First Impressions... the Autoscuola Fivizzanese
Help me out: I can’t decide just what special element of the Autoscuola’s classroom makes me Gasp & Swoon the most? Might it be the board & batten panelling? Has always left me with an uneasy sense of what it must be like to live in a mobile home. Or, could it be the wood’s slightly soured cognac colour? They say age adds character. Then, lots of character. But, the caffe-latte diamond shaped ceiling tiles are decidedly Vintage. You know? Must be those manly beams. So hard to decide. However, no time to muse…
Did you get a load of what’s been bolted to the walls? Lord! Mother!! Mary and the Baby Jesus too!!!
I don’t remember ever having had to study so much stuff for an Illinois Driver’s License. Happened at Summer School before I turned 16 in September of 1967. Class was once a week: 30 minutes to study The Rules of the Road… a slide projection entertainment coupled with a hand-out of a 25 page shirt-pocket sized pamphlet with the same information in picture form and big print. They were distributed indifferently by our teacher… a football coach moonlighting… to the 39 other soon-to-be-16 year olds, frothing at the mouth to drive Daddy’s Chevrolet; and another 30 minutes for actually getting behind the wheel of a late model Pontiac donated by the local dealership. A scary machine. In 1967, Detroit became enamoured for the soft-touch, floating accelerator pedal. 70 mph in the beat of an eyelash, if your right foot even so happened to hover close to the thing, much less actually applying pressure to it. I knew this from previous personal experience…
We lived on a private lane, Fisher Crescent Lane, in one of those innumerable northshore suburbs of Chicago. So, I would get in my father’s late-model Buick Le Sabre… a slick automobile in a fantastic & lustrous blue-green paint… and drive around the quarter mile loop, picking up kids screaming to catch a ride… Come on! Frosty’s driving…
Yes, I was called Frosty. Lasted from birth to shortly after I turned 16 and had a Driver’s License to prove my age. An adopted aunt, Kay Britton… her husband was naturally called, Uncle J.D…. he was my Father’s solid Right-hand Man at the company they worked for. He was the smartest man I have ever known. Rubik’s Cube? Solved it in 37 seconds! Then he went off to fix himself a dry martini at the bar back when houses had such nooks. Those two adoptees spoiled us. Well, Auntie Kay did mostly. Gave me my first cigarette… a Benson & Hedges… my first flute of champagne… always a chilly Piper Heidsieck… and taught me to ingest Beluga caviar spread with butter on a chic-y cracker encrusted with bits of rye without making an ugly face. Oh! And she told me to stop wearing socks… especially, white ones… with my loafers. Said it was a grotesque notion of fashion she could not tolerate. Very California in her tastes. One grim Chicago day, Auntie Kay suddenly felt the need to rebel and did so, summarily declaring the “y” at the end of my nickname murdered & buried for posterity, and proceeded to call me, Frost. Met with almost universal approval… bar one. Frosty was imposed by my mother. Thought it cute. It wasn’t. I was a downtrodden kid hearing too many times to count classmates sing, Frosty, The Snowman. Out of tune. Still rings… distantly… in my head. Again, out of tune. Additionally, besides Mom thinking it was cute, Frosty, was approved by my 4 Star Brigadier General grandfather, whose best friend in The Entire World… Head Coach at the University of Colorado, where The General was also a regent… was called Frosty, short for also bearing the name, Forrest, like me. Thankfully, the new nickname stuck until I stopped despising, Forrest. Took 10 years. But, I did it. In the meantime, my full name of Forrest Charlton Spears… sends Italians into a twirl of Oh! How prestigious sounding… was much abused by my mother, when circumstances dictated by-passing Frosty, usually after she had discovered some gross infraction on my part, such as, bringing home a very sorry Report Card. Once her storm had passed, Frosty was restored to use. Anyway…
One day on tour in the Buick Le Sabre, I drove up the driveway to the Bush Family Complex of mansions… tenants too on the private lane… yet, no relation to those later Bush’s. However, I can say, the Senior Grandmother Bush, who lived in Mansion Number 1 (top house in the above photo), was equally as frightening as that white-haired woman married to the 1st Bush President and mother to the little dippy Bush 2. Kids and dogs trailed behind trying to catch-up to get on board. Space for all, kids! In piled a bunch of under 10 year olds with a couple of their dogs. Put the car into D for Drive and off we went. However, at the very same moment of departure, the two dogs got into a fierce and rather noisy dog-fight. Startled, and suddenly overwhelmed with driving AND having to separate the two combatants, plus any child in between… talk about over-load… my right right foot just happened to grace the accelerator pedal instead of the brake and in no time I had cleanly obliterated an entire 20 foot long boxwood hedge at the entrance to the fierce grandmothers son’s Mansion Number 2 (middle manse in the above photo), a sprawling Tudor monstrosity. Family of 7 kids. The place had wings. I am sorry to report to you all, I did not go and immediately make known the disaster to a Responsible Adult inside the Tudor sprawl but, elected to go home… post haste. News travels fast. No sooner had the Buick been put to rest in the garage than… Forrest Charlton Spears!!!… was heard to shatter the Peace of Home and Fisher Crescent Lane.
P.S. My Dad went out and bought a previous year’s Ford station-wagon in pistachio green. Who has a car in that colour? Must’ve gotten it at a good price. He felt it a safer bet… Ford and the particular model he drove home with was a bit behind the fashion for the latest pedal-tech. I was also discouraged… mind you, not prohibited. The Times were different back then… to drive around. Our maid was sometimes inducted to be my Automotive Chaperone riding shot-gun to shoo and/ or threaten the chasing hordes… of any type.
The high school I was attending at the time I turned 15 for a Learner’s Permit was crazed about actually driving an automobile. Rules & Regulations were secondary. Signage? Basically: STOP, YIELD, and a bunch with arrows, and even better, countless indications written in English: ONE WAY, DO NOT ENTER, WRONG WAY, SPEED LIMIT 15. A definite bitch for people who do not understand written English. Tough.
In Italy, you have to know signage AND everything remotely attached to car, driving, streets, insurance, etc.…. AND I MEAN EVERYTHING… all up on those classroom walls. Appears to be a lot of clutter but it ain’t to Baldo. It’s his mission to explain.
Now, I can happily relate I did manage to make it unscathed to the next theory class.
The Hump was totally out of the question. I came via back roads from Codiponte until I reached the infamous Highway 63 upon which lurked those two Carabinieri agents. Did it for a mere 1/2 kilometre and then veered off to the left… oncoming traffic permitting… to slide down another back road un-repaired with shitty asphalt… lots of pot holes… to sneak up to Fivizzano from below and behind. Un-noticed. N’er a Carabinieri. However…
Tuesday is market day in Fivizzano. All the parking spaces are snatched-up by 8:00AM in the vicinity of the Autoscuola. Luckily, my stealth routing had brought me to a shady street with… Hark!!!… spaces available and just a 10 minute walk to class. Early, I stopped to sip a cappuccino at one of 3 bars gracing the main junction of Downtown Metro Fivizzano. A hot bed of activity on a Tuesday morning. I go to this one particular bar because the staff are young, smiley, and have either pink or yellow hair. The cute ultra-tall bar-guy, who is utterly indifferent to my flirting, is included. Yellow’s for him. Then, I climbed up the short distance along Via Roma to the Autoscuola Fivizzanese. Had to squeeze past a pack of 18 year old boys gathered at the entrance, like gnats. So, what? It’s not cool to go inside, take a seat and wait for class to start? Apparently yes, and not a second before, as a solid black block of NIKE. The girls breeze right on through and into the inner sanctum of the classroom, their long straight hair trailing their behinds in crotch-threatening short short-pants gripping young thighs. Do the guys bother to take note of this pulchritude? No. They chat while staring down at their iPhones. Our civilisation may be doomed.
Sat down and was struck silly by…? By…? Well, by the unexpected interior arrangements. Starting with the 26 coloured posters of cartoon depictions for street signage, engine parts, search & rescue administrations, vehicle types, railroad crossings… one is even named after a saint, Croce Sant’Andrea. What can I say? It’s Italy. My favourite, and especially after witnessing Baldo in action flipping levers to turn certain lights on or off, of a mock relief of what I believe to be a 1970’s FIAT Tema sedan. An ugly vehicle. The Electric Light Show is to indelibly mark the cerebral cortex of 18 year olds about the intricacies of which light serves which purpose in prep for the menacing Driving Test on the horizon. By the way, there are 3 purposes. For everything with 4 or more wheels. But, I don’t care to elaborate because, I actually don’t remember. Must consult my notes.
I do want to talk about the Autoscuola Fivizzanese classroom furnishings…
An esteemed friend once remarked after a few days visiting with me in Italy that what the country really needs is to add 6” to all its dimensions: door heights, parking space widths & depths, grocery-store carts, chair widths, to name a few. The later is particularly galling. An hour and half sitting in the Autoscuola’s seat designed for midgets borders upon entrapment. Maybe, manslaughter. No room to squirm. Causes cramps. Practically impossible to extricate oneself once contained within its miniscule confines. The width, length and height of my 215 lb. body, one nourished on the American notion of 3 square meals a day, of which one rigorously must consist of a meat item, some potatoes and a perhaps, by a fluke of the wayward cook, a vegetable, the other two meals are obligated to be high in carbs & fats… does not correspond in any way, shape or, form, to the ergonomics of said Autoscuola chair … with the flip-up writing tablet. There maybe another term for tablet. Tray table comes to mind but, it seems incorrect. Nearly impossible for me to artfully slip out of the chair without taking victims. And, to have upholstered the 30 or so chairs with a knobby lip-sticky salmon coloured fabric so stretched to the end of its elasticity over the black metal frame, it is either nerve wrenching or, the mark of a ID genius. However, the fabric also clings AND attaches its linty fall-out onto my dark blue jeans. The Responsible Interior Design Person could be Baldo’s wife. He may not be married. Did not see a ring on the indicative finger. His mother, perhaps?
Before I push on… you must forgive me… I am more than a bit of an alternative kind of guy in my design tastes, as my Dear German Friend discovered upon You’s and my first encountering the interior confines of hers and her husband’s historic Tuscan farm-house… board & batten paneling to the nth degree in every room, on every floor… and more than likely installed in the same epoch as the Autoscuola’s… but… but… but, the black plastic tape holding various Autoscuola chair parts together is sincerely a charming detail to warm my renegade aesthetics. Ad hoc is my call sign. The slick surface of the tape clinging tightly to arms & legs defies, perhaps, the basic Laws of Engineering. A wonder and that it has lasted… resisted… for so many years of stress. Marvelling at the thick beige strips of tape is just the distraction I need as I attempt to deal with the stress of memorising what’s-what with the 5,323 signs & info off the 26 posters as the Baldo Show starts. Oh! He just sat down at his desk.