and then there was the threshing

I remember those summer evenings spent in "taking the cool" in the scale of the tower, many times you talk in absolute silence,there was only the croak of some cicada laggards who did not want to silence and even the singing of crickets and a completely starry sky, in the garden, occasionally felt some noise indefinitely due, perhaps, some porcupine or some other nocturnal animal: in the distance he felt the "old Campino man" singing poetry starling middle where there was always some love and a woman and a hunting dog was barking near "Casapaolini". 

We were "poor devils" and university and felt to be alone and at the same time in harmony with the infinite. Every time we needed to say something. 

"Tomorrow comes the tre thresh machinee" begin from Salvatore first and then by Pasquale." And I thought: "to thresh then, the fun begins though very tiring." Now know him well enough "profane rite of threshing." Will you remember as a great bustling of men, from the very first morning, with that "monstrous" big red machine, revered as a totem, which is laboriously climbing to the narrow streets up to "Via del Sorbino", accompanied by a large voices of men worried that the monster could have some damage during the climb and the road that were giving the best trajectory, some were sweaty for the sole reason to put himself on display. But the affair was very serious: there was half of the collection of grain and therefore life. During the day he was an alternation of hard work and fun that resulted in a lucullus lunch, too rich, beautiful and colorful at the same time, where the housewives cooked and served. I was little but I remember the authenticity of those women strong, healthy and true, with those hair styles that are not seen more, and that, I think, even today would still pleased men, together with those who left clothes modest guess that was under a great fabric and not too tanned faces but with the red cheeks. A few, like a "boutade" due only to that party, was, at times, a strip of underskirt. 

The men with the red handkerchief on the mouth, almost all were excited by the work: take the "manna" in the monster, sack the grain that it rained, in my opinion, too abundant, to collect and press the straw. There was an air of atavistic and pagan ritual. The souls of men were very switched on, as if that work them dug in deep. We kids had our place: we were to cut the threads which bound iron presses. It was a tedious job but context, the prelude to other work of greater importance that may one day not too far away we could do: run the tractor that moved everything and take gasoline, download "Manne", take the monster, sack the grain. And meanwhile, the dwarf who had not been for this time, go into the pan run again in the square along with chickens, grains of wheat that had remained in the cracks of the bricks that pave the farmyard. 

Chaff of the threshing was sparsely in the distance we heard the noise of cutlery that women were clean, with lots of noise. 

The pagan rite is initiated at the end, the sun was dropping, and tomorrow you start over again by Pasquale. 

Taken from "Ancajano - la porta Jano" still "unpublished" - copyright reserved 


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