Forgotten photos of il Poggiolo...
The wreck of a house cleaned-up before the four-year re-build…
Spring 2022, when travelling resumed after two consecutive years of Covid-19 Lockdown…
When an Italian friend heard I was going to be in Charleston, South Carolina, where she lives half the year with her American architect husband… of some note, I might add… and the other half of the year perched with him in a terraced villa-with-pool high above the Mediterranean Sea outside Genoa, she asked if I might like to give a talk to her Italian culture group, the Dante Alighieri Society. They’re everywhere in the world, like mushrooms in forests after a rain. I said, No. A typical knee-jerk reaction. Probably hadn’t had a glass of white wine yet. Always improves my receptivity. While I am at it and FYI…
Do not hazard to chat-me-up before I have given the International High-sign that I have sipped dry my second cup of coffee of the morning.
The Italian friend did not take my reply as even remotely acceptable. She remained undaunted. Adamant. Pursued a change of heart with the following flattering enticement… Hey! You could tell the story of your fantastic house in Tuscany. The members will eat it up. You’re living The Dream, you know? Yes, I’ve been previously informed…
A cousin of mine, alighted in fair Codiponte from Addis Abeba on his way to his home in Boston after attending a three-week international conference on Health Care, took one look at me leaning against a beat-up and dusty Hyundai SUV with our Weimaraner hanging out a back window and parked below il Poggiolo, only to holler… Look, dude! You’re living The Dream. Have not been able to shake it since.
The tide did eventually turn in the desired direction on the Italian friend’s fantastic flattery. Still, I equivocated for an extra few moments for dramatic purposes. I like suspense, especially when I have fatto una brutta figura… have embarrassed myself. Yet, perhaps, I just wanted to savour the reverberations of my No before relenting with an enthusiastic… Yes! Actually, the clincher was I had had a congenial idea sprouted during negotiations between that No and Yes! An idea on how-to. What was it? Well, I could draw My Italian House Story with Magic-markers on a big newsprint pad while simultaneously projecting pictorial documents, ie photos, from my vast archive off my laptop. By the way? Where could those photos be?
When did you last take a photo with a roll of film? I haven’t since 2009 with a handy-dandy pocket-sized Olympus film-camera dangled from my neck. Bought it just before You & I had purchased il Poggiolo. I was interested in shooting trash & billboards along the streets of Genoa. Found a better subject personally documenting every phase of restoring the wreck of a Tuscan farm-house we had put money on towards a second life as Our Home in the Lunigiana. How Times have certainly changed with the advent of the iPhone and its camera. Happened mid-stream through our adventure of funnelling €€€’s to builders, electricians, plumbers, painters, etc.. The hard-core construction photos, however, were in print-film and I wanted them for the more mouth-watering part of my talk in Charleston. Somewhere in the house were piles of them. Eureka! happened when I successfully unstuck a drawer of a desk in the Casa Grande, the main part of il Poggiolo.
What a shocker. Apparently, I had DELETED them from my memory. I had to sit down. Then, a question barrelled to the fore as I leafed through the pics… What were we thinking?
Taking a large step backwards to 2009, I want to share a few glimpses of what You saw on his first visit to il Poggiolo a Codiponte on a cold Saturday, the 10th of January 2009. I had had my first visit on the previous Thursday, ridiculously forgetting the Olympus in Genoa. We made an offer after the tour that Saturday and it was accepted on the Monday after…
A second salvo from a overlooked photographic Memory Lane were the those pictures taken in late May of 2009 after the Builder’s Boys had cleared il Poggiolo of all the trash, litter, debris, filth, and icky other stuff… in and around the house & courtyard… and had carted it off to A Somewhere I don’t ever want to know about…
2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 were the years devoted to re-building il Poggiolo…
And now for you to see the fruits of those labours or, what the dream is all about…
And so, a tasting of the past and present, of forgotten and remembered, of a house and home, il Poggiolo a Codiponte.
The garden today...
Archive post March 24, 2010…
There goes the neighborhood… the Garden is in a worse state than to have us called White Trash… whatever that is in Italian… though we are NOT in Puglia… one of the junkiest regions of the Italian boot… or, Campania… representing Il Mezzogiorno… or, The Italian South… in this exalted category. Think trash & what comes to mind? Naples, the capital of Campania, for sure!!!
We have a good excuse though. We are a building site. But, come to think of it… this might be those citizen’s excuse too. However, we hope to be finished by June. Some of the beauty spots I’ve seen near Napoli are in a perpetual state of construction. I hear it’s a way to avoid paying the taxes you get socked with when all is done & finished.
So evident is our bright orange plastic fencing around The Garden… like a nuclear waste dump… and said to be for Reasons of Security & Safety… the Carabinieri came a calling the other day… looking for clandestine workers besides other nefarious occupations with builders. Thanks to Mr. Berlusconi… his rightist government is more than just hysterical about immigrants… it is maniacal. It suspects they are lurking everywhere. But, hey! I AM AN IMMIGRANT!!! You missed me. However, I am gainfully providing work for the local Italians… let us NOT forget this Vital Point, please. I also have Il Permesso di Soggiorno to do so.
What to do? What to do? What to do with The Garden? Nothing until the cement mixer finds another home.
Poor scraggly prune trees. All that ugly dirt is waiting for the go-ahead for Marcello to arrive with his ditch-digger to set all like it was before. I cannot wait to seminate! I feel it to be My True Destiny!
NOT forgetting to get my hands on tearing out all the junk I keep finding. This is a tractor part engaged in making a make-shift fence. Wretched contadini!
Gads.