An Earthquake, a First Communion and Our Departure

An adorable poodle puppy, perhaps with innate psychic powers.

“The 1976 Friuli earthquake, known in Italy as Terremoto del Friuli, took place on May 6 with a magnitude of 6.5 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). The shock occurred in the Friuli region in northeast Italy near the town of Gemona del Friuli.” (Wikipedia)

The earthquake occurred at about 9 at night.  Gemini del Friuli is 100 miles away from Verona but the shock was fantastic.  That afternoon I took the kids to the park.  I was having coffee with a group of ladies.  Remember the fortune teller swathed in scarves?  She had a little black poodle that usually sat quietly at her feet.  That afternoon the dog was up and pacing.  It whined and pulled on it’s leash.  The clairvoyant looked at us all and said, “Something terrible is going to happen.” I felt my spine tingle. Apparently the poodle had similar powers to its mistress.  Or perhaps he was sensitive to tiny vibrations in the earth?

At nine o’clock, I was alone at home with the 3 children.  They were fast asleep. Vincent was in a car driving to a dinner with some buddies.  He told me later that he didn't feel anything. When the earthquake occurred, I was shook-up and scared. I knew we shouldn’t get in the elevator but I hesitated to wake the kids and carry them downstairs.  I remained frozen in indecision.  Outside people were screaming and streaming into the street.  I ended up doing nothing.  There was a short aftershock and then it was over.  That night and subsequent nights, hordes of people slept out in the street, afraid to enter their apartment buildings.  To this day I feel guilty about not reacting differently.  But things turned out well, thank God. 

Gemona del Friuli : The destruction was enormous and hundreds of people were killed.

Marie-Juliette received her first communion while we lived in Verona.  The mammas were all in a twitter about what the children should wear for the ceremony.  There was a lot of high-level discussions before the final robe was chosen for the girls.  It was thought that this one was elegante. (I thought Marie-Juliette looked a bit like a mini-nun. )

For the week before the blessed event, the children were expected to go to confession every single day so they would become accustomed to the confessional.  I remember sitting with my daughter at bedtime each night talking about her day.  She was in a tizzy trying to dream up a sizable list of sins for the next day’s confession.

Not the best picture of the kids.  We needed an iPhone.  Our dear friend, Carla acted as Marie-Juliette's sponsor.

As I’ve discussed previously, Vincent worked at Gelati Sanson but at some point he left that company.  Beatrice Foods needed him to trouble-shoot at another company they owned in the Veneto. It was an industrial bakery called Barzetti which still exists today.  This company made Panettoni, Pandora and Merendine (individual snack and chip packets).  At the time the little packets contained a cheap plastic toy.  My kids thought they were the hot thing. 

Just as we had bags of polenta, boxes of pasta and bottles of wine in abundance, we soon had boxes of Panettoni and cases of merendine snacks in our larder.

The Pandoro was invented in Verona and has a high butter content.  The Panettone has dried fruit.  They both are Christmas cakes.  

The Barzetti company was not doing well.  The cost system that was installed was not effective.  Beatrice was dumping in thousands of dollars but things did not improve.  Part of the problem was that this small company was competing with state-owned Motta and Alemagna that produced similar products at lower prices.

Beatrice wanted to close Barzetti.  But at first they decided to lay off 350 people to save money.  It was nearly impossible to negotiate with all interested parties.  These included The  Communist Party, The Socialist Party, The Christian Democrats and The Catholic church.  Every political group felt they had a stake in the game.  Eventually, Beatrice paid off the provincial secretaries of the various organizations. Then they laid off the 350 people.

During these negotiations, it was decided that the children and I should move to Brussels, the location of Beatrice Foods’ european office.  I spoke earlier about the rash of kidnappings that occured in Italy at that time. There was some concern for our safety.  Within a short time we were moved to Waterloo, Belgium, a suburb of Bruxelles.

La Grande Place in Bruxelles festooned with flowers.