This is a sad post, not because anyone dies, but because a
way of life is dying. Tourists to Italy may revel in the novelty and charm of
weekly outdoor markets. But for small towns like Allerona, they are a fraying
link to a quickly vanishing past.
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| It's a small market, for sure, and with a baby carriage that looks strikingly similar to Naomi's. |
Allerona’s weekly market is held every Wednesday morning,
rain or shine (except for snow), unless there is a state holiday. Vendors
arrive in small trucks and quickly begin to set up shop. For the fruit and
vegetable vendors, one side of the truck opens up and serves as an awning. The vendor
stands in the truck bed, surrounding by crates of fresh produce. The townspeople,
mostly women, gather in a disorderly fashion in front of the truck, but each
one keeps track of who was there first and who arrives after, and no one tries
to butt in line.
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| Fresh, local produce from Roberto |
The favored produce vendor, Roberto, has been selling at
the Allerona market since he was a teenage boy accompanying his father, who
plied the same trade. The other produce vendor, “the Napolitano,” is not as
trusted as Roberto and in truth, he is a little sneaky – trying to hide a moldy
orange or two at the bottom of the bag, or sneaking in five apples when you ask
for three. He tricked me – the unwitting Americana – that way once, and I never
bought from him again.
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| Roberto totals an order. |
So the women gathered at Roberto’s truck engage in a
lively banter with him and with each other, exchanging recipes, reporting on
the state of this one’s health or the other one’s sick mother-in-law or newest grandchild.
To Roberto, they’ll say, “give me 10 good oranges” (as if they would otherwise
want bad ones), or “give me five pears that are good for cooking,” or “how’s
the spinach today?” He weighs each group of items, calculates the price in his
head, and adds it to the tally on the cash register. He almost always rounds
down to the nearest whole euro. If you are a regular customer, Roberto throws
in a carrot or two, a few stalks of celery, and some sprigs of fresh parsley
for you to use to make broth or minestre (vegetable soup). I knew I’d finally
staked by claim in this little burgh when I finally got up the nerve to ask for
the same handful of vegetables he handed every other woman, without her asking.
Now I no longer need to ask, either.
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| Michele in his truck |
A truck or two down from Roberto in Michele, who sells
items for the casalinghe (housewives). His truck opens at the side and the
back, and he stands on the truck bed above his customers, and behind a glass
display case filled with shampoo, face creams, deodorant, cheap perfume and
makeup. On the shelves behind him are more toiletries, along with sanitary products,
cleaning products and solvents. On tables and shelves under the truck’s awning
are toilet paper, brooms, mops, garbage bags, laundry detergent, sponges, and
just about anything else my mother in law might need to clean her house or
mine.
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| Michele has a little bit of everything. |
Roberto and Michele are regulars, as is Luca, the prosciutto
and cheese salesman whom Paolo and I refer to as my “boyfriend.” Luca is easy
on the eyes, and he always calls me “Cara” (Dear), and I confess that
sometimes, I buy prosciutto from him just to catch a little of that glimmer in
his eye. But alas, Luca comes to our market only every other week.
On intermittent weeks, there’s a woman selling bras, underwear,
swimsuits and pajamas, for both sexes, out of her truck. She’s usually flanked
by a humorless man selling pots, pans and kitchen gadgets. Across from them,
there’s a fellow selling sheets, towels, bedspreads and comforters. A little bit
farther from the center of the market is a guy selling flowers and vegetable
plants from his van. Farther still, and very likely because he is “straniero” (foreign)
is a Moroccan selling clothes. He knew I was pregnant before most people in town
did last year, as he kept trying to talk me into a smaller size of a billowing
print top, and I finally had to convince him that I would, indeed, be filling
out the larger one. “Incinta,” I whispered with a finger at my lips, the other
hand pointed at my then still flat-ish stomach. “Auguri,” he whispered back.
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| Every woman in town owns one of those plastic bowls with the sunflowers on them. Most are melted from being set too close to the stove. |
So this all sounds perfectly quaint and lovely, doesn’t
it? Except that our half dozen or so vendors – when that many show up – are a
fraction of what the market here used to look like. Even a year or so ago, a
shoe vendor would show up regularly. Now, he doesn’t bother to come, nor do the
guys selling winter coats, or curtains. Paolo remembers the market stretching
all the way down our main road, from the piazza where it’s now held, down past
the parking lot and past the carabinieri station. There were competing vendors,
as well as more clothiers, farmers selling livestock and freshly made cheese, and
a traveling shoe repairman. Now, we’re down to our diehard handful of vendors,
and I fear the day will come that they, too, won’t bother to drive up the hill
to our little town, because it just won’t be worth the time and gas.
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| Sheets, tablecloths, and blankets |
There was a time that weekly markets were vital to life
in towns like Allerona. Before every household had at least one car – or before
the casalinghe had their daughters or daughters-in-law to drive them to
supermarkets in Orvieto, the markets provided them with everything they needed.
Or so they thought, maybe, until the supermarkets opened, with their 200 varieties
of dried pasta, 10 types of prosciutto, 15 shapes, sizes and brands of maxi
pads, plus baby-food and readymade pizza and entrees. Why settle for what the
market vendors can offer, when they can pick and choose from brands, sizes, and
flavors?
I admit that I am a contributor to the demise of the
market culture. I go to our weekly market just every so often, when I need something
and don’t feel like driving “to town” – Allerona Scalo, just 7 minutes’ drive
from us – or when I just feel like getting out of the house a little bit. But
as often as not, I forget the market is there until Wednesday morning has come
and gone. Instead, I go to Scalo or to Orvieto, often with my mother-in-law and
an odd cousin or two in tow, and we do our “big shopping” where we can get it
all done in one place.
The undeniable factor to the death of market culture is
also the death – literally and figuratively – of little towns like ours. Allerona,
which once housed more than 1,200 people in an around its castello walls, and
brought hundreds more in from the countryside on market day, is dying. There
are about 400 people living in centro now. More than half the houses in the town
center stand empty, with far away owners in Rome, Genoa or Milan who inherited
the homes from a late relative and have barely a passing interest in Allerona.
Some come during the Christmas holidays and festas to “get away from it all,” others
haven’t turned the key in a door here for a decade or more. Paolo rightly fears
that Allerona, in another 20 years or so, will be a ghost town, more so than it
already is.
And the accompanying truth is that in another 10 or 20
years, when the last of the generation of women who never learned to drive –
and I’m shocked at how many of them there are here – are gone, even the younger
women who stay at home to raise their children will still drive to the
supermarket rather than frequent the weekly market here.
I spoke to Michele about this the day I took pictures of
the market. He lamented the dying tradition here, but said to me,
half-questioningly, “Markets are becoming popular in America now, aren’t they?”
And I thought of Eastern Market in DC, of the popular Saturday farmer’s market
in Sarasota, and how Americans now seem to be seeking out more opportunities to
shop local and support small businesses just as Italy is abandoning the same tradition.
It may ultimately be the U.S.’s fault – with our permeating pop culture that so
entices and offends Europeans – that the market traditions in Europe are dying.
But maybe it’s the U.S. that will bring them back, too, who knows.
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| The fishmonger in our driveway. |
I’m happy to report that not all hope is completely lost.
Roberto still comes twice a week, on Wednesday market day and on Fridays, when instead
of parking at the piazza, he makes the rounds, and stops in several places
around town. We he nears the cluster of houses near ours, he sounds the horn, and by the time he’s
parked and opened up the side of his truck, a small group is waiting to him.
On Saturdays, the fishmonger comes and makes his regular
stops. Since I’ve purchased from him before, he now stops at the top of our
driveway and honks his horn. I step out on the balcony and either wave him off
if I don’t need anything, or wave him down if we want fresh fish. He maneuvers
the truck down the driveway and opens up the side, to reveal a banquette of
fresh fish and shellfish on ice. Our unspoken accord goes something as
follows: I ask for a half kilo of shrimp
or four fillets of fish or something along those lines, and he always loads at
least a third more than I want onto the scale. I yell at him to stop, he throws
on a few more shrimp or another fillet, totals up the bill for far more fish
than I intended to purchase, then gives me a “sconto” (discount) of a euro or
two.
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| But really, I don't need that much fish! |
I’m probably being taken advantage of by the fishmonger,
in the way that Italian vendors like to prenda
per il culo (basically, take for an ass) those Americans who are too busy
taking pictures and oohing and aahing over the damn quaintness of the scene to
realize they’re being ripped off. But that’s okay. It’s our deal, he and I. And
if his selling me 10 euro more fish than I want (and discounting 2 euro, of
course) means he keeps sounding the horn every Saturday, then we’ll just have
to eat more fish.
