The conditions of live
Residences: in a lot of houses the
fireplace was missing, fire was lighted in the middle
of the room called “fugherà”, today’s
kitchen, the ceiling of which generally consisted of small
spans supported by beams blackened by the smoke (seccatoio)
on which chestnuts were put to dry. Windows were small,
roofs were made of straw or slates in different shape,
thickness and measure (ciappe); glasses were replaced
by bunting. Villagers had not big problems of heating
thanks to the possibility of having a lot of firewood.
Dresses: they were generally of hemp and cotton or fustian,
the wool suits were rare; during winter lot of them put
on clogs or rough shoes with a lot of patches: in every
house there was always someone who played cobbler using
the awl, preparing the pitchy string for the seams and
the small wooden sticks of dry elder for soling. Coats
or overcoats did not exist. Women dressed simple suits:
a full skirt (fadetta), a bodice (gippa) a foulard or
a scarf on their head.
During the feasts or for the mass they covered the head
with some beautiful wool foulards in bright colours or
with the “pezzotto” decorated with complicated
printed patterns, similar to the mantilla of the Spanish
women.
The food
Bread was black. They used the so-called
“farinetta” (flour) or fine bran or pulses flour
with the addition of beans and vetch. Despite this bread was
baked two or three times a year, on the occasion of great celebrations.
Usually daily, or on alternate days, according to the number
of the family members, they prepared a “focaccia”
made of a mix of wheat and melic flour that was cooked late
in the evening in the fireplace, buried under the still burning
coal and the ash remained from the firewood burnt during the
day; after some hours they obtained a flat dark loaf, hard and
not always well cooked, dirty with ash; when cool, it was cleaned
with a duster and then put under lock for not taking the risk
to find only the crumbs the day after.
Olive oil was rare, walnut oil was normally used. The food of
every day was: polenta, soup (with a lot of potatoes), sometimes
homemade pasta, in winter some leaf of cabbage, in summer beets
duly seasoned with milk or lard.
We must pay attention on the question of the chestnuts: at the
end of last century Fontanarossa counted – with the hamlets
– about a thousand of inhabitants and the land was not
enough for feeding everybody.
Therefore fields were tilled and plantations of chestnut trees
were put anywhere and since then this product has fed whole
generations, being the only resource for so many families.
Woods, also the remote ones, were always kept clean. The chestnuts
were picked up in the “cavagne” (baskets), put to
dry in the “grè” (today almost disappeared)
generally placed in the house kitchen in order to save space
and firewood.
When dry, they were put in small quantities inside strong hemp
bags, long and narrow, and then crushed by strong young people
who rhythmically beat on special wood trunks properly shaped,
the so-called “tacchi”, so that the chaff came out
of the fruits; these were carefully selected by women in long
but happy hours of diligent work and then closed in large cases
“bancà”, waiting for eating them or waiting
for merchants coming from the lowland.
With the ground chestnuts they made a polenta that often was
part of the weekly menu or ate them dry, cooked in soup with
milk.
Appetite (maybe it is better to say hunger!) was always great.
Eggs were not used because they were sold for buying salt and
meat was on the table two or three times a year.
Pupils of ninety years ago |
Ninety years ago school was attended up
to the third year of the primary school.
The school building was the old house “of the souls”:
pupils went in through a staircase of stone protected by a
wooden handrail made of a pole nailed to two stakes.
On the landing, just after the front door, a steep wooden
staircase of chestnut tree brought to the first floor, where
a large room was the only classroom for all the pupils of
the three classes: benches were of raw wood, the pupils number
varied from 30 to 40 (boys and girls) with only one teacher.
As in all schools, the class was full of intelligent, less
intelligent, industrious, lazy and sometimes true donkeys
pupils. Clothes were really poor, pupils did not wear an uniform,
but a cap, a jacket (gipun), trousers of fustian, often with
patches on the knees and at the back, cowhide shows with double
sole strengthened by big nails, often formed by part of old
shoes, sewn by hand with a pitchy string; the shoes were polished
with the soot of the stove cover, spitting on the brush; the
stockings were made of wool spun by hand.
Girls wore a long skirt up to the ankles and in winter they
brought a crochet shawl on the shoulders.
Usually the daily foods was: in the morning before the school
a cup of raw milk with bread or well cooked dry chestnuts,
at midday polenta or soup; seasoning: lard, milk, home cheese
and sometimes a kind of mashed potatoes mixed in the pot with
milk and some onions (fracassà= stew of potatoes).
The satchel was generally a bag of fustian (sacchetta); it
contained the book concerning arithmetic, geography and history,
two little exercise books (price: 10 cents), a pen and a penholder.