THE WARMTH OF THE HEART: Vesuvians' tales

By Nino Vicidomini and eng

A reading that helps revitalize the memory of territory, which too often is battered by ugliness unspeakable, but it is also done (and, fortunately, above all) of respectable people, honest workers, brilliant minds, original artists, women heroic in their daily lives of wives and mothers, which are finally done reborn in memory common, micro-stories in the macro history of a territory extraordinarily rich and variegated of humanity. A "little ancient world", consisting of daily practices forget, trades that no longer exist and a way of conceiving existence that to man's eye contemporary seems absurd in its very identity and that, let's face it, worth rediscovering and to enhance.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: lfapublisher
• Release date: Aug 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9788835876281

Book preview

Nino Vicidomini

THE WARMTH OF THE HEART

Vesuvians’ tales

Nino Vicidomini

THE WARMTH OF THE HEART

Vesuvians’ tales

This is a work of fantasy.Any reference to people, things or facts is purely coincidental.

LFA Publisher

Lello Lucignano Editore

Diaz street, 17 -80023-

Caivano -Napoli, Italy

VAT number 06298711216

www.lfaeditorenapoli.it --- [e-mail]

Printed distribution Libro Co. Italia -Firenze -

To my parents,who educated me to beauty and truth

To my children that follow the trail

The places of the heart have the Genius who speaks through the voice of those who love them in faith and knows the stones which are sorrows, nests of memories,references of an interview that does not disperse.




Introduction by Salvatore Scollo

I only know Nino Vicidomini virtually, both authors / readers of a famous literary site.

I owe him gratitude not only for esteem and affection show me through an email exchange (even if not frequently asked questions), but also for giving me the opportunity, with reading his stories, to deepen knowledge of his city and the human facets of the characters mentioned gave voice.

Nino, with his stories, dictated by the love of his fellow citizens and the propensity to accumulate anecdotes (both cheerful and painful), resize this battage, highlighting the hard work and honesty of the dotted lines continuously.

His are certainly not recent chronicles, but the character and the specificity of a people does not belong only to one given historical era.

His merit is to have reminded us, with thoughtful insistence and affectionate, which are personal vicissitudes – woven of resourcefulness, imagination, active commitment, generosity and love of neighbor - to make perceived, if it stretches the gaze beyond the contingent, the backbone of a nation. in conclusion the history learned on school textbooks is only representation partial humanity of an entire people.

I don’t think we need to mention particular episodes for entice you to read the book from top to bottom.

Nino gives credit to all his characters with the same verve and emotional participation.

You will give me reason - even you - when you come to the end.

I will therefore limit myself to a few general considerations.

The Neapolitan language also has musicality to read it: I realized it as I proceeded, with fun, in reading.

It didn’t seem to me that Nino, referring to characters now disappeared or at rest, you show nostalgia for a past now disappeared and certainly not possible today. Between the other, if you mention legends handed down over time, his chronicle never takes on the subtle role of witchcraft.

His dwelling on past events has a threefold purpose: make a gift to the younger generations of shreds of history of some of their predecessors, soliciting the memories of those who were contemporary of the dotted figures, and, lastly, knitting again (I think), putting my hand to the pen, the threads of one’s own personal existence to make it a unique skein.

Furthermore, I had the impression that, in recounting the deeds and the virtues of his fellow citizens, Nino has, in a subdued tone, remembered that a life has value when it is spent well. Further and not negligible merit in all three cases, having given physical vividness to the places where events took place, meticulously listing the neighborhoods, streets and squares with their corners.

When I finished reading their many adventures (and misadventures), satisfied I narrowed my eyes and I have them revised, the characters of Nino, all together on the stage of life, in an ideal and festive musical carousel, like in the final of 8 and ½ of the brilliant Federico Fellini.

What more can we say?

To dwell further on the merits of the book could bring me to appear affected and perhaps even rhetorical. So I close here, renewing thanks to Nino for giving me this chance and wishing everyone a pleasant time reading.

Introductory note from the author

"My childhood is written on the drab facades of buildings secular road that weaned me with the ancient method.

In that street, dressed in history, overlooking Vesuvius I saw the light in the low damp of a narrow courtyard, born on the polished marble of the walnut table built by my father.

I ate bread crumbs soaked in laurel water and "cianfotte¹"soups in the kitchen that tasted of wood planed.

I suffered the cold of the basoli² which cuts the soles and puts on chilblains.

But I have festive thoughts that linger over picturesque evenings neighborhood to the chase of golden beetles.

I regretted that enchanting sleep he was coming to take me on the basalt threshold while the grown-ups were talking of the arrival of television.

And the January bonfires that touched the sky still give light to moments of joy."

Short Stories

Aurora e Luisina

Aurora and Luisina were known by the nickname ‘e sseccetelle, or cuttlefish, a real oddity considering the fact that both appeared in flesh: that diminutive seemed just out of tune.

Aurora and Luisina were two spinster sisters who started out from the 1950s, taking advantage of the already limited space of their home, they set up a private school for the kids in our neighborhood, ’O vuosco monaco (the wood of the monk).

For a modest weekly sum, Aurora gave after school for those in elementary school and Luisina did entertainment dedicating herself to the little ones.

Ward moms certainly felt relieved a that double chance that took the kids off the streets and them it was conducive to school education.

The two sisters had turned their home into a real one and proper classroom with desks, blackboard and chair behind which Aurora sat imperiously who, mostly in the afternoon, she followed the after-school children and also made repairs September.

A well-calculated job for the whole year with some exceptions for holidays and holidays.

The room that served as a classroom entered onto another room half used in the kitchen, where we went to quench our thirst as needed.

There was a battered table on which Luisina placed a galvanized bucket containing drinking water with the aid of a aluminum ladle, always hanging on the edges of the container.

For my mom the opportunity had to be like one windfall fallen from the sky: the teachers were right in in front of our house, it was enough to cross the road which was safe in those times since it was not so busy with cars (only a few carts occasionally pulled by hand or by animals from load); that was why she signed me up without hesitation.

I remember well those worn out desks, with ink stains and greasy, and top-ups from Luisina to those inkwells where we drowned the already dying, captured flies with the nibs of our stick pens: we took them aiming as soon as they leaned and with spear skills we skewered them first and then we dipped them in black aniline. Those inkwells which, out of cunning, contained the most compound diluted, which made us combine a few more kinks in the writing of the copious rods with which they filled the pages of our first notebooks, those with a single line, with the black cover.

Even afterwards, I always blamed the janitors scribbles and tricks that came out of writing a nib; to get more ink stretched, with further water, the substance bottled by the original producers.

To date, I am reminded of those lessons taught with phlegm and methodicality.

I remember their specific singsongs:

- The days of the week are Seven: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. -

- The months of the year are twelve and following the list. -

So also for the seasons, which are four, and so on.

A very effective method, with lots of musicality, I said, that certainly remained imprinted in the young minds.

From the second room of the apartment, every day a different fragrance came out depending on the cooking that the sisters prepared for their dinner: an effluvium that it always managed to whet our appetite. Mystery of mysteries, I don’t remember traces of any bed in that apartment; yet they slept there.

Surely there had to be some thalamus, maybe a disappeared, but did not reach my intuitions, which ranged in other interests in that familiar environment that it surrounded us and captivated us as if it were our home.

My gratitude often returns to that environment and to those two dear people who remained part of mine lived.

The school lasted for many more years, even after I passed in high school.

Aurora, albeit at a late age, had the joy of meeting love: an exquisite person from our neighborhood who came to find her every afternoon, holding her hand in hand, sitting beside her behind that imperious desk.

I often noticed them, peering through the ajar entrance window to let the air through: I often went to browse in looking for little memories.

An exquisite person, I said, who stood by her carefully and love even in the sad period of his great suffering who consumed her like a candle until the end.

I remember my silent feeling bad on that day of her departure.

So it was that Luisina, left alone, moved to some her relatives, definitively closing the school.

We also moved house and had an apartment more spacious.

We moved to the reduced Trecase³, where I had a corner all mine to be able to set myself apart and write in peace; was already that is my strong passion that I still cultivate.

Barracchella - popolo e pupulazione

Saying Aniello Giordano is little or nothing to make people understand we are about to speak.

Here, Giordano is a common surname, as well as the name Aniello.

Fortunately there are nicknames to resolve the issue and sometimes they become even exclusive.

Aniello had one that he wore stuck on him since his youth, a nickname that tells a piece of city history, a puzzle of an Italy he left at the tragedy of the war on his shoulders and he was about to trace the future with the art of arranging.

Aniello was 18 when he started his charcoal business in a small shack located near the current market fruit and vegetables in via Roma, at that time parking of the coach of the public transport company AGITA.

From the limited size of his charcoal burner exercise acquired the name of Barracchèlla.

A name that stuck to him throughout his existence.

At the beginning of the war he was captured by the British and for about seven years he remained in captivity.

Upon returning home he was one of many who shortened their sleeves and they invented a job to get by in that poverty general.

As an alternative to the previous activity, Aniello invented another one profession: thanks to the power of his voice he lent himself as a barker, offering himself as a propaganda tool for emerging businesses and promoting new and new products exercises.

He went through the city streets magnifying all sorts of merchandise, was the symbol of the advertisement, advertising to the plebs who could neither read or write.

He arrived in the neighborhoods with his deafening bell and expressing himself with our spoken sound he called the population so that he could listen to all kinds of news.

Everyone turned to him: from the merchant to the politician, from individual citizen to the local authority to advertise the opening of a new business, for election advertising, for urgent information to citizenship by the Municipality, for the encouragement of the fans on the football fields ... in short, for everything you wanted to know, you turned without no hesitation, to him.

Barracchella was called even when he got lost a child and his intervention was always extraordinary.

In 2005 I went to visit him in the Carminiello district where he lived together with his son Giuseppe and daughter-in-law. He was 88 years old and, albeit with age ailments, it was lucid and preserved still a fair amount of energy. He lacked only the voice, which advanced age had taken away from him, but the sympathy it emitted it was intact.

In that last bad period he had undergone surgery that forced him to stay in bed: if it hadn’t been for that, I am convinced that he would have received me personally at the door. It was then that he wanted to show me one more he turns his big trophy, the recalling tool he had brought to fame, the bell announcing his arrival.

That bell you could hear in the quadrilateral of prisons while still in the alleyways of the navy.

- I needed it to attract people. A dear friend gave it to me, Vicienzo ’a Caramella.⁴-

He said to me with a smile on his lips and like a river in flood he continued to tell himself for a long