So according to Wikipedia, Scanno is a town on a lake, southeast of L'Aquila, but with a higher elevation, as a matter of fact it snowed there last night, and not just flurries, it was still on the ground when we got there.
I pictured some low-lying village, a bit industrial, the kind of place where you could earn a living, but thought of a better life in the United States.
That's not how it was at all.
Now if you've ever been to the Alps, you know they're staggering. The only equivalent I've ever come across in the USA is the Tetons, but they're just a small row of peaks. Although the Alps are lower in altitude than the Rockies, they jut up straight from the landscape, and they're craggy and rugged and I didn't expect the Apennines to have the same character, but they do.
So we're on the freeway, passing villages with castles, and then we get off the highway and...
It reminded me of Vermont, the road to the Middlebury Snow Bowl. Uphill, twisty and turning...on steroids.
I didn't know we were climbing to an isolated mountain town. On a road that was a death trap. If you've ever lived in the hinterlands, you know drunk driving is a feature, not a bug. And young people lose their lives in accidents all the time. At certain points on the road it was one car only. At others they had mirrors on the curves. And no one was going twenty miles per hour, rather closer to fifty. You know the drill, when you surrender your life to the unknown driver, hoping they have experience.
Turns out ours did. He was a policeman, in uniform and everything, from Villalago, a village fifteen minutes from Scanno. We're driving over these bridges with insane drops. It was truly a stairway to heaven.
And we're in these deep valleys and up on the peaks are these communities... They look kind of like that house the Branch Dividians lived in, as in they're all attached, like one big building, and outside the building are cliffs.
So we ultimately get to a mountain lake, you know, the kind whose color is a cross between silver and green, made up of mountain runoff.
Turns out this is the lake, but Scanno is not built around it. A few kilometers on, you come around a corner and right in front of you is a ski area, with a lift as steep as the one in Val d'Isere, the kind you get freaked out about going up.
And it turns out Scanno is another one of those villages where every building is attached.
So first they bring us to the town hall for a meeting with the mayor. Who smiled and spoke, but not in English, Daniela translated. There was all this pomp and circumstance because the three were the kids of Henry Mancini. The guy's smiling and...I've never gotten such an official reception.
And then we get back in the van, drive in a giant circle, get off and we're at Henry Mancini's street. He's the most famous guy with roots in Scanno, check Wikipedia, they only mention Henry and a guy who hid out there during the War and ultimately became president.
That's another thing about being in Europe, it's hard not to think about the War. We haven't had one in the U.S., we think we're immune. We're not worried about our neighbors invading, Canada and Mexico are not up to that. But in Europe, all the countries are squeezed together. And it's not like your town is so far from the action. 9/11 happened in New York, we didn't feel it quite as deeply in Los Angeles, because it was three thousand miles away. But when some army can invade and come to your burg in a matter of days, you're going to sleep with one eye open.
And then they took us to Quinto's house, just a door in the endless building in the center of the village.
Now I can't go in search of my relatives' homeland. Because they're in Ukraine and Russia. My parents once went to visit my mother's cousins in Russia, but those who didn't leave for the U.S. went to Israel. Our aunts, our grandfather's sisters, came over by boat in the early sixties for a few weeks, and we've all been over there, but to see exactly where your relative lived back in the day?
And nothing has changed. I grew up in a split level house that was new construction. But where these people live...the buildings are hundreds of years old, you're reminded every day that you're just part of a long continuum.
So it turns out there are only 1,800 people in Scanno. And nineteen churches. And with little work, the young people are leaving. But we met this young reporter who moved here during Covid, she wanted to get out of the city. And the town swells in the summer, thousands arrive, to hang out in their second homes, to vacation.
But the rest of the year... Scanno didn't even have a cinema when Quinto lived there.
So Quinto, so named because he was the fifth child, was born in 1890. And he emigrated to the U.S. when he was in his early twenties. And I'm picturing him there back in Scanno... There was no future, I can see getting out, as it was there were twenty guys who looked like they were out of a black and white film from a hundred years ago waiting for the bar to open just before we left. That's another thing about the mountains, the hinterlands, alcohol consumption is rampant, there's little to do and the nights are cold and long and...
Ultimately, after lunch, there was another concert of Mancini music, in a converted church. Unlike in the U.S., the exteriors of many churches are flat and bland...but the interiors are luxurious.
And that's where we met...THE RELATIVES!
Yes, the descendants of Quinto's brothers and sisters, the kids born in the fifties, just like us. It was positively overwhelming, inspiring, yet somewhat strange. It was a complete surprise, we didn't know they'd be there, no one did. And they're so excited to meet Felice and Monica, I've never experienced anything like it. They shared blood, but no everyday history, not even the same language. How do you catch up after all these years? It was like royalty come to visit, very rare, and they roll out the red carpet and are so thrilled you're there.
So much of this official stuff is pomp and circumstance with little meaning. But today was all about meaning.
And twenty of us went to lunch, and the breadsticks enclosed in plastic...trumped every breadstick I've ever eaten. They were somewhat salty and ribbed and far from dry.
I guess maybe if you too live in the hinterlands, you can understand. If you were born and stayed in the same place, with few people there, off the radar screen. It's a complete society, but for those of us who live in Los Angeles, you can never forget the starmaking machinery. You bump into household names at the grocery store. You feel a connection to the outside world, it's palpable. But in Scanno? The roads are treacherous both in and out. It's perched on the side of a mountain. I can't figure out why people moved there to begin with.
Normally it's easy to figure out. There's a body of water for transportation of goods, or a river to provide energy. But what inspired people to build a community in the middle of nowhere with no obvious economic advantages?
The mayor told me the business was cows and sheep, as in farming. And tourism. And ever since Covid, the area's been somewhat depressed. The mayor's the lawyer in town. As for a doctor... THEY DON'T HAVE ONE! They've got a helicopter pad just in case, but if you need treatment you've got to drive twenty kilometers just to see a medical professional, never mind a specialist. And they'd love to get a doctor there, but most people want to specialize these days, there are fewer general practitioners, and do you really want to move to a small town in the middle of nowhere?
Oh, it's spectacular. With vertical walls of mountains rising into the stratosphere.
And you could see satellite dishes. So it's not like you're completely isolated. But...
What would it be like to grow up there? Over a hundred years ago. When life was not much different than it had been for centuries? I mean normally you think about people immigrating to avoid war, you think about how hard it would be to journey so far and start over where you didn't speak the language. But I can't believe it was that hard to convince Quinto to go, I mean what's your future in Scanno? Then again, what did Quinto think when he got to New York?
He ultimately ended up in the Cleveland area, working in a steel mill. The life of an immigrant is never easy. You start at the bottom, usually with manual labor, and you work hard to provide, to get ahead.
Henry was his only son, only offspring at all. And at a young age, Hank was at the cinema, heard the music and said...I WANT TO DO THAT!
Hank played the flute, like his dad. And he didn't quite come from the Liverpool docks, but he made it all the way to the Hollywood Bowl.
Sure, there's luck. But there's also desire. And also taking advantage of coincidences. After losing his job at Universal, walking away from a building on the lot that now bears his name, Hank ran into Blake Edwards, and there ensued a relationship...
You don't know what you're doing when you're doing it, you're putting one foot in front of the other, it all makes sense in retrospect.
Quinto did not leave Scanno to have a famous composer son. He just needed a better future. Then again, in today's world of income inequality, where financial shenanigans are employed to ensure generational wealth, there are tons of rich do-nothings, but it's always those who come from the bottom, immigrants, who change the world and make a difference.
We all come from somewhere, and today we experienced the roots of Henry Mancini, who is still Scanno's favorite child, even though he was born in the United States.
But if his father wasn't from Scanno would Hank have made it, been so successful?
We'll never know, but that's the American Dream, to start from nowhere and make it all the way to somewhere. It's what inspires us, keeps us going.
Perception is they don't have the American Dream in Europe. You're born to your station and...
In truth, the American Dream, the ability to rise up on hard work, has diminished in America, your odds of moving up are actually better in Canada and Europe.
It's the little things that surprise you, where they've got systems figured out better than the States. And sure, the States are more efficient, but they're far from perfect. We could learn from our brethren. Even worse, America has stood for peace, the future, it has been the guiding light, ensuring world order. But now Europe has lost confidence, they don't look for America to save them. As a matter of fact, the EU is the harbinger of regulation these days. The EU stands up for the public in a way that the American government does not. And when Lina Khan blows the whistle on corporations there's all this backlash...
It's different here. And I could live here, but not in Scanno, certainly not in the days before modern transportation and communications.
Brought tears to Felice's eyes. It was overwhelming. After all these years to encounter your roots?
I hope you have the same experience.
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