Not done yet but...
…we are getting close. One half of Codiponte’s piazzetta’s new stone pavement is nearly complete. But look…
Is it not a beautiful expanse of stone, day or night/
P-p-progress...
A bright, brilliantly crip & cold morning in Codiponte last Wednesday. Come on, Dog, let’s hit the road. The Dog might have bashed down the door to la Casetta with his Weimaraner excitement had I not beaten him to such destruction by opening the way… to his Freedom. This semi-deranged canine, one of God’s adored creatures, shot out the open door and down the ramp to il Poggiolo, one of my shoes in his mouth. Have to say, the boy’s fast. Nipped it before I could nip him! Puppy did a dance asking by way of wiggling his Weimaraner butt if, yes, we were really heading to da riva’ and my dirty SUV parked close by. No… Darling Dog, the other way. And up the stone trail he blasted, shoe still gripped in his mouth. I followed with a ready roll of green bio-degradable Emergency Sacks. Unfortunately, the area outside the gate belonging to the neighbor of the ugly-yellow-house, a widening in the trail of stone & weeds leading up to the Borgo of Codiponte and its Castle, seems to have all the necessary ingredients for inspiring donations of bio-waste manufactured by My Dear Dog. I go and retrieve them. A civic duty. And, yes, there’s always more than one pile. Once collected… Scendeee, scendee! And The Croesus-person obeys the order by disappearing down the cut-through to the SUV. Good boy! Done without a leash too.
In my dirty SUV, I turned the corner from da’ riva’ to weave my way up & onwards to Freedom, but found Freedom blocked. The work-guys were unloading a TIR of stone pavers, a ditch-digger sat perched on the flat-bed of another truck with nowhere to go and several white vans were parked behind the flat-bed truck to reinforce the halt towards our eventual w-a-l-k. It was about 9:30AM. Construction Rush-hour. Any earlier though and it’s too darn cold for The Croesus-person to stay outside, even with a lined felted coat on or, allowed to run crazily around nude, so to speak, to generate some h-e-a-t. Oddly enough, the Dog was in idle on his fur on the back seat. I needed to let the ol’ SUV rumble a little longer to warm the engine, hoping it would stop screeching its mechanical aches & pains. So, I got out and walked up to see what was what with Codiponte’s ongoing infrastructure renewal project. What a mess.
One of the work-guys, a big burly & friendly fellow, and perhaps the foreman, came over to chat. He has a later model of my dirty SUV. His was a shiny silver one and clean too. Told me of his pride with a big smile. Having garnered his attention, I sought the latest news. First off, he was part of a new crew. The sixth!!! I feel badly for Crew Numero Cinque. Do not know though I do suspect the previous crew were sent elsewhere for their Big Ooops. Hard to fire folk in Italy. I would have fired the puff-jacketed jeans-cladded Culture-police fellows. They do not know how to manage, much less manage a construction project. Probably because it’s not on a computer screen in an office in grim Massa-Carrara, HQ for our Italian province. All they know how to do, and I have seen this first hand… I like to spy from il Poggiolo’s innumerable & elevated views… is to arrive, point a lot, and then leave. Pointing is not management. It’s only fingering.
My new found friend confirmed what I had heard from a neighbour days before about the problem of building a proper slope for water run-off but, and again explained with a smile of pride, the new crew faced the difficulty with the old water & drainage pipes not laid deep enough to allow the new paver’s height to clear the thresholds of the houses and ex-stores on Codiponte’s piazzetta. By the looks of the herd of trucks & vans, and the comings & goings of the other four work-guys, Progress was being made and with new techniques & construction methods. All the old cement dug up, new gravel cushion was spread and iron lattices placed on top to create a new concrete base to be poured followed by the new pavers. Somewhere underneath all that were new drainage & water tubes. Enough Progress to calm the agitated citizens of Codiponte. Yet, what with the nice weather, most are in their orti, vignetti e frutteti occupied with Spring pruning & clearance. Might be a good idea for me to start that assault.
Doesn’t the via Comunale look spiffy? And, yes, does seem to be a cloudy day outside but, the sun had not risen above the hills behind Codiponte at that hour of the morning.
Ooops...
There was a problem. If you know something about drainage, you’ll immediately see the situation in the left-hand photograph.
Ooops!
I thought it was curious to see the five work-guys, the usual but rarely seen three jeans-and-puffed-jackets-clad of the Culture Police and many male residents of Codiponte gathered at a quarter till 8 last Monday morning, hovering over the newly laid pavers of the piazzetta. I was in my smelling-of-Weimaraner SUV with The Croesus-person in attendance on his furry stole on the back seat heading out for Our Morning Constitutional. The Dog was not interested with the goings-on out on the piazzetta. No. He was focused upon eventually running wild with a new stick at any of our preferred spots for such shenanigans, as I paused the car to take a look, mull-over the reason for the crowd before continuing on our way. I was hoping to take some interesting photographs followed by an optimal cappuccino at my favorite bar.
All happened.
The next thing I knew, and on the day after, the crew had brought in a teal painted machine… a HUGE jack-hammer… to break-up the newly laid pavers plus all the cement pavement underneath and that too from the part of the piazzetta not yet covered with new pavers.
Gosh… what’s happened?
I found out later that same day, when I encountered a neighbor walking to his car parked out on the Casciana New Bridge with his small son. He lives just off the piazzetta. I thought he would be a good source for the latest information. He was. Said the citizens had called in the C.P. when they discovered rainwater would run directly into the alimentare shop off the piazzetta AND that the new pavement, as laid, would end up being too high for many of the thresholds to their houses & stores on Codiponte’s piazzetta. The later long since transformed into storage lockers or, to stack firewood.
By the way, folk here have returned enthusiastically to burning wood in their fireplaces & stoves rather than not or, using pellets. Costs less, creates a good heat and smells better.
My neighbor went on to say that the work-guys should have originally dugged up all the cement on the the one store, and instead, direct it to the stream… ex-open sewer… running along the piazzetta.
And so, the five work-guys and their enormous teal jack-hammer machine have set to work. Thought you might enjoy knowing the travails. Yet, another chapter to Our Continuing Infrastructure Renewal Projects Story. Fascinating, no?
P.S. I have this fantasy… since the Culture Police blew it do badly with the citizenry of Codiponte over the reconstruction of the Medieval Bridge, turning it into an un-fun roller-coaster, the jeans-and-puffed-jacketed C.P. fellows hopped on immediately to resolve the botched piazzetta with the order to tear up all the cement and get the drainage slope right before laying again the stone pavers, thus, avoiding making a brutta figura, the Italian bureaucrat’s pre-occupation Numero Uno!
Paving towards the piazzetta...
As mentioned in a previous blog post, the threat of continuing with new public works projects in Codiponte proceeds apace with a new stone pavement running from the recently renovated Medieval Bridge… the natives are still quite restless about the stone roller-caster still and perhaps more so since the Culture Police AND City Hall, ie il Comune, rejected the citizen’s petition… to the village’s cement crappy piazzetta. It has not been easy. On everyone…
basically, it has rained nearly non-stop and, when not, the concomitant cloud cover keeps everything pretty darn wet & slippery and all this since my hip op of the 22nd of October. Today’s date is the 17th of December! Someone can do the Math. Keeps the work-guys off the job until, on the rare occasion, there’s NO RAIN. About two days for every five days of deluges. Undaunted, progress has been noted. From the newly renovated Medieval Bridge to the dark archway before Codiponte’s piazzetta, the village’s epicentre, now courses a new ardesia stone pavement. Alternating sized stone pavers span between the confines of the once-upon-a-time single thorough-faire in Codiponte. There is even a center stone strip to relieve the boredom of the spiffy pavement. Or, it might just be a necessary visual guide, so folk won’t tend to go askew. Old people mostly. Oh, and one lone American with a crutch.
None of this was I aware of until I gladly returned home to il Poggiolo and the upstairs, one level, Appartamento Azzurro, to recuperate from the rigours of my hip replacement surgery and, most especially, from the bureaucratic Rules & Regulations of two weeks in the hospital and Don Gnocchi rehab center…
I hate socks. Never use them. And, at home, I go barefoot. Nor am I keen on those Nike slippers with a single strap across the foot. Grotesque fashion with white orthopedic socks on. Smacks of those folk in distant Eastern European countries or, wanna-be European countries. Not my style. I just continued in rehab what I am always used to doing and got verbally smacked by a nasty, greasy haired, leaning on the wall, little bureaucratic doctor in the wee-hours, caught going to the bathroom slipper and sockless…
The local construction noise and confusion roared up to y my quarters and is worse than the above indignities or, if I may add? Much worse than being poked & pried for blood at 5:30AM and by other health care atrocities. Jack-hammers, mini-bull-dozers, other heavy equipment & machinery and lots of men… MEN… screaming commands at each other in dialect starting at 7:30AM. How could anyone sleep, think, enjoy a quiet morning moment with a caffe’? Peace & Tranquility reigns for barely an hour at Noon for the whole din to begin again until Quittin’ Time at sunset. I later heard a few residents of Codiponte had fled to their children’s abodes in sister towns & cities to avoid the racket and mess.
Then, the work-guys started playing with the utilities. Logically so. Rip up what’s underneath and for sure, it is time to install new water mains and sewers. NO WATER for 8 hours. And, with new pavement comes new street lighting. Huge mock-19th Century lanterns dangling off cast iron arms. So, of course, the electrical lines above were re-strung & reinforced to handle the extra current. NO ELECTRICITY for 8 hours… twice! With each and everyone of these shut-downs, il Poggiolo rebelled. Water heater in la Casetta when on the Fritz. NO WATER. NO ELECTRICITY. Took 10 days to have a service representative restore it to health. Other parts of our complex suddenly would loose the juice too. Several times where the Dogs & I are staying. Can freak you out to have NO ELECTRiCITY when Nature calls… at 2:12AM. And You in TOTAL DARKNESS the night afterwards down in his Kingdom. We will ride it out.
I would say that in two week’s time, the via Comunale will be completed. Leaves the piazzetta to be refurbished with the same new covering of ardesia stone. Should hopefully bring some much needed Dignity to the WWI Monument to the Fallen tucked underneath the three sycamores along the banks of the villages stream… the village’s once-upon-a-time sewer. Glad I missed that.
