Modena, 1975.
Back then, the majority of people voted for the communist party.
Red land, as they used to say, land of partisans.
The bike was the most common means of transport.
People used to save money to buy a home, an economy car.
Only a few could afford travelling.
People wished for simple things.
There was the big party, the Festa dell’Unità. It felt almost like Hollywood’s red carpet, with giant red flags welcoming you at the entrance…
… and the song Bandiera rossa (Red Flag) coming from the loudspeakers.
And then, all the people went to the culinary stands.
There was a funny, friendly, familiar atmosphere.
That was the generation of the people who lived during the fascism, the war, the resistance; some of them even experienced concentration camps.
They talked about Russia and solidarity with other oppressed peoples.
On every table there was one bottle of wine and one of water. Housewives used to make food. People used to make tomato sauce, vegetable preserves, marmalade, nocino digestive, and vinegar. They killed the pig to make sausages.
Thirty years have passed.
Now you can still see a few old men riding a bike: they are the sons of those gentlemen that used to sit at the head of the table and tell children what they saw with their eyes; they are those young men that used to wear the apron at the Festa dell’Unità and wait on tables while their moms stayed in the kitchen making pasta, until the night came, the stand closed, and they sat at one long table to have dinner all together.
Back then, Coca Cola and Mac Donald’s Happy Meal hadn’t arrived yet to make Italian tables happy, and nobody would have ever figured such things were coming.
Back then, MEMORY was still present, making eyes shine and warming the souls up.
I dedicate this issue to the memory of Mrs. Armanda and Don Neri (aka Cianein, as you could find him in the phone book) from Soliera. I dedicate it to the Love they felt for each other, and to the Love with they welcomed me in their home when I was a child, the Love they had for life, a love that grew up amidst the ruins the fascism and the concentration camps left in their life, a memory they never erased, trying to share it with me in their afternoon stories, and trying above all to pass down to me their values, which were not made of politics, but of tolerance.