly a long and convoluted story about my take on Italy and all the rest that came after. I don’t know yet how it will evolve. I am composing as I go. However, when I finish, I will have something significant to say…
Being born in Denver, Colorado, USA, was a mistake. A joke on God’s part. Sorry, if I seem a bad sport, to say. When I realized my situation, I prayed to the Lord to be relocated to a more scenic, congenial spot on the globe. Once the requests were processed, lo’ and behold and to my total surprise, The Good Lord summarily packed me off from Denver at the wee age of six months to Portland, Oregon… before the city became an alternative Grunge paradise on a river and in a rainforest… back to Denver after five years… The Lord must have had a thing about the place ‘cause later on, he sent me back for a third posting for university… off to Boston for a three-year stint filled with the highs & lows of Life offered at the time. One fantastic high was spending an entire summer in a yellow clapboard house at the water’s edge on Cape Cod. A low was coping with Yankees of every caste; they are all very coarse, hard, and unpleasant. Then, over to the Midwest’s anointed hub of Chicago, The Windy City, where a freezing rain storm hit the day after we moved into our tenth house… total house count came to thirteen by 1969… a drafty three-story pile with too many exposed windows ineptly resisting the city’s hallmark climatic conditions and shoved in between other three-story piles subjected to the same… thus, delaying our First Day of School at one of the sorriest excuses for a school ever… this I know from vast personal experience… The Great Educator!!!… having matriculated to seventeen schools in my career, four were kindergartens!!! And, while I am at it, I can guarantee that when I alight upon the Right Hand of The Lord… and I will do so nonstop once I’ve dearly departed… if luck happens, and I spy Mr. Page, my 7th & 8th-grade math teacher, wandering about in the Heavenly uniform of a white robe, I will give him a resounding slap he will justifiably feel its sting and insult for all Eternity… and finally, to Atlanta, Georgia, HQ for one of America’s greatest capitalist inventions ever and my Dad’s employer for forty-four years. After that, Italy. Bless Our Lord. He got it right, finally, and after much supplication. A good deal has been forgotten, though, thanks to the genius of Italy, etc. It’s my story.
No surprise that once a habit is formed, it’s difficult to break it. The US Tour was replicated in Europe, bouncing around in Italy and Switzerland. Happily meeting You… baring those annoying controversies of character & rank… and settling down with him and two very spoiled Weimaraner snapped me out of that frenetic trend. Twenty-seven years together. Good Grief! Ditto for Genoa. The last sixteen in Codiponte.
But Denver? Back in the 50s and early 60s, it was a well-nourished and beautifully homogenized American city. One of several: Dallas, Salt Lake City, frigging San Diego, California!!! All pretty much the same except for the local accents. In my day, Denver had something like 450,000 inhabitants. Today, metro Denver has a population of 4,000,000+ spread over a once-untouched… virgin might be another description… expanse of prairie land. A metropolis on urban steroids. A sprawling outrage to an environment burdened with millions of single-family homes, asphalt, strip malls, and a few skyscrapers. Oh! And all the trees that have been planted have created a muggy micro-climate… tornadoes, water-bombs for rain, hurricane-force winds.
The city was originally laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted. A cow town re-organized for wide boulevards… Oh! If you timed it well, you could drive down Broadway Blvd. without stopping at a traffic light… tree-lined parkways, and quiet residential streets with separate sidewalks, the urban grid occasionally interrupted by ample green parks lucky enough to have lakes. There were nice shopping centers too with fantastic stores… a toy store Heaven on two floors… visits there often provoked tantrums when The Parents said No! I remember one my sister pulled. It was an aria of total displeasure & desperation… several department & chic-chic specialty stores at the Cherry Creek Mall and downtown, too. And get this: our houses were rarely locked, and Mom & Dad and our au-pairs would leave the keys in their respective cars when dashing into the King Soopers for cereal with a prize inside, the Ace Hardware for nails, or while dining at Writer’s Manners Restaurant at Colorado Blvd. and I-24.
As for Denver’s Culture & Beauty, the former was imported from the East Coast. An art museum… billeted in a Victorian house until the City Fathers in the 70s hired an Italian architect, Gio Ponti, who designed a seven-story fortress faced in reflective tiles, much to the chagrin of the locals. Ex-cowboys, miners, cattlemen. Became a Big Scandal. The attempt was repeated when a different group… rich museum benefactors = oil men and doctors… hired the American Daniel Libeskind to design a large building dedicated to recently donated and acquired Art in 2006. It’s a very pointy thing. Upon first view, thought it ugly. Still do. Inside and out. How often do you find yourself in a multifaceted trapezoidal room? Once was enough for me. You loved them! Other sites of Culture in the city were the Natural History Museum. Lots of dinosaur skeletons were installed, gracing its many lofty halls. And, a zoo with an island for monkeys in the Summer. A huge hit with us kids. The adults worried about escape. Sadly, these cultural poles were few and far between, separated by a wide, flat, and repetitive urban fabric of rarely over one story. Colfax Avenue, however, is renowned for its fancy illuminated signage. Several miles of them. All pretty helter-skelter, though. What can I say? An American city… out West… in over-drive.
The majority of Denveridians… and my clan can be included in these ranks… hankered more for sports than a Van Gogh or, a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Like, what is all this nature for? Well, how about watching football, softball, hockey, or skiing, hiking, skating, swimming, playing golf and tennis? Thus, we come upon a secondary and associated mistake: being born into a sports-aholic family. Come on! They even played at lawn bowling. Ah, my burden to bear, and in the middle of the United States of America. Back before Interstates, it took two days just to get to Kansas City by car. Not being inclined to chase balls or to navigate moguls on a slope denuded of trees, for instance, I felt lost with nothing to spur my desire for fantasy or out-of-the-ordinary. Again, the keyword is homogenization. I was, instead, forced to submit to an endless array of swimming, tennis, and ice skating lessons. I would have preferred to stay in our split-level suburban home with an au pair playing with her hair. I was doomed.
No, I was saved.
I was given a radio, and I found one night a classical music radio station transmitting from Salt Lake City, of all places. How the sound waves got across the Rocky Mountains remains a mystery to me. Nothing of the sort existed in Denver at the time. And quickly thereafter, by Sophia Loren and Andrea Palladio. It must’ve been a moment for me. The latter two turned my head irrevocably to Italy. Took me a while, but I made it here.
Sophia entered my life at the drive-in movies. My folks took me to see It Started in Naples. Just us three. My baby brother hadn’t been born yet. Another two years before he showed up. My sister probably had thrown a tantrum, so she stayed home with the au pair, watching TV and playing with her plastic horses. Oh my! I forgot to mention horses. Horse-back riding. My maternal grandfather, a four-star brigadier general and lawyer, played polo. He had several polo ponies in billeted at the Polo Grounds… now a ritzy residential area full of GIGANTIC mansions and across the street from the Cherry Creek Shopping Center and that heavenly toy store. I was mesmerized by Sophia. Her smile, her ample proportions, her breathy Italian-accented English, her wiggles dancing with the child star, Marietto, who…. now get this… left acting and became a gynecologist. No kidding… and her hit-the-bull’s-eye fashion sense. What can I say? The Italians know style. Additional knock-ons would follow with a fascination for Italy, Italians, Naples, the Mediterranean Sea, red wine… got a juice glass of it watered down for me at my parent’s innumerable cocktail & dinner parties. To shut me up, my parents bought a World Book Encyclopedia. It worked… for a while.
Entered Andrea Palladio through the intervention of my maternal grandmother, who was an interesting person and scary person. Not particularly kid-friendly unless any kid expressed curiosity about a topic of interest to her, or a sport. It might have helped had she provided us with a list. Nope. We had to hit upon it by our sweet luck. Unwillingly inducted to be a babysitter one Saturday afternoon, the Grandmother, exasperated, set me down at a Dining Room table with a big picture book on the Italian architect. Learned the word oeuvre. My grandparents had just returned from their annual Euro tour. They had spent a couple of weeks with friends in Venice and did a tour of several villas in the Veneto, some designed by Palladio. Well, shown the book and allowed to flip its pages full of photographs, I had never seen anything quite so simple, so utterly beautiful as Villa Almerico Capra… today more generally known as Villa Rotonda, a trite reduction to its easily identifiable distinction… and a whole Universe away from anything in Denver. Well, perhaps the nearest structure might be the Colorado State House. Too much of a Victorian notion of Palladio to be much competition to those stunning villas. I was not allowed to take the book home. Drove the Grand-woman mad with requests to let me come and leaf through it still. Rarely happened. Yet, maybe the shock of my first introduction ensured the experience would remain fixed in my memory. It worked.
Here I am in Italy.
I am certainly not homeless yet. I would like an alternative to what is already in our stable of properties: Il Poggiolo in Codiponte, a loft in Genoa, and an apartment in Alghero.
So, I have devised a new residential fantasy. A dream house. What would tickle me Green, White, and Red. My very own Palladian villa. Ecco…
How about a little tour?
Four spaces the same size of 5m x 7m x 4.5m ceiling height… 16.4ft x 23ft x 14.7ft ceiling height. Three remain at the same dimensions… Rooms 1, 2 & 3 on the Main Floor Plan. Room 1 is a columned Loggia and Entrance, closed off in the colder months by folding glass doors. Rooms 2 & 3 would each have a fireplace, doors out to a large open terrace… not shown… and minimaly furnished. Probably, Room 2 would have one of these below for a bed/sofa…
Rather like the brown.
The fourth space is divided in half, and each half goes to a different corner on the Main Floor towards the Front Facade. The right hand would be the Kitchen & Pantry. The room will have only a metal wall cabinet… gold finished… hiding the actual Kitchen & Pantry. The only piece of furniture would be a large table and, if forced to, a stack of chairs. The other half goes to the left-hand corner of the Main Floor Plan. It contains a staircase to the First Floor, which would have a central space for a Library & Lounge surrounded by four small and paired Bedrooms, each pair sharing a Bathroom. Also, a Powder Room next to the staircase, and from a door off Room 2, a door into a large Bathroom & Closet.
Done. Nice, no?
Now what was it that I wanted to say?