A parking lot and another big bad pig

In the morning, I ride to the train station and meet my cousin Monica Spadoni Freshley, who lives in Washington state but is studying in Firenze with Gonzaga University. We go the bar and I order my usual, cioccolata calda, while she has a caffe' latte, which comes in two parts, a class of milk and a shot glass of espresso. It is different than the cafe latte she receives in Firenze, but she pours the espresso into the milk and seems satisfied with the results.

I have brought my laptop along because it has four scanned photos that American cousin Roland has given me. The photos were taken in 1969, when the casa of Pietro Spadoni and Maria Marchi, my great grandparents, still existed. I'm pretty sure our family did not own the house but lived in it as a rental while working a farm nearby as contadini, or share croppers. Monica and I peruse the photos and compare them to existing buildings in San Salvatore. A key landmark in the photo is a service station, which also no longer exists but was once very close to the Casa Spadoni. We figure out that the very bar we are sitting in was formerly the service station. That means that the casa should be right . . over there . . . where there is now a parking lot. Monica takes a photo, but the parking lot is so non-descript that I have no interest in doing the same.

After taking Monica on a short tour of the sights of Montecarlo and San Salvatore, we go back to the agriturismo and have a marvelous multi-course pranzo that Lucy has been working on all morning. Then it is off to Lucca, where the three of us take in a children's play, I Tre Piccoli Lupi e il Grande Maile Cattivo. It is actually a one-man show done with marionettes and hand puppets. It is very well done and entertaining, even for the adults. The best part is, we Americans can all understand it because the Italian words are basic and expressed dramatically. It makes me feel like we are making some progress with our language learning. The show is a take-off on the Three Little Pigs, only this time the pig is big and bad, and the wolves are small. But I don't want to spoil the story for you; you'll just have to come to Lucca and see it.

Here are two photos of the Spadoni house from 1969: