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National Geographic : 1936 Sep
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SOJOURNING IN THE ITALY OF TODAY BY MRS. KENNETH ROBERTS NINE years ago we went to Italy to find a quiet and detached place in which my husband could write a series of American novels without interrup tion. We found it by remodeling a hilltop farm near Orbetello that was used by a relative as a summer home, but stood empty during the winter months. We knew, from the chilblain cures ex posed for sale in the local drugstore, that the hilltop was not a tropical retreat, but it held no terrors for people who had been born in, grown up with, and weathered suc cessfully the rigorous winter climate of New England. The house, a severely simple two-story rectangular farmhouse, stands on a hilltop four hundred and fifty feet above the water, facing the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Island of Elba, and the far-off island of Corsica. To the right, across the mouth of one of Italy's finest harbors, the mainland stretches away to Genoa and the north (map, page 353). AN OLD WALLED TOWN BECOMES A MODERN SEAPLANE BASE Orbetello is an old walled town sur rounded by water on three sides. Today it is Italy's best-known naval aviation station. In our time it has grown from a few in significant buildings and a few small sea planes to many large barracks, officers' houses built in the modernistic manner, and a large flotilla of the most modern and fastest airships. It was from Orbetello that Balbo started on his flights to South America and to Chicago (page 354). The greatest difficulty in building in Italy comes from the well-grounded Italian idea that the customer is always wrong. To counteract this, orders must be given with firmness and no argument permitted. The slightest weakening on the part of the orderer lets loose a flood of counter-pro posals! In rural Italy the carpenter's field in housebuilding is limited. He makes the roof supports, the door and window shut ters, and the door and window frames. All else is in the hands of masons, even to the final plastering and tinting of wall surfaces, within and without, and the laying of tiled floors. The living room plans called for one double glass door, and beside it a stationary French window of the same dimensions. The carpenter came, took careful measure ments for the door and window, and retired to his cavelike shop in the village to con struct them. In the course of time he emerged from his lair, loaded the results of his labor on donkeys, and escorted them up the hill. Whether or not the carpenter had lost his measurements and worked from memory was never known, but the door and window were a foot longer and wider than the yawning cavities waiting to receive them. To the carpenter, this error was a baga telle. With a happy smile he instantly offered a solution for the difficulty. All he needed, he said, was the loan of two masons. Assisted by them, he would demolish enough of the two-foot-thick walls so that his mon strous mistakes might be inserted. His ingenuous smile changed to a look of in credulity and disgust when we made it clear that his work must be made to fit the house, not the house altered to fit his work. With lightninglike speed he evolved an other idea. The glass door and window should be placed against the open side of the loggia to afford shelter to passers-by who might unexpectedly be caught by a shower. Since we were inhospitable, stubborn, im patient Americans, we found ourselves un able to accept his fertile schemes; but since we were not blessed with the gift of tongues, he was spared the distress of knowing what we thought of his blunders. COUNTRYSIDE COMBED FOR FIREWOOD When one begins housekeeping in Italy with a vocabulary of fifty disconnected words and a dictionary, daily problems re main problems for some time. A major one was how to get sufficient wood to feed two terra-cotta stoves and a fireplace. All our cooking was done with charcoal. The prom ontory and the mainland for many miles in both directions yield a scrub growth suit able for making brush brooms but for little else. At first the farmer would make a tour of the promontory, find someone who owned a dead fig tree, buy it, chop it down, and bring it home. Unfortunately a fig tree, whether young or old, is good only for shade and bearing figs. When placed on a
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