My mother's father Stefano Roberto lived in Mongrando, near Biella, northern Italy. He was a farmer and went to work for the French government as a construction worker. At some point he went to work to Madagascar, apparently to build a road. He took his wife Emma and their first daughter Nice with him. It was a long trip by ship. When they returned home, Stefano and Emma had two more daughters: Teresa and my mother Rosa. They were much younger than Nice. Nice got married to a Sicilian immigrant who worked as a cobbler and they had a daughter, Emma, my oldest cousin.
My father's father Frigerio Scaruffi lived in Ligonchio, a town in the Appennini mountains near Reggio Emilia. He had six children from his first wife: Michele, Mario (my father), Enrichetta, Pina, Beppe, Aurelia. He left them and went to work for a bank in Eritrea, which at the time was an Italian colony. There he married again and had one more child: Giovanni. During the war Mario was deported to a concentration camp.
Memories:
More memories:
At the end of World War II, Frigerio moved back to Italy. The bank sent him to Biella, where he eventually opened a shop. Mario returned alive from the concentration camp and found a room in Mongrando, where he met my mother Rosa. Rosa had been engaged to a local man but this young man got another woman pregnant, so Rosa was available. All of his siblings also settled in Mongrando or Biella: Michele, who married and had two children, Enrichetta, who married and had two children (Dario and Virginia), Beppe (the only one who would return to Ligonchio, marry and have three children), Pina, Aurelia and Giovanni.
Mario found a job at the Zegna factory in Trivero and moved with Rosa to a village called Castagnea. Mario's brother Beppe lived briefly with my parents. I was born in Trivero. After three years they moved to Biella, where my brother Paolo was born. After three more years they moved to Orbassano, near Torino, a town of immigrants, where my father thought he had found a better job. Unfortunately, we were robbed of our savings by burglars, and my father was left without a job when that factory closed. The move to Orbassano turned out to be a really bad decision.
The house in Trivero Castagnea:
Meanwhile, Teresa was married to Aldo, a house painter, and was raising two daughters in Mongrando: Emilia and Gisella. They were our closest cousins. Pina, married to Nando and also living in Mongrando, had three boys: Domenico, Carlo and Aldo. Ironically, the daughter of the young man who betrayed by mom, Anna, ended up falling in love with my father's youngest brother, Giovanni. Giovanni and Anna got married in Mongrando and later had a child, Elisabetta. As children, we would spend summers in Mongrando and those were our local relatives.
Orbassano is the town where i really grew up and went to school. My first elementary-school teacher was a nun. Then I had a Sicilian teacher. After five years of elementary school, I moved to mid school, where I remember a tough teacher of Geography and Latin. I got out of mid school with top marks ("ottimo"). I was playing with a group of children who lived in the same six-story building: Nico, Claudio, Nino, ... I was fighting with the child of the landlord, Walter, ... I was in love with a girl named Fiorella (to whom I never spoke).
Orbassano building (we had the apartment at the bottom floor, to the right):
I started high school at the Istituto Agnelli, which was run by Salesian priests. I was admitted after scoring a record I.Q. but also because my father was getting into politics for the Liberal Party and they helped him get me in. My studies were going well, but discipline was not my forte: I was a rebel. At the end of the year they kicked me out. The priests lowered all my marks but the Math teacher, Gino, gave me a 9/10 that I definitely didn't deserve. It took me a while to realize that, thanks to that 9/10, my average was still the best of the class. So I moved to a brand new high school, named Pininfarina. This was happening in the middle of the student riots and I was sympathyzing with the Left.
Our financial situation was rapidly deteriorating. My father found a job selling cheese to hotels. He was driving all the time. In 1970 we moved to Leini, north of Torino, because he was starting a business selling meat and our new house (not just an apartment) had a garage that was suitable for a refrigeration room. Unfortunately, my father had to drive even more. Worse: he was used to drink wine to the point of inebriation. One night the inevitable happened: he crashed into a truck that was parked in the dark, almost died, broke a leg, and was left a cripple for the rest of his life. Nonetheless, a few months later he was again driving around to sell his meat. The whole family was helping with the improvised warehouse in the garage. That could be one reason why I became a vegetarian at the age of 18, something unusual at the time and unprecedented in my family.
Since the Pininfarina Institute was too far from Leini, I moved to a closer high school, the Peano Institute. This high school had an experimental class on computers, and actually had an IBM mainframe. I became famous not only for being a rebel but also for a) writing very long essays (thanks to the encouragement of the literature teacher, prof. Emilio Platinetti) and b) translating the entire IBM manual into Italian (hundreds of pages). I had been lucky that someone had convinced my parents to let me take private lessons of English. By the end of high school, I also became famous for my passion for rock music. In fact, I wrote a colossal history of rock music as my final assignment (almost a mini-thesis). At the final examination, I wrote my usual lengthy essay. The commission gave me the highest grade, 60/60, even if I probably didn't deserve it (there were at least two kids who were smarter than me, but I guess I was the most creative). My best friend in the last three years of high school was Giorgio Moresi, who shared my passion for music.
Thanks to the 60/60 school grade, I was immediately approached by a software company, Softec, which offered me a job. My father's business was going bankrupt. At the age of 19 I was making more money than he ever made (although in dollars it was $150/month). I pretty much saved my family because my income rapidly became the only income. At the same time I enrolled in university, and I chose Math (I could have chosen Literature as well, given that I had good grades in both). So I was working in software during the day and studying Math at night. At the same time I was using the extra money to buy books. I started reading all the classics of literature. I also started writing poems. And I kept listening to rock music. As soon as I had the money, I purchased a stereo and some LPs: Rock Bottom, Saxophone Improvisations and Rainbow in Curved Air.
My boss at Softec liked me and eventually he put me in charge of an experimental project, DMS.
TO BE CONTINUED