Home | Valente and DiRenzo Family History - From Our Correspondent in Geneva (Angelo Abiuso)

Notes about Life in Gambatesa, Campobasso, Molise, Italy

On this page ...

• Wheat was Like Gold: when wheat was used in place of money.
• The Fondo Valle, definition (from Talweg).
• Civilian WW2 Deaths in Gambatesa, when four people were killed; and Italian Army "Deserters", and post-war clothing.
• Giuseppe Passarella, Gambatesan WW2 veteran from the U.S. Army.
• Civil Witnesses (testimoni).
• Funerals then and now
• The Tufo Caves: the sandstone beneath the villages of this area.
  • Tufo and Tufara
• Electricity in Gambatesa.
• Everyday Life in Gambatesa, which was farming life: what the people used to eat.
• The Old Way of Farming in Gambatesa - The Agricultural Year
• The Products of Farming: olives, grapes, fruit, vegetables.
• Sfringelle, another "Pastry of the Poor".
• Mastecotte, the original ice-cream of the poor.
• Women's Clothing in Gambatesa (as it used to be).
• The Street Markets, where people do their shopping.
• Earthquake Damage in Gambatesa, October 2002.
• Il Toppo (Contrada Carestia).
• Children's Toys in Gambatesa, of which there was much need but there were few.
• Feast of the Ascension, the offering made to the church.
• Life for Girls in Gambatesa.
• "The Monk", warmth in winter.
• Dreams in Gambatesa: "He met the San Giovanni."
• Wolves and Gambatesa, with a short story.

Related Page: Gambatesa's Traditions and Special Days: La Madonna delle Traglie (July Wheat Festival); La Madonna del Rosario (October Grape Festival); the Bridge of the 13 Arches (brigands and war); legends about the Medieval Castle; Dovere e favori ("duty and favors"): the legend of "The Old Man and the Stone".

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Wheat was Like Gold

During the 1930s, eighty years ago in Gambatesa, wheat was just like gold, that is, people used wheat in place of money.

12 kg (26.4 lb) of wheat you would give to the barber for the whole year:
 • Shaved once a week (Saturday evening), and
 • Haircut once a month.

For the doctor:
 • 25 kg (55 lb) of wheat for the whole family for 1 year of care.

The wheat grown in Gambatesa was winter wheat, which is sown in the Fall and harvested in July (before the feast of the Madonna delle Traglie). As soon as the harvest was finished the laborers asked to be paid, especially because the 15th of August is a very important day in Gambatesa -- and maybe it was even more important at that time -- (People needed to buy clothes and shoes for that day), but it took at least 2 or 3 months to be paid all that they had earned.

People used to give wheat to the church in July, just before the Traglie: 10-15-20-and even 50 sheaves to the church -- and this paid for the feast. The wheat was put on the sleds, then the wheat was threshed on Largo della Madonna, put in bags and then used to pay for the feast.

100 kg (220 lb) of wheat cost 100 lire. People needed 20 days to earn 100 lire. 100 kgs of wheat = 1 quintale ("quintal" or "hundredweight"). This measure comes from the Celts who counted only to 20 (20 x 5 = 1 quintal) = 100 lire. The word quintale is used like the word "ton" is used in America.

For the braccianti ("agricultural day-laborers") during the 1920s and '30s:
 • 1 day of work = 4 or 5 lire/day.
 • At harvest time, 6 or 7 lire/day.

 • One musician = 7-8 lire/day. One band was 7-10 musicians, but a bigger band would cost 1,500 - 2000 lire for the whole day (early morning to late at night).

This is remembered by Angelo's great-uncle, who is also named Angelo Abiuso whose house is in Gambatesa. He was born in 1917, the same year as Angelo's grandfather Francesco Valente (they were at school together).

Related: the cost of electricity in Gambatesa.

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The Fondo Valle

If you connect all the lowest points of a valley, in German this is called der TALWEG ("valley way"). This is a word that is used in geology.

das TAL = valley
der TALWEG = road through (or, along) a valley

The fondo valle ("bottom of the valley") in Gambatesa starts just after the 13 Arch Bridge; it lies to the north of the village center and runs all the way to the city of Campobasso. The new provincial road, Strada 645, was built along the fondo valle. [See the road map showing Gambatesa and Campobasso; on the old military map showing some of the territory of Gambatesa, look for the Torrente Tappino ("Tappino River"); it lies in the fondo valle, sometimes also called in Gambatesa the Tappino fondo valle.]

fondo valle = le fond de la vallée

S. 39 -- this is what the new road S. 645 is still called in Gambatesa --. Look for the bridge Ponte della [S.] 39 ("39 Road Bridge") that comes from the Piana delle Noci and goes over the Sucida River.

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Civilians killed in Gambatesa during WW2

Related Page: The Capture of Gambatesa by the Canadian Army, 7-8 October 1943. There were four Gambatesans killed:

• 1 young man (sabotage)
• 1 old woman (a shell into the house)
• 1 woman (German sniper on the Municipio)
• 1 man (killed by a shell near the cave)

All these deaths occurred during the fighting. Other people died because of land mines and unexploded shells.

The Germans and Canadians were shelling each other and the Gambatesans used to hide in the caves. A Valente was killed at a cave near the Masseria Valente (My mother saw the cave when she was young). There was a pause in the shelling and the man came out to see if all was clear, and he was killed by a German shell (They probably thought that he was a soldier) that exploded just in front of the cave.

The old woman's house was entered by a shell. The shell exploded inside and killed the woman.

The shepherd. The Germans had strung telephone wires for military communication; the wires were strung on the ground, not suspended in the air. The shepherd, who was a simple uneducated man, thought he could use the wires (they appeared to be abandoned). Maybe the Germans thought he was a civilian soldier/partisan; he was captured by the Germans and executed as a terrorist/saboteur.

The German sniper was on the roof or last floor of the Municipio. There was a German soldier's corpse on the road from San Nicola to the Cemetery. In Gambatesa the people went barefoot or wore wooden shoes, clogs like the Dutch wear in Holland ("sabot"); these shoes were carved whole out of a tree trunk. The woman saw the shoes and thought to take them and the sniper shot her. Before the War people did not have shoes. Shoes were very valuable in Gambatesa.

My grandfather Francesco Valente used to say about the war that the officers told them that they had to go to Africa (Libya) to civilize the population there. "But in Gambatesa we don't have water and electricity, and they want us to civilize them in Africa."

Shoes and Gambatesa. Another person, a boy, who took the boots from a dead soldier during the war couldn't sleep the whole night because he could hear somebody walking in the room. This lasted for two or three days. So then he took the boots and put them back on the body of the soldier. This story is well known in Gambatesa: the boy was twenty years old and he was living at the "Taverna del Tufo" (the one between the Masseria Valente and the village proper of Gambatesa) while he was helping the farmers. This was not a real inn but a farm, but there was a room there where farmworkers could live and eat.

The Germans used the present Post Office building that faces the Municipal Park for their headquarters in Gambatesa. You can still see the arrows they drew on the walls giving directions to the rooms they used.

The German Army positioned some of its artillery in the Piana delle Noci near the Masseria Biagietti, behind Toppo della Vipera and Toppo della Salandra. [Italian military map showing some of the territory of Gambatesa (See left side of map)]

Refugees

During WW2 refugees from Naples came to Gambatesa; they stayed in small houses or in the stalle ("stables", but in Gambatesa these were usually the lower floors of houses, very large, dug out of the tufo). Angelo's grandfather Donato Abiuso had refugees from Naples living in his stalla (beyond Corso Carminale, but Angelo does not know exactly where).

Italian Army "Deserters"

Because of Mussolini's war posturing, my great-uncle Angelo Abiuso was made to serve 6 years (1937-1943) in the Italian army after he was conscripted for national service, which should have lasted only one year. When Italy's government fell, he deserted -- i.e. went back to his village (Gambatesa). Many men did this. Here is what happened in my uncle's case:

My uncle was 3 years in the Alps (on the border between France and Italy). He was there when Italy invaded France, but he was not in a sector of military operations. He remembers that they had a lot of snow during the invasion. Then he was sent to the coast north of the city of Rome to protect the coast against landings. Then on the 8th of September 1943 Italy's government surrendered. The king said that the Italians had to stop fighting the Anglo-Americans and they had to protect themselves. He didn't give the formal order to fight the Germans. My uncle's unit didn't know about all that was going on, and when the Germans arrived and asked his unit to give them all their guns they refused. So the German army shelled my uncle's unit and a shell exploded in the trench where my uncle was. He got a piece of shell fragment under his chin. He saw the blood and thought he would be killed if he stayed in that trench. He left and ran to find a better and safer position under the fire of a machine gun. "I didn't care about the machine gun because I was too scared looking at all the blood on my hands. I thought I would die that day." Then the German officers arrived and they ordered their troops to stop firing. They talked to the Italian officers and they explained to them the situation. The Germans said that the war was over for the Italians. "Drop your guns and go back home; the war is over for you," said a German officer. "This is what we did," my uncle told me.

During the war Zio Angelo was first sent in South Tyrol. When Italy took over after WW1 the Italians did not move the native population out, as happened in many other places in Europe when national borders were changed, nor confiscate the people's property. When the Italian soldiers had leave they worked for the local population, collecting apples for example, working in the fields: when they were on leave they could earn money for themselves despite the fact that they were in the army. The people were very nice to them.

Post-War: Stracci Americani

After the War the French sent supplies for the school to Gambatesa. Then came what the people called stracci Americani ("American rags"). This was used clothing from America [the U.S.A.] that was sold at a low price. People in Gambatesa used to sell these clothes in the market until the 1950s.

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Giuseppe Passarella of Gambatesa

He came to America and was there for many years. Giuseppe was a friend of Giovanni Valente of Gambatesa; he was the godfather of Giovanni's daughter Esther; Esther was born in 1930. Women said that Giuseppe Passarella was a very handsome man.

But Giuseppe was drafted into the U.S. Army for WW2. He landed on D-Day or on the other big day in 1943 or 1944. But he was wounded and lost the use of his legs; he got gangrene and they had to amputate his legs one after another. And so he spent the rest of his life in a wheel-chair.

The reason Giuseppe was drafted into the army was because his wife and children were not in America; if they had been in America, he would not have been drafted. After he was in the veterans hospital in America, he returned to Gambatesa, because his wife was not willing to come to America. Giuseppe also had two sons in Gambatesa.

In Gambatesa, with the disability money given him by the U.S. government, Giuseppe had a special house built for himself, with a ramp for his wheel-chair. He needed 24 hour/day help. The house was the most modern in the village, all marble and very nice. Marble keeps a house fresh (i.e. cool) in summer, but in winter it is very, very cold.

Giuseppe is dead now. He had a sister, named Maria, who is still living (age 93), and lives not too far from Camden. The sister has a daughter named Michelina.

Giuseppe Passarella's house was (and still is) next door to the house of Angelo's Valente grandparents in Via Sannitica. The house can be seen in the 1960 postcard photograph of Gambatesa, although a third floor has been added to the house since then.

In Gambatesa, Giuseppe's wife was called Zia Nunziella a mericana ("the American", in dialect), although she had been to America only once. And she had not liked it there.

[2006 Addition]

Angelo spoke to Giuseppe Passarella's granddaughter Mariangela, and she told him that Giuseppe landed during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, but Angelo does not know the exact day.

[2010 Addition]

Giuseppe's sister Maria (Passarelli in D'Alessandro) died on 3 August 2010; she was 100 years old. Maria is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

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Civil Testimoni in Gambatesa

Testimoni ("witnesses") were taken off the street on the way to the Municipio. -- Not the witnesses for church, but the witnesses for the civil ceremony at the Municipio ("Town Hall"). -- Just someone off the street. My mother doesn't even remember who her civil testimoni were when she got married in Gambatesa. There is no ceremony; it is very informal at the Municipio.

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Funerals then and now

Now the priest says prayers, but no Mass (no communion) is said now. Condolences are made to the family at the back of the Church of San Bartolomeo (at the entrance to the church) or in summer in the courtyard in front of the church or at the cemetery itself (in the old days). The family washed and dressed the body and laid it in bed for 24 hours; then the coffin was brought from Via Sannitica. In the old days the comune had a car that was kept in a garage near Gambatesa's cemetery and it was used for all funerals. All coffins were and are made of wood. In the old days the coffins of the rich were placed in mausoleums, but now it is fashionable for the rich to be buried in the ground (where the poor used to be buried many years ago; space in the ground, as in the vaults at the cemetery, was rented not bought).

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The Tufo Caves

Gambatesa is built on tufo ("compacted sand"). It is very easy to make a cave (une caverne). There are several caves around Gambatesa. During the war Gambatesans used these caves as shelters during the combats.

There is a big cave near San Nicola, but I have not found it yet. Caves are called rut' in Gambatesa; if it is a big cave it is called u ruttone. There are many caves under Gambatesa's old houses. Usually they are called cantine and they were built by Gambatesans. I don't know if the caves in the countryside are "natural" or "hand made" caves. I am not an expert on caves, but I don't think that Gambatesa's caves are natural caves.

In Via Serrone more or less all the houses have cantine under them (like basements [cellars]). -- But not all cantine are underground; a cantina can be dug out of the tufo next to a house. The Gambatesans used to keep wine, wood for fire, animals, tools, in the cantine.

People used to build their houses beside large tufo, so that there could be a cantina next to the house.

Francesco Abiuso's old house -- chickens were kept in a cantina next to the house. And the basement of the Valente house (next door to the white house) is a mixture of rock and house. They made a hole in the tufo rock and built the house incorporating the hole as part of the house.

There is a big cantina under the castle (but it is not open to the public).

There were chickens and ducks in the streets of Gambatesa until the 1950s (when it became illegal to keep them inside the village). But pigs were always kept in the countryside. The chickens were kept in holes dug out of the tufo.

[2003 Addition]

Angelo was in a cantina ("a cellar dug out of the tufo") this summer; this one was under the streets -- and he could see the pattern of the streets overhead. They had to use flashlights because of course there are no lights down there. (The cantina was underneath the pathway to the left at the center of this photograph of part of Via Serrone.)

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Tufo and Tufara

Tufara is the village 2.3 miles southeast of Gambatesa. Like Gambatesa it is built on tufo:

Tufara si affaccia sulla valle del fiume Fortore da sopra una roccia d'arenaria compatta. (Tufara - its Historical Origins)

"Tufara looks out on the valley of the Fortore River from above, or, atop, a rock of compact sand." The name "Tufara" is said to derive from tufo.

[Tufara] riceve il nome dalla roccia tufacea sulla quale è fabbricato. Nei Registri angioini del 1320 è detto "Topharia". (Giambattista Masciotta, Il Molise - Tufara)

Tufara "receives its name from the tuffaceous rock on which it is built. In the Angevin Registers of 1320 it is called Topharia."

The Italian word tufo means "sandy stone", tufa or tuff (from the Latin word tofus or tophus meaning "soft, light, porous rock").

[2003 Addition]

["Is Tufara a nice place?"] All the villages around Gambatesa look the same.

[2008 Addition]

People from Gambatesa do not like people from Tufara, and people from Tufara do not like people from Gambatesa, but there is no strong feeling (if they met abroad they would be friends, and there are people from Tufara who live in Gambatesa). About the Tufarans, the Gambatesans say: "They are very different." The Gambatesans are snobbish, reserved; they hold themselves back because they are afraid of being criticized. People don't make fun of themselves in Gambatesa, but in Tufara they do. The Gambatesani want to look dignified, but the Tufaroli are more relaxed.

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Electricity in Gambatesa

According to Giambattista Masciotta's Il Molise - dalle origini ai nostri giorni ("Molise - From its Origins to Our Own Day"), there was "public illumination" in Gambatesa by 1915 powered by petrolio, not electricity. When electricity did come, what was the service like for ordinary Gambatesans?

They had electricity before WW2. Before the war there was only one light bulb per house. So it was only in one room of the house. And so you had to use a lamp if you wanted to go from room to room. But many people used oil lamps until after the war. Petrol or olive oil lamps.

Olive Oil Lamp

The olive oil lamps were like the lamps the ancient Romans used: they were earthenware, about the size of a man's hand, shaped like a tear-drop; the lamps had two holes, one small one through which a wick was inserted, and one larger one -- about the size of a large coin -- though which the oil could be poured to fill the lamp. The lamp is made out of clay: it burns olive oil, and it neither smells nor smokes. In the photograph above, a nail is used to extend the wick (as in a kerosene [paraffin] lantern). Lamps like this are still used in the cantine dug out of the tufo where there is no other source of light.

(After the war Gambatesans also made oil lamps out of the ration tins that Canadian soldiers had discarded; there were a lot of empty ration tins around Gambatesa.)

The electricity was turned on in the evenings. Everyone got it at the same time. You could switch it off by yourself, but you could not switch it on by yourself: it came to everyone's house at the same time in the evening.

Public Lighting: Comparison to other villages: Riccia had electricity by 1904, Jelsi by 1910; Gildone was experimenting with it by 1915. Like Gambatesa, Tufara had public lighting only by oil, since 1907. On the other hand, Pietracatella had no illuminazione pubblica whatever by 1915.

[2006 Addition]

Electricity arrived in Gambatesa in 1926-1927. People had to pay for each lightbulb that was burned in the house; there was no device like today to meter electricity. 1 bulb = 6 lire/month. The poor had only one bulb, usually in the kitchen. It was switched on and off from the "electric cabin" for the whole village; you could not switch it on or off from inside your own house.

"We used to live as poor people, and today people say that life is expensive" (Si viveva poveri, e oggi la gente dice che la vita è cara), the older people say.

Giuseppe ("Bepe" in dialect) Guglielmo (who was a Gambatesan) was in charge of the switch in the electric cabin and made any repairs; he was an electrician who worked for the Italian Electrical Company (ENEL). There was a man who came around with a piece of paper every month with how much was owed; then people had to go to pay at Guglielmo's office, which was on the same street as the Municipio, on the right.

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Everyday Life in Gambatesa (for farmers)

The Comune ("village and the countryside it administers") of Gambatesa was and still is an agricultural community. What was life like there?

Breakfast, in the early morning

In the past they ate an "American breakfast" (what the English call an "English breakfast") in Gambatesa: bacon, eggs, bread, sausages. This was for workers. They used to get up at 4, 5, 6 o'clock in the morning. 4 or 5 in the summer. They had to milk the cows. Then go to the fields. Women got up at 3 AM if they had to prepare bread to bake. The women did not work in the fields unless there were not enough men to do the harvest. The women would help to make the wheat bouquet (i.e. tie the sheaves) (manocch' in dialect). This was the old way, 1900-1950.

[Photographs: 1. Clay water jug used by farmers in the fields. 2. Gourds, which when hollowed-out, salt was stored in.]

Lunch

Potatoes, pasta, vegetables, fruits, macaroni. Meat -- 1 or 2 times a week. Depending on poor or rich. The rich 3 or 4 times a week. Very poor families had one chicken per week for 10 people. Time 1 PM, because the children came home from school.

Supper

Lighter meal than lunch. Around 7:30-8 PM. Vegetables, beans, tomatoes, salad. They went to bed at 9 or 10 PM. "We had no TV," my mother said.

Television ruined social relations in Gambatesa. Before they would visit. People on the farms would visit each other. They used to visit each other, to knit clothing.

Cooking over a Fire

They put a copper pot on a metal tripod over a fire. The pots are blacked on the outside from the fire. The tripod is called u trappite in dialect. The top of the tripod is circular, like a ring. Angelo's Valente grandmother still uses this from time to time to cook pasta; it gives a special taste to the pasta. But there is also a smaller tripod: instead of a circular top, this has a triangle-shaped top. This type of tripod is used to grill meat over a fire.

Preserving Gambatesa's Past

There is no agricultural museum in Gambatesa. There is not even one in the provincial capital city of Campobasso. "It's too soon," Angelo thinks: it reminds people too much of the time of poverty and ignorance, which is a living memory still. Maybe their grandchildren will want one.

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The Old Way of Farming in Gambatesa - The Agricultural Year

Part One: From December to March

First of all there is a difference between what my mother tells and what my father tells. Their parents did not run the farm the same way.

The end of all the things you had to do in the fields was around December 6th more or less. My father doesn't remember which saint's day it was; according to the calendar it was Saint Nicholas (San Nicola). More or less this was that day; it could be one week before or one week after, but usually San Nicola's day was the end of the work in the fields for the year. So more or less for everybody it was the time to finish the year.

After December 6th there was more or less nothing to do in the fields. But for people who had animals, then they had anyway to feed the animals, cows, sheep, things like this. They fed the animals with hay. But they had to look for the hay, because in Italy it's not like in Switzerland where they cut the hay and then they put the hay in barns to keep the hay dry during the winter. In Italy they had to look for the straw because the hay was kept outside in a haystack [what in French is called a meule]. To stack the hay they cut the hay and then they built a teepee-shaped haystack; that shape works like a roof against the rain and the snow so they don't run through the whole stack.

And so during the winter to feed the animals they to go to the places where they had cut the hay and built these kind of teepees, and then they used an iron saw to cut the hay (This was a saw that was held in both hands and worked up and down; this work was done by the men) and bring it back to the animals. And then they had to mix the hay with corn-straw (the whole maize plant but not the kernels, which they used for their own food). So they had to mix the hay with corn straw and with beans [fève]. So they made this big mix and they had to feed the cows once in the morning and once in the evening. So if they had nothing else to do, they started to feed the animals between 7 o'clock and 7:30 in the morning and this lasted until 11 o'clock. Then after that they had to take the cows out from the place where the cows were kept in winter-time to give them water. And afterwards they had to take the cows back to that place.

They had to clean the place where the cows stayed; usually they did it in the morning, but then in the afternoon they had to check because if there was a lot of cow manure they had to clean the place again; because otherwise when the cows sleep, the cows lie down and they are going to be very dirty because of all the manure. They did not keep the cows in the tufo caves or in a barn, but in a stable (like the place where Jesus was born). There are barns in Italy too, but I don't remember they are as big as in Switzerland, maybe because here winter lasts for a long time. Around 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon they had to feed the animals again and to take away the manure from the stable if there was too much of it. There was straw under the animals.

About this part my father doesn't agree with my mother. My father said that at the end of January they had to go back to the fields to weed the vineyards. In the vineyard there is a grass under the vines and it has to be cleaned away. They had to weed the vineyard, the corn-field, the bean field, the wheat-field .... Nowadays they have chemicals for this, but before they had to do it by hand. The men and women did this work together. My father says January, but my mother says, "No, we did not do it in January because there was lots of snow"; so usually people started in February. In the winter it is very cold, but in February there are always one or two weeks or a few days when it is really like springtime; it's not cold anymore; you have sun; it's the beginning of spring. In Switzerland it goes back to winter in March [Even in war they had to halt operations because it was too cold], but in Italy the spring really begins in February. It's the end of winter in February in Italy. They had to take the thistles [chardon] out of the fields, and this was going from the end of January until the month of February, because there are a lot of these. They weeded the fields from morning into evening.

At my mother's farm the men used during winter to repair all the tools. My great-grandfather Luca Valente had a workshop, and there were lots of tools made out of wood, like baskets [panier] to make the shape for cheese [the "forms" for formaggio]. Men were doing these things, and women were making pullovers [sweaters] out of wool, and socks.

And then in February they started cutting the branches of the trees, that is, pruning the fruit trees to have more fruits, the vineyard to have more grapes, the olive trees to have more olives. This went on through March.

The cows were milk-cows that had to be milked twice: morning and evening. (The Abiuso had four cows, and Luca Valente had four cows.) The women used to milk the cows, because my father said "it won't destroy their hands to do it" (But he made a joke in dialect).

Hay [foin] stays green; it's just grass; you cut grass and then you let it dry in the sun, and it stays green, it doesn't turn yellow, and you can feed animals with it. Straw is from the wheat; it is the wheat plant after the wheat berries (grain) have been harvested. The straw was put under the cows; cows lie down when they sleep (They are not like horses); straw makes a warm bed.

Part Two: From February to June

My father told me that wintertime was the time when they were collecting wood for the next year, for the fireplace. In the winter, yes, because in winter the trees don't have leaves on them, and the wood is dry; the trees are dry (In springtime or summer there is, you know the kind of blood the trees have [i.e. sap]). So wintertime is the perfect time to cut them. But the wood has to stay for one or two years before you burn it. The more dry is the wood the better it burns. I think the wood has to dry for two, three or four years, something like that. Most of the time the wood they used to cut was oak trees. (They may have climbed the trees to cut the wood, because if it is too large you can't cut it; it's easier to start by cutting the last branches, and then you go down step by step. (It is possible that Saverio Farinaccio, who fell to his death from an oak tree on 18 November 1793, was cutting wood.))

In Gambatesa every family, well, the rich and maybe the less rich families, they all have their own woods (If you look on the map of the Masseria Valente, you will see the Macchie della Terra, but the Valente did not get their wood there, but instead they had two very small hills just to the left of the Masseria which were covered with trees for their wood). Every family except the poor. The poor had to go to collect branches in the woods belonging to the comune of Gambatesa; they could only go there once a week, and they could only collect the branches on the ground; they couldn't touch the branches still on the trees. So the people who didn't have the private wood -- my father told me how much wood the poor people could take -- had to hide wood because they could be fined if they were taking too many branches and things like this.

So they were collecting wood, cutting trees, and they had to look after the animals kept in the barn, to clean the barn, to feed the animals, things like this.

Then springtime arrived, in February in Gambatesa. And one of the first things they had to do in February was to take away all the bad grass growing up in the wheat field, and in the bean [fève] fields. And in April they had to prepare the soil in the field for the maize; they had tools and they had to do this by hand; they did not have machines, and they did not have the chemicals that they now put on the fields to kill all the weeds without making the wheat die. So they prepared the soil and they put the corn seeds into the soil. And usually they said that they had to do it when they heard the bird that makes this sound: coucou coucou [cuckoo]. And you start putting the corn seeds in the ground when you hear this bird. That was usually in April.

In May they had to collect the hay to feed the animals and to cut the grass to feed the animals. And around June 20th -- usually it starts after June 15th -- they had the wheat harvest.

In March-April they also had to look after the vegetables; there was a small piece of land -- in French it is called the potager (kitchen-garden), in Italian I think l'orto (vegetable garden) where they used to grow salad, tomatoes, potatoes, things like this, vegetables for use by the family. So before the wheat harvest in June, they had to harvest the beans. At that time they did not have to water the fields; today they have devices to put water on the fields, but they did not used to do this in the past. It was all by natural rain. And the beans, the harvest was the same process as wheat, with the stones, the animals, exactly the same process. And they had to remove the thistles from the fields in springtime.

In March they had to cut down branches (prune) the olive trees, and all kind of fruit trees, cherries, figs, apples, pears, plums, peaches, all kinds of fruit trees, and one, I don't know if you have it in America, in Italian it's called gelso (mulberry).

So in springtime they have to collect the hay (they formed it into teepees). And in summer they used to move this hay next to the farm, because in springtime if you have a field where you have stacked the hay but there is no path, no road to go to the farm, and there is wheat all around, you can't walk on the wheat field because you would destroy the wheat. So they had to wait until after the harvest, and they could move the hay through the fields to the farm.

So they had to work in the vineyards too. In February they had to cut the vineyards, and after they had to turn the soil under (in French labourer (to plough, to furrow)) with a tool with two teeth, called in dialect bovent[e] and in Italian bidente ("two-pronged hoe"; a similar tool was used by Giuseppe DiRenzo of Gambatesa in Camden, but the tool used for heavy field work is larger). After they finished to turn the soil, to cut the grape trees [vines], they had to put four canes -- like bamboo, but it is not the real bamboo from Asia, but smaller; when you cut them and you dry them, they are very flexible -- So they used to take four of these canes and they used to make like a teepee around the wine tree. You know the vineyard, when it grows up, it needs a place [a support] to grow on. If you look at modern vineyards, you have these concrete poles every 2 meters, and there is a wire connecting all the poles; so the grapevine grows up around, using these wires to go up. But in Gambatesa in the past -- but I remember seeing them even when I was young (in the 1970s) -- they did not have these concrete poles plus the wire; so they used to build something like a teepee with canes, using four canes around each wine tree [grapevine] in the vineyard. So it is like if you have four -- each around 2 meters high -- canes ready to build a teepee on the field, one next to the other about every 2 meters. And so when the plant grows up it uses the canes to grow up (There was a string from the top of the plant to the top of the teepee). So every family had a cane plantation because they really needed them. And in April and September you help the vine to grow up around the canes; using little strings you put the branches around the canes; otherwise the vineyard cannot really grow up nicely.

And in springtime they had to put chemicals on the vineyard: water plus copper; and the copper is, the color is very beautiful, deep sea blue, turquoise; and you mix it with water and lime (in Italian calce), and you put it in you know those things that you carry on your back and you pump and you spray it just on the vineyard. And the sulfur, they used a soufflet (a pair of bellows), a device like that to put the sulfur on the vineyards; the sulfur was a powder (the yellow stuff they use for matches); they did not mix it with water.

And then they had to weed the cornfield by hand (i.e. using the bidente). In April they had to plant the corn. They had to make a very little trench on the field; it's called in French le sillon (furrow); it's a little trench but it's just a few centimeters deep, and then with a tool looking like a big nail but made out of wood, they make a hole inside that little trench for example every 10 centimeters, and they put one small seed of corn in the hole, and then they cover it with soil, all by hand. Then the maize grows up, and when the maize is 15 centimeters high you close the furrow with soil from the left and the right, and you make like a small hill around each plant, and then doing so at the same time you take out all the bad grass growing up around the corn (and it's called in French sarclage (weeding)). And then when the maize is between 20 to 30 centimeters, then you cover once again the base of each plant of maize, you make a small hill around the base, plant after plant, and all this by hand.

Both men and women and the children too did this work.

Sometimes the bidente was used as a weapon (as in a shot-gun wedding, but they also had double-barrel shotguns with different gauges of shot; if they wanted to persuade someone they would use the small shot used to hunt birds and they would fire at the man's feet; the small gauge shot does not damage too much the bones and the flesh, but usually you have to go to the doctor. Once they fired a gun through the small hole in the door that the cats use, at the man's feet so that he would get the message that he had to marry the girl).

Part Three: From May to December

I asked both my mother and my father, and they were talking about the month of May. So we begin in springtime. In springtime or May, they had to cut the hay for the animals; they had to cut the hay for the haystack and, if they had place, to put it in barns. Then in April, May, and June they had to spray the vineyards. [The grapes were harvested at the end of June (vendemmia).] Afterwards, around June 20th, they had to do the harvest. So they had to start with oats to feed the horses. And then the barley. And then the wheat. The wheat was called rane cappelone, the one with the black awns; my father thinks it's the same as grano duro: it's a kind of durum wheat. The harvest was made by hand -- no machines at that time. And it's -- in French we use the word artisanale, in Italian artigianato; in English "artisanal" or "of artisans": of or involving skilled manual laborers, craftsmen. It means "not made by machine". And the tool they used was a sickle, a curved blade and wooden handle held in one hand. And so the men were cutting the wheat, and the women they were tying it into bundles or sheaves.

Then at the end of May, beginning of June, they had to harvest the fava beans (also called "broad beans"), and the peas. And first the fava beans, they were already ripe, beginning of May, but they have to dry while they are ripe and still on the plant. So the beginning of May the fava beans were already ripe, but they didn't harvest them yet. So you could take some of them just to eat them for a meal, but not for the final harvest, because they final harvest was at the end of May. There is a time when the fava beans are still green and fresh, and they can be eaten: either you cook them or you eat them without cooking them; they are quite big and when you eat them fresh they are quite sweet, but when they are dry they are hard like stones. (So I like sometimes to buy them and I take out -- you know there is a very hard stuff around it like a skin (that is, the "pod") -- and then you take the fava bean out of that skin and put it in your mouth and then you suck it, and then it's like a sweet.) So at the end of May, the fava beans are already all dry; so, they are not green any more, and they are then harvested.

The cereal harvest was always in the same order: first the oats, then barley, and then wheat, always in the same order. The wheat harvest was in July. In Macchia Valfortore -- where my father lived when he was young -- the wheat harvest was around 10, 15 July. But in Sant'Elia a Pianisi the wheat harvest was at the end of July because it's a bit higher; it's a bit of mountain. (Both these villages are just north of Gambatesa, with Macchia being the closer.)

The minimum altitude in Sant'Elia is 200 meters [656 feet], in Macchia only 148 m. [485 ft.], and in Gambatesa 175 m. [574 ft.] But there is a great range of heights in all three villages, with the highest point actually being in Gambatesa at 958 m. [3,143 ft.] For the respective villages, the town hall [municipio] in the inhabited center of the comune is at 666 m. = 2,185 ft. in Sant'Elia; in Macchia 477 m. = 1,565 ft.; and in Gambatesa 468 m. = 1,535 ft. [Source: "Comune di Gambatesa (CB) - CAP e informazioni utili" at www.tuttitalia.it/molise/43-gambatesa as it was in January 2010]

The highest point of the comune, 958 meters, is called la montagna ("the mountain"). It's the place where the hunters go hunting, legally and illegally. And it's the place where people collect wild asparagus; there is some in Gambatesa, but very, very little. And people go up in the mountain, in the woods there to collect them. And you boil them and you put them under oil, and you can have them in wintertime. It tastes very good.

Then after the harvest they had to burn what remained on the wheat field, which was the straw that is still connected to the soil with the roots. But you could not do this before August 15th; it was forbidden by the law before August 15th. Probably this was because of the fires; if you set fire to the fields when the weather is too dry, then you can set fire to the woods and you can create a disaster. After August 15th the weather becomes fresher (that is, cooler); often it starts raining. There is a saying in Gambatesa, that when it rains after August 15th, then it's the beginning of fall; this is because the air starts to not be as warm as during the summer. So it's a rule (an oral rule, saying, a meteorological principle: how to explain it: you know, people in the countryside they have a lot of sayings about meteorology, so it's one of these sayings, a proverb, yes. (And it's more or less the same in Geneva: when it starts raining after August 15th, then it's the end of summer). So the fire after August 15th, not before.

Then in August -- my father said it was in August, and my mother said no it was in September -- there is a corn [maize] harvest. But my father said it's around San Bartolomeo in Gambatesa (The patron saint of Gambatesa is Saint Bartholomew the Apostle; his day is 25 August). So around San Bartolomeo they had to harvest the corn, all by hand, using the same tool as for the wheat. After the corn there came to harvest of les haricots, in Italian fagioli, that is, the beans. And these beans were dry. And the ceci ("chick peas"); you can't eat them when they are green; they have to be dried. And then they have the lenticchie ("lentils"). And then September: potatoes; but they could already start eating potatoes when they were doing the wheat harvest, but the big collection of potatoes is in September.

And in Geneva we have one week vacation in September and it's called "The Potatoes Week", because in the past they used the children to collect the potatoes in the fields; and so the name of this vacation in September is still "Potatoes Week". But the last time the children did this was maybe during the war, World War Two, when they used to put potatoes in all the parks in Geneva, to feed the people during the war; they used every green space, sports fields, parks; and everywhere there was a little bit of soil they were planting potatoes and wheat and things like this.

So the corn had to be harvested by hand using the same tool as for the wheat; but the fields were smaller than the wheat fields. But they had to do it all by hand, one after the other. So after cutting them, they were putting people in line, and people had to take out every in French we say les épis de maïs ("ears of corn"): they had to shuck the corn. So they had to do it by hand, and they kept the husks to feed the animals during the winter; they keep the plant to feed the cows with, and to make mattresses. For the poor, the mattresses were made only with the corn leaves, and for the rich they made an under-mattress of corn husks with a wool mattress on it (Today they don't use wool anymore: they use rubber, latex; before it was made with wool and by hand. We still have mattresses like this in Italy -- absolutely not comfortable; terrible). And under this mattress made out of wool, there was a second mattress made out of corn leaves [corn-husks]. But the poor people and young people, they had only the under mattress made out of corn leaves.

So after they took everything from the ears of corn, they were using an agricultural tool which is made of a short stick of wood connected to longer stick of wood [or, pole] by a chain, and they were using these tools to beat the corn, to separate the seeds ("kernels") from the core ("cob"). They were working four people together, two were beating while the two others were raising their tools to beat after the others, you see both like an engine: two by two. And you have to be very careful, because if you miss the target you can really kill someone with that tool. So afterwards the core was burned in wintertime; they used them after to start the fire. [What did they do with the corn? Did they make polenta?] Ah, I think yes, because my mother from time to time she does it, yes. But it's a kind of polenta called -- it's a different name; it's like bread. Polenta, you eat it and it's warm and soft. And the other one made by my parents, it's a little bit like a biscuit; you can eat it cold, or even warm if you like. I don't know the recipe; I must ask my mother: she does it from time to time. And I once asked the man in Geneva who sells Italian products on the street if he had it, and he said Yes, but I have to ask my wife to do it; you have to order it before, because we don't sell it like this. And I don't remember the name; it's a dialect name.

In Italy they still sell, you know that fish that is sold dried with lots of salt -- baccalà ("salt cod" or "stockfish") -- in Italy you can buy it, and the way it was made in Gambatesa they still eat it this way: it's kept with saffron and vinegar in bottles, and it's yellow and very, ouf, it's very hard to eat. It was a way for the poor to store it; the Arabs invented it, and you can still find it in Gambatesa in the market. And because of the saffron, it's very yellow, and it's stinky, it's very -- I had it for a couple of times and it's very hard to eat.

All that I told you happened at the end of August, beginning of September. So then my mother told me that around her farm there was a field with hemp. So they had a hemp field and, when they finished all the other work they had to do, they were cutting the hemp. They were putting the branches in the water, in the fiumara [torrente, "seasonal river"]; they were looking for a place where there is not a lot of water, and there is no current in the water, and they were putting the hemp in the water to make it soft. And when you can remove the skin from the fibers of the hemp, it's done. Then they use a machine to break, to separate the fibers from the wood.

They used the hemp like wool: you can make clothes with hemp (During the war military uniforms were made of hemp). It's not like cotton, or it's not soft -- it's very hard, like rope; but they didn't make any rope in Gambatesa, only bags for corn, and for dish towels for the kitchen (the kind that is kept and washed after it is used). So they were making dish towels with it, all the things for the kitchen, to cover the bread and things like this. And you work it the same way as wool, with a spinning wheel. All these kind of things made with wool or with hemp were done in wintertime. They didn't make any rope or strings with hemp, but they were making a kind of bag called in Italian bisaccia ("saddlebag" or "pannier"): it's the kind of bag you put on the horses and the donkeys to carry things; it's meant to carry things be like a backpack, but it doesn't look like one. They were doing even bed sheets with it, and I saw some of them -- my mother has some of them, and it's very -- if you sleep in a bed with that kind of bed sheet, then the next morning your skin is red. They were making mattress covers (what you often put around the mattress to protect it), dish towels and tablecloths.

So the women were doing this in wintertime, plus the knitting. Preparing all the things that are made by hand, made out of wool, for tee shirts, pullovers, things like this. There were women who were able to -- they have this tool to make the bed sheets by hand; there was one woman who was from the Concettini family (The Concettini is the one related to my family, the one who was a baker in Gambatesa); she was from the village of Jelsi (which is just a bit to the west of Gambatesa), and she had that tool at home to make bed sheets with. In French it's called a métier à tisser ("loom for weaving"). (There are looms you can use them by hand. A loom can be very small in size to big enough to make a bed sheet; it can be from one meter to maybe 3 meters or 3 meters and a half in size.)

Then again in August, end of August, they had to turn the soil in the fields, you know, with the animals (in French it's labourer, "to plow"), and to prepare the fields for when you put the seeds on the field ("sowing"). Even the fields that were used to grow clover for the animals had to be tilled; and they were doing these fields first. Then they had to do the same where there were the beans and the all other things I told you before. After August 15th the had to burn off the wheat fields. They had to turn the soil in the fields during the fall, and they had to do it twice; the second time was to get the soil thinner. But my father told me that if was starting to rain around this time, usually they couldn't do it a second time. And the purpose of the second time they were doing it was also to prevent weeds from growing in the fields. Around October 24th they had to put the wheat seeds on the fields. Then they planted the oats, barley, fave, petit pois ("garden peas"), all the things I told you before that you had to harvest. All these things were put in the ground around October 24th. And they had to do the same with the clover, to sow the fields for the grass for the animals. So all these works, wheat, oats, barley, -- it was all done between October 24th and the 6th or 7th of December. I think the end was around San Nicola's Day (San Nicola di Bari, Saint Nicholas; his day is 6 December); I think they had to finish before San Nicola. Everything had to be done before San Nicola. And that's all.

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At Luca Valente's farm in Gambatesa

Angelo's mother Maria lived on her grandfather Luca's farm until she was ten years old. This is what she remembers of the products of the farm.

Olive Trees and the Olive Harvest

Olive trees were cut back each year to make new branches, so that there would be even more olives the next year. This was done in February-March. In those days the olives were hand harvested one by one; as they were picked the olives were put into gray bags (like the sandbags used in WW2) made from the same material as wheat-flour sacks. Then the olives would be put on the floor of a room where no one was living; only after all the olives were harvested were they taken to the mill to be pressed. This delay in pressing made the oil a bit acid; the quality is better now that they take the olives to the mill on the same day that they are harvested (Nowadays they use machines that shake the olives from the trees).

The oil that was pressed from the olives at the mill was stored in vats carved out of big stones each holding 100 kilos of oil; these stones are called pil' d'olio in dialect (vasche di pietra in Italian). The vats are of the same stone as Gambatesa's old Roman measuring stones (limestone); any extra oil was put in demijohns like those used to store wine. The oil was stored in a cantina (a storeroom dug out of the sandstone foundations of Gambatesa), but not the one under the house. All cooking was done with this oil. It was greenish-yellow in color. Extra would probably be sold, because there was too much for one family to use in one year.  The Valente had two of these stones.

Giovanni Valente's father Nicola Valente used to send olive oil to his son in Camden, America. People used tin cans to send the oil. Probably people going from Gambatesa to America carried the olive oil to him.

Grapes, Fruit and Vegetables

For the grape harvest, people came to help (from Riccia and all around) with the harvest at the end of June, because the wine was hand-make; the men would tread the grapes with their feet. In 1973 or 1974 Angelo remembers his grandfather Francesco Valente using feet to press the grapes.

There were two huge fig trees on her grandfather Luca's farm and little Maria would eat figs all day. But mostly the farm animals ate the fruit. They grew all kinds: apples (many kinds), peaches, apricots, pears (many kinds), cherries (many kinds), plums ("reine claude"), nuts (almonds, walnuts), many kinds of figs (so many that the pigs were even given figs to eat).

But there were no citrus trees, no oranges, tangerines or lemons. No one in Gambatesa grew them. (It would be too cold there in winter Angelo thinks.)

They grew all kinds of vegetables in summer: tomatoes, beans, lettuces, onions, artichokes, bell peppers, but they were given away. No on had time to go to the market to sell the vegetables.

The farm made money from: wheat, cows, wine, sheep, turkeys (there were fifty turkeys), pigs, eggs, chickens. They made lots of cheese.

Maria remembers that Luca was always complaining about the property tax on his farmland.

The bestiame (Farm Animals)

The cows and goats had names, but not the sheep. The farmers had affection for the animals, but the animals had to remain animals (They were going to be slaughtered; they were not like pets).

My father always said that the pig is a very friendly animal. It's like a dog: it follows you around. All the farmers in Gambatesa had at least one pig, even the very poor. Because a pig is very easy to raise. Zio Angelo Abiuso kept a pig in the cantina under the street, but the pig kept its place very dirty (Pigs like to stay in the mud because their skin in very delicate and it protects their skin).

The goat's name was Peppenella (the diminutive for Giuseppina). There were cows on the Valente farm where my mother grew up. They were named Ciardina, Capo Rosso ("Red Head") and Signorella ("Little Lady") (but the final vowels are not pronounced in dialect).

During the winter, if the weather was bad (if it rained or snowed) the sheep and chickens were brought inside the stable; otherwise they were kept outdoors. The cows were kept inside. They had only one goat, for milk and to keep the grass down around the farmhouse. There were seven or eight sheep.

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Another Poors' Pasty - sfringelle

Besides the taralli of Gambatesa, poor people had a second kind of pastry. It was called in dialect sfringell[e] (The final "e" is silent ). It was made for Christmastime and New Years.

Recipe. Prepare a simple batter of flour, water, yeast and salt. These are the ingredients of pane comune ("the lean-dough bread of everyday"), but the mixture must be more liquid; it should be too sticky to knead, for example. Then drop this batter a soup-spoon-full at a time into a pan of "boiling" (i.e. very hot) oil. It should turn dark yellow to shallow light-brown in color and it will inflate. Then when it is cooked (maybe less than 1 minute), put the sfringelle on paper towels which should absorb all the extra oil (In the past they used maybe a dish-towel).

Next put lots of granular sugar (the type of sugar put in coffee) on a plate, and roll the sfringelle in it until their surfaces are covered in sugar. But they do not keep, because of the oil; unlike taralli you must eat them the day you make them. The sfringelle (fried dough) are very soft, like marshmallow; they are not crisp.

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Dishes that are Common to the Poor

About Gambatesa's "milk soup", Adriane wrote [28 March 2006]:

as a young girl growing up in SW Louisiana, my old Cajun grandmother used to serve to us children for breakfast a dish we called "coffee-milk and bread". She of course said the name in French but I do not recall it. Other than the fact that the coffee we used was not made of barley, the dish seems identical. Even down to the fact that it was considered a dish for children.

Then I read about the Italian pastry called sfringelle. I couldn't believe it but my grandmother made that, too. In this case I clearly remember the French word for it -- banyez. The two are identical in every way, even the sprinkling of the sugar on top.

Angelo recognized banyez as beignet (pl. beignets, English "fritters" or even "doughnuts"). This was sometimes the only pastry [sweet] of the poor -- the poorest of the pastries, the simplest -- throughout Europe.

Sometimes in Gambatesa a relative would send coffee from America. Then they would add some coffee to their barley "coffee" to improve the taste. But that was the only time they had coffee.

They do not have a tradition of sweets in Gambatesa; sweets did not exist except from fruit trees (figs, pears, apples). For the longest time their only pastry was taralli, although now they have a few more types of biscotti.

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Lucia, whose parents came to Massachusetts in 1900 from Colli a Volturno in Molise [near the Volturno River in what is now the Province of Isernia], wrote that as a child she had zupoli (hot chocolate and bread) for breakfast. They also had fried dough with sugar; sometimes the dough was made with mashed potato and salt and pepper. [12 March 2007]

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"Ice-cream" in my Valente grandmother's time - mastecotte

Mastecotte (or, maybe, maste cotte, maybe translated as "cooked grape must") in dialect (also called sorbett[e], sorbetto in Italian) is not really ice cream; it is water-ice or granita. But this was what poor people had instead of ice cream, and this is how it was made.

Recipe. You begin with mosto: "wine must" (the juice of pressed grapes) just before it turns into alcohol; because after a few days, or even sooner, it will begin bubbling -- i.e. fermenting -- so you should use it before then or it will begin losing its sweetness. (Note that wine grapes are very much sweeter than table grapes, and that the one cannot be used in place of the other.) Put the grape must in a pot and boil it for a few hours until 1/2 to 1/4 is left of what you began with; -- but do not reduce the grape must too much or it will become hard like jam; it must be liquid like Canadian syrup (from a tree).

Then pour the mastecotte, which will look very dark, into small bottles (about the size of soda [fizzy-drink] bottles) -- and pour a thin layer of (olive) oil on the top, like they used to do in Italy with wine. Angelo remembers when he was a child that his grandfather Francesco Valente used to take the oil off the wine by rolling up a sheet of newspaper: you just touch the oil and the paper sucks it up. They used olive oil in Italy to isolate wine from the ruinous effects of the bacteria in the air, like the way corks were used in France. The wine was stored in demijohns (damigiane, in Italian) with a layer of oil on top.

One you have added a thin layer of oil, you cap the bottle. "And my grandmother said that it lasts for years, so you can keep it for years." The mastecotte is kept in the cantina ("basement or cellar of the house") where the wine is kept. Mastecotte was made at the same time that wine was being made, the vendemmia at the end of June.

Angelo's mother used to make something similar to mastecotte when she was living with her mother, Luigina Abiuso in Valente, Angelo's Valente grandmother -- i.e. Francesco Valente's wife, but they used figs; "my father thinks they must have added water (otherwise you would burn the figs) but my mother does not remember".

Finally, you wait for the wintertime, and when you have snow, you pour the mastecotte onto the snow, you mix it, and it makes a sorbett[e] -- that is, you put some snow in a small glass; you pour in the mastecotte, you mix it, and you eat it right away.

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Women's Clothing in Gambatesa (as it used to be)

Women in Gambatesa wore calzettone -- long wool or heavy cotton socks (stockings). And when they were working in the countryside they wore gaiters, hand-made out of old cloth, which were held in place by winding string around the leg. This was until the 1950s, 1960s. The dialect name for these gaiters is i jamere.

Women did not wear shoes: they went barefoot or they wore wooden clogs, like in Holland.

Shorter dresses were worn by younger women, longer dresses by older women; "older women": either married or after 40 years old. Also, young women did not wear head scarves.

Peasant women did not have overcoats, so they used big blankets -- i.e. shawls -- in the winter. These were for women only. Dark colors for the shawls: black or brown. In Gambatesa shawls had a plaid decoration (like Scottish tartan) or they had only one color, usually dark.

An overcoat could play a part in dowry negotiations. A father-in-law-to-be might demand that the-bride-to-be's father provide her with an overcoat as part of her dowry.

Clothing Fasteners

If you look at old photographs you will see that the women often had huge hands from all the work they had to do. And if you look at the clothes of poorer women, you will see no buttons: they used safety-pins (like for baby's diapers) instead.

Washing Clothes

They used to wash clothes on their knees bending over a stream. Angelo's mother when she was young used to do it this way: it is a bad memory for her; this had to be done in icy water of the torrente ("a stream that rushes down from the mountains") in the winter too.

In Gambatesa they made the soap they used themselves. They made it from the fat of dead animals plus potassium. Some people still do. It smells like commercially produced soap; it does not have a bad smell. When Angelo is in Gambatesa, he uses it to wash his clothing. (In the old days, stray dogs in the village used to be killed for their fat to make soap by the poorest of the poor in Gambatesa.)

Homemade soap, from animal fat and potash

After washing in the stream, the white clothes were folded and put into a big basin. Then they put a bed sheet over the top of the basin and they poured boiling water with ashes which they had boiled in the water over the clothes in the basin. (The bedsheet stopped the ashes.) This was supposed to bleach the clothes, although it did not whiten them, or to disinfect the clothes, but Angelo's mother said it was useless. They did not have l'eau de javel ("bleach") after the war (WW2). [In Camden, New Jersey, at this time they used to call bleach "gevella water".]

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The Street Markets, shopping in Gambatesa

Where did people in Gambatesa do their shopping? Where do they buy their food?

Al mercato ("at the market", u mercat' in dialect): the street market, like the flea market. Nowadays at Largo della Madonna and Viale Vittorio Veneto. In the very old times there was a street market on the street going to Gambatesa's castle and the Church of Saint Bartholomew, n'op a Chiazz as that part of Via Eustacchio is still called. It was once a week if I remember right.

They used a Roman balance for everything at the market, vegetables, coffee, wheat, chickens. (That type of balance is held up with one hand; it has a dish on one end and an arm with a sliding weight on the other; goods are put in the dish and then the weight is moved until it counterbalances.) For 2,000 years people at the market were weighing things the same way. Until the middle or end of the 1980s they were using that kind of balance, but afterwards the government required scientific balances that print the price and the weight on a ticket.

Also there was la fiera ("the fair", a ferie in dialect) four or five times during the year. It was the same kind of street market but much bigger, with many more items to buy and sell. All the streets around La Fontana were used for it (and are still used for it today). Before Christmas, Easter, 15th of August (Feast of the Assumption, Ferragosto), and Santa Lucia.

Each week people used to go to other villages to buy and sell things as well. Market days are different from one village to another. From time to time people used to go to the city of Campobass' or Cabuasc' ("Campobasso" in dialect), but it took a whole day. They went to the other villages by donkey. The donkey would be loaded with things to sell or with what was bought, for example, chickens. A few years ago, "donkeys were the cars we had, the buses and cars of that time," my uncle Angelo Abiuso said to me.

There was a wooden rack that was put on the donkey's back like a saddle (but not for riding); it was a structure to hold goods, like wooden saddle-bags. It was called a varde in dialect. Because on the varde, on a donkey you could carry wood for the fire. A donkey with a varde was like the camel of those days, Angelo's father said. The varde was like a wooden cage to carry flour or bags of wheat, and real cages with chickens inside. There was a blanket under the varde to protect the donkey's back.

The poorer people had donkeys; the in between had mules; the rich had horses. The mule was like a lorry: it was used by people who needed to move woods and stones from place to place. The Valente in Gambatesa had two female horses, which is an indication of their wealth; the female were more expensive. Angelo thinks this was because the female could have foals: so a mare was of more value than a male horse.

Almost all the houses in Gambatesa have a ring on the outer wall to tie up horses, donkeys.

My grandfather Francesco Valente had a grocery store. But I don't think there were before. Everything was sold at the street market. Today there are some grocery stores, but only small ones like in a city's downtown.

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Earthquake Damage in Gambatesa

On 31 October 2002 there was a large earthquake in the Province of Campobasso. The roof of an elementary school collapsed in San Giuliano di Puglia, killing many young children. [Map of the Province of Campobasso showing Gambatesa and San Giuliano]

In Gambatesa, 12 miles to the south of San Giuliano, there was not much damage. There was a small crack in one wall of the Church of San Bartolomeo Apostolo, and one building in Vicolo del Orologio needed to be braced with wood. Also, near Largo della Madonna what is called in Gambatesa "the old school" (across the street from the present school) was damaged.

The earthquake occurred in the middle of a wedding ceremony. So they went out of San Bartolomeo and finished the ceremony outside, to be safe in case the earthquake began again.

Now San Bartolomeo is closed for repair. They are using the Church of San Nicola meanwhile, which is much smaller. They also broadcast the village Mass on a radio channel in the village for those who want to hear it.

The monastery of San Nicola has been under renovation for many years, so I don't know how long San Bartolomeo will be closed. [Note: San Bartolomeo has since re-opened.]

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Il Toppo

At the entrance to the village center of Gambatesa the directional sign lists "Campo Sportivo" -- does this mean the Contrada Carestia?

Old people don't say Campo Sportivo ("Sports Field"). They say n'gop u toppe ("on the toppa"). They do have football (soccer) matches there.

The land that was called carestia was land that was of poor quality for agriculture. What the map calls the Contrada Carestia ("Famine District") is called by the Gambatesans n'gop u toppa, and carestia means more the garden around there.

There was a convent on the toppa. It was a school run by nuns. Maybe at the end of the 1940s, beginning of the 1950s, the nuns left. But the monks left the monastery at the Church of San Nicola earlier; the monastery was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy and was for a time used by the state as a school.

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Children's Toys in Gambatesa

Children's toys were almost unknown in Gambatesa. In 1961 the nuns of Gambatesa's kindergarten appealed for help; among the things their kindergarten needed were toys for the children:

It would necessarily need some appropriate playthings, such as interlocking building-blocks and blocks, little blackboards and so on. (La vita del locale asilo infantile)

The (old) people in Gambatesa would say:

E chi ti deve! A desperazione! (E chi te li dava tutti questi giocattoli! La disperazione (ci stava solo la disperazione)!

"And who would have given them to you, all these toys?! Here there was only despair (Here we had only despair to give you [That was the only thing anyone had])."

My mother spent her childhood on a farm in Gambatesa after the war. She had at first only one toy, a rag doll (une poupée de chiffon) made by her grandmother or by an aunt of hers. Later she had a plastic duck with four wheels and a string to pull it. The people were very poor.

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Feast of the Ascension

Goat's milk and ricotta were offered to the church. There was a procession of very small carts pulled by goats that carried the milk and ricotta. The money collected from the sale of these was used for a celebration.

The Feast of the Ascension is celebrated 40 days after Easter Sunday.

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Life for Girls in Gambatesa

In Gambatesa when Zio Angelo was young, when people got engaged in the village, the girl could dance with all the boys -- except with her fiancé. (This was when parties were given at home and the parents decided who to allow in or not). When I asked him why, he laughed; he just said "It was like this".

Girls were not allowed to stay outside the house without any good reason. So if they wanted to stay out longer to talk to their friends, for example when they went to collect the water at the fountain (and there didn't happen to be a lot of people there collecting water), they would fill the tina ("water pot") and then pour the water out, so that they could join the queue again. Then they would tell their parents that there were too many people at the fountain and that is why they took so long.

All the water used in the village of Gambatesa had to be fetched from the fountain at Largo Fontana. It took a girl about 3 minutes to walk from the fountain to the Church of San Bartolomeo Apostolo, for example, carrying a tina on her head. This carrying of water began at 5 or 6 o'clock each morning with girls queuing (lining up) at the fountain. Poorer girls were paid to carry water all day long.

[A Scene from Life in the Village

[Note by Robert Angelo

[One evening forty years ago, in Gambatesa during Ferragosto, I stood in a doorway speaking English with a girl from Gambatesa who was about my age. To everyone who walked past us she said, "Buona sera." Finally she said to me, "I have to say that or they will think I am a bad girl."]

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"The Monk", warmth in winter

Il monaco ("The monk")

When the weather turned cold, Il monaco ("The monk") was placed in the bed between the husband and wife during the winter to keep them warm. First wood or charcoal was burned in a pan (See upper left corner in the photograph); then when that turned red it was put in the wooden cage called il monaco, which is the wooden structure in the foreground, and the monaco was placed in the bed. Of course this had to be done with care to avoid fire.

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"I San Giovanni" (Dreams in Gambatesa)

In the old days in Gambatesa ... dreams are like the Australian Aborigines' "Dream Time" -- the time of the world's origins when they see their ancestors in their dreams. When they dream, they think they are in touch with a spirit world, an open door to another dimension. Here is the story told to Angelo Abiuso by an old woman about the sick man who thought he was going to die and had a dream.

"He met the San Giovanni (compari)"

He [the sick man] met all the, well, do you know the words compare ["godfather"] and comara ["godmother"]? In his dream he met all his compari who were already dead. So the woman told me that he asked them, he said "Ah, I know that you are dead, so it means that I'm going to join you very soon." And all the compari said, "No, no, don't worry. It is not yet your time. So don't worry because this one, and this one, and this one in Gambatesa, they are going to die; only after you will join us." And it happened exactly like this: all the names he gave, these people they died and then he died. He was very very old. So the people who told me that, they said, "Probably he was already half dead. He went already in the other world to talk with the dead people and he came back."

San Giovanni's Day

So the compari and comare. There was I think, there is a day, San Giovanni's Day, and I think that during that day they used to go, for example, good friends who wanted to be compari together. They used on that day to go, I think, to San Giovanni, or to go to the church. And there was a like a ceremony they used to do among them. It was something outside from the church, and with that ceremony they used to become compari and comare.

It's something they told me: very long time ago, with stones, they used to do things with stones. It looks like a, yes, something not connected to the religion, something probably coming before the church, before the Christian tradition. Something like tribes do the same in Africa or things like this. But I don't remember -- I must ask my parents. They had to collect stones while walking to a place called San Giovanni. I don't remember how many stones that they had, the stones where there is the holy water in the church. But I'm not sure, it was something like this. It was like a non-Christian ceremony.... as something connected with paganism.

Probably to a place. They must be a sanctuario in a place called San Giovanni. They went for two days to this place.... sanctuary, things like this.

And that ceremony used to take place in the evening. But I don't have precise information because these are things I just heard. People, they knew what they were talking about, but I didn't know, so it was difficult for me to understand what they were talking about.

These compari and comare made something at the San Giovanni. The woman who told me the story of that man he was sick and this and that, she didn't use the word "his compari" but she said "the San Giovanni", meaning "San Giovanni" stands for "compari". She said exactly, "He met the San Giovanni", meaning the compari. But I don't know exactly because these are very old things that nobody does the same today.

For the Church: witnesses at weddings, godparents

Because officially you are a compare and comara, for example if you are the witness in a wedding at the church, then you become compare of the man you are the witness for and his wife. For example, my father and my mother call my godfather and his wife compare and comara [not because they were the witnesses at the church but] because he is my godfather, so he became the compare, my mother's and my father's compare. As soon as there is something connected with the church, that you are a witness, or you are a godfather, things like this, then you are compari. And in the old times, there was a second way to become compari; it was during that San Giovanni's Day, with that strange ceremony.

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Wolves and Gambatesa

Wolves were living just southwest of Gambatesa in the Bosco di Riccia ("Riccian Woods" or "Woods of Riccia"). At my godfather's place the Masseria Biagietti there is the picture of the last wolf killed in the area. The father of my godfather's mother was among the hunters. It was end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th Century.

Wolves and wolf hunters, circa 1935

The stories about wolves do look like legends more than real stories. The only one I have read is in a schoolbook of Angelo Abiuso's (my Abiuso grandfather's brother in Gambatesa) -- you can imagine how old is that schoolbook but Zio Angelo still likes to read it again and again --. The title is something like Il tamburino di Riccia.

The Drummer of Riccia

Long time ago a man was walking back home during winter time. The night arrived and he was in the Bosco di Riccia (I didn't tell you that Angelo's book is about Molise). A bunch of wolves (starving wolves) wanted to attack him. He climbed up a tree but the wolves were all around the tree and he couldn't reach the village of Riccia. But it happened that moving on the tree une baguette frappa le tambour ("a stick struck the drum") and of course it produced a sound. The man saw the wolves got scared because of the bang produced by the tambour ("drum"). He started to play and the wolves were scared about the sound. He climbed down the tree and started to play as strong as possible. And he played the whole way to Riccia. He went on playing into the village and he knocked at the door, and when his wife opened the door he came in still playing. His wife didn't know why in the middle of the night her husband was doing that but only when she closed the door he stopped and told this story to his wife.

Except that I have never heard that a Gambatesan was eaten by a wolf, although old people, in Riccia, used to eat wolves' meat. Not too far from Gambatesa (in Abruzzo) there are many wolves and now Swiss shepherds are going there to learn how to live with wolves because in Abruzzo shepherds live with wolves in the same area (Italian wolves are invading Switzerland through the Alps).

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The URL of this Web page: https://www.roangelo.net/valente/stracci.html
Last revised: 12 August 2010 : 2010-08-12 by Robert [Wesley] Angelo.

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