43 Via San Gallo
For some reason lately I have been thinking about addresses and their role as milestones or bookmarks that are dispersed throughout our lives. Apparently, the average American lives at just over 11 separate addresses over a lifetime. I am not quite sure where I stack up on that statistic. I will try to tally up my addresses before wrapping up my musings.
I am thinking that addresses can serve myriad purposes both in the here and now of everyday life, but also as a marker that can delineate a period of a lifetime and in part stimulate recollections and sentiments associated with the past experiences. Overall, in my cursory review of the addresses of my lifetime, the overwhelming response is full of fond and sometimes cherished memories!
401 N. Naches Avenue,
13 Via Cavour,
414 N. Naches Avenue,
1514 Bellevue Avenue,
1631 16th Avenue,
2313 10th Ave E.,
30 Via Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi,
With the count at ten, I am shy of the US average so far. Some disclaimers: I am still alive and may yet still move again; there are some addresses that are missing due to lapses in memory. To that point, I propose that if you don’t remember the address, does it really count? If so, I likely already exceed the national average. Another disclaimer, the final address on this list, 43 Via San Gallo, while I have stayed here multiple times over the past 45+ years, it has never technically been my home.
43 Via San Gallo is the home of Bruno Pace, a man of immense generosity and steadfast friendship. Bruno is currently in the US visiting his sons and grandchildren. On a whim I decided to extend my current trip by a couple weeks and when I asked if I could stay here, he did not hesitate. So after accompanying John and Bruno’s ex-wife Monica to the airport, I have once again taken up temporary residence at 43 Via San Gallo.
Monica met Bruno during our junior year abroad 1979-80. Bruno has rented this apartment for some years before that. The building has been on site in one form or another since the 12th century beginning as a convent and eventually being used as a military hospital. It is indeed a singularly unique kind of place. The improvements have all been due to Bruno’s efforts. And even with his enhancements, it remains a one bedroom walk up in a medieval building. While small in dimensions, the impact of this apartment has been broad and wide. And the impact has been the result of Bruno’s unwavering willingness to share and host.
While I cannot attest to the nuances of others’ visits and stays, I do know that recipients have included nephews, sisters- and brothers-in-law, as well as wall-to-wall high school buddies.
I can speak more fully to the influence this address has had on me. Monica and Bruno married and made their home at 43 Via San Gallo in 1981. When I returned to Florence for the first time in the fall of 1982, I was included in countless lunches and dinners without hesitation—senza complimenti!
By the mid-eighties they had moved to the states. When I started making my biennial trips, on at least one occasion, my travel companion and I had the place to ourselves, well at least after the first night when his nephews were using the apartment. That visit coincided with the Great Freeze of January 1985 when Florence and Tuscany had record amounts of snow and cold temperatures. Just like snow in Seattle, for several days Florence was a veritable winter wonderland and somehow my friend Bill and I managed to stay warm and cozy! I remember multiple layers and a legendary hooded terrycloth bathrobe.
Over the years, while I did not always stay here, 43 Via San Gallo has served as an informal ground zero for me. There were a couple of trips in the nineties where an inexpensive hotel was chosen by virtue of its Via San Gallo address. For me, Via San Gallo has always been an easy reference point that is central to all of Florence’s magnificent landmarks and easy to give directions to. If one imagines themselves in the middle of the Ponte Vecchio and walks towards the historic center, while the street name changes multiple times, if one stays the course they will find their way to 43 Via San Gallo. Por Santa Maria, Calimala, Roma, Piazza di San Giovanni, Borgo San Lorenzo, de Ginori—just a few of the streets that will lead you home. Case in point, last year a dear friend was staying in Via de Guicciardini and we were meeting at Caffe Lietta in Piazza Libertà which is at the end of Via San Gallo, I told her to simply cross the Ponte Vecchio and stay direct until she reached the destination.
The stay at 43 Via San Gallo that most qualifies me to include it on my list of addresses was a two week stay in May of 2006. Bruno’s oldest son was graduating from college and he would travel to the states to celebrate the occasion. I proposed that rather than close down his stall in the San Lorenzo Market and lose two weeks of income, that I come and operate the stand in his place. I arrived two days before he departed which gave us only one full day for him to show me how to set up and break down the self-contained stand full of merchandise. One day is not enough and that particular one day in early May of 2006 was one of torrential rains and gusty winds. Admittedly, I was likely a poor understudy for the tasks at hand and the necessary sequence for setting up let alone doing all in reverse and in high heels for closing down! To his credit, at the end of that long soggy day, Bruno did say, “If it’s raining like this tomorrow, don’t open the stand.” I remember thinking that if I didn’t do it right away, it may never get done. I recall Bruno left for his flight early the next morning and by the time I was up it was a gloriously sunny spring day in Florence. Perfect for selling linens!
I tell you without shame that it takes a village to help an idiot open and close one of the stands at the San Lorenzo Market! In my case the village included the longtime vendors with stands adjacent to Bruno’s. Lellio and his wife ran the stand across the way and Spiro the stand next door. By 2006 both knew me as a regular return visitor to Bruno’s stand and did not hesitate to help me figure out the step-by-step process to open and close on a daily basis. I think that of the overall 14 stay I opened the stand and sold table linens for 10 of the days. I did pay my daily expenses and took a modest cut from the sales, but when all was said and done, I left behind a pile of cash and credit card receipts for Bruno and left with one of the best vacation experiences one can imagine.
In the months of planning ahead of my 90-day visit in 2024, I was researching potential rentals through several websites. Each website allows one to mark favorites for consideration. Part of that process for me was to calculate the location of different apartments in relation to…you guessed it, 43 Via San Gallo.
This address that has long occupied a corner of my mind and heart would not be present in either without the man who has inhabited it for years and who has always welcomed me and so many others back multiple times for decades. Bruno Pace is not a perfect man, as none exist. He is a solid, stable, generous man—generous with the things that matter most. Bruno is a good man to argue with, you can discuss matters on which you differ broadly and still part on friendly terms. He is a good father as made evident by the three fine men who are his sons.
At the end of the month I will try to leave his home tidy and no worse for the wear. I will lock it up tight and return the keys to him upon my return home. Along with the keys I hope he will accept my heartfelt thanks for the role he has played in my lifelong connection to Florence, Italy, and to 43 Via San Gallo in particular.
401 North Naches Avenue
If one were to recount their life using the framework of street addresses, it seems reasonable to start at the beginning. Well, sometimes reason has nothing to do with how one spins the yarn of their life. I am not a knitter and have no idea how a knitter begins or proceeds, but I have worn enough sweaters to know that regardless of the process, what matters is how it fits.
401 North Naches Avenue is the address where my parents lived at the time of my birth. The house and home to which they brought me back from the hospital. There I joined my six siblings and I assume that once my parents judged me to be a successful addition, there were no more.
I lived at 401 North Naches Avenue for over 18 years before leaving home. The house itself—the structure—looms large in my memory, perhaps larger than the reality justifies. Architecturally, it is what is known as an American Foursquare home and was built in 1915. Whether or not it was a kit home is debatable. It had a big wraparound porch on two sides and sat on a generous double lot. Inside there were attributes that I still remember fondly. The double hung windows all had diamond mullions in the upper sash. The dining room had a plate rail at shoulder height above which there was a hand painted pastoral scene with hillocks and pastures with sheep. The light fixtures in both the entry hall and the dining room were Tiffany style. The former was rather discreet while the latter was, at least in my memory, stunning. I regret not having color photos of some of these details to regulate their enhancement or deterioration due to the vagaries of human memories.
While there are other physical attributes of the house that I could expound upon, like the single bathroom that served 9 people, the incredibly creepy basement with its coal furnace and pull-string light switch at the bottom of the stairs and the chest freezer with a wood plank for a lid, I should share some of the attributes of 401 North Naches Avenue that would be classified under the umbrella of “home” versus “house”.
Bunkbeds. Bunkbeds must be a staple in any home that has more people than bedrooms. 401 North Naches Avenue did have four good sized bedrooms, but the configuration ended up, the two girls shared a room, my oldest brothers shared a room, and I shared with two brothers. Collectively we were known as “the three little boys” (3LB). To be honest, I don’t know with certainty if my sisters and oldest brothers had bunk beds or if they just shared their rooms. I do know with certainty that bunk beds were a staple in my room for the greater part of my childhood.
Tangentially related is the phenomenon in large families that as the younger ones get bigger, the older ones get going, leaving much needed additional space in their absence. I think that by the time I was 12, enough of “the four big kids” had moved out letting the 3LB have their own room! I remember our parents let us each choose what color we could paint our rooms! While one brother chose banana yellow and the other chose bright blue, I landed on a shade of sour apple/spring green! Hey, it was the 1970’s and we were groovy!
Another aspect of growing up at 401 North Naches Avenue that lingers in my memory are meals around our big oval oak dining table. My mother at one end, my father at the other four on one side and three on the other. There was a lot of passing back and forth and while someone always joked about sitting on starvation corner, I know that none of us ever went hungry. It took a prompt from my sister to recall our exact placement around the table.
In all honesty, no recollection of a childhood home should ever be all sunshine and rainbows. One thing that I loved growing up at 401 North Naches Avenue that was a double edged sword was the fact that we had two daily newspapers delivered and three on Sundays! The dailies were the Yakima Herald-Republic and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and they were augmented on Sundays with the Spokesman Review from Spokane. The upside to this phenomenon was that our parents encouraged us to read the news and we had plenty of it to choose from! Obviously there were also the benefits of plenty of funny pages to read as well as one grew into reading the more in-depth articles. In late June of 1969, I was 10 years old and I remember reading about the death of Judy Garland in one of the papers and feeling a deep sadness that I really didn’t understand. While like most kids of the era, we always enjoyed the annual broadcast of “The Wizard of Oz”, I was going to miss those song and dance numbers from TV specials and the Ed Sullivan Show. It’s strange I wasn’t a theater kid in high school.
The downside of all those newspapers was the sheer bulk and clutter they added to an already hectic and chaotic home full of people with no one especially interested in or in charge of order or tidiness! In the era of “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best”, the Hogan family bucked the standard of fathers work and mother tended to domestic chores. My mother was a smart, funny person with many sterling characteristics, none of which included cleaning. She worked outside the home from my earliest memory as a laboratory technician. I think it was work she enjoyed and gave her satisfaction that household duties never could. I cherish the memories of hearing her come home at the end of the day and running to the door announcing, “Mommy’s home” like a banshee! I remember burying my face into her legs and throwing my arms around her. To this day there is a medical laboratory smell that transports me back to those hugs.
Earlier I referenced the creepy dark basement of 401 North Naches Avenue, in it was a washing machine that to the best of my knowledge, never worked. The result being that washing our dirty laundry was both a family affair and a public event! Call me odd, but I have very fond memories of accompanying one of my parents to the laundromat. The car would be loaded up with baskets filled with laundry, stacks of wire hangers and Fels Naptha laundry chips. Mom or Dad, supplied with loads of quarters, would oversee the loading of the washers. The washers would all end in sequence and loads would be transferred to dryers. Shirts and pants would be taken from the dryer as they dried and hung to be transported back home. Piles of socks, underwear, towels and sheets would be folded and arranged in baskets for the trip home. I remember we had a removable hanging bar that fit in the back seat for hanging items. To this day I have a sincere fondness for laundry rooms and laundromats!
401 North Naches Avenue is full of fun, funny, quirky, odd, and happy memories for me and for that I am deeply grateful. It is, however, also the place I experienced some of the deepest pain and sorrow of my life. The youngest child in any family is often labeled the favorite. I don’t know if that is always true, but I was the last and youngest child. I benefited in that role in one sense that my parents seemed to learn along the way and by the time of my adolescence, rules were less stringent and the relationship between me and my parents was less tense than my older siblings. My experience as the youngest was greatly shaped by a sibling who I believe blamed me for usurping his role as the youngest. Over the years I have told many people that I cried everyday of my childhood—tormented and taunted with a vicious heartlessness that I have grown indifferent to but I will never forget. Don’t let anyone tell you that the youngest child has an easier path; different perhaps but not easier.
In late August 1977 I left 401 North Naches Avenue for the last time as I left to attend Gonzaga University, my father’s alma mater. It had been a tough year for everyone. Just before Christmas 1976, at the age of 52, my dear funny, smart, loving mother suffered her second heart attack and a subsequent stroke that left her comatose for several weeks until her death on January 10th 1977. To be honest I really can’t remember how I managed to get through those months. I must have gone to school because I graduated in June. I think I had a job to earn money for college—can’t recall any details. My dad moved out of the house, a move I am not sure I fully understand even now. Granted he moved next door into half of the duplex owned by my grandmother, but whoever was left at home was pretty much left on our own. To the best of my recollection it was my brothers Tom and John who are 7 and 4 years older respectively. Another painful memory associated with that period is the fact that instead of attending my high school graduation, my father attended a Mariner’s baseball game in Seattle. He didn’t say anything to me about his plans or offer any explanation. There I was, at 18, left to make sense of all of it on my own. I don’t think I would wish that on anyone.
While I forget the exact timing, it was not long after I moved out that my father sold the house. By that time I was well ensconced in college life and while I was wistful about the house no longer being home, the truth of the matter was it had stopped being home in the truest sense on that January day in 1977.
Whenever I think of 401 North Naches Avenue, I generally think of the best of times that we shared as a family there. We never wanted for anything. But to be frank, so much of what has shaped me into the person I am were some of the darker, more challenging aspects of growing up in a large, boisterous, chaotic household. So it’s a blend of the good, the bad, and the ugly that make 401 North Naches Avenue a bookmark for a very special, formative chapter of my life.
13 Via Cavour
I have to confess that I was mortified when I first entered the portal and vestibule of 13 Via Cavour in Florence, Italy. It was a dark, cavernous space with low slung annoyingly short, broad steps leading upward that all seemed to be a shade of leaden gray. As I lugged my overloaded suitcase up those stairs I was regretting not getting assigned to Pensione Medici where a lot of my friends were housed. My mortification, dread, and regret were soon alleviated when we were greeted by the proprietor and patriarch, Orlando Gelli, who welcomed us and introduced his family—Bruna, his wife, daughter Manola, and son Luca. While I didn’t suspect it that first day, these people would remain in my life forever.
Clearly I have skipped a couple of addresses that filled the gap between leaving 401 North Naches Avenue at 18 and landing in Florence, Italy at 20. Do dorm rooms have street addresses or do student mail boxes count? There was that apartment I sublet from an upperclassman during the summer after freshman year, but the thing is I don’t remember those addresses let alone any major life events. By this reasoning, as flawed as it may be, I will try to record the people and events that populated those eight months at 13 Via Cavour.
While I don’t recall the room number, I shared a lovely double room toward the back of the building with Mark Pernell. Mark was a sophisticated southern Californian from Orange County. While we knew each other before the trip, as two openly gay men, we decided to room together to mitigate any awkwardness for ourselves and others. Among other attributes, Mark stood out for his quintessential good looks—square jaw, good hair, and dazzlingly bright teeth. It was a good match and we had a great little room with storage for us both, a sink, and French doors that opened onto….well, it opened and luckily there was a rail to keep us from stepping out onto the red tile roofs below. While directions in Florence have always escaped my complete grasp, I think we looked out in an Eastern-ish direction in an interior courtyard.
The name of the family owned pensione at 13 Via Cavour was Hotel Casci. Casci was the surname of Orlando Gelli’s mother who opened the hotel in 1926. Hers is a remarkable tale that deserves to be told in its own right. During my time at 13 Via Cavour, Signora Casci was a seldom seen imposing old lady referred to by the family as “Nonna”.
The physical attributes of 13 Via Cavour, at least those within the walls of Hotel Casci have long been altered—as early as spring of 1983. My description will be unreliable as it is filtered through over 45 years of human memory. In my time I recall the high ceilings, especially in the reception and dining rooms. At the front there was a desk where we dropped off and picked up our keys coming and going. I really do not recall spending significant time in the reception area, but the next room, the dining room, was the epicenter of many wonderful meals and memories.
Exiting the dining room, one was presented with a series of small seating areas connected by hallways with doors to rooms and shared bathrooms and the occasional shower room. Hallways turned or jogged to one direction or another and one might go up or down a step or two. Along the way there was what I consider classic Italian pensione decor. A pair of formerly resplendent down cushioned chairs might offer the perfect spot to hunker down with a text book or a novel, Wood pieces that to a naive American may or may not be museum worthy would populate corners or niches. Along the walls were simply and charmingly framed historical scenes of the sites of Florence and other Italian landmarks. Occasionally there might be a real oil painting in a style that takes time to fully appreciate. The floor surface was generally tile with the occasional carpet runner. All-in-all the effect was living in a genteel if slightly faded ramblingly gracious hotel. It is an aesthetic that I cherish and which is surprisingly difficult to find today.
As I referenced earlier, the dining room was the heart of the home for us during our year abroad. Morning breakfast consisted of pots of coffee and hot milk and baskets of sliced Tuscan bread and sometimes packaged cornetto or other sweet breads. Butter and jam made the simple plain bread my favorite. While most of the time the bread was fresh, sometimes it was clear that you were getting bread from the day before. My solution? Extra butter and jam! Never did I consider complaining to anyone thinking that I was entitled to something else.
While breakfast was a come and go event with small numbers of classmates as they prepared to head out to school, lunch was a different matter. I think that lunch was served at 1pm daily and it was probably the best attended hour of the day. The tables always included olive oil, salt and pepper and a basket of bread. The typical Tuscan bread is made without salt so it was at the lunch tables of 13 Via Cavour that I learned the secret of drizzling it with olive oil and a sprinkle of salt! The Italians have a word for things without salt, “sciocco”, it is also the word for foolish.
The lunch meals were generally hearty, plentiful, and delicious. I don’t recall a day when at some point someone came out of the kitchen with offerings of seconds for anyone still hungry. It didn’t take long to discover that while we were being treated and fed like an extended family, my classmates that I had envied on arrival day were routinely underfed by their well-fed “Mamma”. I have no doubt that my love for Florence and my never waning desire to return is rooted in my experience living at 13 Via Cavour…and not just the food!
Most who know me know that I am still strongly connected to the family that hosted me for those eight months spanning September 1978 and May 1980. Orlando Gelli, a force of nature, created a home year after year for students like me. I was in their second co-hort of students and I owe so much of what I took away from the year of study abroad to him and his family. After my initial dread had passed, I grew accustomed to the odd idiosyncrasies of the physical home and grew to love it. The care and well-being offered by the Gelli family spoiled me and let me be “at home” in both 13 Via Cavour and in Florence.
*****
As students we did have a curfew after which we would need to disturb Orlando to get into the hotel. As I recall, curfew was 1:00am and given how late nightlife starts in Italy, 1:00am comes awfully early! I only remember missing curfew twice. One time I ended up sleeping on the floor of a friend’s room in another pensione hotel. I have no recollection of how that managed to happen and discretion keeps me from naming the friend. The other time was at the long, bitter end of a weekend adventure to the island of Elba with Casey Reardon where our plans were to sleep on the beach. Beyond the absurdity of imagining me or Casey Reardon sleeping on the beach, the entire trip was a series of delays, missed connections, and general poor planning that was somehow mitigated by the serendipitous kindness of strangers.
The trip to Elba involved taking a train from Florence to catch a ferry to Elba. By the time we reached Elba we had missed the last bus that circumnavigates the island that would have taken us to a particular beach where we were told we could sleep. Neither of us had enough money for even a cheap hotel, so we sought out and found a cafe that stayed open late. Our thought was to reduce the time we would be sitting outside waiting for the first bus to the beach. While trying to look as unobtrusive as possible, the cafe started to fill up with young Italian men entering in small groups. While none seemed to take notice of me, most if not all definitely noticed Casey. People who know Casey understood why. As I recall, Casey’s Italian was pretty limited, so the men who managed the most English fared the best with Casey. For the most part none of these young men seemed especially sketchy or shady, but we were both taken by surprise when we noticed one was wearing a gun in a holster! It turns out that there is some sort of police training academy on Elba and rather than stumbling into a gathering of thugs and hitmen, we were among police recruits and trainers!
One of them, likely an officer or trainer, understood our predicament enough to offer to let us sleep in his car for the night. While marginally better than sleeping outside, it was still cold and uncomfortable but we were thankful for the security of sleeping in the parking lot of the police academy.
Dragging our blurry eyes out to the bus stop early the next morning we did get the bus to the beach. Well, to a stop on the road from which you could see the beach and trek to it. The day had dawned and it was gray and mild with big tall clouds on the horizon. By the time we made it to the beach per se, the big clouds had rolled in and we were in a downpour.
Whatever remained of our dubious enthusiasm for a camping in the beach adventure was quickly washed away with every raindrop. We decided to cut our losses and try to retrace our steps back to Florence. Back up to the main road we trudged to wait for the next bus back to Portoferraio and the ferry to the mainland. And wait and wait and wait we did with not a single bus passing. We decided to walk and to possibly hitchhike. After what seemed like an eternity of walking with very few passing cars and fewer slowing down, finally on stopped and offered a lift to the port. I remember being jammed in the back seat securely packed with our bags and whatever the driver had back there. Casey was up front with the driver doing her best to engage in conversation. To the question “Quando tornerete in America?” (When will you return to America?) She cheerfully replied without hesitation, “Mai!” (Never!) instead of “Maggio!” (May!) It was an honest mistake.
Between the ferry schedule, the time to reach the mainland, and waiting for a train to take us to Florence, we were beat and ready to get back to the comfort of 13 Via Cavour! I think we were both happy that when we were finally on that Florence bound train, there was room for both of us to be comfortable enough to catch forty winks. The next thing I remember is waking up to the sounds of the cleaning crew—luckily in Florence—with no real sense of how long the train had been there. The final stroke of misfortune was that we had missed curfew!
While I don’t recall any discussion of the pros and cons of waking up Orlando, I do know that we both wanted nothing more than to sleep in our own beds!
Orlando seemed rather un-rattled by our late arrival and I venture he was probably amused and surprised at who the two culprits were! Bottomline, Orlando cared more about the safety and well being of 30 rowdy American college students than a good night’s sleep.
******
My eight month sojourn at 13 Via Cavour came to an end, not “mai” but in “maggio” of 1980. I left with only one certainty, that I would return. Over the years I have shared a number of stories from my time spent in Florence that I glibly refer to as “tales of my misspent youth” and yet now with that youth well in the rear view mirror, while many things may be larger than they appear, I would not have spent my youth in any other manner.
To be continued…
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