North Carolina Portraits [ENG]

NORTH CAROLINA

PORTRAITS E

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HOX GIANLUCA

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MISSERO

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NORTH CAROLINA PORTRAITS

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GIANLUCA

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Contents Prodromes....................................................................................... 6 First business trip to Greensboro.............................................. 8 Wilmington.................................................................................... 18 Two days in New York................................................................. 26 Reidsville........................................................................................ 38 Two apartments in Greensboro............................................... 46 Venues and premises in Greensboro....................................... 58 Winston-Salem............................................................................. 78 A trip to Savannah....................................................................... 88 Stories about Reidsville............................................................102 Raleigh & Cary............................................................................110 Charlotte.....................................................................................126 Stories about oddities...............................................................134 Back to Italy.................................................................................148

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PRODROMES

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Towards the end of the last century I was a co-owner along with two other associates of Netstudio Company, a business in IT / Internet Security / Multimedia segment, based in Marcon (Venice, Italy). In December 2001 I quit without being able to take away a large sum of money I really needed to build another company on my own, but this is not the right place to investigate the reasons.

I spent months in real depression at inconceivable levels, day and night I was lying on a couch looking at the ceiling, apart from when I dragged myself to the bathroom or nibbling something my companion periodically put under my nose. I have no memory of those days, like I was in a coma or under anesthesia.

Everybody considered me in a cul-de-sac, but one morning I woke up, and without a reason or a specific event I was once again in touch with reality, I even had the will to restart again.

I headed to the bathroom, cleaned up and shaved to perfection, dressed in the best clothes I found in the wardrobe (now I had forgotten to have clothes, I was always in pajamas) and within a week I got a job at the Cooperativa Portabagagli of Mestre. They put me to work at Ferrotel, the station’s train drivers hotel, where I cleaned and I managed to assign rooms to the them, and also, when not busy with the hotel, I was cleaning offices and even wagons.

The shifts were a continuous alternation eight hours of rest / eight working, 6 days a week, so within a short time one becomes insomniac or fall asleep while standing, alternatively and not regularly, and the whole thing is rather heavy to bear. But after you’ve lost everything and you were given for boiled, you simply do not throw away any job.

After three months I was working in there, it was in August, I heard of a firm in Mogliano, called Solutia Italia, seeking for a graphic designer with expertise in color management, scanning, typesetting, creating mockups (product prototypes), packaging, plotting and artistic dexterity for creating and editing artwork.

The designer had to produce gift wrap. I was experienced in each of those skills, so I had the edge over other candidates, left the cooperative and started this new experience.

Luckily I was immediately in tune with Attilio, the packaging expert manager of New Filcas of America’s Italian branch and put me in the best condition to do a large amount of product lines while working comfortably. The owners have started in November to make me flight to the headquarters, and it was the beginning of a commute between Italy and North Carolina. I wanted to speak about the american part of this experience, for the pleasure in itself to tidy up the memories, and to give an extra element to those wishing to compare present day North Carolina with what and how it was at the beginning of third millennium, shortly after 9/11.

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First business trip to

GREENSBORO 8

As mentioned in the introduction, in the first three months at Solutia Italia with Attilio, my supervisor, we have produced about 250 pieces, being able to rationalize and optimize the most of the choice of artwork, paper types, handles, sizes and consistency of color ranges for each line. The rage to overcome my sad experience as an entrepreneur has prompted me to put all my energy, experience and determination to demonstrate the quality of my work, and Attilio was equally, if not more, determined to achieve an extraordinary result in this new stage of his career. The combination of these two manic approaches have exceeded our expectations and surprised the owner of Filcas, Massimo della Santa. He came to Italy to see the prototypes, has invited us to dinner at Melograno, an elegant restaurant in the center of Mogliano, and there he notified us that at the end of the month we had to go for a couple of weeks in Reidsville 9

headquarters to analyze our work together with the sellers, and deal with their experience with customers’ demands, meaning the great malls like Wal Mart, Target, K-Mart, Four Season.

The company also distributed goods in European and Asian markets, but had more business movements in the USA, so it was necessary for me and Attilio “to absorbe” the differences in taste and living by American society. Attilio was already quite experienced, and in fact - for example - had often warned me to use some green and red tones (fundamental colors in paper and handbags for Christmas gift) because Americans prefer them. I had spent hours in the evening, after work, on the internet to study handbags made from the competition; however, it is undeniable that you can not really understand the mentality and tastes of people living in another continent, if you don’t hang out and drink a few beers together with them.

I also had to interact with Raul Rizza, an engineer specialized in printing machines, capable of taking a 4-color Andreotti and turn it into a thirty feet long monster typographic printers with three 4-color printers in line; you could simultaneously print 3 different gift papers with three different color setups, or twelve Pantone colors on the same card, all in a single pass!

A ridiculous ductility that I had never seen in nearly twenty years working as a graphic designer; of course I had to go in front of the machine, thoroughly talk to this engineer, print a series of tests together with him and see the result, do experiments, especially aiming to build color spaces for Photoshop, so to reach best correspondence of colors when we would print on Super-Andreotti.

Of course the night before departure I did not sleep, I was in total paranoia and doing foolish, totally irrational reasoning. I thought: I will not understand anything of what they say, or they will not understand what I say because I’m too rookie in English, forgetting that it was three months we talked on the phone almost every day, and we understood each other... all right, but I wanted to think of not being able all the same; and then, perhaps, even certainly, I had made ugly handbags, and they’ll really get it when I will be there, exposed to their fooling around.

And I imagined corporal punishments like whipping and pillory, people spitting at me, eyes full of resentment towards me. Hell was waiting for me to come!

The plane ride was pretty exhausting. We had taken a combination flight with a change in Frankfurt, Germany, then the route passed over Greenland, in short it took us 15 hours to get to New York JFK. And at check-in it happened a fact that seemed to confirm my bad thoughts of the previous night. The police officer was an old far-right woman, xenophobic at most, which began to provoke me asking to justify everything, even the presence of a folding umbrella in my suitcase, and eventually asking me contemptuously: “How comes we’ve got all the best artists of the world in USA, and they took an Italian, a foreigner from a lil’ country across the ocean? We already have too many foreigners here!”

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There she got on my nerves. Calm, without raising my voice volume, but with all the contempt I could put in it, I said, “They took one Italian, one guy coming from a country that has conquered the world with ancient Rome two thousand years before the USA existed, when here there were only bisons and native americans throwing arrows; Italy, a country that has given and gives to the world the best fashion, design, art, cuisine and literature around! Yes they were right to hire me, who the fuck can be better? An American redneck?” I don’t think this for real, obviously a great professional can sort out of a 30-inhabitants isolated little village in the third world or in NY, but I wanted to offend her by humiliating her racist patriotism/suprematism.

An ignorant calling “lil ‘country” the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, the man that - ok, by mistake: he believed to go to India - discovered America. Come on.

If there is one thing that makes me nervous until losing control it’s facing a mannerless illiterate who rants through a single spastic neuron.

5 minutes later I was in the office of JFK police station Commissioner. Attilio, seeing me going there, accompanied by two policemen, facepalmed and for a few seconds mumbled something that I suppose to be a mass of curses and blasphemies, then managed to get calm and asked (in italian) “What’s happening? Where are they taking you?” And I answered, again in italian “A racist cop bothered me because I’m Italian, sought and found a way to mess with me.” This was last statement before they gently, but firmly, pushed me inside the door.

When the Commissioner realized who had reported me and requested his intervention, he made a face like “That idiot again...”; questioned me so lazily, I answered while he was thinking of his own business, then he liked the illustrations I had in my trolley and found them more interesting than the pantomime he was acting to justify my foolish arrest.

After about 45 minutes he dismissed me, wished me good stay and told me not to worry about my job, he reported he just checked out documents and luggage of a random traveler.

Outside the door was Attilio: he was questioned as well on the phone by the company, who wanted to know where I had gone and why. After explaining him facts with details he was silent, I think because if he opened his mouth he would have covered me with insults, so better shut up than further worsen the situation.

We went to take the JFK-GSO flight after eating and drinking something.

3 and a half hours later we landed in Greensboro, rented a car at the airport and headed towards the center, looking for a room in a hotel. We found one near Elm St (I thought: what a luck, sleeping next to a road with that name!), near Natty Greene’s who later become a constant reference point. But Attilio, who was recovering from a series of business trips with sleeping in a hotel, could not take any more. “Enough with hotels. We must look for a B&B.” I understood it was not a hypothesis, it was an order.

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B&B, in North Park Dr.

Found. Exactly as he wanted: a B&B that wasn’t a shack, a little far from skyscrapers and apartment blocks, and in fact it was located in North Park Dr, passing - as the name says - north of a park that’s the continuation the adjacent Fisher Park. The boss is affable but resolute, shows us the common lounge with TV, a quite large backyard with a small swimming pool in it, a dining room where we will have breakfast. Then he gives us two rooms on the first floor, facing the rear. This one in the pic below was mine, and immediately I was confronted with an American

My room in that B&B.

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reality: the window was bolted, it could not open, airing the room could be done only by opening the door on the corridor. In exchange, the heating was at full capacity throughout the day and I wandered in underwear around my room, because there were always 70°F! We are dead tired now, so we salute each others and we go in our rooms, add to it I was sleepless and in anguish the night before: as soon as I slipped under the covers, I fell asleep.

In the morning we find out that John, our host, is indeed a remarkable person. Seventy years old engineer born in Maine that has been formed in Belgium, provident of an endless supply of anecdotes that happened in both parts of the ocean, often interconnected, ie a fact started in Europe who have then found the conclusion in North America. He has traveled and changed a lot of jobs and homes; this created empathy right away because I also have moved a lot, and Attilio already had a long career as a manager who flies around the world. Also, I am trying to understand how is it when you’re by far no longer supported by youth, and begin to be tired of relocate. His wife is a nice and cheerful woman, and we understand that she and her husband have an old-style relationship. When he speaks, she never stops, and snaps at every code in his glance if the partner has been serving crayfish with mashed potatoes and hasn’t got free hands to bring the salad and fruit juice.Yes, that breakfast was practically a lunch, with first and second dish, fruit and dessert. In fact we weren’t even hungry at noon, we often ate a small burger in downtown Reidsville and we were OK. Just one problem: in the first two hours of the morning I was in full digestion, with a slight hibernation tendency, and that’s the time when you have to be alive and kicking to solve problems; then towards the end of the morning there’s the relaxing part, like doing some graphic design, discuss with colleagues, read notes and tips written on post-its savagely pasted on our desks or emailed by sellers or managers.

Unfortunately we can not reverse the two phases.

But I prefer to talk about job in Reidsville chapters, this reference was necessary to understand the dynamics grafted from the B&B, which I was excited about too, because in those two weeks the breakfast time with the two hosts was one of the very tasty moments (in any sense, cooking included) of my first travel in NC: it was not known what trajectories John would follow, he could talk about fishing, astronomy, sports, politics, philosophy, quantum mechanics, history, dance halls of Europe in 60s; a storyteller with no need of a musical instrument or audiovisual. He ran another B&B with his daughter in Maine, it’s the state where he was born, and he also considered it still his home, even though he spent the majority of time in Greensboro.

To resolve the issue he learned Visual Basic, and had built a software which updated via the internet the bookings situation, payments and customer demands of the two B&B. Furthermore text messages were sent, so he could be informed on the phone even though he was not in front of the PC, and wherever he could be, he always had the other situation under control.

He had circumvented the fact smartphones weren’t invented yet. Genius.

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I only had two issues with this accommodation. First, I had to go out to smoke. In winter it is chilly in NC, even if it is a southern state. To avoid dressing up as an eskimo, I often quit to smoke in pajama, went back inside frozen.

Second, the squirrels. I love all animals, except parasites in general and in particular the mosquitoes. And squirrels are cute, hysterical, funny, they never stands still... Halt!, let’s not forget this features list.

My room was beside the exit on the backyard, a small wooden platform covered by a plastic corrugated roof, with a stair to go down.

The first two days nothing happened, but the morning of the third, about 4:30 AM, I woke up by a noise like they were shooting on the roof with an anti-aircraft machine gun.

Those already awake bloody squirrels were playing and running on corrugate, throwing and eating acorns. I went out with a big towel, I climbed on a support beam and when I reached the corrugated roof at chest height, I began a furious battle, I alone against 100 squirrels more bastard than Chip and Dale. Of course I lost, and they made fun of me by jumping on my head and back, or bouncing off my chest with plastic parkeur poses, and they ran all over.

As soon as I surrendered, came back home and closed the door, they’ve started again, twice worse than before.

In that moment I realized all: Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester the Cat, Tom, Daffy Duck. Hatred towards dwarf bastard animals, oh how I understood it! Luckily they were bored to play always in the same place, they made me sleep three or four hours in “only” half of the nights, those damned thugs. A strange form of Stockholm syndrome: when we came back from work and I was smoking a cigarette in the backyard, right before quitting home to have a dinner, I continued to throw peanuts to feed them. I have not tried to chase them anymore, too strong for me.

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On a saturday morning Me and Attilio put on a tracksuit and sneakers, had a breakfast and laughed with John and his wife, then went to the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park.

We were happy to do the tourists after a week of work, but we didn’t show that happiness each other.

This is a classic view you encounter while running on the sinuous-like-a-snake road leading to your destination when it’s fall in NC. A triumph of yellow, red and green. It’s like a drug for the eyes, the pupils cannot believe there’s such a feast of colors, and to people working on colors, digging them to win dominance over one another, this is like going to an amusement park.

We both imagined those tones into handbags and gift paper, we were thinking of ideas and materials to pair, and glitter, and trinkets to paste above.

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But let’s go back to our excursion destination.

Above there’s a map of the area, looking at it you can get what happened.

The sign on the right is more clear, but to dispel last doubts: the British have won here, losing so many men that eventually this defeat in a single battle has become a long-term victory of the Americans.

Going into deep, 2100 men under the command of Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis defeated 4500 American soldiers led by Major General Nathanael Greene, but at the cost of a huge loss of British soldiers.

Later, because of this blow, Cornwallis was defeated at Yorktown, while other British troops conquered the South Carolina and Georgia (I noticed it in the irish Savannah, see related chapter), and then lost to Washington and de Rochembeau coalition.

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The park, however, is a history trip.

Maniacally, in every place that was the scene of some important battle they put pieces of artillery, the soldiers figures and lecterns with images and text that explain exactly what happened.

Even if you did not know the exact history, by walking in the park, little by little, as in a video game adventure, you slowly discover all the facts because they give you clues.

You walk through the woods warily, knowing that there, right there had passed the third wave, and you are curious where they tried to stop the second, and then you slowly approach through these paths in the midst of an unleashed nature to do backwards - or in the correct direction, depending on the entry door the same paths of those people who desperately were massacring each other, trying to imagine the smell of gunpowder, the screams... but if could have more: on the anniversaries of the battle they call some volunteers wearing uniforms and antique weapons and reenact the battles.

Needless to say, this logic to force the viewer to pick up clues, wandering in a predefined area, so dear to the creators of video games, was born well before them.

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WILMINGTON 18

We were talking about what to do the next day off and Attilio has proposed a trip to Wilmington. It would be a chance to cross the North Carolina, starting from Piedmont and going down to the south-east, to the central part of the coast; and then continue along it, to see more interesting things. I had not yet discovered Red Lobster: I immediately added a predictable fish lunch to the advantages of this day trip. We started on early sunday morning, heading for the ocean.

The trip did not require my usual navigator function with a map in my hands (the GPS was pure exoticism, at the time).You just get into the Highway 40, go in the right direction and follow it until you see the “Welcome to Wilmington� sign.

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Downtown Raleigh.

In the first part, about a third of the trip, the landscape is lightly sparkling, there are parts in the middle of woods with ponds, then trees thin out and Graham, with Burlington on background, emerge on the right side, then a stretch where there’s Chapel Hill on the right and Durham on the left, woods again, then Cary and finally Raleigh, the NC capital.

After passing the latter, there are endless flat views (now even the small hills are behind) and the inevitable ponds, quite boring panorama, only the chatter saved us from getting Attilio asleep at the wheel.

I was impressed by the amount of roadkills; a massacre! Almost all raccoons, at a rate of one every 50 meters.

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Wilmington waterfront (1918).

“North Carolina� battleship.

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Road to Wrightsville Beach.

When you arrive in Wilmington, the first thing you notice is the absence of skyscrapers. The tallest buildings have ten floors, all concentrated in the industrial and administrative area, the rest is a series of individual houses surrounded by greenery. As you get closer to the coast, you progressively perceive more and more the tourist attitude, it’s full of restaurants, beaches, clubs, events, boat trips advertising signs. We went to Wrightsville Beach, walked between the various small bars and clubs, all beautiful and colorful, but nothing special compared to any tourist center attached to a beach. Driving down to the south, we followed roads that are divided from the coast either by hotels or houses on stilts, those swept away by the tornado a few years ago.

Around lunch time we ended up at Kure Beach Pier (see photo below).

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When you reach the pier’s end you can see the whole coast up to Cape Lookout to the north and the island of Bald Head to south.We stayed a few time there to comment the landscape, and the difference in size between the tiny piers of Venice’s Beach, with Adriatic little ripples, compared to these huge pier, two hundred yards long and 20 feet high, with the ocean below. Then we were hungry and we headed to a restaurant across the street, the Big Daddy’s, and here the first notable moment of the trip happened. The impact is not the best, because before entering the restaurant room (you cannot see it from outside) you pass through for their gift shop. I had the impression of being in a gas station restaurant, which is not exactly the place where you expect a Gordon Ramsey in the kitchen.We ordered two big plates of grilled shrimp, a little mixed fried fishes and a caesar salad as a side dish, nothing particularly exotic. It’s hard to make bad fried fishes, even the worst cooks are able to obtain a sufficient quality; but the cooking perfection of shrimps was awesome, to the point that we did an encore, and many compliments to cook.

We went out sated and satisfied, had a walk to give at least the starter to digestion and to smoke a cigarette (just me, Attilio doesn’t smoke) and then we got back in the car with two sure goals.

The first is Cape Fear river outfall, where Scorsese shot the namesake film but being a nice day the view did not coincide with the memory of those scenes.

I’m a movie buff, but not to the point of touching the fetishism, and even Attilio: we gave a fast peek here and there, then we left.

Fort Fisher Historic Museum.

We then went to the two museums into the complex of Fort Fisher; NC Underwater Archeology Center, really tiny, where they collected parts and paper materials about shipwrecks that goes from the Indian canoes until the last boats using the Cape Fear River to transport goods or passengers (the famous paddle steamers), and the Fort Fisher Historic Museum, but it wasn’t particularly interesting, probably because I’ve never been a fan of weapons and wars.

We saw these three places in less than one hour.

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North Carolina Aquarium entrance.

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Map of North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher.

The third attraction of Fort Fisher area, and the second goal we did not want to miss, is the North Carolina Aquarium, where instead we spent the rest of the afternoon.

It is surrounded by a grassy area crossed by several channels where fishes and harmless swamp animals wallow, there are various bird species and a lot of giant frogs. There we already spent nearly an hour to walk on bridges and little pathways. In between there’s the real aquarium center, composed of two buildings connected by a passage.

Looking at the map above, the entrance is in the building on the right, and it leads straight to the Cape Fear Conservatory, a path that winds through tanks containing small reconstructions of wetland environments, where there are frogs, turtles, crocodiles (small, long a couple of meters), poisonous snakes. I’m not saying it’s disturbing, animals are caged, but I had all the same a little fear that a crocodile or a serpent could jump out, a sentiment shared with my colleague. Here indeed we spent only ten minutes. Going beyond this area leads to the upper level of the Marine Building. Here you can watch the great aquarium from up to down, there are other tanks with turtles, eels or absurd fishes, the rooms where they make lessons and the administrative offices of the center.Then there’s the cool part of the affair; the lower floor where the aquarium dominates, and all around again tanks with sea horses, jellyfish, poisonous frogs, screens that send continuous audiovisual, reading materials, an auditorium / cinema and a restaurant that has the tables next to the aquarium.

On the way back, doing an analysis of the day, we realized that we spoke only of lunch and the NC Aquarium. But above all, where to eat again so good shrimps in Greensboro.

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Two days in

NEW YORK 26

Before returning to Italy, at the end of my first trip to the US, the boss told us to stand a couple of days in New York at the expenses of our company, before taking the flight to Venice.To be precise, this was said during a dinner at his house, with all the vendors and the entire production department, meaning designers and coordinators, to celebrate a season in large active.

That friday at the end of the working day we jumped in the car, brought it back to the car rent, took the GSO-JFK flight, and in little more than three hours we arrived in New York.

This time there were no problems at check-in, and as we retrieved our bags we went in search of a taxi to take us to Metropole Hotel, where they recommended us to go for the fairly central location. An aside on the New York taxi driver: I have seen them pass with a 5 feet large 27

Taxi driver.

car in spaces large maybe 4, against all physics laws. Not just one time: continuously. It is inexplicable how they can do it, when sentient beings, even of great intellectual might, would give up emitting a groan of defeat. There is something savage in those cold hunters of passengers refractory to public transport. In any case, the guy fate has sent us was honest, Attilio who had already been to the NY has caught him just a couple of times while trying to make wide circles to pump up the earnings.

After several unexplained - as mentioned - feats, among flocks of crazy drivers who seem paid by some obscure entities to create disturbances to traffic, he deliver us exactly in front of the hotel. After paying the thug inside the yellow car, we go to ask for the keys of our rooms, and I realize one thing: in New York they speak English in a way you do not need much effort to understand, unlike the south, where people often opens their mouth to start speech and close at the end, producing a series of vowels where sometimes emerge some sparse consonants.

Of course this fact reassures me, anyway I and Attilio go up in the elevator to our separate but adjacent rooms, put down our suitcases and we meet for dinner.

The place is an Italian restaurant on the right of the Metropole entrance. We enter and the owner welcomes us with elegance and related ceremony etiquette. We decide for a table in the first room and eat triplets of first, second, side dishes, we do not forget to take coffee, des28

sert and the Amaro as well. All nothing short of excellent. perfect service, perfect food, never banal conversation, the type is sharp and clever, he debates of economy and problems in the enterprise, or about common friends of him and Attilio, but he never said a cumbersome sentence, perfect host in his business. Also the background music, even though it was the bloody italian pop-folk I have not in sympathy, made sense in that context, it was an ideal soundtrack for a place detached from the neighborhood.

On the right of restaurant entrance loomed a giant African American with his hot dog kiosk.

That presence was a clear message: “Restaurants are expensive, here with 7 or 8 dollars you can eat and have a beer.� Regardless, after dinner we jump in bed because we are really destroyed by that pyrotechnical friday.

Hey bro, need a hot dog?

The next morning we wake up and I have to solve a problem: two days before my company’s camera I shamelessly used also on my own was broken, it must have taken a hard hit somewhere. So I am looking for one of those disposable carton cameras. I describe it to young readers: it was a small carton box, with a film inside, a fixed lens and a little plastic wheel to turn and advance the film after the shoot, being careful not to forget to do that, or make only a half turn, because you get two superimposed photos. This is because good digital cameras costed around 500 $, a bit too much for an emergency purchase; and in any case, as you will see from the pictures I did with the carton box camera, well, it was better than digital cameras, except in low-light conditions, where the digital does some color balance/exposure tricks. But first we wanted to have breakfast, and we found a perfect bar, which looked a little Nighthawks

by Hopper. The usual American giant size pastry, but without crazy colors as those I found in Greensboro, and - fantastic! - some croissants.

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They had a good coffee machine, and in fact the capuccino was like the Italian one.

This luck seemed to us a clear signal that the day started immediately fine and would continue better.

Apart from the fact we gave up to see the Empire State Building, because we had only one full day available and did not want to spend half of it in a very long queue, everything went the right way.

Once refreshed we meet a camera store, where I found and bought the disposable camera I was looking for, and we went to the port, strictly on foot, to avoid lose anything on the way.

In the pic below we’re on Broadway, Attilio is carefully studying the most interest-

I made this when we left the breakfast bar.

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ing options to see nearby. On the left, the famous palace with an extra-acute angle at the intersection of Broadway and 7th Ave, and you can see a part of it also in the photo with Attilio. New Filcas of America’s showroom was 300 meters far from that position.

It is impossible to get lost in Manhattan, the streets are all perpendicular (apart from the Broadway which goes a bit on the diagonal), as in the Roman grid. It is roughly a rectangle, with the avenues that run lengthwise, the streets parallel to the short side, you just have to reach a crossroads and you understand exactly position and orientation. The classic question “Where are we now???” was never reasonably asked. As we walked towards the harbor Broadway. we found a street vendor who was selling Rolex, ha ha ha!!! At first we made fun of him, then we said, come on, let’s give these 30$ and buy two fake Rolex, LOL. We continued to make jokes about our clocks for a while, then we saw we had arrived almost at the dock and I focused on a curious fact: in the little park before the waterfront there is an enormous amount of squirrels. They are everywhere. In the photo below one of them doing the acrobat on a hurdle.

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Believe it or not, the tiny figure near me in the background is the Statue of Liberty

And here I am posing to the usual souvenir photo in New York, dressed up properly to resist the cold, because in late November it already pwns. But pay attention to the woman with red hair in the lower right corner. After the photo, I reach Attilio and sit down next, we start talking bluntly; we are in the US, they do not understand if we speak in Venetian dialect, not even the Italian-Americans. After 3 minutes, the redhead turns her head and ask, in italian “excuse me, are you Venetians?”. She was from Treviso.

At first I thought: I’m in New York and the first person we have a chat with is one living 30 km far from my house ... this has taken away the charm of being in a foreign land, and sense of adventure, but she was a brilliant woman, we remained there to talk and warm up in the sun for a while, then we said goodbye because we had to walk a lot and morning was about to end.

Coming back we passed Wall Street and we arrived in front of the famous bull, which is really impressive, it’s bigger than you imagined after seeing it on TV. 32

Going to Soho.

Our plan was simple, go for a ride in Soho and then see the Greenwich Village.

Here we are almost there, the two photos are the left / right direction of the same street, taken from the same location. Soho is on the right, a bit ahead of the photo below.

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The rests of 9/11.

Oh, I forgot; we also passed near the former Twin Towers, unfortunately I lost due to underexposure the only photo where I was able to frame the giant crater. It was full of tourists and there was around a big barrier so it was impossible not frame the iron slats.

When we arrived in Soho I had the impression of being in Asia: it was full of Chinese, Sinhalese, Filipinos. Lively district, crowded, full of hi-fi shops. We have been into a few of them because inside you could find anything, even a stereo portable as big as an SUV, who works with 12 of those batteries as big as a beer can. And of course for maniac audiophiles, vintage stuff, from 70s and 80s, with valves, huge speakers, a music listening amusement park. But in itself a neighborhood like any other, no peculiar feature at the architectural level.

Far more interesting is the Greenwich Village, there’s a street where each store has a beautiful showcase with an artist or craftsman in action: painters, furniture makers, sculptors, tailors, upholsterers, people making knitted animals... everything. Even the locals, the bars are different from the rest of Manhattan, more refined, with artists and intellectuals who oppose the image of Little Asia I had in Soho.

The Village is very European, often what I saw evoked France.

Not surprisingly, being now 1:00 PM, after hours of frantic tourist walk, generator of atavistic hunger, we found a very nice local, the classic restaurant/bar of the artists, on two floors. From the first floor, being made a like a horseshoe, hence empty in the middle, you see the tables below, a structure I like because wherever you sit you see almost all other customers. Of course epic poster and paintings of every style, especially abstract, on the walls.

We went upstairs, expecting it to be hotter than the ground floor, where the entrance door was annoyingly always open, and then a rather pretty waitress came to bring us the menu, which was composed almost entirely of French cuisine. I didn’t understood a heck, I don’t 34

speak French, but luckily Attilio is multilingual so he proceeded to translate and explain to me the dishes, and then we ordered. It was all fine to our taste, and the final coffee has not disappointed, the place was so beautiful and relaxing (great music, it goes without saying) that we remained there chatting and digesting - and have a rest after the big walk - until two and half. 5 minutes later we were in the 5th Avenue that starts from Washington Square Park, the square near the bar we had just left.

It’s the most expensive area in Manhattan, ​​ there are all the milliners, goldsmiths, Disney, absurd toy shops like the one in the picture on the right. You do not see well because I did not have a flash and there was little light inside, but the middle one is an animated roGigantism at all costs made in USA.

bot-lift 21 ft tall. I do not know how many elephantine follies I saw wandering around the shops, it is certain that the gigantic Disney store in comparison was formal. Here, this part of the day was the most confused in my memory, because all this opulence and outbursts have ended up mixing in my mind in a disorderly manner. I remember especially the Trump Tower for the use of faux-gold brass that made all the interiors so tacky to be unbearable.

We went to drink a beer in the bar where you can see the indoor waterfall, other garish stuff, like dressing a morning dress with orange sneakers and white socks.

Donald Trump’s perfect mirror, one that is not known for good taste.

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Then we returned to the hotel to have a shower after the long walk started early in the morning, at 9:00 PM we went out again, and the situation was the opposite of that morning. Completely skipping the Village we had a dinner at an Indian restaurant in Soho. I had never seen so much food on a table for a diner in my life, I thought it was a joke. They have brought thirty dishes, we were able to eat only a quarter. In the end we were asked if we wanted to bring the rest away, I said yes to the instinct not to throw away all that food, but Attilio opposed it.

“Do you want us to go and spend an evening in New York with four Indian food bags in our hands? “.

Before going out, into the hotel lobby we asked for a journal of the shows, and I had noticed that it was as big as the Milan’s phone book.Thousands of concerts, exhibitions, theater performances, movies to see. What happens in the Venetian region in a thousand years it’s happening here in NY every night. I realized the actual firepower of that city by going out of the indian restaurant and taking a road that ends in Broadway. We had passed from there in the morning to go to the Village, and it did not impress me at all. But in the evening...

There were bars with concert hall on both sides of the road. One after the other, not even a dwelling door in the middle. We entered the first on the right, and began an uncontrollable rollercoaster. We remained 15 minutes in a bar, I took a whiskey and listened to two songs 36

of the concert, then we went to the next door or across the street.

At 3:00 AM when we reached the end of that road we had seen a hundred fragments of live act, every imaginable genre of music; blues, jazz, rock, fusion, reggae, country, and I could not walk in a straight line even if concentrating to the maximum.

If was driving a car and stopped by the poBack to my hotel room. lice, they’d put me in jail.

We returned to the hotel because luckily Attilio is not a party animal. If it had been up to me, we would have spent the night wandering around at random, trying to remember where we had to go to sleep.We did not actually “sleep” that night, because we had the plane early in the morning, I watched the TV without understanding a heck because of the whiskey and I made a sort of half a nap lasting a couple of hours, then I dressed, and while I was still tipsy, to say the least, we went inside another demented taxi. After a series of evolutions worthy of a skater, but made with a car, we arrived healthy and sound at JFK. I tried to mitigate the hangover with two giant size coffee at Starbucks, with no success, then we went to the gate. I took the photo down in this page while I regretted having to return to Italy.

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REIDSVILLE 38

Reidsville is a tiny town (15,000 inhabitants) in Rockingham County, to the north, near the border with Virginia.

It is in fact born in early 1800 as a last outpost on the route Salisbury, NC - Danville, VA, and for its strategic position has become the second headquarters of the American Tobacco Company, the old owners of Lucky Strike and Pall Mall, but also of many other companies in the tobacco industry acquired one after another between 19th and 20th century; the head office was located in Durham, NC. ATC within a short time employed a large part of citizenship; this core also led to an industrial center made of some textile companies and these two events have made the small Reidsville grow up prosperous and important until the end of the last century.

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In 1994, after a series of lawsuits from the US government for antitrust (they had arrived to buy 200 tobacco companies, an embarrassing monopoly position), the American Tobacco Company was dissolved, as it happened for AT&T, and officially closed.

With domino effect, begin to close, one at a time, even the textile companies, because the lack of such a big business center has obviously generated unemployment and drain of citizens, and when Americans start to flee from a city, almost always soon this becomes a ghost town.

Understandable that the textile investors, perceiving the trend, they decided to sneak off somewhere else, if you do not deal directly cross the ocean and relocate to China.

New Filcas of America

In the middle of the industrial area there was New Filcas of America, the gift wrap industry company. As I said in the introduction, I was hired by its Italian subsidiary Solutia Italia in Mogliano, but after two or three months I began to be called to do the work in USA and regularly return to Italy to check the press samples as responsible for color consistency: each nation has different color strengths, so you have to go see if the green, coming out shining when printed in the US, has become a rotten green in Italy, and be careful that the correction doesn’t end up with an orange transformed in red, virtually is a 16 hours a day melee against the two printer technicians who take turns at the machine, with discussions bordering philosophical limit on how opening or closing up color nozzles.

Luckily I dodged to control also those printed in the Chinese subsidiary, because the Chinese have color 10/15% stronger than ours, it’s a nightmare to manage it, and their English is hard to understand, if only because they pronounce the “R” everywhere except where it should be. That 40

is, when they speak in Chinese they use it, I heard it, but if they speak in another language they substitute “R” with “L”. I always suspected that they do it on purpose because they know it makes their speech more “Chinese”, more exotic. :-D Whatever, arguing about technical facts with one that speaks poorly in English - like me - means a misunderstandings rain, and consequent errors.

The doric-babylonian epic entering of Holiday Inn, Reidsville.

Not a photo by me, this is recent, but the room is the same, tent colors apart.The moquette is tragically the same.

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In the first few trips I have been in USA for two or three weeks at a time, taking an apartment for rent if you don’t even stay a whole month is not worth, so for convenience I lived in a B&B in Greensboro, as I described in detail in the first chapter dedicated to that city; but since Greensboro is an hour’s drive from Reisville, and this time I had to stay there for at least a couple of months, I asked to be placed at the Holiday Inn which was located in front of the company and about

Dale jr. fan.

100 yards far. In the picture above I wear with undisguised satisfaction the # 8 sweatshirt by Ralph Dale Earnhardt Jr. , which for all the fans of racing stock is simply Dale Jr, one of which won a truly impressive array of races and titles in various categories, but I it was pricey especially because he was born in Kannapolis, NC. A city which I sadly have never seen.

This way, returning to the main topic, I was able to see what it is to live in Reidsville in the disintegration era of its administrative core / industrial center.

The crazy car by two married colleagues. Warner Bros Delirium.

For starters, only three companies remained: Filcas; a TIR terminal of containerized goods exchange that stood between the Holiday Inn and Filcas (its traffic at night had a certain charm, but unfortunately I did not take a photo); a company with its industrial building on the other side of Barnes St, the road that virtually divides the city in two, and connects the industrial area to residential.

I couldn’t rent a car because I have no drive license, my salvation was often walking un-

Snacks and beers at Marathon.

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Reidsville city center.

til the store/delicatessen of the Marathon gas station (see photo below the other page), always on Barnes, to stock up six-pack and various absurd chips packs of any possible flavour, there were even chips that tasted only of chips; nothing from fry department, I did not trust what they cooked, US service stations are certainly not famous for having clean kitchens.

When there were no colleagues who carried me around, or I did not want to follow them in Greensboro, I often went there, eating packed stuff & drinking beers.

Between the industrial area and the beginning of the town there is the restaurants area where we went to lunch break, when we did not feel like eating a “real� burger in town. Here I and Marius avoided fast food as if they were infective, and in turn we went to the Mexican or Japanese. The Mexican restaurant was a real pleasure, all covered in wood so nice welcoming, I

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was devouring very spicy chickens, drowned in storms of gravy and cooked vegetables, and translating to my fellow South African what the Mexicans were saying, indeed after realizing I’m Italian they were careful (like their compatriots who worked at Filcas, for that matter), because they know that those bloody Italians understand a little of Spanish. Ate reasonably well, the plates were sumptuous, epic, wild, exaggerated.

The Japanese, however, was a diametrically opposite environment: very cold, very white, you could see the cooking through a window, but a faster service than the Mexicans, and they made a great sushi, I no longer eaten it so good, but also hybrids with Chinese cuisine were not hurt, I took a complete menu where they put a sample of everything and I profusely appreciated it.

Or, in fact, we went to a place in the center which reminded me of Arnold’s from Happy Days.

Without the original wood, bigger, but apart this I expected Fonzie to enter at any moment, mostly for the customers, which was pretty all older people in 60’s clothes.They do handmade burgers on the fly, from the minced meat, slicing tomatoes etcetera.They do not seem even far relatives of McDonald’s ones. Burgers are TRUE in there.

Later we found out another Mexican restaurant, but more wild, close to a rail crossing; resembled our worse taverns, and chairs were all different, and so the tables, everything made of plastic, managed by a couple of Mexican women I would not call anorexic; indeed, they were wider than high. Waiters were the children, all too young to work, the older probably was 12.

The husband of one woman came in, sat at a table and drank beers, and not content to be sprawled like a sack of shit, costantly stressed his wife telling her the typical drunk crap by people who has finished the primary school at the age of 20.

It is not hard to imagine that he we didn’t like him, sort of paradigmatic parasite husband doing nothing all day long and living of the poor companion’s earnings. A situation that would have to advise us to slink off and go back to our usual Mexican restaurant, but right because we are stubborn, of course that day, for the first time, we sit down and eat there.

We did not return in the first Mex restaurant, except for a couple of times because we were in a hurry: to reach the latter Mexican it takes half an hour more, and at lunchtime, if you finish late and you have to be at work on time, it makes the difference.

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But this was much better, the dishes were less “exaggerated”, cooked with more elegance and class than the other mexican, the brutality of this place’s poverty clashed with the quality of food, all dishes were very good, anything we were ordering. In addition it was also much cheaper, being more a brutal tavern than a restaurant. In fact it was always full, this way sooner or later the disgusting husband had to be evicted, with our satisfaction.

Then there was a bar where we went sometimes after dinner, this one covered with wood; every night there was a concert by an acoustic guitar, I mean with ever-changing players, but coming all alone, solo concerts, at the same time, about 9:30 PM, the time of post-prandial whiskey.

The guy came, he had the cowboy hat to hung on the wall, greeted everyone; the featured guitarist often went to shake hands with everyone present, but there are 6 tables in the room where he played, it was never a long ceremony. Then take a chair from an empty table, someone got a little stool for the leg on which the guitar rests, and the live act started. There was always someone who was talking seemingly oblivious, but when the music was on, all lowered the tone, the people went on softly.

And here comes the sore point: the bar was the ONLY thing to do at night in Reidsville, apart from eating in a restaurant and then go home.

The city had become a kind of dormitory area, where there are no clubs, discos, big concerts, but even swag bars to meet silly people. After the day’s work, you go to Greensboro, or to Danville in Virginia, which is even more distant.

Otherwise, literally being buried in a coffin-home lounge is the only night option.The city is full of old people clinged to their home ownership, the youngsters fled. A situation similar to that of Venice, where three-quarters of the “native” resident population has more than 70 years.

Needless to say, the following year I took an apartment in Greensboro, preferring to lose two hours a day to get to and from work, but where in fact there were many opportunities to have fun; I will tell of this in the next chapter, and I will return to the Reidsville topic to tell some anecdotes about oysters, a tornado and a police operation in a company in front of the Filcas.

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Two apartments in

Greensboro 46

I’ll tell you about two of the many apartments I’ve lived in, because in both there was something more than just housing. Not curiously they were just a few miles far from each other, one above and the other below the Wendover, because that was the area with less fierce rentals, and convenient to get to Reidsville through Highway 40 and then 29.

The first, also in chronological order, was the one to the north, in a village for commuters, near W Market St, and is reached by passing alongside these high voltage pachyderms pictured above, and their inexorably, unstoppably buzzing. Luckily they were far enough apart as to be inaudible.The village was divided into various buildings of two or three floors with more apartments, similar to Italian condominiums, in parkings there were only upper-middle class cars, 47

within which it was not uncommon to see samples of products, briefcases, maps and maybe 3 or 4 empty Starbucks coffee vessels. Many of them were executives moved for a period in Greensboro, or B2B sellers who had decided to spend a few months to meticulously chase all possible customers in the area. In fact, during the period I was there I did not hear noisy parties, or scuffles of any kind, they’re all people who stay there for business reasons, perhaps in search for redemption, and therefore they are not inclined to behave like college students.

Marius and I had two apartments on the same floor of the largest building right on the side of a forest, a very comfortable situation to interact. I could have his attention by throwing pine cones to his head when he was on the terrace, or - more civilly - by leaving my home and knocking on his door.

The apartments were quite large, as I think will be evident in this series of photos of my apartment down here, which I had taken to show it to my relatives.

Overview of open space dining / kitchen / living room.The latter giving access to the terrace through the door window.

Living room, on the side of my throne to watch TV; the corridor with rooms to the left bed and bathroom / laundry / utility room on the right; the laundry.

The two bedrooms.

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Unfortunately I have no photo of the exterior, and I’m sorry because it would be functional to the description. I was comfortable in that apartment, for these reasons: • I do not have a driver’s license, but I live 20 feet far from my friend-colleague which owns a car, and we get along, and we liked the same restaurants and the same premises.

• It was equipped with ultra-fast Internet and cable TV. • I had two bedrooms, one with a queen-size bed and the other with a single bed, and two comfortable sofas, I might as well keep there a platoon of friends to sleep in.

• Private terrace, large as the living room and the first bedroom, perfect for sun bathing, or eating, or having a drink with someone.

And then I was living behind this grove, surrounded by nature. I had no windows on that side, they were all in the living room and two bedrooms, that means toward the high-voltage pylons, which I could not see because there were in the way many trees and another building.

Often I went back home destroyed by a particularly stressful day. The strategy was always the same. I avoided any evening sorties, ate something fast, and went to bed after dinner, so I woke up early, at 4 or 5 in the morning.

I dressed a pajama, I had coffee with the Italian coffee pot I had brought from Italy (the true Italian abroad!), and couldn’t drink it quietly because I had already begun to think about types of paper to use, and how to pair different types to get some original effect, about affordable printing sequences, how to arrange the showroom, when having a meeting with scannerist and give him the new illustrations...

HALT. At that point I usually deleted all, put on the jacket because it was winter, grabbed the Camel pack and lighter, put on shoes without tying strings, and I went out on the landing.

Imagine a wooden deck between two houses (they were detached, linked only by these platforms on each floor), in the middle of the staircase, narrow, zigzagging going up through the floors, which is fully made of wood.

At the end of the platform, on the side of the forest, a handrail that makes you think of those in westerns, on the upper floor in the Saloon. There I leaned my elbows, lighting a cigarette and looking toward the woods.

From the house started a lawn downhill, which ended where it began the opposite hill, and from the lowest point of that, tall trees, suddenly, out of sight. We were on the second floor, but the trees were at least twenty yards higher than the roof. On the left Market St glimpsed through the trees, which are smaller in that area. On the right, hills and knolls one after the other by miles, with the mountains of Piedmont in the background.

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When you wake up so early you do not lose the sunrise, you even have some time to wait for it; and from that position it was magnificent, because it came from behind on the left (the facade looking south-west), so I could see the reflection on mountains, expecting the moment in which reality became compactly red, apart from the shadow areas. And more or less at that time were beginning to come down the usual squirrels. They fall from the trees quite menacingly, all at the same time.

At the end of the grass hill, behind the house, there were perches with birds’ houses on, and related pans with millet and other grains. That was what the squirrels wanted. Rapidly, they are already on the ground, run, climb the perches and like hairy piranha eat all they find in the pans, the birds vainly oppose them but then overwhelmed by the number they’re all fleeing.

The scene lasts a few minutes.

I saw who took care of the bird houses, an energetic woman of about 55/60, once she arrived at dawn with the broom to hunt the little bastards, but, as I ascertained at the B&B of John, it is scientifically impossible. Maybe they run away now, then soon as you turn around are back in action. They always beat you, sooner or later you will need to get away to do something else.

Anyway I’m in debt with these uplifting micro-events.

Another plus was the proximity to Sheetz. I must have made the photo on the right at 2:00 AM, following a friday night spent in Winston-Salem, I think.We started from there which was about 1:30, and half way we got hungry. As usual we had taken the 421, which passes through the towns, but nevertheless we rotated our head left and right as in a game of tennis and saw only lit signs, and below restaurant’s lights turned off. We were trying to remember what we had at home to be put together and have a snack, like one had the bread and the other the

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salami, but we had just stuff to cook and at 2:00 AM we didn’t like to deal with cookers. In addition we were both without beers. Meanwhile, around everything was closed. In the car, an unusual silence, two unstoppable chatterboxes defeated by the lack of a luxury snack like fried chicken wings or a definitive sandwich. And a cold beer. A beautiful frozen big beer.

Suddenly, almost at our destination, like an oasis in the midst of a desert, the appearance of the red silhouette of Sheetz. It seemed even having a halo like the saints’ heads in Renaissance paintings. We both, in unison, have moved from the “sack of potatoes” to “ninja warrior” position.The next scene: Marius, with a maneuver worthy of a rally championship, zigzagging enters the parking and he brakes in a slot near the entrance, and I swear there was a time when he was still sitting inside, with just removed belt, while it was already up out of the PT Cruiser, to say at what speed he quit the car. Or how many whiskey I had drunk that evening. Not to be outdone, a second later I was out as well.

We headed to the bar and we ordered everything, we wanted to eat even the barmen, then we resized our appetite to the usual sandwiches with grilled chicken, perhaps nachos or burritos, chips and beers for sure.

While chewing sandwiches we refreshed and were again talkative, we said,among other things, that we had found the right place, to stay there until we worked in Reidsville.

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I lived there for a month now, and I had had in recent times unjustified itching: there were no mosquitoes or other bloodsucking insects. I thought about allergies, pollen from another continent I am not used to, even at work they had noticed I scratched me more and more often.

One evening, the story had become almost unbearable. I took a one hour shower, scratching with the rough sponge, and in the end I felt relieved, still persisted some little itching, but nothing distressing as the nightmare before showering.

Relaxed, I jumped into bed, I slept right away.

That night came the worst moment. I woke up very early, at about 3:00 AM, because sleep had become half-sleep due to the fact that I was scratching increasingly strong, when I opened my eyes I saw that the sheets, my shirt, my pillow were full of stains and blood strips (almost like a gore film), and I was completely covered in bubbles, like having chicken pox or measles. I went back in the shower, the very hot water made me feel more burning than itching, and frankly I preferred that way. But I could not keep boiling like a lobster for hours, at one point I stopped and I was gasping obscenities and swearing while walking around home. Sitting or lying back was worse because it increased the itching.

At 7:30 Marius knocked my door, surprised because I wasn’t ready yet. I opened the door wearing the bathrobe, and he remained petrified. It seemed that someone stabbed me all over the body with a knitting needle. I told him that it did not seem appropriate to go to work in those conditions, and in the meantime I scratched and bled further, it was unbearable. “You can not stay here in those conditions,” he says. After a brief phone consultation with the boss they decides that I have to go to the company, and then they makes me have a visit in a dermatology center in the north of Greensboro. I dress up and we head to Reidsville, with me having St. Vitus dance alongside a driver worried that I’m infectious. At work all the colleagues were impressed, and even worried, they stayed at least 10 feet far from me, and I don’t blame them, it seemed that I had the Ebola virus.The owner as soon as he arrived he told me to go in a car, a manager who knew where the clinic was, and was waiting for me outside, we left right away (I sat behind) and in fifteen minutes I was already in the waiting room.

Three doctors have seen me, one after the other.The first, an Indian American, asked me a series of questions about my eating habits, any past allergies and other medical data that are used for diagnosis.The second, African American, has analyzed my bubbles, it has crushed and pulled a bit, he asked me as well if I had an allergy from a list he passed me, and I repeated that no, never had any problems.

The third, a Caucasian american, called me and my colleague and told us that according to them I had scabies (!), I had to be immediately quarantined but not in my apartment, which had to be 52

disinfected. No danger about the car, because I had made the trip heavily dressed, with the jacket, and lasted only a few minutes, but it would be better to disinfect it as well.

My colleague reported verbatim to the Chief, and looked at me with a worried look, it’s obvious what he was thinking, that is, “And now I have to also bring him back.” After a while they call him and say they asked to the Holiday Inn of Reidsville if it may hold a quarantined customer, getting an OK. He must bring me to the booked room.

He paid with Filcas’ credit card my visit, the modest sum of 850$, they gave him a list of medicines to swallow and ointments that I must smear, we go towards Holiday Inn, except when we stop at a pharmacy where he takes medicines, and finally delivered me to the hotel.

The girls at the reception are nearly all the same the previous year, they have been advised of the quarantine, but greet me with the usual smiles and wishing me a speedy recovery.

I go in my room, and look at the dosage, there is a white cream that I have to spread all over the body including the scalp (a problem, because I had long hair); I have to take the drops, the pads, I swallow everything and then I sprinkle this cream.

To eat, I ordered takeaway food, the morning one of the girls brought me a coffee, milk tray, two or three fruits, a cake slice.

Beyond being annointed all day like a greasy pole, that is indeed annoying, and isolation from all other human beings except for some phone calls or internet chats (they gave me a company laptop, to stay in touch but above all to keep me from dying of boredom), the idea of ​​have taken such an embarassing disease was humiliating.

Although very slowly, quarantine has passed and I finally went out. They moved me in another room to disinfect the previous one, and I stayed there for another couple of months. I’ve had no itching, then my fellow workers felt reassured. Raul, who famously loved heavy jokes, he still nicknamed me The Scabby Boy. One of the last evenings before returning to Italy we went to dinner at Applebees, practically in front of the Red Lobster but on the other side of Wendover Ave; no one would bring me to Reidsville and drive again 60 miles back home (they were all living in Greensboro), so I slept at Marius’ home, he did not have scabies in the apartment, he was healthy. In two or three days, and even during the night I spent there I seemed to have again itching, but I thought it was the power of suggestion to get back close to where I had caught scabies.

No. Back in Italy, itchy situation rapidly escalated almost to the worst levels, so I asked for an emergency visit to make me redo quarantine and treatment. The dermatologist has listened to my story, his face wasn’t convinced at all. He took a tiny scalpel, took away a slice of skin from the 53

scalp, he looked at it under a microscope and told me:“You don’t have scabies.These are the bed mites, the American ones are different from ours, obviously you’re not used.

Sprinkle once this anti mites cream, make showers with hot water, buy a new mattress or steam clean it, and wash all clothing, linens and blankets you used lately.“ I did what he said, everything. went OK. After recounting these facts in the company, the boss said nothing, but I have the suspect he thought of denouncing dermatologists for fraud. Raul undaunted kept calling Scabby Boy for bothering me, ha ha ha! What a laugh that man, even when I was the target of his jokes, one guy always on bastard humor.

However, this is the last apartment where I lived, in Stanley Rd, called StudioPLUS, now it has become Extended Stay America. In the photo above - seen from the back - my apartment was the first window on the left, on the ground floor. In the background, the Citgo station. The photo on the right is the front side, just to show the old name and graphics. Here below you can see it from the side, and you notice the Car Wash.

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On the left: living room, bedroom, work/meal table - On the right: the kitchen

It was a one bedroom apartment with bathroom, much smaller than the other, and close to Wendover, so pretty busy, even if surrounded by a little green; like the rest of the area, where each hotel has its own garden and trees around, being the outskirts of Greensboro. But as a strategic location it was better.

In the other I had to take a car because on foot I would meet the first restaurant after two hours, and also to reach Sheetz it would have taken three quarters of an hour. Here, across the street, 50 meters from my house, there was (and still is) Citgo, which has behind the gas station a snack bar with a market and a Chinese restaurant, and then a series of sandwich bars and other snack bars, starting from his right and up Stanley Rd towards the airport.

The last sandwich bar, run by three African-Americans... I went only once. Here’s how it went: I enter, I look at the sandwiches, I choose one, I tell the guy to give it to me, showing it, with a draft beer. He looks at me for two seconds, then he replies, and says not a single word that I can recognize as English. He seemed to speak an arcane language, of some lost civilization. I say, sorry, I’m Italian and I don’t understand, however I want that sandwich and a beer, simple, take that sandwich, give it to me, and then a beer on tap, it’s that easy. He shows me two or three sandwiches and continues to speak in Ostrogoth. In that moment I see that there’s a white jogging guy waiting his turn to my side and giggling, I look at him, raise my shoulders and my hands palms up, signifying: “Dunno what to do”. He has a big laugh, and tells me, don’t worry, when they speak strictly slang I do not understand what they say me myself, and I’m living here since all of my life.

In that moment I think: there are 5 or 6 other sandwich bas within 300 yards, but why do I have to stay here and talk to the incomprehensible guy, that surely does it on purpose to tease me? 5 minutes after I’m eating a sandwich right in the sandwich shop across the street. Where an African American served me and, what a strange fact!, we perfectly understood each other.

At the end of Stanley Rd there were also two places that become fundamental, always very close to my house: TGI Friday’s, a bar, and Red Lobster, a restaurant. In the first I went almost every day for a drink after work, and in the other I eaten very often. I’ll describe them in next 55

chapter dedicated to my favorite locals in Greensboro.

Also, behind the sandwich bar by the hermetic language ​​talker, there was a small but wellstocked mall, five minutes far from my house, and in the area behind the Red Lobster other various supermarkets, from super economic to those devoted only to DIY and gardening, or just furniture, or electronics.

Shortly before arriving at TGIF you meet an Italian restaurant, the Villarosa. One sunday I was alone, and I just wanted to eat Italian. A dish of ravioli or noodles with meat sauce, scaloppine (breaded steak cooked with Marsala wine), nothing special, but done well.

I enter and notice that only two other tables occupied by customers, and I get suspicious, but reading the menu I see more or less what I was looking for, there are even lasagne, and gnocchi with duck that I take immediately, and scaloppine with roasted potatoes. I try the restaurant’s red wine, a risk outside Italy, but at this point, I tell myself, I go all the way.

Gnocchi are a bit too compact, and the duck, I realize there was it, more than taste it. I think: perhaps I’m used to the American turbo-flavors and it all seems bland in confrontation. Let’s see if the scaloppine are tastier, however it is unlikely that they are not...

The “scaloppine” aren’t breaded, and swim in a strange transparent broth; I say, floating, in the 56

true sense of the word, with parsley leaves above having a tragically random aspect.

What is this stuff? Despite being nervous, with calm I briefly explain to the waiter how you cook them, and I ask him if he thinks that dish resembles the one I just explained to be the true scaloppine. He does not know what to say. I tell him to bring me the bill and clarify that would not have paid the floating meat. I eat a few potatoes, they are good, but now I am disappointed.

I never tried anymore to eat Italian in the USA, apart from the pizza Elizabeth.

Manager of StudioPLUS was an African American, as the majority of the population in that area, named Kwami, 6.5 ft tall. A person very courteous and always willing to help the customer with a smile.

His wife was a scary person, very tall as well, she seemed Grace Jones’s evil sister but with long hair, always had an aggressive facial expression. I found her sympathetic.

Their daughter, guess what?, very tall again; age 20, incomparable beauty. Not only she was beautiful, but had an elegance and delicacy in her movements to seem as light as a feather, celestial, and always dressed with quasi-European taste.

Usually one or two of them at a time were more than enough to manage the long-stay hotel: there was no room service, nor a buffet breakfast, you were living there as in a normal rented apartment home (and without bills paying hassle).

Unlike an apartment, however, no washing machine. There was a laundry room with several washing machines and dryers down in the basement, half a dollar per wash and 25 cents to dry it, if I remember well. It may seem unhygienic and even annoying, but actually the laundry became a meeting place. Having to stay there until it stopped washing, then put the stuff in the dryer and wait also for that, there were always two or three customers; and to pass that half an hour, you ended up with chat, so in a short time I became acquainted with all the others, and I also had the opportunity to seek and obtain rides in their car, or reached the sufficient confidence to ring the door bell and ask, for instance, some sugar ‘cause I finished it, but more often I found myself in socializing some food missing rather than asking for it.

And then there was the triangulation between customers of StudioPLUS, they almost necessarily knew those of the Car Wash in front because they used it, but also those of Citgo for gasoline and especially the The Pop Shoppe behind, where more or less everyone went to stock up on snacks, drink and some sandwiches. And then we met again maybe at TGIF or at the Red Lobster for dinner.

Here, in two weeks I knew everyone, while in a month I had not greeted any of my other apartment’s neighbors. I had the impression that living where there are so many African Americans, apart from the episode with the sandwich bar :-D , make the interactions easier.

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Venues and premises in

GREENSBORO 58

Early sunday morning, I often went to Barnes & Noble, almost always with Marius, but if he was back in South Africa, or sent to the Chinese typography serving our company, I hitched a ride by a neighbor’s car, with the agreement to meet again him at a given time for the return.

A few times a Texan who lived two apartments after mine in Stanley Rd brought me there. I have never seen him without his cowboy hat; no tips his hat even while driving, I imagined he wore it also during sleep. A taciturn, we did the journey in silence, but this wasn’t embarrassing, we knew we had dramatically opposed political ideas and tastes / passions / interests, so we gave up to measure our opinions. But there was an inexplicable empathy between us. With him I had the 59

advantage to come back in the afternoon, instead of same morning, I do not know what he was doing and I was not interested, but this gave me the right time for my business.

Barnes & Noble is a kind of oasis in the American culture. All around there are one or more malls, and many stores: musical instruments, hunting or fishing, gun shops where you can buy weapons as if they were boxes of chocolates, restaurants where flock people who do not read a book even if you torture them, you see them and by how they talk and dress you know you’ll never find them into a bookstore.

This happens in any place; the US are modular in a shocking way. I remember one afternoon in a Greensboro bar we met a truck driver who went back and forth from coast to coast, and told us that he often seems to run in a circle, passing over and over through the same city.The Toyota dealership, the Taco Bell, McDonald’s “M” sign, the wooden houses in the outlying areas and the brick buildings in the center; with each new town they recurred regularly.

Gone through this humanity doomed to have no interest in culture, I (or we, when I was with my colleague) approached to the bookshop and already people were different, more elegant, less noisy, more composed. Understandable. Inside there, in the center of the room, a bar where they have Italian coffee machines and make coffee as ours, not like the weak one by 60

Starbucks, and there is a decent pastry, with even the croissants, like that bar in New York I spoke about in a former chapter.

So it all started with a nice breakfast, if I was with Marius we talked a little while chewing and drinking coffee.

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After breakfast we split, and everyone went to investigate in his own interests in the stacks. When I found an interesting book, I looked for a free seat then settle on it.

I read comfortable and quiet, the background music was a never banal mix of classical, jazz or fusion, or pop but never the idiot one, because obviously average customers are not gross people. At a low volume because the notes must not disturb the concentration. After reading a whole book, or almost (not always had time enough), then I bought another one to read it later at home, at the end that was equivalent to the supermarket offers like “take two at the price of one”.

I still have it.

Paying was an enjoyable event as well, because the clerks, mostly women, were all courteous, patient, and often they suggested another book in that topic or by the same author they thought I might appreciate. In fact I have not infrequently told to wait a moment, because I was going to take also the suggested book.

Once I went to the cashier with the t-shirt “Article 11, Italy repudiates war” (see the pic in this page) that we had printed with LibLab during the Yugoslav wars.To my amazement, the cashier knew a bit of Italian and understood what was about!, so I remained there to tell her the genesis of that shirt, how D’Alema - our Prime Minister in those times - had been interventionist (she knew who he was, as well as all other European premiers) and explained a bit the political situation in Europe after the advent of the Euro. Meanwhile others were paying, she gave rest and receipt them and we continued to chat.

I often had chats with other guests sat on the same couch or in an armchair in front, all with their book under their nose, hooked one of them during a reading break and within a few minutes that became a round table. It must be said that it is a quite common attitude in Americans, they are on board right away because you see that they love to chatter. Usually it started from the book one of us had in her/his hands, and then we chatted of every kind of arguments, also of pure fooling around, like teasing Bush for his last dialectical prowess in the opening of Fox News report.

It was also an effective school of English, because I obviously found people who spoke properly, without totally incomprehensible accents, and having language richness, which gave me the opportunity to learn new words.

I really miss that situation. That sense of “active” peace and tranquility.

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As for the purely epicurean and disengaged activities, premises I preferred were almost all in downtown: more precisely, in Elm St or in the immediate vicinity. In one of the first days of my first trip to the USA, I and Attilio went out to eat with New Filcas of America’s owner and his family at Natty Greene’s.

Mostly it is a brewery, and frankly I did not drink beers better than their ones anywhere else in NC, but they also make burgers of all kinds (including vegetarian) and, again, it’s hard to eat 63

better burgers. In fact, it was rare to go there and find it empty, especially after 6:00 PM, when the Americans leave from work and attack bars where to find friends (or make new ones) for the ritual drink before dinner.

Across the road (you could reach the entrance by turning around the building) there was M’Coul’s The restaurant area at Natty Greene’s Public House, Irish restaurant where the food was good enough, but we only went once, one evening with a few sellers of the company, at the end of an overtime meeting. After dinner, however, we went to play the worst snooker match in the whole history, the drinks we had made the holes impassable.

I often have been there, but climbing to the first floor, where there was a bar where I liked to drink a slew of B52s as you can see in the photo at right. Behind those windows there is a wind-sheltered terrace, may be seen in full-page photos on the right, and often we have given appointment in there during warmer months, because you could drink and smoke, while staying out of the incessant traffic on Elm St. Natty Greene’s had the same advantage by its outside tables, but during peak hours you had to scream like being at the disco, to understand you with your interlocutors, there’s a train station near there, and also a bus station behind it. Noisy! I always preferred to I was with a friend that took this pic, I mean, I wasn’t drinking two B52s per time stay inside, when I was at Natty.

50 yards away from Natty Greene’s, on the same sidewalk of Elm St, there was the Green Bean, a coffee shop where you could drink good wine and beer, they always hosted live acts, sometimes in the evening we went there, we took a bottle of wine with two glasses and we had fun for a couple of hours.

150 yards far from it there was another local, a classic night bar whose name I can not remember (now it’s gone, replaced by a taco), but I have a picture of the inside, the one on the left, in which I immortalized Marius’ arm while doing the operation/symbol of the US economy: paying two whiskies, an amount of 8 $ ... with a credit card.

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E questi erano i luoghi abituali, per non dire rituali. Poi devo citare un paio di posti dove ho mangiato bene, uno molto chic, l’altro spettacolare. E questi erano i luoghi abituali, per non dire rituali. Poi devo citare un paio di posti dove ho mangiato bene, uno molto chic, l’altro spettacolare. E questi erano i luoghi abituali, per non dire rituali. Poi devo citare un paio di posti dove ho mangiato bene, uno molto chic, l’altro spettacolare.

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The evening takes off.

Behind M’Coul’s, zigzagging towards the south-east, you arrive in Summit Ave where there was a restaurant I liked a lot, the Solaris. We had already have been there a couple of times because the food was good, good wine, fast service, toilettes were near and we always found a nice table (I hate the ones in the center of the room) because it was quite large, 3 rooms with about 50 tables each.

But one evening, after dinner, we went to the restaurant’s bar for a coffee and a drink, and we met the Cubans of the two pictures in the top left corner, and a married couple from Brooklin that ran away in NC to live quiet; as Kenny said, there were so many shootings, stabbings and criminal raids they absolutely didn’t want take root and have children there. I thought: thank goodness when we went to NY with Attilio we didn’t think of going to Brooklin.

Kenny and I found immediately in an incredible harmony, after 15 minutes we were already arm around the shoulder screaming “I pay these beers brother”,“no way, it’s my turn!”...An hour later we were the two drunkest people in the restaurant, and they were all laughing as seen in the photo above, because he also - when drunk - shoots unexpected funny bullshits, you can imagine imagine two completely drunk making ping pong of idiocies at furious pace, plus we broke the balls to everybody next to us. Of course, we didn’t spare the bartender, a pretty girl (the photo does not make them honor), which is seen here at the limit of her endurance, listening to Kenny that wanted to convince her to marry me, while I was photographing her.

Then we realized that they had transformed a mezzanine behind 66

the bar in a stage, and then played a few bands, the firsts were pretty boring, post-rock like Iron & Wine, but then - surprise!- after the first two slow and boring groups, went on stage three guys who were playing something more lively; later we made friends because we started doing stage diving at first song. The stage was 10 inches high, Kenny went “up”, he dived and I took him, then I went on and he was took me, and they were laughing seeing this scene of rare stupidity, but they noted that indeed we were attracting all the youth , intrigued by the casino; they had started with the usual math rock staid, but seeing this enthusiasm they turned to play faster and faster until it became pretty much a hardcore punk gig, and everybody at a certain point started a mosh pit.

An incredible mess. I understood that when Americans start a mosh it’s hard, they’re all blacksmiths pounding, women included. Then at the end we stopped and had a chat with them, they thanked us for the support, and explained the problems they encountered to find a record company.

Having a serious talk appeased me and Crazy Kenny (as I and Marius had renamed him), his laughing wife has finally caught him and told me “sorry, I take away your bruh, you’ll see him again another night!”. Then there was the Tearjerker scene, the two drunkard friends embraced who say such embarrassing things like “you’re the greatest friend I’ve ever had, even in previous lives.” We even exchanged kisses like when you meet your relatives after ages, his wife and Marius laughed heartily. Then they got bored because we started again to rave, probably if not stopped - until the next afternoon; each picked his stupid and brought him in the car.

I rarely found such a mate in doing silly thing during an adventurous night, those who never flinch to anything, including try to tap dance on the bar desk, chased by bartenders.

We also really liked the Green Valley Grill (yes, in Greensboro there’s a plenty of locals with Green and Greene in their name), connected with the O. Henry Hotel, both luxury category, on the right you can see the main hall of the restaurant.

Spectacular fillets, 2 inches tall, perfectly cooked (medium rare is the best, to me), but it was also great for brunch, with omelettes, baked potatoes, salads; we went often there with colleagues / friends of the firm.

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When we wanted a pizza we went to Elizabeth’s Pizza, the last one on Battleground Ave, going north. We went there the first time with other fellow workers, who introduced us to the owners - they were happy to speak to Italians - and the pizza was good: pizza makers were Neapolitan immigrants, not Italian Americans as the owners, and indeed I heard them screaming in tight Neapolitan dialect into the oven room. So for first we went back a few times with Attilio, and then I continued with Marius. I always tried to land in the first table to the wall on the left (I have already said that I like to have a wall at my side or behind when I eat, and here I confirm). After a few times, if that table was free, Marius automatically headed to it, accustomed from my logistic paranoia. He was very patient that gigantic Afrikaan.

I always took pizzas with a number tending to infinity of ingredients and as this wasn’t enough, I told them to put a raw egg on the pizza. Beer Oktoberfest size.You had to wait a little to be served, but things were way worse on saturday evening, when you first had to wait forever that someone finish and free a table so the waitress can finally bring you there. And then you have to wait for ordering, and to have the pizza ... It’s always the same strategy: after ordering they immediately bring the beer, and then you wait half an hour before having the food. When it arrives, you already drank three quarters of beer out of boredom and you order another one. In fact we went only twice on saturday.

So far, a fairly generic picture of a restaurant where you feel good, good food and yadda yadda yadda. But once we went at noon, I believe a sunday.

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We walked in, went to the usual table, we begun to ask ourselves what pizzas we had not tried yet.

At one point I feel a person’s presence standing next to me, must be the maid. I just decided what to get, I turn to tell her, and I see this girl, very much like Liv Tyler, but more beautiful, with a perturbing body, nearly six feet tall, smiling at me and tilting her head as if to mean “you can talk safely, make the fucking order, we are among friends, come on.” My eyes must have been like an open book, on the page where he, with a bottle of Dom Perignon in one hand and two glasses in the other, chasing her that’s hilarious, uninhibited and dressing a petticoat. Marius told me later that he thought I had gone into a coma with the eyes open, because I did not even breathe anymore and I was still as a mannequin. The scene seemed to me lasting a quarter of an hour, but it had been a matter of few seconds.Then I managed to articulate and transfer to her my will, sadly the culinary one. Throughout lunch when she passed I left the conversation and followed her pirouettes around the room, and she smiled, perhaps because my great interest was clumsily evident. I have not seen her anymore. For sure one full of money told her “Look, throw away that apron, laid off and climb on my Lamborghini, I’ll take you to Miami.”

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The last year, when I went to live in a one bedroom apartment in Stanley Rd, in the extreme south of Greensboro inhabited mainly by African Americans (so was my host, proudly called Kwami to claim his African roots), they entered powerfully into my life two places that have become customary stage in most evenings after work.

The first is the Thank God It’s Friday’s, where after a while I attended now I walked through the door and the 70

smiling barman took out the glass bowl as big as a sink for Margarita.

After a busy day spent on solving problems of any kind, disappeared suppliers because they have not finished the job, the Mexicans in assembly line that mounted handles of the wrong color on handbags, the scanner guy who has not finished scans of artworks, some seller who claims we have done too little pouches with dominant blue, or green, or red, after all this nightmare it was a cure.

Alone or with other colleagues I sat at the bar corner of the bar and sipped while chatting, it took at least half an hour to finish it. The beauty of Margarita giant size is that you don’t get drunk; certainly you can’t remain indifferent, but you will not reach the levels of that evening with Kenny at Solaris, it is like drinking two / three Tennent’s or Coronas. Plus I accompanied him with various appetizers, spicy stuff, so I absorbed.

In this case, those under the left are fried chicken wings, with some celery and a dip of melted cheese; bottom right hand are those mozzarella sticks and asiago fused together, with over slivers of Parmesan cheese, and Romano cheese (Pecorino) accompanied by marinara sauce.

It is one of those bars where you feel relaxed all the same, even if there is a rowdy crowd around, to the point that watching one of the TV hung on the walls need to turn on caption control you hear nothing.

They were less hectic of the bars in downtown, but also the customers, all quiet people staying there hours chatting, snacking and drinking.

The majority was made up of African Americans, but there were also white, especially Hispanics, or Latinos as they call them, a term that can’t stand, because to me “Latin” is Italian.

I understand that is a reference on Latin America, but I better see the term stuck to ancient Rome rather than people who speak Spanish.

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The other place that gave me happiness is the Red Lobster. I discovered it by chance while going around looking for a mall like Leroy Merlin, behind TGI Friday’s, and I found him before.

I was reminded of a trip with the company, during which we stopped to eat at one of their restaurants, and I was satisfied even if I did not think much to eat.

I was distracted by what we had to talk after lunch, I was not so hungry and in fact I must have taken only fry squids and a salad, that time.

But I could see that my colleagues eaten lobsters with great satisfaction, and even oyster dishes like this on the right.

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However, I continue my search, I find what I needed, materials to be used as add-ons for my handbags, then quickly take them home because I do not trust myself in eat out with a bag of stuff for the job, for sure hanging it on a chair and forgetting about it when I go. I then went back to the restaurant, and all that walking around has made me hungry.

Later, I sit at a table for two, next to the kitchen, I look at the menu and ordered a American lobster, a caesar salad, beer and scallops. I see the latter cost $ 3 and a half, I think it will be two, because they cost two euro each in the Fiaschetteria Toscana restaurant, near the former Ponte dei Giocattoli (Toy Bridge), in Venice. The lobster was huge, with a big claw and all (the spiny lobster has no claws, contrary to what many think of people born in the mainland; it is basically a mega-shrimp. What in the Red Lobster logo is therefore an American lobster).

Anyway, what surprises me most is that for those 3 and a half dollars they bring me a plate full of scallops, something that would have cost me 50 euro in Venice. Could not believe my eyes, I was afraid that I had misread the menu, that the dollars had been 35 instead of 3,5, and they would give me a $ 50 bill in the end.

No way. With $ 15 I paid for everything, including a whiskey at the bar. I left the local being confused. It was like eating the Xmas Night dinner at the cost of 3 packs of cigarettes. On another evening I asked why, they explained that there are intensive breeding of scallops, lobsters and oysters, so the costs are dramatically cut down. Needless to say, the last year in Greensboro I almost never eaten at home; many times a snack at TGI Friday’s was enough, when I was hungry I went to devour oysters, prawns, lobsters, scallops at Red Lobster.

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And these were the usual places, I could even define them ritual places. Then I have to mention a couple of locals where I ate well but I’ve been there only once; one very chic, the other spectacular.

The first is Table 16, which is - coincidentally - still in Elm St and describes his proposal as “New World Cuisine”, meaning a meeting between new continent’s kitchen and the European one. I can not vouch for how is it today, but at the time, a dozen years ago, with “European” in Table 16 they meant mainly French.

We went there one evening as we walked past every so often, and since first glance it gave me the idea of ​​being a French restaurant, also for the local design.

Today, as seen in the photos up right in this page, it has this yellow plaster that suddenly, with irregular profile unveil the brickwork, and there are hung paintings. When I went there, however, it was as in the photo on the left: very cold, walls covered with white wood, small tables strictly against the 74

wall, and this rigor continued outside, with entrance always in white wood, the minimal clean style of typical places beloved by intellectuals, artists and the usual snobs.

I was anyway interested mainly because I wanted to eat some dishes that weren’t binding to digestion, light food, maybe not gargantuan portions, like in nouvelle cuisine; and that bring me some unusual taste for American cuisine. With good Scallops.Yes. again. I admit it, my weakness. light wine. When we entered the corridor hallway was a bit claustrophobic, the tables against the wall gave me the impression of a canteen, for a moment I had the fear of being finished in a bad place, but in the middle you notice that the kitchen is open to view and you can follow cook’s work like in Japanese restaurants, and past the hallway you enter the main room, which is brighter and has the tables at reasonable distances. This reassured me. I thought: if they did not put two tables more to raise more money, while making feel uncomfortable customers, surely would have had the same foresight in both service and in the kitchen.

The reading was correct; waiter was fast and efficient, as soon as he reLamb with root vegetable hash and butternut squash. alized we had decided what to take, without waiting nod came rapidly with a notepad in hand to take our order.

The menu included a few starters and four or five dishes by type in the categories soups, sandwiches, sea food, meat and vegetarian. But all were attractive, each dish had at least one curious and unexpected ingredient.

I do not remember exactly what I eaten, certainly a delicious soup, very dense with onions, a dish of meat (chicken, if I remember correctly) and one of fish, but for sure I savored every bite with great pleasure. There were only three other tables occupied by customers, and they all spoke in a low voice, even I (usually a screamer), involved by the general climate; but this has given to that restaurant my prize for the most relaxing place I’ve eaten in Greensboro.

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The second place is the Lebion, a churrascaria (Brazilian steakhouse). Here we had a dinner with the company, all employees of the management and design departments, managers and sellers. Every so often the Big Boss took us out to eat, something I always appreciate. In Adriano Olivetti style, not only paid us well, more than they were earning average engineers, managers, graphic designers and art directors in the industry, but trying to make the team meet regularly, offering dinner and turning a blind eye to the table if someone hade some extra drinks. Of course dinner was always on a friday night, so any hangover would be absorbed by the weekend. Every so often during these evenings we also talked of work, but for the greatest time it was jokes, puns and comical anecdotes. In another time, at the end of one of these dinners, the Chief brought us all to the disco in downtown Greensboro, but I’ll talk about later, we are now in the churrascaria.

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Lebion applies to the extreme all you can eat concept. There isn’t a menu, or, better, there is a list, but just to show you the variety of meats, side dishes, salads, desserts, you pay a fixed price, then go to the buffet (see photo below) and you take as much salad, side dishes and dessert you like, you order the wine and then dive in the sarabande of the meat.

They roast meat on those skewers Gauchos, dunno why but they remind me a few 3D survivor videogames. with the handle that are seen down in the other page, then the gauchos (waiters) when they are ready wield skewers like swords gripped on the contrary, in the other hand brandishing a butcher’s steak knife (yes, at first glance the scene has some violence), they wander around the tables asking who wants a piece, and they cut the slice directly into your plate.

The climate, however, is the opposite of Table 16: Latin American music here, at fairly high volume, the gauchos continually revolve around the tables, customers on average voraciously eat and drink, reaching in short enough thrill to become rowdy.

But we’re fine because the environment, the incentives and the drives are different: overeat perfectly cooked meat within the frenzy samba rhythm makes you forget all melancholy. I had fun with my crazy fellows and had a wonderful meal, but the top of the evening was when at the end of dinner, Raul led me, Marius and Claudio to drink the classical nightcap at a bar/theater nearby where they make concerts, which unfortunately can not remember the name, and to my great surprise while we were having our drinks sat in front of the stage... came out the Average White Band, aged - logically - but with perky attitude, and they attack right away with Pick Up the Pieces! Very welcome surprise final (one of my three favorite historical funky groups with Larry Graham and Defunkt) for a really terrific evening.

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WINSTON-SALEM 78

Winston-Salem is close to Greensboro. Stanley Rd, where I lived the last year, ends at a crossing with Highway 40, so just get in it and follow it in the direction of Charlotte, a half hour trip, as you can see in the map below.

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The wall covered with rims, porcelain dishes and all sorts of objects.

Arriving at the town center will immediately send precise signals: graffiti, near the bus station there is a small wall they turned into sculpture because they planted and cemented car rims and other objects (a triumph of Arte Povera), it is full of shops ranging from the small gallery (everywhere you can buy paintings and sculptures on display) to the merchandising of pocket art, or places like My Sistah’s Place (which inspired the title of second track in Hox Vox record Hurry Up Harry pt. 2) where buy African handmade soaps, fabrics, clothes, sculptures and any ethnic-related object (not African-American, it’ s a just root approach), then the American art museum Reynolda, the SECCA (Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art) and the Anthropological museum of Wake Forest university (they are all in the same area, in fact if you do not understand the content where you roam).

Reynolda entrance.

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6th & Vine’s bar counter.

On the sidelines, the Reynolda to us Europeans arouses a strange feeling: I have had for years in the living room a table older than any piece in that museum. It looks more like modern antiques then art history.

On arrival, we headed straight to the 6th and Vine, because art is beautiful but when you’re hungry you put it temporarily in a corner, and pretend satisfaction for your stomach.

It was one of my favorite restaurants of all North Carolina, along with Table 16, the Green Valley Grill and the Red Lobster in Greensboro.

You enter, and in two seconds you’ve already understood you have found the right place.

European wines (Italian, French and - yeah! - Portuguese not bad) and Californian (I drank a

A graffiti in front of 6th & Vine.

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Cabernet made there, that seemed right up our Franc, as the others said).

For heaven’s sake, I’m not a sommelier, or at least a connoisseur, I’m more sensitive to beer or spirits; I guarantee that we sampled many (almost all), and at least we never thought one had a cork taste.

To accompany the drink they gave you dishes with cheese and Italian cold cuts.

We were already clearly drunk as well and blinded by the flash.

When I put in the mouth this slice of Romano cheese, and then a nice soft gorgonzola, after months of steak houses and Mexican restaurants, I closed my eyes and felt a pleasure that no Italian can understand if doesn’t spend a few years in US. And can’t imagine after the slice of salami and that of mortadella, which also had not eaten for months because of a work cycle which did not involve me to be sent back to Italy.

The restaurant offered European cuisine and dishes in which they attempt to fuse their kitchen with ours; the results were quite satisfactory and above all not indigestible.

Jam session.

In addition, at dinner time the room next to the entrance is emptied of tables and chairs, becomes a stage and they make gigs; I have seen two concerts in two nights, two technically very strong groups - but in US I have never seen people that sounded bad.

Not like the ones that made my jaw drop in Savannah (see related section) but almost. Both of funky/fusion genre with rock fugues, and even prog; I think because Phish that time raged far and wide.

I would not give rise to suspicions about my propensity to drink a lot of beers: it is a certainty.

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My friend and South African fellow Marius satisfied after having sacked My Sistah’s Place.

Back to My Sistah’s Place, which is in Trade St, I found very interesting artifacts inside, no industrial production. A stubborn craft showcase.

I enjoyed, bluntly.

The black soap with tiny bits of wood and small stones inside I bought there was a pleasure to use when taking a shower, my girlfriend liked it a lot, in fact when I went back there with her, she bought a bag of those soaps; and she went in confidence and started jokes with the huge proprietary. Put in contact two women and easily, with those evil tongues, start to make fun of males. That soap smelled of tree; you could smell the roots, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers. Washing with a tree, that bizarre and pleasant feeling!

African sculptures gave the idea to carry around 50,000 years of humanity, but maybe also a little of Cro-magnon and even traces of Neanderthals, you could see inside them the Descent of Man, as has been indeed Africa.

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A few minutes before falling into sin, I could not wait.

At the end of Trade St you pass near the Silvermoon Saloon. When we first saw it we made two photos (one is above) and then we jumped inside, believing it was another place not to be missed.We were right.Two motorcyclists (one pair) after drinking together a few B52s (my favorite cocktail with the Rusty Nail and Negroni, but lighter and sweet, I consider it a “snack� cocktail, and in fact I usually drink it in the afternoon, at tea time) they have boarded me to smoke behind the local. I leave my mates for a while with a BRB and I follow them. They pull out a purplish ganja, at this sight my eyes have become as large as two zildijan dishes.

5 minutes after, on the other hand - returned to the back of the bar - I had eyes like Mr. Magoo, and I laughed lying on a couch, with two rough bikers hilar themselves and satisfied to have bent the Italian friend as they should. One is proud to verify that the impromptu feast he organized was appreciated.

The sum of cocktails and smoke turned me to furiously cocky, I was shooting extraordinary crap, we spent a late afternoon with tears in our eyes for the laugh, and then feverish tales to share our cultures and experiences, I say it loud and clear, one of the funniest moments in those years spent between Italy and the US. 84

An illustration in one of the galleries spread to Winston-Salem that lends itself to multiple interpretations.

Speaking generically of Winston-Salem, it must be said that sometimes they do something extraordinary: they close all access to the center, when you arrive you are forced to park on the outskirts. Cars banned, it becomes a city of pedestrians, pull up stages for playing in plazas and squares, and let’s go with concerts and parties for a few days. You look at one, then after a while you have enough, you take a little walk and you’re in the midst of another completely different concert, there was funky, here there’s rock, but if you stretch your ear there’s a punk band playing the next block, you take another beer at the first bar and there you go.

It is full of happy people, never seen a fight, au contraire, you enter bars and if you throw an argument they respond right away as if they were eager to get on board, and there aren’t many ignoramuses; it’s all people interested in art and music. Then they were all curious to understand what a European was doing there, in that local context, hardly known worldwide like New York or Rome.

Talking of art galleries, I liked two who were adjacent, to be precise one occupying the ground floor, the other on the first floor in the building next (not coincidentally) 6th & Vine. I put some images as comment in the next two pages.

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RomanticherĂŹa.

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The managers of the two galleries were intelligent, refined, courteous.

Those of Seed Gallery actually appeared after a long time we were walking and shooting photos through the halls, denoting a curious faith in visitors’ honesty; the others instead were immediately, always present, mainly because of the structure was more store-oriented.

They patiently explained everything we asked, and in front of such kindness we could not help but buy some small art objects, including a dollar with the effigy of Saddam Hussein, which unfortunately I forgot in my apartment in Stanley Rd when I returned to Italy for the last time.

The naive sign by one of the two galleries.

Art-O-Mat,Vending Machine of small art objects.

Detail of the famous Iraqi dollar :-D

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A trip to

SAVANNAH 88

In the contractual arrangements it was expected periodically a return flight for my partner that was living and working in Italy, and a few days off for me.

The first thing we did upon her arrival was to rent a car in one of the offices on the first floor of the airport of Greensboro, pompously named Piedmont Triad International Airport. I do not remember what company we have chosen, but in a delirium of omnipotence we evaluated the top, a Buick LeSabre 2002 (700 $ a week).

After analyzing the interior, kind of antisocial living room because it consists of two armchairs and a sofa behind their backs, with XM satellite radio, and all the options, we decided it would be the mobile flat we were looking for wandering that week.

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Buick LeSabre 2002. How confortable was this car!

Anecdote: I do not have a driver’s license, Alberta had never driven an American car. After10 minutes we were still in the parking lot because she did not understand how to turn it on.

Turned the key, nothing happened. We also had the suspicion that it was “broken”. Fortunately a brave and giant dude passed near us and explained how to; we understand the mechanism and headed towards my house.

We decided to go to Savannah on the advice of a colleague of mine, a warehouseman.The last day of work before my holiday he told me, while we were smoking a cigarette in the garden: “It’s a beautiful place, if you go with your woman, but better to be alone, he he he!”. From his look I realized that he was not lying, and I readily sensed his fugues there, unbeknownst to his wife, but I’m not allowed to ask ( a new use of “do not ask, do not tell”) so I thanked him and after watching a few photos and read the local tourist sites seemed to us a good idea. Done Deal.To reach Savannah had to cross three states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia (although the stretch in the latter is minimal).

Among the various possibilities we chose to go to Charlotte and then Columbia, as you can see in the map on the side, and as my colleague suggested. The road through Florence is shorter, but I was already gone several times to Asheboro and Rockingham, and above all, after months and months I lived at the beginning of Stanley Rd and kept seeing the half km that 90

connects it to Highway 40, I would see what’s on the other side. After drinking a coffee and checked for the last time if we had remembered everything we could possibly need, we started early, at 7:30.

Americans do not want to ever running out of power.

Well, the other side of Stanley Rd there is only what you see above by 20 km.

Not exactly a stunning panorama; a narrow and winding road, flanked by high-voltage cables, which runs through a forest. I had not lost anything particularly cool down there during my stay.

Hunger. “Our” Buick was the first right.

We spotted a Waffle House before entering the Highway 85, and made our first stop.

We eaten of course waffles filled with various honeys and jams, and drunk orange juice.

Even just the idea of having to travel for eight hours actually makes you hungry.

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We smoked a cigarette while checking the itinerary on the map, and then we went inside in the car again.We put on the satellite radio, jam bands channel, and immediately Umphrey’s McGee, moe., Phish and the like have been the soundtrack for the first boring leg of the journey, the 60/70 miles of highway up to Charlotte.

We hated so much these bloody school Cursed! buses, slow, which at that time were very abuzz bringing greenhorns around schools in Greensboro and Charlotte. I could not help but notice that they are the same color of the Waffle House.

Charlotte, NC.

Just over an hour later, at a constant speed of 60 miles we arrived at Charlotte. Constant speed in the literal sense of the term: the US cars have a button on the steering wheel that keeps the car to the current speed, you can also remove feet from brakes and accelerator and limit yourself to turn the steering wheel. It is very useful because often the highways are pretty much mega-straight for tens of miles, there is no need to vary the speed, and then the others pressed the button as well. In North Carolina the police are particularly fierce, so if there is a limit of 60 mph, you should go 60 or you face a rough arrest.

The last notation is not a complaint against the excessive hardness of the road of N. Carolina: it’s a brutal confrontation with what we found later. After turning around Charlotte, and continued on Highway 77, at one point we saw the sign “Welcome to South Carolina.” We were in the middle lane (there are 5 in that stretch), and as soon as we have passed the sign, with various engine rumbles began to pass us to ridiculous speeds in all other lanes, and those behind our car were honking!

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So it was that we learned road police in South Carolina is NOT inflexible.This thing was nice to us: the Buick runs fast, we recovered nearly two hours on the scheduled travel time.

A couple of times we saw crashed car on the side of the road, it is the famous phenomenon of the mysterious road exiting.The car is always resting on the guard-rail, perfectly parallel to the axis of the road. Or in a gutter at the side of the highway.You see the scene, there are no skid marks, everything seems a bit surreal.The reason is simple: there are straight sections that can last for two or three miles, then a very large curve, then another infinite straight part. After a while, without even having to shift gears or press the pedals, add to this maybe a few drinks in; one falls asleep at the wheel and slowly moves from the path and out of the way, to wake up to the sound of scrap metal the cars emits when rubbing on the guardrail (to the mechanic’s delight). If there is a small ditch, it knocks down a bit of wayside and then ends up inside.

Speedway Blvd.

Speedway Blvd, the bridge.

I don’t have other notations on this state, in fact we crossed it all at breakneck speed, and the landscape is nothing really different from that of the NC. The matter began to get interesting when we arrived at the Speedway Blvd. where you leave the South Carolina and enter Georgia. Between us and Savannah there was only this long bridge, which crosses two branches of the river and the ground in the middle in one shot. But we did not go into the center to find a hotel, we driven around the town and we went to the beach area, the Wilmington and Tybee islands, mainly.

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Here’s three pics to give you the right climate and panorama:

Right out of Savannah. Cute tour bus full of overheated tourists.

Swag Toyota. I was impressed by the sobriety of lights and color.

“Where did I already have seen this road?”

Behold, here we shouted in unison “OUT RUN!!!”.

We would have liked it if the Buick had been convertible, and then we would have just wondered why we didn’t see the large pixels like in the ancient arcade racing videogame.

A total deja-vu, because after this part the road crosses the lagoon (unfortunately I do not have a photo) just like in the video game, to reach the various islands.

I came to suspect that it is not a random fact, one of the tracks was actually a brief reconstruction of this road near Savannah.

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Finally a break in the freash beach.

Once in Tybee Island after hours of traveling we looked for a tree, behind a tourist village house and we parked under there.

Within this, at the return in car, before the air conditioning had prevailed we would have been roasted to death.

Almost total absence of clouds, a sun that drilled hard although it was not yet summer. The area resembles the pine forest of Jesolo, apart there are palm trees instead of pine trees, as seen from the top right of the picture above.

Because the wind slightly less impetuous than a wind tunnel, the beach, and sometimes the sky, were crossed by a lot of kite surfers. Every now and then they jumped out of the water like huge swallow fishes.

Kite surfer that takes a running start and then flex his muscles and hover in the air.

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When we have had enough of getting a tan at the beach and watching these unleashed crazy guys, we returned to Savannah. We begun to feel the trip tiredness, and we wanted to find the room soon, to have time to pull out the stuff from suitcase, search for information on the most interesting places to visit and then calmly get a ride and dinner out.

We found a room at the Quality Inn, a cross between motel and hotel. Very expensive, for two nights - if I remember well - we spent $ 250, but it had the advantage of a perfect position, next to the Savannah River just where start all the cool shops, boats to do sightseeing, best evening / night clubs and restaurants. The room was Man in his shelter. not bad, supercharged, a nice well stocked mini bar. Above I have been photographed when I smelled a smell that came through the bedroom door and exclaimed: “Fish fried... what do you think if we anticipate dinner?”

Quality Inn’s courtyard.

This is the courtyard of that hotel. Behind there is a little factory that gives the whole the aspect of American industrial city, Cleveland kind, but very clean, no rust or rot, the smokestacks at daylight seemed made of silver. It is one of the pictures of this trip that I used in the booklet of 96

my EP The Wanderer. After we cruised for a while in the city, and spent a few time in the hotel reading brochures and cards of events gathered around, we went out for dinner.There are dozens of restaurants on the riverside. The Savannah River at night is actually a glance. Aside from the big size, the lights make it quite romantic, like the Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice.

Romantic Savannah River.

This is the road bordering that runs behind an area full of restaurants overlooking the river.

Since the rest of the city is about 7 or 8 yards above the level of the waterfront, and the height difference in risolved horizontally within 20 yards, this is the level at half height, that gives access to the first floor (the ground floor is reached only by the river ) and above you can see the steps leading to the second storey, which are at the same level of the rest of the city.

Alley behind the riverfront.

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“I had already booked the tour and I am not giving up, damn it!”

The next day, surprisingly, rain intermittently; above the melancholy tourist bus image with a single, stubborn tourist who defied Jupiter Pluit.

I imagined him, alone on the bus, every now and then to exclaim, defiantly: “HA!”.

Of course I took it well, apart from the initial half hour of blasphemies that I couldn’t spare to those damned weather conditions.

But when started the intervals I mollified.

As you can see in the picture alongside, that proud 210 lbs big belly having a shiny, pleasure-loving and hilarious facial expression.

That one behind me was my favorite restaurant, the Dockside Seafood, where fried fishes triumphed.

It was also ok to stop for a beer outside, watching the slow procession of tourists and at the same time the other one by the boats in Savannah River, as two independent streams but strangely synchronous and, together, hypnotic.

The most remarkable thing is the shops The great Dockside Seafood. of the waterfront overlooking the green and the clovers, unleashed references to Ireland are continuous and even cheeky, of course there are also many Irish pubs. In the rest of the city this doesn’t happen, but as soon as you get close to the river you know you’re in Little Ireland.This fact didn’t disturb me at all, far from it.

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Tobacco, what are you?

The one above is not a tobacconist, is a paradise for smokers; I came in, I couldn’t quit anymore! Bought various types of tobacco to take to Italy to my friends who smoked pipes or rolling papers (I as well now, while at the time I smoked Camel), but there were also cylums and bongs of every shape and size. Please note the ABSOLUTELY identical pose in the two pictures; in that on the other page I’m perhaps even more fat.

But at least up here I’m smiling.

One thing that impressed me a lot along the river are these three figures that peek out from the roof, see left photo.

I could not know the reason of their presence, but they are in wrought iron and they sure are not a gimmick, there isn’t a logo, a brand. I liked to imagine that The three mysterious men in black. they were three examples of thousands fake figures the inhabitants of Savannah put on roofs centuries ago, to frighten potential enemies who had attacked them from the river. Who knows if it’s true.

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Another glimpse showing the gap between the city and the riverfront.

That evening I wanted to drink some cocktails or whiskey, and we ended up in a bar near the small factory that could be seen from the back of my hotel; two hundred yards away.

It was not a classy bar, it looked more like a punk one. The bartender, a boy about 18, with blond/brown dreadlocks. Other very young boys were acting as waiters, with an alternative look as well.

Customers, a bit freak, not the usual tourists, they were people who drink a series of whiskey and laugh loud at the tables, in the dim light: the internal lighting was deliberately low, like the ones above the more secluded couches at the disco.

After having a couple of drinks, at some point we note that in a corner of the

Old Style tourist boat.

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room two guys are taking away the sheets from a structure that appeared to be (and then turned out to be for real) a drum set with two discrete amplifiers to the sides. One sits behind it and begins to lazily play it, another plugs and unplugs cables among pedals, mixer and speakers, and I hear them say: “Where’s that asshole?” “I don’t know, his boat is docked”.

And they continue to pointless playing, they lack the guitarist.

Then, with a quick step, guitarist arrives. He’s a beautiful boy, in flip-flops, dressed in white but dirty, he’s a fisherman still wearing the shirt and the pants used for fishing. He pulls out a guitar from behind a mobile, attacking cables too, apparently he’s the oldest of the three, but probably he’s 21. I and Alberta looked at each other, that sight meant: if they’re horrendous, three youngsters playing punk à la Blink 182, we finish the drink and we spin.

5 minutes after we had to recover with a bulldozer our two jaws that had fallen to the ground.

Thee played blues. Drummer, precise and dry, like a drum machine, bass player clear as well, but warm and mellow. The guitarist, a monster. He began to play songs by Steve Ray Vaughan, but further enriched than the original, and other stuff that I can not say whether additional cover or their tracks, but it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen.

An hour and a half of music with all the customers excited and clapping repeatedly their hands during innumerable fancy numbers by those three.

I swear, I never thought about going to a blues concert because it’s a genre that I do not like much, but... in this case I have not regretted not even for just a second to have seen it.Too bad that at the time the smartphone wasn’t created yet, to be able to shoot a video or at least record the audio.

This was the most exciting experience during that trip, I think it’s the right anecdote to close this fragment of the North Carolina Portraits (ok, here we were in Georgia, but frame it as one of the quick getaways in another state, and also, after all, I do what I want here).

Ready to restart.

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Anecdotes about

REIDSVILLE 102

In last chapter about to the trip to Savannah (GA), I referred to the police severity in North Carolina. Regarding to this, I’ll tell about three facts, one happened in Reidsville, the other two on Highway 29, the road that connects it to Greensboro, going from the “lighter” to the most spectacular.

During one of my first transfers to the US, one day me and Attilio are going to introduce us on the 29th from the north of Greensboro. The crossroad forms a small queue, and like he was sorted out from nothing a quite young men, I’d say about 25/28 years old, bearded like a hipster today, very thin, slow-moving, tired, with the aspect of one who has not eaten in last days and 103

lost almost every ounce of energy. In his hand, a piece of cardboard that read “No home no job, help me”. Yes, a homeless aged just after the teen, who knows if he ran away from home, or left with no family and no job, but he’s not a drug addict. It gives me the idea of ​​someone who is facing a life uphill and not by his fault.

He tries to approach the three cars in front, but no one pays attention, windows closed, not even a look at him. He is coming to us, when I see that he throws the piece of cardboard and look behind us.We look in the rearview mirror, a police car is coming.The boy is torn between running away or just ignore it. Attilio sees that I have a $ 10 note in my hand, and tells me “Be careful, it is forbidden to beg, and even give money to a beggar, in the USA”. Not that he didn’t want to help the others, but he was afraid my naive generosity instinct could lead into a day at the police station.

Meanwhile, the police came behind our car. I had the map of Greensboro opened on my legs because I acted as analog Tom Tom navigator. I had an idea: put the money in the middle of the map, I open the window and call the boy, out loud,“Hey, I’m sorry, are you from here?” He nods with his head “Can you help us? We got lost, we are Italians.” He approaches, show him the map bent a little like a V so that you do not see from behind, ask him “Where are we, here or here? Which way we have to go to Reidsville?” And pointed to the ten bucks. He leans on the map, his back to the police; and while pretending to tell us this and that, he quickly grabs the money and tells us that we are right, just turn left after the intersection. The green enlightens up, I thank him, he has a smile like those in toothpaste advertisings. We turn to the left, the police turn back towards downtown Greensboro. Mission accomplished.

I can not help thinking for a few minutes I had to stage a pantomime, invent a trick to be able to help one in need, and still I think this is an absurdity.

However this was, after all, a matter of two minutes of tension, as I announced this was the less spectacular fact, although it suggests a moral issue.

One year later we are in the PT Cruiser with Marius driving, I’m sitting near him and Claudio - the production manager in China - is sitting behind. After work we always return from Reidsville on the Highway 29, and we are chatting, joking, laughing, so our driver is slightly distracted. Suddenly it seems to be on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, red and blue rotating lights reflected in the cockpit and the windows, and immediately after we hear the police siren. They are behind, very close, and I see in the mirror that a policeman beckons to pull over. Marius obeys, slows down and goes to the edge of the road, in the emergency lane, stops and forgetting to be in the US, perhaps the stress of having to deal with the police for some reason, he opens the door to exit. Claudio and I were there turned to look and try to understand the reason for that still, we see the two policemen lean out of windows pistol in hand, and shout “STAY IN YOUR CAR !!!”. As bloody Italians we immediately fear and put us hidden behind the seats. Marius luckily has considerable reaction times, immediately closes the 104

door and sit down straight, looking straight, hands on the wheel. I and Claudio do the same, we sit normally, so they do not think that we are taking a rifle from under the seats.

They quit the car really angry, they’re two blonde guys very similar to Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, almost 7 feet tall, muscular, they could arrest us also with bare hands. They say, you two (me and Claudio) stay here and do not move. Pistols in hand they make Marius quit the car and bring him into their one. For a very long quarter of an hour we do not know anything, sitting in this car, and we begin to wonder what the hell they will be doing. Maybe they found something, some old offense in his personal database, but it seems impossible, he’s one of the most honest people in the world... maybe they have seen that he’s South African and suspect him of being an illegal immigrate... or they were just wondering: what are doing two Italians and a South African in a car between Reidsville and Greensboro? But above all, what’s the violation?

We were in speed limits, no reckless driving, no broken lights (we were on a PT Cruiser just rented, it was not even dusted).

We are now in total paranoia, we do not know what to think, when they suddenly open the doors of the police car and a policeman with Marius, both laughing, come towards us. Our friend and colleague go back in the driving position, the cop tells him, please, rest assured that everything is fine. He greets us, and come back, we salute him and we turn to greet also the other policeman, who reciprocates with a smirk. They start, surpass us and we see them disappear over the horizon at full speed.

Marius turns on the car, starts and while we go he explains all. The ground for detention is: we were going to 61 mph with the limit of 60, and there I and Claudio said in chorus, “Shit, what crime, serious stuff eh!!!” Oh yes, even 60,1 mph is an infringement for Greensboro parameters. If you go to 80, they probably shoot you down with a bazooka. However the two policemen have gone from angry to friendly attitude because he told him why he was there, but starting from the contact he had with the Filcas while he was still in Cape Town.

The two policemen were intrigued, because they had never met a South African, seen only on TV. He hooked them for ten minutes telling them about the magnificence of the place, amusing anecdotes, and they were all ears, made a hundred questions, and finally one said to him, now in confidence: “Look, we take care of the fine, you have to introduce yourself to pay within three months after which there is the prescription. But if you go to Italy and come back in four months, the issue resolves itself, we will send a notice to the apartment where you said it’s your accommodation, the landlord is obliged to reply that you no longer live there, and checking you’re no more in the USA because there is a track that you took a plane to Italy, freezes any further judicial action”.

To celebrate the narrow escape, we went to have a shot at the Green Valley Grill.

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The third event involving a police action occurred in Reidsville. It was a friday, which in America is payday (they pay the salary weekly). Usually the money is delivered at the end of morning session, so it often happens that in the afternoon the company gets almost empty because many ask an half day-off to run and spend the money. Americans are not great savers.

In fact, into the warehouse there were only the people with big debts. In addition, for various reasons (foreigner employees back home bonuses - but not for me -, business trips, tours to sell paper bags and stock) in the creative / management side of the company there were only the three graphic designers (I, Penny and Susan), the secretary and some employees.

Well, suddenly we hear a helicopter noise, and engine sounds as if it was Indianapolis. We look to the company that was across the street and see the helicopter parking on the roof. Meanwhile the roar of engines stops. I go out to dodge the trees that are in between, and I see several police cars parked in front of that company. Other colleagues come to see and we more or less understand what happened.

Must have committed some offense, 99 out of 100 is for unpaid taxes, we deduced. Practically they arrived unexpectedly, without even using the sirens, they surrounded all outputs including the roof where someone could go to hide, and began to question everyone inside the firm, leaving out one at a time employees that had ended their verifications. Evidently they were afraid that summoning them to the police station could cause hiding or destroying evidences.When it was 6:00 PM and we went home, there were still cars of employees and all those by the leaders parked, they went on til night for sure.

The following monday the firm was closed, without even a car parked outside. I worked at Filcas for another 6 months before returning to Italy, but the company has not shown signs of life. I never understood exactly what had happened, but certainly dozens of employees have lost their jobs because of the adventures of the bosses. For heaven’s sake, I do not say that it would be fair to let them evade taxes, so to save the salary of employees, but it sure did not do a favor to the already almost ghost town Reidsville.

I always suspected that she had been tipped off by some mafia that had not received protection money from the company, but they are only allegations, unsupported by facts. Among other things I never heard about mobster protection money practice when in NC, I may have shifted in that case too much of what is sadly an Italian tradition.

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Let’s close this part about the detective genre, and pass to the weather. On thursday before going to Savannah Alberta picked me up after work, and we headed to Greensboro.We were telling each other how it has been my day’s work and her strolls around the NC, listening to the radio at high volume, when we realize that trees, bushes and even traffic lights (which in the US are often hung from cables stretched across the road, instead of being on top of a pole like in Italy) are a bit too fluttering.

There is a strong wind outside because I feel that the car itself is tossed to the sides, or slows down and speeds up in a suspicious way, but we don’t have time to even think that it could be a simple storm, we suddenly understand as I turn my head and behind us, at a distance of about 10 miles I see there is a huge tornado, the famous twister, who is twisting and rotating clouds at a speed you’d expect only from Tex Avery cartoons. plus it’s not like any of our tornadoes, it is as wide as it is high, even from a distance is scary.

Alberta launches a “Damn, let’s hope it’s not coming here!”, and indeed still looked still, but I remembered that usually hurricanes and cyclones come down from the north, and we were just going from north to south, and after the two minutes in which we exchange these words I have another look back and I see it twice the size, it’s approaching at high speed, seems to me in two minutes or less we have it over.

We were in an area where you can not get out, and even if he could, where to hide?

Behind one of the wooden houses on the outskirts of Greensboro? Those fly away like kites when a tornado passes over.

We are almost at the exit of US-29 Bus and now the trees are dancing the samba as if they are made of rubber, the same wind push us to go beetween the embankment of the joint and the guardrail, we pass under the bridge through the grass, park on the opposite side of the embankment, the “repaired” side, and we start to see coming small trees, street signs, pieces of sheet metal, unidentifiable objects, all flying like they’re made of cardboard, but from behind the embankment they don’t hit us. I think we’re screwed, a look of Alberta is eloquent, same thought. By sheer luck it doesn’t go over the road, but half a mile away.

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The impressive thing is the noise, it seems the scream of Godzilla, a voice of giant animal roaring two octaves below the tone of the lion, or like a thunder that never ends ... I believe is the sum of the power of the wind and the noise of the objects that drags.

The car dance and jump, first in front, then behind, also slowly turns slipping on the grass, and then that damned bastard walk away and we heave a sigh of relief. We stay there another ten minutes, because it could have slowed down or change his trajectory and we enter it again.

Let’s quit also the dramas, I would close this series of anecdotes talking about something light: The Green’s, who was (it’s closed in 2012, because of the recession) on Highway 29. topographically speaking it was a restaurant in Greensboro, but honestly I have always perceived as an object in the middle, because having behind only the woods, not even one home.

It was an oyster bar, with an adjoining concert hall.

The dining room was a huge bar counter shaped as an L, regularly full of people and half of them had the cowboy hat on their head, as my Texan neighbor in Greensboro. We asked the dish with whole raw oysters, shell and all, in the usual bed of ice, and ate without even touching the dip (bowls with deadly sauces, real caloric bombs able to disrupt any liver in the long term) .

The other, the natives, wanted the oysters without shell and boiled, which is already disgusting because they seemed, excuse my frankness, huge boogers; and of course they soaked them in the dip until - most likely - no longer felt the oyster flavor but only that of the dressing.

We perceive this as a gesture of great barbarity, but being the redneck people not really accommodating (understatement) and generally provided at least with a rifle in the pickup and a gun in their pocket, and bikers are alike, we were careful not to comment on this while we were in the room.

Of course it was not just a site where to eat oysters, they also did the usual rib; and soups, but I’ve never seen any108

Classic customer of Green’s.

One of the “tiny” pick-up you could find parked in front of Green’s. N.B. Marius is nearly 6.5 ft tall.

one eat one. They also had decent wines, and of course a cornucopia of beers. One evening after dinner they were likely to begin with live shows in the side room of the restaurant, and approached a type similar to the other biker page down, but this was a redneck, with his fine cowboy hat, boots and even pants with fringes.

It seemed a background actor from Blazing Saddles

by Mel Brooks.

All of us three tried to understand what he was saying, but only Marius was able to figure out that the guy was going to play and wanted us to go and be his audience.

We reassured him, okay, now we finish eating and then we come across and see you, we promise!

* IT’S - but, hey, that’s a redneck place!

He started the show, and started playing the violin in F and singing in F #, and he never stopped being out of tune by a semitone. Well... it’s not true. I can not vouch for the rest of the concert: we ran away, terrified to listen to the rest.

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Raleigh and Cary 110

The building above is the new North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, opened in April 2000, and the skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex that can be glimpsed through the windows of that sort of apse confirms it. It is not only a museum. Interactive rooms inside based on web technologies, a small high-definition cinema with 256 seats and a virtual classroom that still brings in contact teachers and students from across the US; continues to produce innovation and create new projects, but of course here I refer to what I found in spring 2005, this book must be a report of the North Carolina as it was in those years.

But a contemporary data must be given: it’s one of the most visited museums in the US, the most crowded in the south-east: more than ten million people visited it from 2000 to 2016.

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Let’s follow a chronological order, starting from the travel plan. To get to Raleigh we basically made again the first part of the journey to Wilmington. The only difference: we started from my apartment in Stanley Rd instead of the B&B of North Park Dr. Since this time we weren’t leaving very early, we avoided to stop in Burlington, Chapel Hill or Durham and it has done a whole pulled up to our destination, in fear of wasting the whole morning. We saw Cary on our way back in the early afternoon.

Apart from the remarkable museum that I mentioned before, in Raleigh I was immediately reassured, just got off the car and looked at the tree we had in front: if you go around the USA, you will never remain without the squirrels.

After a while you begin to think that they are billions, because not only they’re everywhere, they move in flocks. They are worse than the Italian emigrants. But these squirrels were much larger than those of Greensboro or New York, with a huge long tail, and with the same arrogant and spiteful attitude of those damned rodents that woke me up at 4 am running on the roof of John’s B&B. Having made these considerations, we began to walk around and as announced in the incipit of this chapter we went at the Natural Science Museum, where we had a look to everything, especially the Jurassic Park area.

During the day we passed also near the North Carolina Museum of History (on the right), but we didn’t feel like to see another museum.

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Confederates monument

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Just before we look for a restaurant we found ourselves in this vintage car exhibition. We bypassed between these still working museum pieces, and we noticed that among the proud exhibitors the most popular tattoos were the swastika and German crosses. Nostalgic across the board, from the garage to the political creed. The cars were almost all well repaired, hyper-cured, spotless as if they were just sorted out of the factory, and curiously the 30’s seemed the most “fresh”, despite the more old-fashioned design.

Some were on, with the hood up, like the black car with the blue flame in the center; because the owner was proudly demonstrating to an exhibition colleague (rivalry) or occasional curious visitors (pure exhibitionism) that his scrap metal is still roaring. A patriarchal-dominated show, we only saw two females proprietaries of 2 cars, the rest, all dudes. It is easy to notice the various crews, grouped by the passions to a particular automobile age.

Those into 30’s do not talk with those into 50’s, like the poor communication within different currents of a political party.

After looking every single car of the rally, because they actually were all really beautiful, and by virtue of the long walk we had already done before, appetite arrived.

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Once analyzed the map of Raleigh with marked restaurants, we have identified one nearby, a Mexican half a mile away. Reached in less than no time, we ordered a seafood paella and two beers. To kill time I demanded a giant margarita, and - not afraid at all - the waiter went away and after two minutes he took my drink, slightly smaller than the titanic one by TGI Friday’s.

Alberta took another cocktail but conventional size, being the driver has made a choice of sobriety. Of course, I was happy, I sucked this margarita with three straws and I proposed to go directly to Cary after lunch, because Raleigh resembles too much Greensboro (and Charlotte, though the latter has some bubbly situations as I’ll tell in the near chapter). In addition, urban or not, I had the impression that the old-growth auto parade was the best we could expect, according also to the ride in downtown we had done that morning.

My table companion did not seem discordant, mostly because she was busy with eating shrimp from the paella, which had arrived in the middle of my schedule for the afternoon. I immediately took from the pan half paella to my dish and I attacked it, leaving the chat as well.

Good idea, it was very good.

In fact, the discussion was already closed, when one proposes and the other says nothing it means that there are no objections.We made the picture of the next page, and we left for Cary.

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This part is not very joyful, but everything is orderly, geometric, a little cold.

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Cary is ten miles far from Raleigh, we didn’t have the time to look at the panorama between them because we were already arrived. It is full of charming houses like this, in fact we watched them while trying to figure out what was interesting and where it was, with the usual map of commercial activities.

Unfortunately, in hindsight, I have not seen nor reminded the Koka Booth, natural amphitheater where BĂŠla Fleck & the Flecktones had played time before, and interesting also as unique structure for technical solutions, the favorable local conditions and especially the acoustics. I could not go there because there was no one interested, aside Marius but he had to leave in the morning after the concert at 4:00, so he did not feel like. I would have liked at least to see it, and who knows, have had the good fortune that afternoon someone interesting was in concert. But it was not in my destiny.

So we continue to turn on patrol, now abandoned the map we go at random, and just when we were hardly likely to make a u-turn and go home, we had the wish to have a snack, sweet stuff, a cappuccino with two small cakes.

Koka Booth.

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We begin to look for the place, crossing the length and breadth of Cary, we pass even for the Amtrak station (see photo above), we see nice shops, elegant bars, but not our goal. There is a strange contrast with the fact that we would have liked to live in three-quarters of the houses that we saw around, but we could not find a winning pastry.

At one point we see a sign: “Blue Moon�. In Lido di Venezia it is a part of the homonymous beach, so we walked into the parking lot for a Pavlovian reflex, something that triggered in our Venetian brains a sense of familiarity. We were heading into the pastry bar, but I noticed the inscription Russian Art in a building on the left, and we go to see.

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Russian Art Gallery, in fact, but it is closed, although there is a sign that reads OPEN. There is little to do, it’s dark inside. While we are cursing jokingly “Damned Soviets!�, our eyes fall on another sign hanging on the door. I took a photo because it exudes a genuine enthusiasm, to candor limit. The pride of these Russian gallery owners presenting their fellow painter (known at home but not so much abroad) to the people of Cary, which may take the opportunity to follow a series of three lessons, three hours each one, with the master, and they do not need to know the Russian, the lessons will be held in English! ... Because if he had made them in Russian, would remain definitely no followers.

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I made the photo on the left it as we climbed the first floor of the art center, culture and costume / jewelry / gift items. Panache, the shop that you see behind the statue, gives an idea of​​ the kind of items for sale: jewelry not too exorbitant, luxurious frames, shouting, skirts shirts dresses in silk. We have seen them all, in this climate between fabulous and crazy (there were kitsch peaks, and not exactly the sublime ones).

From above we saw that the owners arrived and opened the Russian gallery, so we went down again to watch it. Almost all Impressionists, some abstractionist, a pair of hyper-realists. The paintings were so many, and all crammed like a warehouse, but everything appeared readable, though the whole was cacophonous. I could not take pictures inside because there was plainly written they would not allow it. They tried to sell us something, but we fancily wiggled and disappeared while thanking them for their hospitality.

The quadrilateral on the corner of W. Chaltham St and S. Academy St was a trading center for... people who do not like the institutional malls. There was a shop on the other side of the Blue Moon over the white building with the Russian tunnel, but there was no hope of finding in the trendy outfits: jeans with crazy inserts, or already torn as it is used today, elegant women dresses with daring lace, t-shirt designs with absurd or enigmatic thoughts of crazy intellectuals (they didn’t miss an acknowledged from Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry,“the work of art is a stuffed crocodile.” and under a crocodile similar to that of Lacoste) and strange shoes, assaulted by tourists and native alternatives.

These came already dressed with western bandit hats, raincoats Matrix-style, ponchos, boots or All-Stars repainted by them, in graffiti style with acrylics maybe bought at a designers stationery that was not far from the boutiques, where I had taken the glitters with bizarre reflections that I would use for Filcas handbags.

In short we bought a bit of things in various shops, to us or to give them as gift to friends and relatives, then we went back to the Blue Moon, which by truth is called “Once in a Blue Moon” but the first part of the text is written so small (on purpose) you keep only the rest impressed.

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Another mansion in Desperate Housewives style.

The interior is as you can imagine. The room with the pastry counter, where is the hasty people who consume up and runs away, has soberly yellow walls, some vintage advertising posters (especially Coca Cola) hanging at the walls. But it is not very sober the refrigerator on the left, where we note that the handle is a plastic hand in comics style. I liked the bottle trapped inside the moon that you see above the counter on the right, generally all benchtop tools had unusual shapes and bright colors.

You pour the various citrus juices yourself, directly from siphons that reminded me of the Daleks, inside the room for clients who are camping at the tables (like us).This room however has blue walls with paintings and plaster coagulated and repainted with dreamlike themes, back there you can see a festive caravan of fruits on a hill that seems made of pistachio ice cream.

The moon is another plaster worked in low relief. The stars, you do not see from the photo, reflect a lot, increasing the fairytale effect. It looks like the playroom of an asylum... for adults.

And we liked, after that vortex of merchandising/fashion/art, to camp for an hour at that table where you see our white handbag. They had a lot of interesting cakes, we took a slice for each type and eaten them all while regarding our purchasing and reading the newspaper of Cary, who continued to reiterate the general impression: elegant city, with an attitude of originality, and, above all, people rather sleek, which for me is a compliment. Winston-Salem is also very artistic, but the architecture is the usual, similar to Greensboro, Charlotte, Raleigh, and the artists and intellectuals who live there are more “free range�. I loved Winston-Salem, but to live in and savor the triad home/people/city I definitely would come here.

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... And a few nights to go to Cary Theater, see a movie, a concert or some stand-up comedian.

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Charlotte 126

Charlotte is similar to Raleigh, the capital of the NC, but has an extension and population are twice (450,000 people vs. 900,000); and more or less the same ratio between the two metropolitan areas (1.2 million vs. 2.5 million), reflecting the US homogeneous development model.

Charlotte, however, has a distinctive feature: the higher rate of growth and its greater frenzy in the connective tissue of society. In short, during the two adjacent trips to Raleigh/Cary and Charlotte I realized that in the latter there was more life.

You get it immediately by the greater traffic density, in Raleigh we have often walked along a whole street without a single car passed. Charlotte is more like Naples, where it’s rare to find an alley where do not pass at least two street urchins riding a motorbike.

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This building with its overt phallic exuberance, 871 ft tall, is the Bank of America Corporate Center. Dominates the center of uptown Charlotte and is the first you see when you’re getting near the city. The Federal Aviation Administration had accused them of creating disturbances with such a giant to a number of flights to and from the Charlotte airport. It turned out that they changed the routes and flight procedures, ha ha ha! There is no hope in trying to attack the Bank of America. However this is the first picture that came to my mind to take (at the time I took pictures only when I assumed they were fundamental, or I absolutely needed to grab an image of something that I later needed for my illustrations and graphics), and have been successful in creating the signal & strong effect they were looking for: be impossible not to notice them, frighten the poor mortals!

The second picture I did is this on the right. From a distance I thought it was a museum in Charlotte dedicated to Dadaism and Surrealism, or perhaps a modern art gallery where to find follies and its accompanying ideas, but I was wrong.

It’s one of the pizzerias of Brixx’s restaurant chain, which proudly boasts of making pizza with wood oven. ( “Wood fired pizza”). Among other things, each location has a different design, and no one of the others approaches this indefinable architectural dementia product.

It was still mid afternoon, otherwise we would also gladly went to dine in a place like this...

After a little walk in the neighborhood we could not resist, we went back and had a beer at the bar inside. And oh well, we also ate a chicken salad in two. I confess.

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This is the fish fountain in front of the New Gallery of Modern Art, within the Green, the uptown Charlotte urban park.The weather was cloudy, he had also rained for a few minutes, the fountain was not working, in short, there were all the premises to create a melancholy picture.

In summer is a destination for lively children playing there and actually make a shower.

It’s the work of a public art designers from Denver, Carolyn Braaksma, commissioned by Wachovia.

Other public art, but this time it’s one from Italy, a piece of the series Il Grande Disco by Arnaldo Pomodoro, which is in the Bank of America Plaza (and you thought?) On the side of Tryon St, installed in October of 1974.

2 discs of the same series can be found in Milan, one in the square Piazza Filippo Meda (from 2006 to 2010, during the renovation of that place it was moved temporarily to Lanza, in front of the Piccolo Teatro Brera) and the other in front of the Teatro Strehler. There is also one at the Campus of the University of Chicago, and another in the Donald Kendall Sculpture Gardens, which are located at the headquarters of Pepsi (Purchase, New York).

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In the fountain behind the bank I found a duck doing acrobatics like a synchronized swimmer. He was not afraid of me approaching to take the picture, he continued to plunge, to reappear a few feet far, jump ashore, flutter above the fountain and let himself slide down as if he was on the slide of a water park. Occasionally, for the satisfaction of his deeds, I guess, he let himself go to deafening quacks. I haven’t seen other ducks, so I assume it was the usual bastard brood, the contrarian, the one that goes and make a bath with impunity in uptown, “in your face, humans!�

On the left we are in the little park with tables and umbrella at the corner of College and SE 3rd St, with the titanic Hilton before, and the unfailing fountain. 5 minutes after this shot, the duck came running - not flying - and dipped even here.

Palmiped hooliganism.

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What I have shown doesn’t mean Charlotte is an enormous uptown; as soon as you move away from the center you find scenarios like the one above. Which, anyway, especially with the sunset light, has also its own charm, but certainly not that of opulence.The only car parked increases this sense of lacking sunshine. Going home in the evening after work must not be a joy for those who live there, it’s clear why the bars are filled from 6:00 PM to lunchtime, much better than going to a place like this and collapsing into the couch with a six pack in their hand in front of the TV. As we walk around now tired, lacking mental clarity about targets and return times, it is almost time for dinner now, this truck fire department took my attention. First of all the graphical solution to put “4” in the midst of “ENGINE” resulting in a ENGFOURINE that means nothing.

But you should hear the mess of sirens and lights which is capable of firing this machine to understand my shock (and jerk, when he suddenly turned on the audiovisual arsenal).

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I have seen this in a night bar that would open a few hours later. I was seriously tempted to go for a ride, promptly dissuaded by Alberta: she argued that surely I would have hurt me, even though it was puffed and there was a mattress around the bull. I thought, calm, maybe I’m under euphoria by some beer we drunk along the way, so I do not realize that at third jolt I would fly away spinning like a boomerang, and then smash myself on the bar counter, which is out of the picture on the left. Since it’s almost 20:00 PM, and we want to eat something at Red Lobster in Greensboro, we decided that the trip is over, and we move to look for the car. Luckily I marked the position with an X on the map, otherwise we would have found it who knows when.

Before we leave, and after seeing periodically during the whole day the Bank of America Corporate Center, I decided to make him the last photo with a photobombing Hearst Tower. I’d had enough of that concrete blowhard.

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Stories Ritorno about in

oddities Italia 134

In the US, as many suspect, it is full of crazy people. There is a mixture of circumstances, events, forces, traditions, instincts, pressures which fosters this incessant production of loonies. I, who have always been attracted by madness, and always loved the most demented musicians, the Dadaists, writers such as Sanguineti or Queneau, I immediately prodded.This chapter is opposed to anecdotes about Reidsville, all tied to facts such as justice, power of nature, sociability of bikers and rednecks, events that happen in practice.

But here the anecdotes concerning extreme situations, paradoxical, if not walking in territories where one didn’t think to set foot, even short bursts at the end. I start with a trio of African-American giantess. And then I try to investigate also less playful aspects of American culture.

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I can’t avoid to begin with the Chemistry Nightclub.

It all started one afternoon, we were drinking whiskey at a table of Natty Greene’s. For privacy, I alter the names: I - who cannot hide, nor want to-, Frank and Louis.

Louis, who has never been afraid to let us know about his homosexuality, because he understood immediately that we are people incapable of discriminatory thinking, tells us that he had heard of the club, and he would like to go and have a look, but he did not trust to go alone: you ​​ know that the southern states are not very friendly to homosexuals, he did not feel safe, then he asked us if we wanted to go with him. Goin out with people who are clearly straight made him feel safe.

Then he looked carefully at us and said, no, let’s say that is because we are three, instead of just me.

After having laughed a lot by understanding every nuance of the joke, I must say that the thing has puffed me, because it was like give me a certificate of foreigness to every homophobic instinct.

Even Frank smiled - I had not doubt about him - and so he had no problems to join the group.

Done deal, as we all knew ever since Louis opened his mouth.We knew each other well, we are curious people, we like to put us in unexpected situations. It was clear that we were going.

That saturday afternoon we exchange a few phone calls, they retrieve me (the usual jerk without a driver license, ahem) and we go to the Green Valley Grill, to see if there is someone and drink a couple of cocktails, eat something, then we jump in the car and head towards the place of perdition.

The Chemistry is a cuboid covered with mirrors (except the roof) without windows, dimly lit, in Spring Garden St, from the outside it looks like a bunker decorated by a queer. Indeed it is.

It was pitch-dark due to poor lighting.We park, and head towards the door. Louis ring the doorbell, a few seconds passes (we are in front of a video camera), then someone opens a tiny window in the door, like in prison.We only see his eyes. He greets us warmly, but asks us if there are only three of us. As it’s obvious, we all understand in a tenth of a second that these occasionally have one guy that ring the bell, and if they open without care, 20 other homophobes appear with spiked clubs. And we realize that it is no longer something playful.

It’s a tough time, because I understand the fear of those who are homosexual. But also that I’m in the midst of a group of socially hated people so I could be a victim myself of the violence from 136

others, only for my being among them. I smell this fear, it’s in the air, and it was also in Louis’ polite request to be accompanied, and at this point it had all the sense in the world. We give them the passports and we wait until they controll them. After half a minute, the guy opens, we quickly enter, he closes the door.

Entered, we turn left, we are in a dark little hallway, 9 ft long, with the reception in front. To the right of the reception, the entry to the premise.They give back the documents to us while taking note of the latest data, so we have been “filed”, in case of us wanting to create troubles. I don’t take it as they stolen my freedom, I’m thinking about how they lack it, at the point they must act as jailers to give access to a few hours of fun.

It’s not over, they want to have a chat before, and frankly at this point I expected it, the dialogue with the guests is the last test before trusting them.

We tell him exactly how is the story: I have a girlfriend, Frank was married twice, Louis is gay and we are his friends and we accompany him in a nightclub that he does not know, we don’t give a fuck.

Suddenly they are all convinced that we are quiet people, the two bouncers move away and invite us to enter.

One opens the door, move the curtain and there is an open space three times larger than it looked from the outside.Two pool tables on a mezzanine with staircase to the left, a ballroom in Saturday Night Fever style on the right side of the entrance, then at the end of the room always on the right side, a bar counter and high tables with chairs around.

Frank and I see that a group is leaving a pool table, we take it and go choose the cues. Louis plays as well, no way if he should make the snob. There were still few people, we came too early because of boredom, it was about half past nine.

We get to play, but we drink a couple of Jack Daniels in the meantime, so from young Paul Newmans we soon regress to the level where the ball goes into an hole every 2 minutes. The third game (we made two against one in turns, because who plays alone does double shots) arrived around 10:00 PM and suddenly I realize that we have 4 pissed lesbians at table side, who suspect us to play poorly on purpose to keep the table occupied and spite them. As I hear the complain I say that we are drunk and see the potholes doubled, we’re not evil, but the explanation does not appeased, they are brandishing the cues as foils, meaning “you know where I can put this”.

Fortunately the two on the other table are fed up and they go to have a drink, so we overcome the impasse. We miraculously end the game, while the 4 girls are making an indescribable mess with each other after only three shots, and we decide that now at this level of the evening we are unfit for play, better to delight in having a look around.

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Without a word, we put the cues in the rack, close the timer, we pay, then each one goes his own way. It is as if all the three suddenly wanted to live that story on a personal level, look, wander around, analyze, each following his sensitivity. I can only tell my own, even though it would be interesting to know the other two.

My dwarf bunny, Miele, just died the night before, I heard it from Alberta in the morning of that day.Who does not have an animal will find it ridiculous, but it was a pain that has haunted me all day long. I was at the bar watching the cocktail menu, when I came to think that anyone could die of the people I cared about in Italy, and I’d only be able to record the event. And I would have missed the last few days with that person. My eyes went wet, and the barman, stripped to the waist, with white collar and papillon, promptly handing me a tissue. I thank him, and suddenly I look around and I see everything.There is a coffee table-side with 5 women in overalls and physically similar to trucker, if not true truckers, with very short hair, laughing and joking; behind them, two bloodless lovers who look at each other for an hour, a bodybuilder in underpants dancing as if he had a jalapeno up the ass, then the other two men on table 40, from the institutionally straight aspect, very distinct, kissing each other, and in a table alongside two ruddy women laughing and touching hands, visibly drunk. It is as if each pair, or group, or individual had a different kind of character, in total contrast with the approval in the open world, and accepted by straight people, for example the parade of clones in Elm St...

While I think this, I see one of the clones, a dude that I had often seen, always surrounded by young girls in those bars, the real alpha male “ultimate female hooker�. There he is, trying to seduce men. At this point I have a better look, I see another who was a macho customer in the bar of the Californian guy, that is now a taco restaurant now, embraced with another guy. I realize that a dozen of those who make the big boy, and even with homophobic stance, around Greensboro are in there. Not that it bothers me, the act itself does not create me any ethical, moral or political issue. No. it ails me when one pretends to be someone else for convenience, opportunism, cowardice, or worse, inability to understand each other. In fact, going against himself to be accepted by the load of indifferent assholes who make the majority defaulting in society: what an aim.

During these considerations and the record of these facts I crossed the other two who wandered, and we exchanged the same impressions, all three had noticed everything. And the only one of us three feeling uncomfortable - apparently inexplicable fact - was Louis. Actually, instead, it made perfect sense.

Frank and I, apart from the bodyguards function impromptu, a task which we actually never had to fulfill, we were fascinated by an environment where we had never set foot, so he was thinking and considering the same of me and Frank. But Louis was suffering of an aspect indifferent to us: 138

there was no way to enter in those microcosms.

You could not start a conversation, simply having a chat with the lesbian truckers, or those of the pool, or the two bloodless. It was full of couples and small groups that made their own business, avoiding others. It was a kind of incommunicability fair, where the games had already been made before.The only approaches that I saw were those of the aforementioned bisexual who normally make the fake straight, among them. The others came in as pairs, and out as pairs, singles came out single, the group was on its own without any shit and came out untouched.

Then something happened that attracted all of the three’s attention. Indeed, the speaker announced the attraction of the evening, so we gathered in front of the dancefloor, glass in hand.

Then they turned off the light.

The dancefloor was stuck in a corner, and in one of the adjacent sides, near the intersection, there was a door. Always in the dark, total apart from blue LED light on the track that made all the nearest people fluorescent ghosts semifluorescenti, starts a song that I do not recognize, but it’s 50’s great orchestras music.Very slow style, suave, soft.

Slowly a blue and a white cones of light, to give brightness with the dominant blue, converge on the door, and comes out an African American woman very tall, high heels, in long dress, generously low-cut front and back, also this is blue, but not in prostitution way. She’s a trans, you understand it just because you know that in that place can be only that, and puts on stage five minutes of disconcerting femininity, without grotesque forcing, without exaggeration.The trick is light, apart from eyelashes. And she sings for real, I’m in front of the stage near her and I hear her voice over the miked one coming out from the speakers.

Suddenly all the considerations that I had done so far on the narrowness by the actors of this situation are overwhelmed by the event. I presume to believe that Frank and Louis have thought the same, at that time.

I keep looking at this figure, that seems to be guided by a director full of good taste and a choreographer with the grace of an orchid. And how beautifully she sings!, every note of the voice is perfectly carved in music. I felt that the entire room is watching, listening, it’s an event that transcends the ideological or social positions. She is a person with talent, and despite the plenty of talent shows, finding one is becoming increasingly difficult.

Then the music reveals that she is leaving, and the figure fairy leaves the stage retreating in the door from which she had emerged as the lights fade.

Suddenly the lights come back on, the singer in blue reappears from the door and thanks everyone, and as she approaches the edges of the track, many put banknotes in her cleavage.

It destroyed everything in two seconds, with the weapons of cheap lust and mirrored prostitution.

Returning home, and Louis had expected it, I told him “I won’t come with you to Chemistry anymore, and do not like if you go back there. But thank you for the wonderful evening, I am sincere”.

He understood and smiled.

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Now we are in the topic “tall black women” and continuing with another anecdote on the lines. This side is the classic setup that you found in the basement of StudioPLUS in Stanley Rd: on the left the washing machines, dryers on the right. Minimal, certainly, but really what you needed.

As mentioned before, in the far downtown, I think because of low prices, there was a predominance of African Americans, I’m not saying an Harlem in Greensboro, but had a lot of African American acquaintances. I was friendly with everyone because I had only one episode of making fun of me by blacks (that was funny, anyway), and two racist acts by white women, so I trusted more blacks, which never offended or attacked me.

One evening I was full of unwashed linen, because I stubbornly wanted to redo 4 series of handbags from SCRATCH, a whole week I was in overtime and also working at home in the evening to work on bags and after dinner I realized that I didn’t have anymore clean sockets, underwear and t-shirts.

I put down drafts, sketches, drawings and proofing, and finally I got back to thinking to myself, I collected a lot of linen, I put the sheets as well, and I headed to the ladder at the side of my apartment, and went down to the laundry.

I find this woman, only her, who lives three apartments ahead of mine, and I have always seen dressed in black, and always high heels, worn with naturalness, without clumsiness. She always looked sad but when she saw me, find out enough strength for a smile.

Anyone in my friends knows that this does not leave me indifferent. I liked the way he walked, alters, and watched her with a smile when she passed. We were greeted in the early days when she arrived, just after me, always winter 2005.

She has a luxurious body, but the face is edgy, sculpted like a male and this attracts me and rejects simultaneously. His body is perturbing, but his face repulses me, even if I do not find repellent, nor bad, in fact she’s a “peculiar”, a woman you don’t easily find around, I liked to look at her face. We are both washing the linen, sitting on the sink and waiting to dry it.

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We start talking, and the dialogue goes everywhere, like when raiding Barnes & Noble.

Simply put, she is an intelligent woman but also quite crazy.

I had a girlfriend in Italy, did not want to go with another, however many times I heard this woman was shooting a cross right in the centre and I just had to score the goal.

Since that time, everything happened with this woman, including finding her in my room (I had left the door ajar because of rapid buying something to eat at Citgo) to ask me to read some passages of the Divine Comedy (all about Inferno) in Italian. I was simultaneously anxious and full of myself. She then read the Italian in a surprising way, with little or no bad accent, but I had already established with my host Kwami that there are African Americans so connected with their African origins to be able to handle both the Anglophone and the plain one used in most of the rest of the world.

If you put under Ugandan eyes an Italian map, that person will read the names correctly as an Italian, a Portuguese, a Spanish.

Every now and then she was knocking my door because she understood that I would never court her. Within the “lend me [...], then if you need anything in the future, you also help me” lobby, we met several times. American women are very aggressive if they perceive that they do not attract the object of their desire, of course with some exceptions and special cases, but on average they are very reactive to an unsatisfactory response.I could not reject her because she fascinated me, but in any case when I’m with a person I don’t betray, so I could not, nor wanted to, fall into contradiction.

Although we often could meet at TGIF or while shopping in different supermarkets, and we spoke so often I didn’t care anymore to find arguments, as you do with people in confidence, there was always this tension on her side. She knew very well my situation, but it seemed impossible that I did not also realize that I was now one of them.

When I spoke of Italy she stared at me with a questioning look. “You live here since 2002! You speak shit English because you’re a lazybone “ (yes, true) “But every time you tell me something of your living I feel you’ve become one of us.”

In fact I’m in Italy again since 2005.

When I greeted Kwami before taking the flight for Italy, She was there and told me that she would never forget me, and me too about her, as evidenced by this double page.

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The Four Seasons was my perdition. For example, I bought these shoes there, I liked as hell, and I suffered when they gave lump sum for unraveling the upper and sole.

Here, however, there is the third giantess of the miniseries.

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The first time I went to the Four Seasons, I realized that inside there was everything, even Dillard (meaning even something I don’t really care about), but almost immediately, right from 2003. No coincidence I ended up with all of my colleagues and also with my companion at the time. I think I bought there three-quarters of my wardrobe. Not only that, I found clothes and shoes made in Italy... stuff that in Italy costs much more.

You enter the Four Seasons, and see everything everywhere. When you understand how it is structured, you already know that in the thousand shops there will be what you need. It is a trap like a spider web.

One day I enter the hunting and fishing department, like a snob animalist hating everything.

I look around, and after seeing rifles and fishing rods, I begin to think: that pair of pants are fucking cool. I take them in my hands, they hinge below the knee, you open the zip, remove the piece below, pants becomes short at knee. I do not say that I bought them; I’m still using them after 13 years.

Investigating that colossus I slowly discover they occupied every inch of collective imagination.

As you can see from the photo above, the space is huge, but the wicks abound and always have dazzling smiles. On the ground floor there is an Irish pub where you can perch in gaiety and tranquillity. Always the best beers. I went there dozens of times, I loved it.

It had another unique feature: no caption control used in monitors, because in the bar there was no noise, so you felt the audio.

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One day I was determined to remember a scent that some of my friends used 30 years ago, and I smelled around again. I convince Marius he needs to buy stuff, it works, I propose: let’s go to the Four Seasons and we split up, who has finished sends a text message to the other.

Instead we go around together, because we actually both want to go to a place filled with people and see what happens. We look at all the stores that sell what we do not want, we feel like not having ice creams and buy them, we talk with deficients because it is inevitable. Then I explain to my art director that scent had awakened some of my memories and I want to buy it, and told me to go to the first floor, in the Disneyland of Perfume. If it is not there, you can not find it anywhere.

It is a quadrilateral of a half mile x half mile, with inside perfumeries, bijotterie with perfumery, perfumeries perfumery. We enter and already my nose is waving and forgets the purpose. But I just have to think of the persons who used it on and I remember.

We check dozens of shops / stands, it is a huge open space with corridors created by the spaces between a perfume and another. I keep bouncing as they try to sell me all the perfumes that gives them more tips to the sale.

I walk followed or preceded by Marius, fortunately he also seeks a new scent, so do not bother me due to the quest boredom.

Suddenly, I go at the counter of the nth perfumery, and I find myself in front of the third African-American giantess of this triptych as a saleswoman. The first thing after the stature that strikes me (she’s very high and with high heels 18 cm) is his thyroid: has huge eyes. It’s as if she looked at me even with her head turned 90 degrees. She looks like a lil’ girl 7 ft tall. I go in awe, and I follow her in every evil path to make me buy the fragrances that will never be bought.

Marius sees the dynamics and disappears.

After a while the girl relaxes, and talk about random topics. Like the other two giantesses does not seem a virago, but a morbid person, in spite of the intimidating stature. She goes in the back of her stand, comes out and sprays me a perfume on my wrist, I do not even have to smell it, it is what I wanted. She gives me a bag filled with hundreds of samples of other scents.

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Relax, just a tad. Count the cats and see if you find them all.

This is the old Terra Blue, always, consistently, in Greensboro - 518 Elm Street If you look carefully it says “Cappuccino” and “MILK” at the top right. But it’s not a bar.

Ah, a review of this year on Terra Blue said: “... The cats are a nice touch, if you’re allergic to cats do not go in there ...”

We spent an hour in here, every time we entered, I mean, me and always different people. If you go to Greensboro, do not miss stores like this. Although you do not want to buy anything, you will always find something you couldn’t imagine it exists. Their philosophy is to stubbornly find objects and concepts outside of conventional mental paths. Walking around the shelves and exhibitors is an experience that is worth.

The hosts are helpful people, I am sure that these 11 years have not scratched them, as they have not moved an inch of belief even in me.

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One day we went to eat at a steak house near Reidsville, a lunch paid by the Chief, Massimo della Santa. Above it’s just me, Claudio, and in between his secretary at the time, leaning against Marius’ PT Cruiser. It is a photo of that very day, there were all employees of the top mid-level company departments. We all arrive in disorder, some people had to end things, someone else was free immediately, those who lost themselves on the road to the steak.. Around one o’clock we are all present, at last.The leader knows that there will be delays in any case, for or against him, that’s a matter of fact. Finally we are all sitting around this huge big table, where we are about 20 people. They take orders, I want a filet mignon with baked potatoes and a caesar salad, loud and clear. After a while they take the dishes, and I see my steak with dips, I mean, not one or two, about ten. They make me fold the stomach because buttered butters, cheeses, vinegars and a thousand other flavors make me lose the taste of eating the steak. I say to the waitress, “No thanks, can you can take them away?”

Started a hallucinating scuffle between me and the waitress, who is offended by the fact that I do not want the dips, and I that eventually scream “I’m Italian, I do not like dips, I just want a steak, these odors bother me, shit!”.

Eventually she resumed the dips, like I was a mentally retarded man, who does not understand anything, to please. Laughter and various “You’re crazy!” from across the enterprise. I smile, I won.

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Back to

Italy 148

In the summer of 2005, I stopped the relationship with New Filcas of America to return to Italy.

In that period they also closed the production department, outsourced entirely in China, and kept open only administrative / design, which in the following year was moved to High Point.

They had already proposed me in 2004 to remain permanently in the United States by a series of annual VISA, until I had citizenship within ten years. I would have been happy to stay up there, because it was a job that I handled it with ease and pleasure, I had the respect of colleagues and the owner, earned enough money. Plus in the last apartment I was beginning to weave social relations, that is the element that most makes you want to take root.

But simultaneously there were also some other antagonist factors.

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Like all true designers, I suffered from gastritis and esophagitis, the classic psychosomatic diseases due to stress. Annoying fact, but not that worrisome. During an examination towards the end of 2004 they found a rather extensive dysplasia in the esophagus. And as it often progresses as tumor, I began to consider the worst case; that is this happening for real and manage it in a country where having as cancer costs you one million dollars per year to cure yourself; while in Italy I could have counted on support from health care.

The strongest incentive, however, was another, unexpected to me. At that time I developed a strong idiosyncrasy to work in shared environments. Even just three or four people. An issue that disappeared (I verified it) years later, but at that moment I could concentrate only by working alone in a small room. Even a basement covered with a tent, but alone. Perhaps because I felt the weight of responsibility and I needed to not share it. In last year, in fact, I produced less, despite putting an effort equal to that of previous years, and it’s a typical sign that you’re not shooting fine anymore, even if you think to keep a dignified pace.

So I announced my intention to end the partnership, and it was a difficult moment, it seemed to make an affront to the owner, after he had always behaved properly with me (apart from some inevitable disagreement here and there, but nothing earth-shattering, it was just routine); I also had reasons to stay, as I mentioned on the previous page, and still I’m not convinced of having made a good choice.

Dysplasia disappeared three years later thanks to a ferocious diet without meat, coffee, tomato, cheese, alcohol and other foods that rekindled the disease. But I could not know at that time, I had heard that statistically with that disease 50% of the times you were fucked.

The last day I saw one at a time all employees walk to the office of the chief and get out heads down with the last salary and a small clearance in the pocket. Greeted each other, got into the car and disappeared on the horizon, almost no one stopped to comment, and almost all were waiting for their turn in a corner, or sitting in the car, alone.

Apart from the young blacks, who as usual were in crew mode, and cheerful, because basically have assumed to be loser anyway, whatever, it was not worth going also in paranoia. Sarcastic pragmatism by the Afro-American new blood.

At the end of the day I did one of my last sorties and I saw the parking lot almost empty, there were only the cars of remaining active departments, silence in the shed. The company where I had worked in recent years, as I knew it, suddenly no longer existed. I entered the hall, I had already seen it empty when it happened to work overtime on saturday or sunday, everything neat and clean as in every public holiday, but this time there was an awareness that all of this was not to be revived.

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Susan,me, Penny.

Susan, Marius, Penny.

I did not want to close this diary with a sad image, so I wanted to keep last page to the last brief note about last lunch with the complete design department.

The day before we decided to go eat during the break in a park in Reidsville, a kind of picnic, but by buying supplies at the last minute somewhere.

I was the one leaving the company, everyone else remained there, so at noon and a half, when we closed the morning’s work, they all agreed to grant me the honor of deciding the menu. I thought about it for a moment, then I said, “It is a whole life that I hear about Kentucky Fried Chicken, it’s years I’m in US and never went to eat there: it’s now or never!”

Fifteen minutes later we were in line at CFK in W Harrison St. I took grilled, extra crispy and wings, plus fries and a Pepsi. We quickly found the right table and started the party. I must say that indeed they are delicious.

There was a veil of melancholy because I was going back with Marius to Italy, only temporarily to him, I would have remained there instead. In fact I tried to stick in my memory those places; who knows when (and if) I would see them again?

I realized that those years will never vanish into the past, even Reidsville that made me suffer so much when I was alone at the Holiday Inn, no car and first restaurant at least 7/8 miles away, I miss it all the same.

When my weight was 225 lbs.

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NORTH CAROLINA PORTRAITS

Venice, Italy - August 2016

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