It was time to go to Italy.

We were going to visit our friend Sara, who lived in Florence with her family, and said, “Come on over. You can stay with us. We have room.”

Sara had been a friend, and then a good friend. She was an exchange student at PCC and that’s where Shirley met her. I think they were in classes together, including dance. I think she took lessons at Shirley’s Ballet Studio. We’d all hang out together. We went places, ate at restaurants, saw movies, she stayed over at our house more than once. We were all comfortable together, especially since she was European and grew up with civilization and culture and we shared a lot of experiences and our views of the world.

She had come over with a travel friend she had grown up with, an extravagantly gay guy who went off to West Hollywood as soon as they arrived, to join the local scene. That left Sara on her own, and she stayed with a host family in San Marino.

San Marino you may know is an exclusive community that borders Pasadena, where every house is large and has a gardener. It has the feeling of a gated community, but without the gates. The residents knew they were privileged, and enjoyed it. You could drive through the streets, but shouldn’t park unless you knew the residents and then maybe should park out of sight down their driveways. There’s a lovely little park, fenced, and a sign at the gate announcing “Residents Only.” Shirley and I went there several times and liked it. If there were Park Police, they never caught us.

Sara lived with an open-minded family which had hosted exchange students before, enjoyed their company and didn’t make them do chores. Sara threw parties and the host family joined in. After all, it was their house. And Sara’s friends were enthusiastic but not rowdy. Shirley and I were exemplary proof of that.

Sara’s travel friend as I remember vanished the first day. I meet him once, shook his hand, thought he seemed a nice enough guy, with the same advantage of having a European background. I don’t remember clearly what he looked like, couldn’t draw him even if I could draw, which I can’t, as I’ve proved many times over and over. I think he liked Hollywood and may still be there.

I invited Sara to come to my class of High School Seniors to read Italian poetry to them in Italian. 12th Grade English classes are World Lit, and we had been reading from several countries, England and France and Germany and China and Russia and several African countries and, of course, Italy. Sara was a full figured young woman and the boys were riveted as she read. They thanked me for bringing them “a real live Italian woman.” Suddenly I was a hero.

So we were going to see Sara in Florence and stay with her family. It was on our itinerary.

We took the train from Nice along the Riviera coast, through Monaco which was nice but we didn’t stop, and it was so small that we sneezed and were past it, and said, “Where did it go?” and “Must be nice if you can afford a visit,” and “looks good in the movies.”

And we came to Italy. I don’t remember the details of the border crossing, showing passports, mugging like the passport pictures to verify it’s you, maybe visas needed, I don’t remember.

When you’re on the train, you give yourself up to the train people because they know where you’re going and how to get there. Look at me, sounding like a traveler!

Sometimes, though, the connections don’t always connect. We did have some maps with us, and occasionally looked at them. But you can’t always tell where you are just by looking out the window. Especially if you’re not looking at a map, just enjoying the scenery as the world flashes by.

It seemed like a long time to get to Florence which is at the upper middle part of Italy and the country seemed larger than we realized or expected. Then we noticed, as people got on and off the train, the sudden realization that there were a lot of nuns and priests on the train and we thought, “Wow! This really is a Catholic country!”

And then we noticed that the nuns and priests were getting on but not getting off. And then we saw the sign: Roma.

The conductor apologized for the track switch, told us in a few minutes we’d be going back up to Florence, don’t get off the train. We looked out the window and saw on the platform venders rushing up to the train like sharks after blood to sell souvenirs and drinks and ice cream. Some people lowered their windows, exchanged money, and brought their purchases inside, like caps and scarves and snacks and drinks and Italian ice cream that looked awfully good in the summer weather.

A friendly priest, almost still young, was sitting nearby, knew English, and had heard us talking. I was trying to figure out money to get Shirley an ice cream, when he kindly interrupted, said, “Here, let me,” and bought an ice cream for Shirley. He said, “Welcome to Rome.”

We went back up the country and got to Florence. I think maybe Sara was waiting for us because she had read the train schedule change.

Sara’s father had a respectable position I think in government and a very nice house appropriate to his station. White painted walls with an inner courtyard garden.

Sara’s parents welcomed us with special attention because they knew we had taken good care of their daughter in Pasadena and wanted to return the favor. They gave us food and our own room with a comfortable bed and windows that opened onto the garden. We slept well.

In the morning Shirley discovered she was covered with mosquito bites.
The windows didn’t have screens. Either the locals were used to the mosquitoes, or the mosquitoes were bored with them and wanted fresh meat, the taste of American. Which Shirley certainly was, with succulent thin smooth easily penetrable Southern California skin. Me, they left alone, weren’t interested. Either I was the wrong flavor, or had thick skin, or they just weren’t intrigued, which surprised me, because I have hot blood about 95% red.

Sara’s mother was horrified and apologetic and embarrassed and solicitous, and rustled around to find something, making a poultice I think from baking soda and water to neutralize and draw out the injected poison. For about a day Shirley had these little white patches all over like I don’t really think a pin cushion, except that the ubiquitous stings reminded me of pin cushion pricks.

We did get out to see the city. We walked around some of the greatest monuments in the world. You want Cathedrals? How about Santa Maria del Fiore, Bruneleschi, the Duomo, that tiled dome, and Giotto’s Bell Tower? All cathedrals are built for looking upward, and this one especially was a doozie. Of course we went into the cathedral. You have to, in every European city.

And art? How about the Uffizi Galleries, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, da Vinci’s Annunciation? And Michelangelo’s David with place of pride and special lighting?

And the Great Square. With towering statues outside, an oversize copy of David so everyone could see and gather around and look up at what has been proclaimed as the perfect example of the male body manifest in archetype. It was as if the great Greek sculptors had come back after centuries of rest to finish their work.

Everybody knows from pictures that Michelangelo David. Here it was in full force in full face in full view. When Shirley was a little girl, her mother told her, “When you look at statues, especially the men, don’t look below the waist.”

She was an obedient child. I was happy to fill in her education, or fill it out.

I remember years ago on a television show where people on the street were confronted with this same statue and asked what they thought of it. One guy, he looked like late teens or early twenties but comfortably familiar with life on the street and the signs of the times, I think maybe he had a bit of a beard dressed casually, said a little apologetically, looking at the sculptured genitals, “I guess they were smaller in those days back then.”

We had the River Arno, and the Ponte Vecchio. We thought of Gianni Schicchi and I started humming. Lauretta, who threatened to throw herself off the bridge if her father doesn’t help her lover, Rinucchio, who has a wonderful aria of his own. She sings that virtually perfect aria that everybody now knows and looks forward to hearing, “O mio babbino caro,” with such heartfelt supplication, clasped hands and vocally bended knee. One of my favorite arias from one of my favorite operas by one of my favorite composers. Puccini lives, and rules! And here we were at the very spot, on site, where the real world makes art four dimensional. How often does that happen in real life? Not often enough.

Shirley and Sara spent time together, shopping, which apparently all women know how to do from birth, and taking ballet classes from the locals. [Note from Editor Daughter – Dad can be a dinosaur sometimes.]

Sara arranged a special dinner at one of the best kept secrets in Florence. It was a restaurant her family had favored for years. It was downstairs on a side street and you’d miss it if you weren’t in the know. Sara’s whole family was in the know, and known, and when we entered the owner/proprietor/chef rushed to her with open arms and exclaimed, “It’s been too long!”

It was high class dining, something I’d experienced very few times before. A separate wine with each entrée, so many things done with fish, a particular specialty. The dinner went on a long time leisurely, waiters, more than one, especially attentive to a friend of the family. When the bill came, it was over three hundred dollars, which would be several times more in today’s dollars. I shudder at the math. I hadn’t realized that I was paying. Fortunately, I had either a credit card or a whole book of traveler’s checks.

Sara’s father was angry with her for luring us to a very expensive restaurant and then having us pay. We were, he said, their guests. He tried to partially make it up to us by staying home from work and cooking us lunch, fresh pasta with wonderful sauce. It seems all Europeans can cook. He felt that didn’t quite make up for our self-paid dinner, and that night he drove us all up to the city overlook where every one goes to park and gawk. He was giving us his city, several histories of a great city where the present rests on the past, and the night was magic.

Sara had things she had to do, and Shirley and I were left to our own devices and wandered the streets. It was exciting just to be there.

We walked through and past the main avenues of the city and were devolved upon the outskirts. This was where the real people were, and we found a peripheral street on the edge of things where grass grew in patches and truck drivers parked their trucks at noon in the shade, broke out their lunch and relaxed. We joined them. We, who had never quite acted like tourists and were universally welcomed everywhere, sat down with the truck drivers and talked, sharing stories as if we had always been there and never left. They broke out the watermelon, cut slices and chunks, and passed them around. We ate and dripped together, shared watermelon and belonged.

Florence was a miracle city, high art and culture, history, and real people.

We didn’t want to leave. But our itinerary led us by train down to Venice.