Part 2 – Il grande viaggio 1975… 50 years since Nanna Francesca and Nonno Anni took their ‘big trip’ overseas.
For this instalment, one photograph stands out – when Nonno Anni returns to Fossa more than three decades after emigrating to Australia. I wrote about this in Joe’s Fruit Shop and Milk Bar, in the chapter ‘Orange Drink – 6d’ and looking at this photograph again now, it takes me right back to sitting at the kitchen table when Nonno Anni handed me this picture and spoke of returning to his beloved Fossa for that first time. I can still smell the brewed coffee, feel the biscuit crumbs on the tablecloth, and see the tears in his eyes…
‘It seemed the entire village came out into the street when we arrived in Fossa,’ Nonno Anni shakes his head, marvelling. And having stood in that lane, I can almost hear the clunking open of shutters and doors, footsteps on stone.
He shows me a photograph of the return – Nonno Anni in his travelling suit, kneeling on the cobblestones surrounded by dozens of villagers clustered around him, many reaching out with a hand on his shoulders, his arms, his back. The emotion in his face is pure. They never forgot him, enveloping him back into their village family. Several decades of poverty, migration, and the war had forever split an entire village. A period short in historical terms but long for those living through it, and everlasting in that there would forever be those who went beyond the mountains and those who stayed encircled by them.
The younger people in the photograph must’ve been thinking, ‘who are these people?’ but it’s clear the older people knew. It’s lovely how they embraced Nanna Francesca also, though she wasn’t from Fossa or Abruzzo. Of course, she too was very keen to see her family house again in Calabria, but that is in the next part of their travels… Buon Viaggio! 💛🌠
It’s fifty years this year since Nanna Francesca and Nonno Anni took their ‘big trip’ overseas. And what a trip it was – to several countries in Europe and the UK as well as America. It was also the first holiday they treated themselves to after decades working in their fruit shop and milk bar every day from 7am until 10 or 11pm, with only Easter and Christmas days off.
Bisnonna Francesca… a companion post to the previous on Bisnonno Domenico. Likewise, I didn’t get to meet her yet each photo has a little to reveal and brings the past somewhat closer in that moment. A rare photo, circa 1930 (bottom right) shows Francesca in Palmi, Calabria with her mother, Soccorsa, the baker and her daughter (Nanna Francesca). The three who lived together for years after Domenico was in Australia. And then (top left), just Francesca and her daughter, soon to leave to join him in 1934. She and her mother had worked hard to help raise the ship fares, determined as she was to be reunited.
In his work clothes (top left), one knee patched, behind him his Applethorpe orchards on land he’d hand-cleared, long before he could afford the horse.
Spaghetti squash… a sunny winter vegetable. It grows on a vine like pumpkin and has yellow, star-shaped blossoms that only open for one day. Love how, once tender, you can gently fork the strands from the sides to create spaghetti in its own bowl.
Zoë Boccabella 