Category Archives: ex-pats Italy

Maria’s story

Maria   (as I will call her here )   is one of my oldest acquaintances and one of my dearest friends.  She has been coming to help me clean my floors, keep things dust-free and tidy, and save me hours of housework  for as long as I have  been here.  She saw my children born and watched them grow up as we all matured together.  She struck me from the start  with her easy and genuine smile, her positive outlook and caring demeanor.   This is a rare commodity in these hill towns where diffidence,  legitimately-earned  owing to centuries  of foreign invasions, is the rule.  She is scrupulously honest with her friends, and can be diabolical with her enemies.   If there is anything you want to know, any information about anyone that isn’t official, she will know about it.  Her version may turn out to be larger than the truth, but I can count on getting any gossipy tidbits from her, before they  go to press.  She often says that she would love to be alone, free from constant scrutiny, and yet she could never live without her small town.  She is an integral part of it.  I am very fond of her.

“Family  Landscape”   mixed media

Maria’s life has not been an easy one.  She lives in community housing with her mother and father, an although she would like to have a place of her own, she is aware that her parents depend on her for support, both economic and emotional.   Ours is a small town, and modest  unsavory deeds  shine brightly in  this overcast atmosphere of shared knowledge.  Families provide one’s identity, and if one member has committed a sin, all will be tainted by association.  Once committed to communal memory, an unfortunate incident is rarely, if ever,  forgotten.

Her parents are an interesting couple, her mother an intelligent  foul-mouthed  and  iron-fisted  busybody who still applies heavy make-up and peroxide at sixty-five.  She is one of those women who understands that her control of the situation depends upon her playing her cards close to her chest.  I like her!   Her father is mouse-like, a reserved and hesitant cultivator of a small plot of land, an ex-drinker.  Maria confided to me that as a child, after each episode of  drunkenness and predictably despicable behavior, her father would wake them all up to require that they  eat the compensatory ice cream he brought home to them.    She told me that recently she tried, yet again,  to eat some ice cream. She was not surprised to be overwhelmed by nausea, just like the times before.

She was one of five siblings, now four.  One beloved brother was lost to a drug overdose.   Working in Germany, trying to make some money to send home, he died  in isolation and was discovered  after many days.  They brought him back for his funeral service, where the presiding priest chose to lecture the congregation on the evils of drug use.  This  provided Maria with her final reason to cut herself loose from the overweening and proprietarial hypocrisy of the local church.  Judgments given  so easily require the addition of a smidgen of empathy before they are applied to a family, one already reeling under the weight of  tragedy.

Her oldest  brother is known as one of those people who cannot be trusted, and many a finger has been wagged in his direction when something of value disappears.  He is an opportunist, someone who is up and about in the wee hours.  He is  a gatherer of available merchandise, some of it already the property of others.  He supplies firewood, and therefore he  is a wood-chopper, a cross-cultural category which implies unsavory traits.  Opportunities  present themselves in special ways for him.   He sued a friend of mine who ran a small gas station, because his teenage daughter (walking along looking at her phone) stepped into the open manhole where my friend was refilling his tanks.   She was only slightly injured, but thanks to her father’s adept legal  maneuvers, her sore ankle supplied the family with extra funds for a year. My friend, who had four small children, was given only the opportunity to worry.

Maria’s sister has many children, a hard-working husband with serious heart trouble, and a house which  she imagines is running hard in an  imaginary “Joneses”  derby.    Her character  does not shine for its altruism.   If given a gift, it will be immediately rated  according to brand and selling  value.  Home-made gifts or donations of time and effort are rarely appreciated.  She often begs for  free babysitting from her sister when Maria has time off from her work.  She always has a favorite child, chosen serially on her good days,  and the others jockey for position as her “pet” in order to profit from the associated perks.

Another brother is a collector of metal scrap, and he possesses an honest heart, even if he may be persuaded to behave to  the contrary on occasion.  He has a garage  in the Centro Storico which is stacked to the ceiling with interesting antiques,  and a wife from Naples who has just given birth to their first son.  They live over their small store which stocks  a few paper flower arrangements, souvenir postcards,  lightbulbs and assorted sundries.  They do a brisk business at Christmas in artificial trees and figurines for  presepi.* 

 Maria is tainted by a reputation which is not of her own making.   It doesn’t matter really what she does, as she is part of a clan which is known for its less-than-exemplary behavior.  This, I imagine, has been her lifelong motivation to behave as she does;  she is scrupulously honest, excellent at her job,  and demonstrates a punctuality which is almost scandalous in this part of the world.   She has had to deal with people who would not pay her for her work, a recurring theme which , each time it occurs, causes me to cringe.  Humanity, empathy, recognition of   merit;  all seem to be lacking in regard to those who aren’t high in the pecking order.    Money, for many, occupies the highest rung on the motivational ladder,  just  above  familial love  and the Pope.

She is  assumed to be an “easy” woman, an ignorant woman, a person of little moral integrity.  All these things are not true, and yet  these things will define her as long as she remains in the same small town where her family is known.   I believe that Maria is an uncomfortable presence for many, a kind of moral thermometer which measures the extent of their  mediocrity.  Most people prefer to stand next to someone who doesn’t illuminate their flaws so clearly.  And yet she shines on brightly,  and it is clear for all to see.

I wish her a long and happy life;  she deserves it.

“Morning”  pencil on paper

*presepi:  traditional  Christmas creches

The grass is greener, at least in theory

Don’t get me wrong, there are many things I love about living here.  And there are many things that everyone hates with a passion, and rightly so.  It isn’t so much that we are all reluctant to follow the rules, which, after all have been created with us in mind…it is that these rules are counter-productive, counter-intuitive, and run contrary to every logical desire  we might have to comply  if given half a chance.

This is Italy, and being a country famous for its beautiful landscape, its citizens must be encouraged to behave in such a way that the countryside remains attractive and healthful.  But times are hard, and revenue and personal incomes are in a tug-of-war with each other where everyone will lose.   So what better way to aid the floundering economy  then by creating more rules to follow, more reasons to evade them, and more impetus to misbehave out of sheer frustration?   And maybe create some revenue in the process?

We are in the process of restructuring a small, centuries-old house in the old part of town.  The view from the roof is marred by a large square cistern, made out of that wonderful material from the sixties and seventies, asbestos.  As it sits, it is not a threat to anyone, but it must be removed to make way for the renovations.  The mind of a conscientious citizen moves forward in an orderly fashion, and imagines that the object, not too heavy for a few men to lift, might be removed with the help of friends and carried to a corner of someone’s yard where it might be yet of use.

Ah, but there are new rules.  Enter the Azienda Sanitaria Locale, or ASL.*   They will have to be contacted about the removal.  An appointment will have to be made with a transport company in the area, and this will cost money.  It will require time, as they are not immediately available, of course.  There will be the need of a specialized truck with a crane to lift the cistern off of the terrazzo, and before this there will be another call to make, with a firm which is responsible for shrink-wrapping the offending item before handling it.  But before they can be called, we must locate an authorized area, call it a dump, where such items may be “disposed of.”  One hopes that these areas are safe and correctly-utilized, but we can’t know for sure.  At the end point of its removal, whenever that comes,  it is out of our hands.  Our ASL will protect us.

All of this for the bargain price of roughly 1800 Euros, or about 2300 dollars.

The end result of such regulations is understandable:  no one uses the official procedure for disposing of dangerous items, and the woods and gulleys of the surrounding areas slowly fill up with toxic and unsightly rubble.  Near our house there are two piles of broken asbestos roofing, and I try to avoid them on my walks.  What else can I do, call the ASL and pay for endless toxic removals?  It could get quite expensive.

Yes, and what to do with tires that are worn out?  The government requires stiff fees for disposing of used tires, and it is practically impossible for a customer who buys new ones to get the gommista* to dispose of the old ones, utilizing the proper channels.  It is much too expensive and time-consuming.  The result is that  every rest area is festooned with tires, every low spot along the road has its compliment of rubber, picnic spots are delineated by piles of black doughnuts.  It is almost as if it were a requirement for them to be there.   Ditto for car batteries.  When these piles are set on fire in order to “reduce” their mass, everyone enjoys the effects.  For years.

Do you need to repair the roof of a shed?  The old tar paper will need to come off, but what to do with it?  It would be incorrect and dangerous for the public health to dispose of it in a dumpster somewhere, so the government agency which deals with such things will have to be called.  The cost of getting rid of eighty pounds of old roofing material?  Only 500 Euros.  Needless to say, the  roofing material ends up in the dumpster anyway, deposited in small quantities around town.  True story.

Another true story:   An old friend ran a gas station with a partner, which  naturally  needed to dispose of its collected used motor oil.  There is a government agency for that!   The owner of a  station is responsible for compiling a scrupulous and almost indecipherable notebook accounting for every drop of oil, its date of arrival and source, and so forth.  A moment of distraction and their notebook contained an incorrect entry, discovered when the authorities from this specialized government agency arrived to enforce their rules.   The fine for the incorrect entry?   Sixty million lire for each partner, or a total fine for the business of about 200 thousand dollars.  Paid with no possibility of recourse.

And again, a friend’s experience only a couple of years ago:  While doing some  remodeling at home, he parked his almost-full wheelbarrow full of old bits of plaster and cement by the driveway while he went in for some water.  In that brief period of time the NAS officers (nucleo antisofisticazione, or a kind of  “agency for the conservation of  purity”) drove past and spotted the wheelbarrow.  Not allowed!   This was not deemed to be a permissible method of storing or moving such materials, and a fine was applied.   Sixty-five thousand Euros.  Almost 100 thousand dollars, give or take a few thousand.  I believe the case is still making its way through the permanently-constipated court system after fifteen years.

So we will be careful as our remodel proceeds, not to leave any wheelbarrows parked awkwardly around the site.  And we will continue to live with the fruits of way too much government regulation, unfortunately, in the form of   poisonous fumes and toxic waste, strewn about in our beautiful landscape.   As people, in their desire to avoid stringent regulations and fees, dump anywhere but in the right place.

I believe our offending asbestos container will magically make its way to my garden after all.

*Local Health Authority

*tire repairer

Saint Mary’s Loch,  oil on canvas,  30 x 60 inches

(above) detail, “Damage Control”  mixed media on paper

Spend wisely

If you are going out to shop, you will have to make a decision;  stay in town where the shops are smallish and local, or head out to the big city where some supermarkets are so large that their workers get around them on roller skates.  You  may save money at the big box centers, but you will have to calculate the gas and the aggravation.  Keep in mind that I am talking about my small area of Italy, and of course Rome, Milan, and even Bari are probably a different matter.

I have never figured out why many items cost what they do.  Plastics, everyday items such as washing basins, all manner of molded colorful utensils are incredibly cheap when compared to typical American prices.  I have heard about Italian Plastic, maybe this is what was meant.  Some of the most beautiful laundry baskets, lawn furniture, and kitchen utensils I have ever seen anywhere are here.  Why plastic should be so cheap and gasoline so expensive, well, it tells a story about how easily prices can be manipulated.

Bathroom rugs are incredibly expensive.  They are ratty and badly-made, ready to fall apart at the first washing, and yet they are costly.  Things like band aids, hair bands, brushes, demitasse cups, faucets, door knobs, office supplies, insect repellent, and lamps are all incredibly expensive.  Why is this?   There are two levels of commerce, the very nice  (places where I will not easily be found)   and the kind of crappy.  It is either custom-made-to-order bookshelves or shrink-wrapped and assembly-required.  There really is no middle ground of decent quality and modest price.  There is a third option, the market on designated weekdays, which is made up of traveling vans which set up and then leave in the course of the morning.  But if you don’t know how to haggle and bluff, or if you have a face like mine, blond and foreign, this might cost you dearly.

In the past few years one area which has benefited greatly from the influx of foreign-made merchandise is doors.   The doors which were so lovingly made for our house twenty years ago, no two exactly alike, cost about four hundred dollars each.  I can remember having to sit down when I heard what our modest (compared to other houses) component of  seven doors would cost.   Now you can get very nice doors and frames for about seventy five dollars if you look in the right place.  They are made in neighboring countries to the East, and they are now in every new house and building.  Walking into a charming old remodeled house and seeing these doors can be disconcerting.  It creates the same feeling of melancholy that peeking at  a kitchen in, say,  Japan produces.  You see your exact chairs and table, cutlery and clock,  and you understand that we have paid with our identity for our Ikea world, where everyone can choose the same items.  And they do,   because they are so irresistibly cheap.

However, there are some bargains!  Wine  flows and flavors most meals at  negligible expense.  When I first came here there was a Cantina Sociale where you could buy red, white, or rose–these were the categories–by the case.  Twelve full bottles for about seventy five cents each.  Many areas still boast their wine cooperatives, which is what these are, where all the farmers can pool their grapes with generic but decent results.   Unfortunately our cantina sociale is a thing of the past, a victim of in-fighting,  location,  and the boutique wine industry.  But lest you should be forced to stay sober, you can pick up all manner of hard liquors at your local supermarkets.  A bottle of Russian vodka will set you back about five dollars and a decent single malt whiskey, imported from Scotland, will cost no more than about nine dollars.

Do you want to buy a nice carpet?  It might be very expensive.  There are a few televised infomercial sellers who have been around for many years, and one can only assume they do sell their Iranian and Indian-made rugs to someone.  From what I have seen, they are four times as expensive as the equivalent in the US, and nowhere near as attractive.  Even in high-end shops offering antique hand-woven carpets, red and blue are the colors offered.  Unless of course you prefer blue and red.  Tradition is a powerful beast.

Strangely,  it would seem that television has cornered the market on art sales.  All those channels at the high end of the dial, presenting their line-ups of paintings by “quoted” artists, and will they constitute a bargain?  Not hardly. I have seen pieces offered, horrendous kitsch and pitifully awkward abstracts,  for upwards of fifty thousand dollars.   The median price will be high, and never are there pieces of original art offered for less than a month’s salary. Sadly, while purchases are being made in this fashion, galleries are gasping for sales with no hope in sight.   So I always wonder, who can be buying this art?   Are they satisfied when the pieces are delivered and displayed?   Who in their right mind would happen on a station, some afternoon with nothing better to do, and telephone to order a fifty-thousand dollar painting, plus shipping?

Everyone here complains about the inexorable advance of the Chinese in all commercial areas.  But there is an almost total disconnect when it comes to consumer behavior, and if anything at all can be had at a cheaper price, then it will be had.  Every small town has its  storefronts with those red Chinese lanterns hanging out front, popping out like mushrooms after a rain.  They are a regular stop on everyone’s shopping trip, mainly to see if that item seen down the street can be bought at a cheaper price.  Usually a cheap imitation can be, and so another Italian shoe factory, fabric weaver, button-maker,  or small local shop  continues its  decline into bankruptcy.  Yet some hyper-protected areas of national pride are still safe, such as cheeses and olive oil, but you will be well-advised to read the label before you buy.  There are always alternatives to the real thing for the unwary.

Today, March 12, 2012, gasoline is going to cost you almost exactly ten dollars  a gallon.    As far as I see it gas prices are a lot like skin;  they both have the capacity to expand almost indefinitely.  Over-eaters and drivers  have to adjust their intake in order to cope.  My car, a relative gas-guzzler at 27 MPG, is used only when absolutely needed for hauling a trailer or lots of friends.   After all, there is another solution to high fuel consumption:  drive less.  In a small town in Italy, this is still possible.  I might note, however, that even at this price, the roads are still packed with cars.  Sometimes the very thing that we think can be manipulated with pricing will cause unexpected results.  Cars are still swarming over the roads, while local economies are suffering the slow death caused by shoppers going elsewhere.  In their cars.  There is a lesson there somewhere.

“Conspicuous Consumption”   mixed media on paper, 2005

A deep subject

The water lines which supply the town didn’t come out this far when we built our house.  The obvious solution was to have a well dug, and keep our water tanks filled with well water.   To do this, we needed an expert who had experience with our stratified terrain, which was comprised of hard sandstone “chiangare*,” sandy soil patches, and, of course, sand.  Not the best material to collect and hold water.

Word was spread around town, and a man appeared who seemed to meet the prerequisites.  He was from Pisticci, (because when an expert is needed it is always better not  to go local)  and we were assured that he had ample experience,  and was responsible for numerous productive wells in our area.

We imagined that his first day on the job would bring heavy equipment, rumbling diesel motors, long  pipes and tangled cables,  all indecipherable to us.  We were amazed when,  punctually at 7 AM on the first morning,  there appeared a  three-wheeled Ape* truck holding just a man with a pick ax, a bucket, and a mission.

The only thing he lacked, to my mind, was a forked stick.  He assured us, as had the town whisperers, that he had never failed to find water.  But finding it, assuming that veins were plentiful and ubiquitous, was not the main problem when digging a well.  It was much more difficult to capture and not break through the falde*, which were tiny and easily destroyed  with one blow too many to the fragile sedimentary strata.  This was the main reason why  it was practically impossible to drill a decent well mechanically.  The drill couldn’t recognize, of course, a vein when it found it.  But a man could.

He produced a string from his pocket, and after a few minutes of contemplation and slow meandering steps around the area we had in mind for our well, staked the center of his circle and drew it in the dirt.  He then commenced the arduous task of picking  and shoveling out his meter-wide pit.  We watched, transfixed, as we soon lost sight of his ankles, his knees, his hips and torso.

The second day, he arrived accompanied by his son, a strapping twenty-something who helped his father to descend faster by hauling up the buckets and porting them away.  At lunchtime, after they had consumed the contents of their  small stainless steel buckets of wonderful delicacies brought from home, they set up a winch and pulley system over the deepening hole.  We could no longer see the man, but the buckets of soil and sand and rock came out fast and furiously, pulled up by his son hand-cranking the winch.  Peering down inside, we saw a  perfect cilindrical chamber had been created, the negative image of the growing pile of sand and rock which grew steadily at the corner of the yard.   It descended about twenty feet by day three, and began to cause us great concern as to the stability of its unsupported walls.

But our guys had a plan, and they brought forth two half-circle aluminum forms which would be employed, along with cement, to create the walls of the well.   As he burrowed further down, he placed these forms inside the cilinder and his son sent down buckets of cement which he had mixed in a small two-stroke diesel tumbler.  As each three-foot length of wall was created, he set to work picking away the ground underneath.  When enough earth was removed the rings would slide seamlessly down to the next level, and another cement fill was created.

Every time he came up out of the well, he would drop a pebble at the center.  This method, in the days before lasers, would indicate immediately if his vertical cylinder was perfectly symmetrical.  The eye is, after all,  always the best judge of space, and an artist’s eye especially.

Down and down, impossibly far down he went.  I experienced cold sweat peering down at him,  claustrophobia making my palms clammy, imagining myself in the damp half-dark tunnel.  He began to tell us that he was finding signs of water at about 30 feet, but the veins were too weak.  As soon as they were discovered, they bled out.  The missions was to descend to a point where three or more small rivulets would supply enough water to allow a submersible pump to be installed.

Looking down from above, seeing a vague outline of our man’s head at 75 feet, was eerily disturbing.  When he finally reached the depth he considered adequate, the final ring, slightly larger in diameter than the others, was installed.  There is no bottom to the well, just the natural sandstone layer.   With a strong spotlight, we could see three finger-sized streams of water as they entered the flat reflective circle of water.   It would supply only small amounts, but continuously pumped out and stored in tanks, this would be our drinking water.

Our well water was  full of calcium and had a rusty taste, but some of our friends came with bottles to collect what they assured us was superior to any treated water available in town.  We have since switched to “town” water and we do not miss the problems caused by calcium, nor do we miss the possibility that some small animal could easily fall into the shaft and end up a soupy flavoring in our drinking water.  But while it is closed and locked now, and mostly a visual addition to the yard with its wisteria vine growing above, we know that if we should ever need that water it will be there.  And every time I open the heavy iron cover to look down into 80 feet of perfectly round shaft, I think of one man and his pick and how he  demonstrated to us yet another  manifestation of a true work of art.

*chiangare:  flat sandstone formations formed by flowing water millions of years ago

*Ape:  Made by Piaggio, a three-wheeled motor scooter with a cab and hauling bed behind.  It is the vehicle of choice for those that have no drivers license, and they can be encountered crawling along the roadways stuffed to the gills with farmers, their wives,  produce and small livestock.

*falde:  small tributary channels of water flowing deep below the ground

Underneath

Traces of the past and clues to the present are hidden just below the top layer of the soil.  The surface yields clues to recent events as well, and because of this, I am always looking for more, eyes to the ground.  I might have been a tracker, and I know if someone, or something, has passed by recently.  Wet trails in the dewy grass,  small paw prints,  a pile of warm feathers left by a fox.  A darker patch of soil.  Trash and treasure are  both hidden,  but  near, waiting for discovery.

One spring, as I marked out rows in the garden, my heavy hoe kept bouncing back up at me instead of sinking in the soil.  Strange.   I spied a pinkish smoothness, and hooked my hoe under it to pull it out.  A root?  It was a scary thing to find underground, and my thoughts sidled spider-like toward all things Mafia.   It was about three feet long and rubbery, fresh.  The dogs were suddenly attentive as the cow’s trachea came into the light of day.  How did it get there?   A canine trophy, carefully buried, to be enjoyed later.

I found a five-cent coin, dated 1885,  in my vegetable  garden.  It was  badly corroded and hardly legible.   The Lira was originally divided into cents, with one hundred of these comprising one Lira.   At the twilight of the currency, fifty-thousand Lire might  fill  half your car’s gas tank.    I thought of the poor farmer who lost it;   it must have been disheartening, so long ago.

A tractor pulling a large  plow scraped up some terracotta tiles;  roof tiles, larger and flatter than the curved kind used in recent centuries.   I know from my experience with excavations that where there are roof tiles,  there are often tombs.    In fact, Greek tombs were commonly made from  these.     The countryside where we live was divided into neat plots of land in 500 B.C., and people often buried their dead close to home if they weren’t grand enough, or near enough, to be included in the organized necropoles closer to the ancient town center.  Up the hill from this  area there is a large area of  rich  dark soil, and an extensive  jumble of broken pot shards.  It represents the farmhouse that belonged to the occupants of this parcel of land, and so it would follow that family burials would not be far away.   Around  the broken tomb  I found a beautiful and simply-painted lebes gamikos, as well as pieces, broken long ago, of other ceramic objects.    The pot is not nearly as old as my lithics are,  some of which  date back as far as twenty thousand years,  but it had been lying in its forgotten grave for five hundred years by the time Christ was born.  It is a sad fact that  the advent of mechanical farming has led to a swift and relentless  fragmentation of all antiquities which lie  in the uppermost layers of soil.  A large plow can reach as deep as five feet and damage or obliterate all it comes in contact with.  And there are also bulldozers, and a thing which is called a ripper, which describes its effect poetically.

River stones lie beside the roads, this having been the site of swiftly-moving water  millions of years previously.  All of the stones are rounded and smooth, but once in a while I will find one which has the shape of a cork from a wine bottle, larger at one end and narrowing in a pinched arc toward the other.  I imagine how it was shaped, trapped in an eddy of the stream, turning dizzily, rubbing continuously against its brethren which surround it on all sides.   Ground to a distinctive shape over years, these stones are an illustration of persistence, and movement, and transformation over time.

One Spring day as I was hacking out crab grass, I moved my wedding ring onto my smallest  finger, the better to grasp the handle of my hoe.   As I was throwing the weeds away I accidentally tossed my ring away as well.  Hours of searching produced no results, and within the week my husband and I went and picked out another one for me to wear.  Years later, again pulling weeds, I found it again, shining in the newly-turned earth.  Now I have two, should I ever need a spare.

This is the dwelling place of giant toads, some as big as broiler chickens.  They are reserved and single-minded, as they search for insects in damp places, and often hide in corners of the yard where weeds have grown tall.  We are careful when mowing the grass not to tip the machine up and lower it onto these weedy islands, as two have come to a tragic end in this manner.  One day I found a dead toad, poor soul, and I buried it in  a secret corner of the compost pile.  A year later I  gathered its bones and bleached them white.  I keep them for use in my art, and fondly  remember their original owner.

Following the sheep paths which criss-cross the edge of our  fosso,  there are bits and pieces of ceramics and glass, rusted iron agglomerations and bones.  You must watch your step close to the edge because you can fall twenty feet to the stream bed below if you are careless.  Along this edge I spied a small crusted object, a glint of blue and yellow paint.  Pocketed, carried home and washed, I found  I had two joined pieces of a century-old puzzle,  pieces from a vase which had been broken a hundred years ago.  Mended carefully with strips of lead, these were threaded through small holes in both sides of the break,  metal laces in a ceramic shoe.   It must have been a favorite, and the loss of it must have seemed unacceptable to its owner, such a long time ago.

My shelves have space, openings available to display new finds.   I often wonder what random bits of our lives,  hundreds of years hence, will be carried home and treasured by our descendants in their wanderings.

“untitled,”    wood, paper, bone, shell, Mylar, beeswax, oil, brass   11 x 7 x 2 inches,  2009

(above)  “Sotto San Costantino Albanese,”  oil on canvas,  14 x 14 inches, 2004

Critters, chapter three: Buster.

Sometimes things happen in different places, for different reasons, and move  inexorably along an invisible line toward an unexpected conclusion.   We had this experience, with a horse, and a dog, and two open gates, far distant from each other.

Buster was our first Maremma sheepdog, a large, sweet-smelling snowball of an animal,  who was  maturing,  healthily,  towards his retirement.  He was an excellent guard dog, most of the time, but if there were female pheromones in the air he could climb an eight foot fence as if he were Spiderman.   Always attentive to any changes in his surroundings, we counted on him to alert us to arrivals, especially those people, animals,  or automobiles that were not included in his repertoire of acceptable objects.   We were his flock.

My son attended an elementary school far from here, on the opposite side of town.  It was the same building to which my husband had trudged every day as a child.   There is a distinct possibility that  some of the desks  were the same ones he  sat behind on those  days when the classroom windows mocked the children with  their tempting views of grass and sunshine.   At the back of this school building, there was a fenced area on the edge of the valley below.  Even now, the fenced area is used to keep livestock; sheep, goats, the occasional cow.   On this day, a horse.

A moment of distraction, a latch not properly closed, and this horse found it was suddenly free.  But freedom in town has a different countenance than  freedom in the country, and the streets are in constant movement.  Cars, people, bicycles, motorbikes, and above all asphalt and noise conspired to alarm the horse to the point of panic, and it began to run through the streets.  It galloped away from the school, around the road which rings the town, and on towards imaginary pastures, despite the best efforts of some to slow it down.

Two kilometers, four, six, and the horse continued its gallop until it came to the long gravel road leading eventually to our house.   Our yard is fenced, and we have a large gate which normally keeps the dogs in and intruders out.  This day,  because we had been  doing yardwork, it was standing slightly open.  I heard frantic barking, and inside the house I felt a pounding rhythmical vibration.  At the window there was  an incredible sight, a large horse furiously throwing up divots of earth as it raced around and around the house in circles.    Buster was close on its heels and the animal was becoming more agitated, spooked  by his attempts to nip its lower legs as it ran.   It continued to circle madly, ignorant of the open gate by which it entered, and which  would allow it to tear off down the road, away from the dog.

I used to be a horse owner, so I know a little bit about how to behave around them.  But a panicked horse is anything but rational, and it is dangerous.    Not having the means to calm it, I opted for guiding it out the gate by creating a diversion.  I ran to grab a hoe, a towel, anything to wave in the air and cause the horse to change trajectory.  Suddenly I heard a crack, the unmistakable sound of  a bat hitting a baseball hard enough to send it hurtling out of the park.   But this was not going to be a home run for the team.  I turned, dodging as the horse ran straight toward me and the open gate, to see Buster sitting, dazed, pawing energetically at his muzzle.  Blood poured from his mouth.   It was one of those moments when disbelief gives way to knowledge that things have changed, and for the worse.

As the horse pounded out of the gate and back up the road,  I prepared myself for what I would see.  The horse had kicked Buster with such force directly in the teeth that his entire boney upper jaw,  teeth included, had been detached from the front of his mouth. It was still attached by the muscles and some of the gum, but it was no longer a viable part of him.  The vet was called, antibiotics and pain relievers were administered, the injured area was removed, and we waited.  At the time our small town vet, who was occupied primarily with livestock,  made housecalls only.  He did not have any walk-in facilities, so we had to do without major operations on our animals.  Buster had been neutered in our own garage on a picnic table, with the aid of some kitchen utensils and a massive dose of horse tranquilizer.

After a time, poor Buster healed.  He required softer food, and his fighting days were over, but he got along comfortably enough.  I keep one of his enormous canine teeth as a memento of that day.  He has long since passed away and moved on to that other place where good dogs dwell.   We never had any contact from the owner of the horse, assuming that an unhappy accident is no grounds for exacting any payment or apology.   Another horse has never arrived here unexpectedly, thundering down our road with evil intent.  But I often think of Buster when casual circumstances  seem to align, improbably, and give rise to a  momentous event.

“At Pasture”, oil on wooden block,  4 x 6 x 2 inches, 2011

(above)  “Rusty Gate. oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 2010