The Story of a Sumarai Chess Set. Part 3: Talking to Mutti about where we were in the 1950s

Via Appia.
The Via Appia Antica is 2,300 y.o. The Appia Nuova 250 years old.
We drove on Appia Nuova to get to our house in the 1950s

From yesterday: "That's me meeting the set, at age 7, lying on the floor of our peasant house, waiting for Pa to sit down with me and explain what's what about chess."

In chess the moves are forward and sometimes back. And sometimes sideways. And sometimes forward, or back and sideways at the same time. 

And so, I now move back a bit, before I go forward again to my first confrontation with the Samurai Chess Set, my first marvelling at it, my first grapplings with the rudiments of the ancient game that my father began to teach me three quarters of a century ago, in our house, just off the Appian Way. 

I spoke to Mutti yesterday, my mother, my sister's mother, our children's grandmother, my grandson's great-grandmother. 

She's now 104, still totally with it. Though she cheerily admits that she forgets what she had for dinner last night. But can remember where we lived 70 years ago in Rome. Or just outside Rome, to be precise. 

When she and our father arrived for a posting by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, to the Australian Embassy in Rome, they were told they had to find their own accommodation. 

The budget was so tight that they had to find a place outside the centre of Rome. The Roma Centrale was then as unaffordable as Manhattan today. So they went to the countryside. 

Where they ended up, with the help of Charles Amato, the local Embassy fixer, was in a town 25km or half an hour from Rome, and just five km west of this beautiful place below: The Castel Gandolfo, Summer Residence of the Pope, since the 17th Century. The Pope being at the time Pope Pius XII, who we met. 

Castel Gandolfo on Lake Albano

Pope Pius XII, the Vatican, 1956. Anne, my sister, 
in white dress, me on her left. Pa behind Anne, w. glasses

The map below shows where our house was in relation to Rome central (we 25km South) and to the Pope's Castel Gandolfo (we 5km West). This was the town of Falcone aka "Falcongnana": 

Where we were in the 1950s. Just 5km from the 
Pope's Summer Residence at Castel Gandolfo

And finally, I find that there's a picture online of the actual house we lived in for five years. I visited the house with friends back in 1973. It's no surprise that it's still there. Building new houses in the Italian countryside is notoriously difficult. 

In those 1950s we rented the house from a "very nice Australian lady", according to our Mutti. Our landlady was married to a local Italian. The house in the pic below marked as being "Mimmo and Lola's" is that of what Mutti referred to as the "contadini", or the peasants. They were peasant labourers on the farm. Harvesting the grapes, on a profit share deal. 

I learned, only yesterday, that "Mimmo" is a nickname of Domenico and that "Lola" is a nickname of Dolores. 

Our peasant house, just off the Via Appia Nuova.
Falcone, in the Lazio region, part of the Metropolitan
City of Rome, Municipality of Frascati

I'll make a sideways move in the next post. Still not quite getting to the Samurai Chess Set, but getting to some of the surrounding vibes of what was going on in those days of La Dolce Vita. And then to the Chess Set....