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Welcome to our blog, Baby Rafael story plus
and this post, breaking away from my farm life
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Breaking away from my farm life
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In Italy all fit young man in their twenties are required to serve in the army for about a year, and so was I in my early twenties. Most people do not like to serve in the army, because there is no real pay, but it is a different way of life to see.
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Breaking away from my farm life
Dear readers, this post is the continuation of our last post, my harsh
destiny, so, let us continue our life story.
For about twelve
years I lived this farm life, as I have explained in our previous posts.
Anyhow, the only time that I had a real break from farming was when I was
called to serve in the army, which in Italy was/is a compulsory service to the
country, which every able young male must serve when one turns twenty-one years
old or soon after that. Then when the army released me I migrated to Australia,
and I was then in my early twenties. I was young and not afraid to do hard
work. I would do anything at all in Australia, since I did not have any
qualification, and I would work hard if I had to, since I had learned in the
farm that we needed to work hard to earn our living.
But let me say just
a few words about this service in the Italian army of those times, being in the
compulsory Italian army is a hard life for anybody, for a start you are not
paid or you are paid so little that you believe that you are not paid at all; and
then, everybody laments about everything especially about the discipline, as
for myself I did not find it very hard like some recruits complain it is, but
at the same time it was, because you do what you are told to do, at the same
time you learn something new because you are exposed to a different way of
living. But the hardest part of it all is that the compulsory army of those
times, they didn’t pay us, we only got free food free clothes and just enough
money to by some cigarettes if one was a smoker. Anyhow it is good to be in the
army and learn a new way of life, it makes you feel better when that is over
and done with; some of the old people think that after you have been in the
army, you have really become a man of the world, because of that extra
experience that you learn in the army.
But, let me go back
to tell you about my life in the farm and what it did to me. Because as I have
already mentioned before, the farm life of those times was not what one would
prescribe for a young man like me, if one wanted me as a young man to develop
my potential properly, so that, I could be ready to meet the challenge of life
when I would be older, in all sorts of communities not just farming a small
farm.
But you see, as we
have already mentioned, at the time when all this happened to me, no one could
have ever thought, of the forth coming changing world, and of the difficulties
that I and some of the other boys, which shared the same fate as me would have
to face in later life. Just because the way of life happened to change so much
and so fast, when we were young.
Now, in order to
understand how unfair it was, for me and for those youths of my time who ended
up in the farms like myself, I have to convey to you the different set up of
this town of Genzano; the way that people separate each other in classes, not
because they like to be different to each other, but because they are
different, and therefore they think and talk in different ways, so, they group
themselves with their equal, because they feel more at ease that way: But in
reality they are somehow all equal, as all the groups need each other soon or
later.
There are reasons
to believe that this way of life would usually happen everywhere else in the
world in small towns, where there are two main groups of people in every
community: There are those who live directly from the land, which are called
the rural community, and those who work in town in all sorts of jobs, which
would be called just town’s people and they include; shop keepers, doctors,
vets, craftsmen, clerks, schools and school teachers, priests, policemen,
(carabinieri which are Italian policemen), guardians, and every other sort of
jobs that one can think of, in order to run a town properly; and then all the
rest of the population, like whole families and women and children, so that a
town would be self-reliant.
Anyhow, at a
certain stage of my life I started to become aware, that I had to break away
from this type of farm living, because a lot of things were changing and we
didn’t earn enough from the small farm that we had, so, it was time for us
young would have been farmers to change also, but let me say a bit more about
my farm life views and the town I have come from, because, it would be better
for my readers to understand what was going on at those times, in the fifties
and there about. After all, those old times will not come back anymore, and it
would be good to have at least a sort of record written here, in order to
remember how those times were.
So in my next
article, let me continue to talk about my farm life views, followed by several
other articles about my farm life, and then talk about the town of Genzano and
its communities, to explain better how those times were, in the fifties and
earlier; not only because I want to tell you my life story, but also because a
sort of record is being written and kept, in these internet articles that could
be available to the public for a long time in the future.
So, see you next
time in my next article, my farm life views.
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Baby Rafael story plus
Breaking away from my farm life
IS TO BE CONTINUED:
Next time with, my farm life views
Baby Rafael story plus
Breaking away from my farm life
IS TO BE CONTINUED:
Next time with, my farm life views
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