Moving to Italy: Furniture--Plus

The vast echoing emptiness of the rooms disturbed me. I knew that curtains would help absorb sound and provide a decorative accent. I had sewn clothes for the children and had made simple curtains for our smaller windows in California, so when my sewing machine arrived with our trunks, I decided I would start with curtains for the children’s bedroom and the bathroom. If they looked all right, I would tackle the windows of our main living space. On one of our trips to Casale, I noticed some lengths of fabric at a stall in the open-air market. It was not cheap, no surprise there, but I splurged on a length of material covered in blue and green animal prints. It took a lot. The bedroom windows started at hip height and extended almost to the ceilings, which were at least ten feet. But after we got over the pain of spending the money from our savings, I was excited to think of it as another step in creating a home at Gabi. Sewing those curtains would also help fill the long evenings.

While in town, we found an electronics store and went in “just to browse.” We saw a small, portable radio/tape recorder. It was a luxury we could have done without, but buying the fabric seemed to have loosened our monetary resolve. We looked at each other, ignored the probable disapproval of my in-laws, and bought it. When we got home it was a thrill to hear music fill our living/dining room. The acoustics were great because of the high ceilings and hard surfaces—all concrete and tile. For better reception, we set it on a windowsill and placed our chairs nearby. 

The Italian radio stations were useless to me because without visual cues I found it extremely difficult to understand the rapid-fire speech. But George and I played with the tuner until we found Radio Luxembourg that broadcast clearly from a ship in the English Channel. It was in English, and it played up-to-date popular music, like the latest Rolling Stones and Beatles’ releases. We also listened to the American Armed Forces Network from Germany, where we could catch up on the news headlines from the States. We heard about the continuing Vietnam War and the escalating protests, and we wondered about the bias of news from the American Forces. We were very glad to be out of the controversy, but saddened that Americans were still dying. 

Besides the news, the Armed Forces station would broadcast plays or the audio track from old T.V. series, like Gunsmoke, Our Miss Brooks, or Mystery Theater. That was exciting for us. It seems so tame now, but we were media-deprived, so a radio play like Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds on Halloween night was the highlight of our week. Sometimes the station would fade out and we might miss the end of a play, but at other times, especially late at night, it was really clear. The voices, and the whine of the tuner, echoed around the room, but the noise meant we were getting closer to the environment that we were used to in California.  

 However, it was not close enough. We were still sitting on hard, wooden chairs, or lying propped up in bed for our leisure activities. More and more our determination to fit in with the local culture gave way to our need to recreate our own home-like atmosphere.