ROMANO BUTIQ
88
Ciprian Necula
How we were inspired by a craftsman called Nea Ion We have a craft of our own: to bring forth the craft in their life stories and multiply it!
In Ceacu, down in the dusty South of Romania, not far from Călărași, along with the prevailing local peasant population, lived three small Roma groups. Some were fiddlers, and, as their name says, they used to entertain villagers with their music and dances. Others worked in the fields - day labourers - employed by better-off peasants, as they did not own land. Finally, the last group were the blacksmiths, providers of useful tools and makers of the only traditional means of transportation (carts, chariots, etc.). Nothing special! A peasant community and its bigger or smaller gypsy neighbourhood (as the people say). This is where the person that inspired us was born - Mr. Ivanciu Ion, Roma blacksmith - no ordinary man! Our character, shall we call him Nea Ion, was born in 1934, the firstborn in a family blacksmiths - Nicolae and Gherghina - and was followed by three siblings. Ion grew up back in those hard times, with scarce resources, because his father, albeit a well-appreciated blacksmith, most of the time worked in exchange for food (money was rarely used, as Nea Ion remembered). When he was four or five, along with other children from the village, Ion organized nailing sessions. They hammered nails (made by his father) into the neigbours’ fences. In 1942, his father enrolled in the army and went to the battlefront to fight on behalf of Romania. Eventually, because of his war wounds, he passed away. Incidentally, Nea Ion’s grandpa had also been shot dead on the battlefield during the First World War. Nea Ion was only 14 years old when his father died, leaving him as the eldest male member of his young family. He was a schoolchild in Călărași and didn’t have any skills yet, as his father had decided he deserved another fate, to get educated rather than suffer the hardships of blacksmithing. He had no choice, so, without hesitation, Nea Ion went to a blacksmith in Călărași, Nea
HOW WE WERE INSPIRED BY A CRAFTSMAN CALLED NEA ION