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Welcome to our blog, Old-man and Rafael
and this post, the story of my life
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The story
of my life
Dear readers, this
post is the continuation of our last post, a man life journey. So let us
continue and let me start telling you my life story. I was born in the late
thirties that means that, I was born before World War 2, 1939-
1945, I was born in a rural town of southern Italy, as I have already mentioned
at the beginning of this story, my family had a small farm and owned some farm
land around the farm, but this farm land that we owned was not enough to earn a
living, so we (my family) would also work the land of large land owners who
would let us use their land for a price that had to be paid usually with an
agreed amount of produce each year; to some of you this way of doing things
might seem strange, but, that was normal practice in those days.
Perhaps I need to
write this observation here, to understand better the situation about us small
farmers, without going in too many details about the past, one has to think
that in the past the entire countryside would usually belong to the landlord
that the rulers of the day gave the right to run that part of the country, so
even when I was young some of these way of living existed, the rich landowner
that now replaced the government landlord or the master of that portion of the
countryside, anyhow, they would let us use their land for a price. Anyhow
talking about the old ways of how these things were done, and talking about the
landlords or the masters of the castles that they used to run the countryside,
there in Genzano is this castle of Monteserico and I remember that from my
family farm I could see this castle far away every day of my life, of course
there is also a history about this Monteserico castle, I have written about
that in this hub, The castle of, as this castle of
Monteserico has plenty of history of its own.
Anyhow, in order to
understand how things were done then in the farms, and here I am talking about
before and also during World war 2, I need to tell you this; to earn a living
in those days was very hard, it was much harder than today, not only for us
farmers who were then thought to be in a better position of the rest of the
town community, because we were producing something useful for the rest of the
community especially in war time when food was hard to come by, we could always
find something to eat from the fields, so the rest of the town were influenced
by us farmers, so if we were doing well the rest of the town would be doing
well too, I believe that here I could add this observation to make you see what
I mean; in the simple life of those times, the most important thing that people
would aim for was to be able to eat wholesome and simple food every day, if you
were able to do that then you were doing well, I hope I have made my point
here, there were no luxurious food or things to be had, accept a few times each
year, at Christmas and other important events.
Now I need to point
out that there was no much money going around in those days and a lot of times
we had to exchange produce or things to make ends meet. So, let me tell you a
couple of examples how things were done in those days; for example if it
happened that we needed a blacksmith to sharpen the tools during the year to
work the fields, we would pay the blacksmith with an agreed amount of wheat,
since wheat was our main crop and also most people needed wheat to make their
own bread during the year; you see in those times, if you had wheat you could
take it to the mill to make flour and then make your own bread; therefore by
paying work done by wheat was convenient, as it was a two ways solution. It
also was done like that because there was no much money around then; you see, even
the barbers used to be paid in wheat or some other produce from the farmers. Of
course there was some money to do other general smaller services or things, but
all those services that would take a long time usually for years were done by
these agreements of so much work in exchange of so much produce. Sometimes even
small things could be bought by exchanging some produce with some other things.
I know dear readers
that what I have said might seem ridiculous today, but this is how life was in
those old days. So, I wonder how you the younger generation would feel to live
in the old days that I have described above, and be a farmer’s youth working in
the farm from a very tender age as I did. Here I would like to call on you my
readers to compare what I have said above to today living and let me know if
you feel like making a comment. I just wonder how you would feel like to be in
a lonely place as I was, where there was not a single electronic device to play
with or just listen to; I just wonder how you would feel like and what you
would do.
I am saying this because
today when I look at the young people most of them walk about with a mobile
talking to their friends, or listening to music, or doing whatever they can do
with their mobile, the difference in life style is so great that it is hard to
believe that so many electronic devises have come out in the last fifty years
or so, and they have changed our life style and we are better off today;
therefore, I have to ask myself, what the youths of today could have done in my
place? But anyhow let us continue to tell you the story of my life and my
personal concern’s, in our next post, which we are going to call, some personal
concerns.
See you soon.
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Old-man and Rafael
The story of my life
IS TO BE CONTINUED;
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Old-man and Rafael
The story of my life
IS TO BE CONTINUED;
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Some personal links:
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