mostly nonfiction and bakersfield news | October 20th, 2009
The Flying Pedestal
Please enjoy this charming post by Irene Zion on TheNervousBreakdown.com. – Erika Rae, Irresponsible Editor
When my family moved to The Free Territory of Trieste, it was a time when people did not fly across the ocean. Flying was prohibitively expensive and rare. No one really believed that airplanes made with all that heavy metal could actually fly safely when they were full of people. It was counterintuitive. I personally still have trouble believing that those enormous things get off the ground at all. (And don’t even get me started on those helicopters from the mosquito family!) Back then, everyone had the same reservations. We sailed across the ocean to FTT on the Saturnia. I suppose that if I had thought about it, I also would have questioned how a ship made out of metal that should obviously sink, could float. I’m glad I didn’t think about that at the time, or I would have worried my way all across the ocean.
We rented the bottom floor of a fabulous villa belonging to General and Mrs. Santi. My dad was a gifted Marine Engineer. He knew everything about ships and ports. With the benefit of hindsight, it is pretty clear that my dad was a spy. Dad knew all kinds of sketchy military types and nebulous characters you couldn’t really figure out. They were in and out of the house all the time. My dad was unavailable behind The Iron Curtain most of the time. I rarely saw him during those years.
While I lived there, I went to a Convent school about a mile away from the villa. I loved it there. I believed myself to be a typical little Italian girl. [...]
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