In case you weren’t aware, every city in Italy has a street called “via Roma”. It’s the Italian version of Main Street. Well, just off via Roma in Codroipo my father pointed to two buildings. He couldn’t remember which one it was that he took his first English lessons in shortly before coming to Canada. I imagine the lessons were largely useless, providing translations for “Hello, I’d like to buy some cheese and butter.” Or “Excuse me. Which way to the nearest igloo?” The idea that Canada is permanently encased in ice persists.
After class, before riding their bicycles home, my father and his classmates would gather in the town square to talk. Some of the young men were smokers and offered cigarettes to the non-smokers. My father admits to having joined them on occasion, but he never picked up the habit. He didn’t get any joy from it, and ever the practical one, he viewed it as setting hard earned money on fire.
One particular night dad and another young man rode home together; they were in their late teens. The other guy lived in a town further down the road and they said goodbye in Gorizzo where the road splits in front of Villa Mainardi. It may have been the last time the other young man was seen alive.
Shortly after dad awoke the next morning he heard the telltale ringing of the church’s bells off schedule. Someone had died.
To the best of dad’s knowledge, the story was that the young man had gone home to sleep but had awoken early in the morning to go fishing. Later on that morning he was found by the water…dead. “What happened?” I asked. Dad explained that the young man had been using a “new” way of fishing using electricity drawn from the power lines above the road. By ignorance or by error, he had made a fatal mistake and electrocuted himself. My father admits to the events having affected him profoundly, especially since he may have been one of the last to see him alive. For a while, even the act of switching on a light bulb was enough to give dad pause. Electricity: mysterious, invisible and with the power to kill.
As the sign I read in Taiwan last year said: “No electrocuting, poisoning or bombing of fish”. Dad says it’s for your own good.
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