Masseria Mazzapede

We Finally Meet The Man and Make a New Friend!

The ‘me’ in the title is Graham and the new friend is Giuseppe.  These are my recollections of arriving at the Masseria.

I drove around Grottole only once before we found La Vecchia Appia.  I picked the bar for the simple reason that there was a parking space close by.  When  we walked into the bar I ordered two small beers for Jackie and myself and asked the Signora whether she knew Giuseppe Riccardi?  Her face brightened with a smile.

‘Si; e un amico di mio figlio.’
It came out so fast, but  Jackie caught ‘amico’ –
‘Friend, amico?’ she asked
‘Si, mio figlio.’

For the last nine months we had been trying to learn Italian via CD’s and also a nice little guy on the Internet.  We felt comfortable that we had a rudimentary grasp; that was, until we crossed the border into Italy and found that everything we had learned seemed to have flown out of our heads like captive birds from a left-open cage, leaving us with dry mouths when confronted with a native.

‘Mio’, we knew was, ‘my’; so ‘Figlio’ had something to do with her.  ‘Famiglia’ is ‘family’; so Jackie deduced it had to do with a member of her family and anything with ‘io’ on the end is generally male.  Jackie ventured. ‘Your son?’
First she frowned, then comprehended.  ‘Si, Son:  Mio figlio.’

While this had been going on I had pulled out my phone and rung Giuseppe.  When  he answered I passed the phone to the Signora and asked her to tell him where we were.  What we didn’t know at the time was how lucky we had been in picking that particular bar.  It turned out not many people in Grottole knew Giuseppe.

He must have been in the village already, because in a matter of seconds he materilised at our side.  Giuseppe was a tall, lean guy in his late thirties.  He had wild black curls and a tanned, olive-skinned face, which lifted into a charming smile, showing off his strong, even white teeth. He was effusive in his welcome and there was a twinkle in his intense, almost black eyes.

‘I will guide you,’ he said. ‘Just follow my car.’

I would never have found the farmhouse on our own. It was described on the web as ‘just outside Grottole’.  We had picked it for that reason, wanting to be part of a small Italian community; all necessary research for my next book.

After a short conversation we discovered that Giuseppe’s English was near on perfect.  We got into our respective cars; his was a slightly battered, silver Punto.  What the heck, I thought; he’s a farmer.  He shot off up the road with me trying to follow.  I’m by no means a slow driver, but Italian drivers are notoriously fast and a lot of them, when they get behind the wheel, appear crazy.  I love them as a people and a nation, but not as drivers.  (But I’ll moan about that later.)

A Little Bee…

We soon forked off onto a narrow, twisting lane, dropping down steeply in a series of hairpin bends.  I tried to keep the Punto in sight.  Suddenly Giuseppe came to a screeching, sliding halt, leaving a smear of rubber on the road behind him.  Luckily, having some distance between us, my stop was more controlled.   From out of a cloud of smoke an old, battered three-wheeled Apé chugged into sight.  These funny little three-wheelers with a trailer incorporated, (covered with a plastic hood reminiscent of an oxygen tent) are synonymous with rural life all over Italy and France.  The Apé passed Giuseppe’s Punto as if it was gasping for breath, whereupon his vehicle disappeared off in a cloud of dust.  The Ape came abreast of us, and the driver peered into our car with unabashed animosity.  He couldn’t have shouted louder,  “What the hell are you doing on my patch of road?”

Deciding not to throw caution to the wind and tear off after Giuseppe, I drove quietly down from the  high ridge where Grottole was perched; the road making ever sharper bends to the valley bottom.  When the driving would allow I would glance at Jackie, who was keeping very quiet.

‘What?’ she eventually snapped.
‘I thought you said we were just outside the village,’ I complained.
‘That’s what he told me.  It’s definitely in his website.  Maybe he’s giving us a grand tour and we’ll find ourselves at the other end.’
‘Well let’s hope so;  we’ve already been driving for over ten minutes and gone nearly ten kilometres.  Let’s hope he has the sense to wait at any junction we come to; otherwise we’ll be lost.’

I was tired from the long drive and concerned as  to where we were going.  Although it was late afternoon, it was still hot.  We came out of a bend and and levelled out.  There a hundred yards ahead, was the Punto, straddling the road at a roundabout.  As soon as he caught sight of us our new friend was off again as though the hounds of hell were after him.  This time I was determined to keep up, and put my foot down.

Scraping the Bottom.

We had gone a total of twelve kilometres when the Punto’s right-hand indicator started blinking and Giuseppe swung his car onto a farm track.  I followed suit, and then came to a sliding halt on loose gravel.  Gripping the wheel I watched in dismay as Giuseppe drove the Punto, grantedly at a slower pace, on one verge and a central rocky ridge.  It was obvious that much larger farm vehicles used this way.  Two deep furrows, forming wide tracks with high verges and the humped, barren central ridge, wound up between two fields. which would tear out the undercarriage of any low vehicle like a Punto or a Golf.  For some reason, halfway up, Giuseppe swapped sides.  I say up; but not as steep as the hill he had taken us down, thank God.

‘What are you waiting for?  If he can do it so can you!’ I said to myself.

Yes, I knew I could drive up there.  I had tackled far worse roads; once in Crete, in the mountains with a thunderstorm clapping around our ears: but that was in a hired car, and it didn’t have to get us home again three thousand-odd miles away.  Yes, the Punto had made it, but then Giuseppe had probably gone up that track many thousands of times.  There was no knowing how many cars he had wrecked to gain that experience.  From the looks of the Punto, it was closer to the graveyard than a showroom.  There was also the fact that his car was empty and ours was laden with luggage, which probably weighed as much as three adults sitting in the back seats.

I started off, put the Golf into second gear and kept it there.  I was not going to try and prove anything to anyone.  Both verge and central ridge were wide and stable enough, though the car rocked over the uneven surface.  We made easy going until we got to where Giuseppe switched sides.  Before us was a pot hole that could swallow a tank: well, maybe not a tank, but it wasn’t something I was going to venture into, not even on foot without a rope.  The verges and ridge had been worn down where vehicles had negotiated round it.  As I swapped sides without mishap our car jolted and tilted alarmingly.

It took us a good three or four minutes to traverse up to where Giuseppe had disappeared over a brow of the hill and the dust was already resettling from his passing.  We came over the top and the track levelled out, became even, and then turned to laid concrete.  The ground dropped a little and we ran through large green metal gates into an orderly concrete farmyard.  Ahead to our right was a two-storeyed white modern house looking nothing like the one on Giuseppe’s website.

At the far end of the yard was the Punto, and close by two large cream shaggy-haired dogs, and a small, feisty rat-catcher.  They stood their ground, barking ferociously.  A hand came out of the car and waved us forward, then the Punto jerked on and disappeared between two large shrubs.  With Giuseppe gone the dogs turned their attention to us, so we quickly raised our windows.

When I reached the bushes I could see another, smaller track.  This one was not so deeply rutted, though it had far more pot holes, and was hemmed in by foliage.  I was unable to miss all of them and winced at each jarring jolt.  We proceeded cautiously up, with the crescendo of barking slowly fading as we neared another set of gates. At last I could see that the track now had a good surface of tarmac, though old, with spots where grass was spiking through.

Unfortunately, right before the gate where the tarmac finished, storms had gouged out the earth, creating a deep step.  How deep wasn’t clear; it was shaded by the trees.  There was a nasty grinding sound as something under the car caught the edge of the step.  I didn’t think stopping or going back was an option, so pressed my foot on the gas.  There was a clank – and we were over the step.  Twenty yards further on a sleek young black dog came into view, wagging his tail excitedly, Giuseppe by his side, grinning like a schoolboy.  He lifted his hands in the air.

‘No problem; si?  Come; you can park just round the corner.  I will help you with your luggage.’

As soon as we  got out I checked under the car and found no oil leaks; the exhaust was as firmly secure as ever, with no holes or dents.  The brake lines were intact; the only thing I could see was some metal scraped clean from one of the jacking points.  We had been lucky, but if the hole wasn’t filled in something worse was likely to happen.  Giuseppe assured me:

‘We’ve had bad storms for many weeks.  I have men coming to fill in the potholes, domani.’

I was to hear the word domani (tomorrow) many times over the next nine days.  At that moment I stayed silent about those ‘storms and rain’ over the last two weeks.  I didn’t like to contradict our new friend, but for the last fourteen days we’d driven through a heatwave.

‘Okay, how about a hand with the luggage?’

Daft Young Dog.

The excitable dog became a hazard, dashing in and out of our legs and tripping us up, until Giuseppe lost his patience and locked him away.  We took everything out of the car and carried it up two flights of steps to the first floor.  This would be ours, except for the two rooms at the front of the house.  Unfortunately, Giuseppe explained, the laminated floor had only just arrived and the carpenters would be laying it in the next two to three days.  He gave a shrug and put it down to the bad storms.  All the furniture for our rooms was stacked in one of the front rooms.  We would sleep in the other, smaller front room – and use the shower downstairs.

What could we say?  The rent was low and it was ‘only for a couple of days’.  At least we had one compensation; the smaller bedroom opened onto a wide balcony with a wonderful view; over the countryside and down to a large lake (Lago di San Giuliano).  And in welcoming manner our host was cooking us a meal; we were to rest, and leave everything to him.  So we sat there, wineglasses in hand, and soaked in the view as the light faded from the sky.  The whirring sound of cicadas rising and falling, took us back to when we had lived in New Orleans.  At least we could rest for a while, and hopefully everything would sort itself in a few days.   And I already really liked the guy!

Text by – Graham Usher, SoA.  ‘Graham Liverpool’ on Trip Advisor.)
Photographs by – Graham Usher.
Thanks to Google maps – Most of the images have been  taken by Graham, though in this blog the vintage Ape came from other sources.