And winter was coming …

Written by Rosella Librandi Tavernise on January 21, 2021. Posted in Culture

Winter was approaching and Vaccarizzo Albanese brought the cold, the snow, the strong west wind that uncovered the roofs and caused the tiles and bars to fall from the window sills, the strong north wind (vorea) and the long afternoons that gathered around the hearth (te vatra).

Often it snowed heavily and the snow, with its weight, broke the branches of the trees; to go from one house to another you had to walk through the streets shoveling the snow; the men, to protect themselves from the cold, wandered around in heavy black cloaks and the women wrapped themselves in wide woolen shawls, called kerchiefs and scarves.
From the roofs of the low houses (terranet) the snow melting and dripping, during the night, because of the strong cold, froze forming stalactites: irresistible temptations for us children who made colorless icicles, breaking them with sticks.
In the mountains, the mountaineers knew how to preserve the snow by pressing it into large holes lined with straw, alternating layers of snow with layers of straw (the neviere) and in summer they would go down to the town to sell it. The crunchy, granulated snow was purchased to make a slush with cooked must (shurbeta).
Throughout the winter, at dusk, when the air became humid and the sky gray, donkeys laden with sacks of olives would return and take them to the mills to be pressed (there were about ten in the village at that time). The streets smelled good of fresh oil and firewood burned in the chimneys. Large slices of homemade bread were grilled and seasoned with fresh oil.
In the morning, at dawn, the women in groups, with the basket in their arms, would leave the house to go to pick olives in the field that surrounded the village, te kopshtet and difizet. Other groups moved, throughout the harvest, to the plain and slept in the large rooms on the ground floor of the farms: they brought bread, vegetables, dried figs and salted fish from the town as garnish; in the place they found wild vegetables and olives that they ate raw, well seasoned with oregano and paprika or fried, seasoned with chili peppers and vinegar. After Christmas, when the cold turned bitter, pigs were slaughtered; The poor animals, taken from the pigsty (cimbunet), were taken to the oil mills where the cruel rite of slaughter was carried out because there were the workers who had the strength to immobilize them and there was always the boiling water necessary to skin them. After cutting, the children were given the “cannarutu bone”, a piece of bone wrapped in meat, the coccyx which, when grilled, was very tasty. (The Kyrgyz, nomads from Central Asia, offer this bone to their special guest and also call it “delicious bone”)
When it rained, not being able to play outside, the children played inside the house: with buttons, with soccer player cards and hide and seek (musheta), hiding behind furniture and grandmother’s long skirts. In the houses there was no heating and daily life took place in the kitchen in front of the large fireplace. Next to the fire there was always a pot (poçia) full of vegetables, potatoes, chestnuts or beans. These, dried with all the skin, were sprinkled with oregano after cooking. The kitchen was always infused with the good smell of food and talk. In the red-hot brick of the fireplace, the children made popcorn (which we didn’t know at the time): we threw in a handful of corn and waited for the kernels to swell and burst; chestnuts were roasted in the perforated pan (pastillera) and the sausage, stuck on the spit (te helli): when the fat, tinged with red pepper, began to flow, the sausage was dried into large slices of bread that were soaked and delicious panzanelle (çaudelie) were obtained. From the robust iron chain suspended above the hearth (Kamastra) hung the copper cauldron filled with water, always hot, for every need. In the kitchen, long rows of sausages and soppressata hung from the posts hanging from the ceiling that had to be “cured” before storing them in oil or fat in jars and tarzaruli (cylindrical terracotta containers).
The elders remembered stories and characters from the past. The children kept at bay by scaring them by telling them that if they were bad, Boborroku, Tat Loshi (the thunder), Lal Orku (Uncle Orc) or Gjankalliu (the owl) would come and make a sad noise at night.
Nonna Marietta read me Luigi Capuana’s fairy tales; Grandpa Peppino used to tell stories that I couldn’t follow to the end because I fell asleep. In December, Christmas and the Christmas holidays arrived with all their charm; in February, the sad commemoration of the dead and the Carnival. For the costume, there were no expensive ready-made dresses such as astronaut, vampire, Fox, Snow White and princess for which they invented gypsy, beggar, bandit and lady costumes, using the clothes of the mother and the old men.
The kids went through the town with a wooden spit in hand to paste the pieces of sausage that they were given when they knocked on the doors of the houses. Today, in the town, little or nothing remains of all this; the past is not of interest, you live in the present: smoke from the home makes your clothes dirty, grease is bad for your health, games are played on the computer, popcorn can be bought in packs, artisan shops are closed, colored and fragrant palettes of chemical scents are bought in stores and sucked all year round, new houses are cleaned with electric brooms, olives are beaten and collected in nets in no time, cold cuts and bread can be bought in factories or shops, etcetera, etc …
Corigliano Calabro, 01/21/2021

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