On the 22nd of July, we gave a heartfelt goodbye to Angela and her sweet husband and made our way one last time down the mountainside to Amalfi. We had to wake up early to catch the bus to Salerno and then transfer to another bus to make it all the way to Oliveto Citra. For some context, Oliveto Citra is where the distant relatives on my Mom’s side of the family come from (name Naponiello). They left Italy in 1900 to travel to America, eventually ending up in Chicago. Since Oliveto was so close to Amalfi and Salerno, it only made sense to stop there and maybe see if I could find some of the people Grandma had met 30 years ago when she had traveled there. We knew that it was likely that a few relatives had moved to Salerno based on her information, but I still wanted to see the town itself and hoped to be able to find a distant relative there as well.
Of course, the first step was getting there. As mentioned, we had to take two buses to get to Oliveto and needed to transfer in Salerno. However, our transfer window was small, only about 20 minutes. I was super worried about missing the transfer and waiting another three hours in Salerno for the next bus. Worst of all, there were only three buses daily to Oliveto, meaning that missing one bus meant dwindling options. Fortunately, the bus to Salerno arrived only 15 minutes late, giving us a five-minute window to make the next bus. We rushed to the bus stop just in time to catch the bus to Oliveto. I’m not sure the bus driver had ever seen a group of Americans go to Oliveto, and maybe he thought we were lost. I’m not entirely sure. Either way, though, he made sure we knew how to get there and when to get off the bus. Best of all, we didn’t have to pay anything! Seems like regional transport in Campania (outside of Naples and the touristy Amalfi Coast) is entirely free. You’re supposed to pay, but the bus drivers don’t care. So we relaxed on the hour-and-a-half bus ride to Oliveto with the other two riders onboard.
We arrived in Oliveto around noon and were greeted by our Airbnb host’s dad. Our host was once again out of town (weird theme here), and their parents were taking over the place while they were away. Antonio’s (our host) dad drove us the short distance to the apartment and showed us around. The apartment was super nice and recently renovated. It was also in a pre-earthquake building with an original wooden door, beams, and stone. According to Antonio’s dad, it was over 400 years old.
The earthquake was a big theme here (one I admittedly knew little about). The 1980 Irpinia Earthquake killed about 2,500 people across the Campania region, including 11 people from Oliveto (one Naponiello). Its epicenter was only about 16 miles away in the town of Castelnuovo. It leveled multiple buildings in Oliveto and severely hurt regional infrastructure. For most people in Oliveto old enough to remember it, it seemed like the earthquake was a turning point in the village’s history. If you’re interested in a small history read, I’ve linked the English Wikipedia article here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Irpinia_earthquake. In summary, most of the aid never reached the people who needed it most. Politicians, the Camorra, and just regular greedy individuals stole the majority of funds.
Anyway, before he left, we asked Antonio’s dad if he knew any Naponiellos or Indellis in the town. He said he knew many Naponiello's and that it was actually a common name in Oliveto. As for the Indelli's, he thought most had moved to Salerno years ago, although he knew some still owned property in Oliveto. As small towns go, it’s easy to get information because everybody seems to know everything about everyone. I don’t think there are such things as secrets in Oliveto. In that way, the cat was out of the bag the minute we arrived. I think everyone immediately realized that two random foreigners were there. One last thing to mention about Antonio’s dad, he told us he had distant relatives in Chicago. Keep this in mind because it will come up a lot.
After getting acquainted with the apartment, Chiara and I explored the town. I was definitely pleasantly surprised. I expected to find extreme poverty and poor infrastructure, but I was surprised to find a town with many new and updated buildings. A hostel (can you believe that!), a hopping town square, a few actually nice cars (one or two BMWs), and newly paved roads. There also were tons of informative signs in both Italian and English about the history of Oliveto and the pathway of immigrants in the area. The signs emphasized the olive oil history of the region, with olive oil production being the main export for literally thousands of years. It’s likely that Giuseppe Naponiello (the ancestor who immigrated in 1900- leaving from the Port of Naples, where we were just a few days ago) was an olive farmer too.
Through these initiatives, I could see a potential glimmer of the start of tourism in the town. It seemed like they were trying to attract people to come, and I can’t blame them. It’s a beautiful village perched on a hill overlooking the Sele Valley and has many nearby recreation opportunities. The next town over, Contursi Terme is well known for its great baths, and there’s a World Wildlife Fund sponsored nature reserve with a spectacular waterfall a short drive away. The hard part about the region is that it’s hard to get to. Even from Salerno, it felt like a journey to get to Oliveto. I can’t see why international tourists would add this to a destination versus Amalfi or Naples. But I can also see a future where the region takes advantage of rural tourism, much like Tuscany. That is, of course, if the Camorra lets that happen.
The town itself is beautiful and full of quaint alleys and side streets that haven’t changed for hundreds of years. A castle (Castello Guerritore) graces the top of the hill and looms over the town below. There is also a scattering of beautiful churches around the town. Sadly, we were unable to get into the one where the distant Naponiello ancestors were baptized because of time constraints (this will make sense later). But like most small towns, we only had to walk around for about an hour to see everything. That left us trying to see if we could find any distant relatives.
Chiara, for her part, was very invested in trying to find someone. There is definitely something alluring about the mystery of it all. She suggested we talk to the hostel owner since she might have connections in the town and know people (well, when I mean we- just her since we only met one person in Oliveto who could speak English). She did! The hostel owner actually had a Naponiello that worked for her (who was sadly not there at the moment) and also knew the Indelli family back when most of them lived in Oliveto. She suggested we talk to the owner of a bar across from the fountain in the main square, who might know more about the Indelli and Naponiello’s. This, of course, was eerily similar to the advice Grandma gave me.
“There is a big water fountain with a little bar across from it and tell them you are a distant relative of the Indelli family. Enrico Indelli is the young son dentist married to someone from England who came with his father who was also a dentist to see grandma and grandpa for dinner when they visited in 1992 and took them to the older Indellis home.”
The small bar owner, Salvatore, told us he wasn’t exactly sure where to find the Indelli’s, but he'd ask around once the town got busier. He suggested we wait near the main square fountain for an hour until more people arrived to go drinking on a Saturday night. So Chiara and I stayed at the fountain and watched as the townspeople filtered into the main square. Some people drove to the square to get drink water and keep going. Others parked their cars and sat down to talk with friends under the shade, while others went straight to the bars and restaurants lining the plaza.
After waiting an hour, we walked to the bar to talk to Salvatore. He then suggested we walk down the road to the petrol station, where he said the owner could help us more since she had the Indelli’s contacts. So Chiara and I walked down the road to the nearby petrol station. This petrol station was beyond iconic. The pumps still needed an attendant to come out and help you pump. The inside probably hadn’t been changed since at least the 70s. Racing memorabilia and pictures of Oliveto from years past lined the walls. The owner, a nice woman in her 60s, was extremely confused when a pair of foreigners entered her shop asking for the Indelli’s.
She definitely warmed up once I showed her the documents from Grandma that listed the names and contacts of the Indelli family. I honestly don’t think she expected us to have the real names and information. It was at this moment that she fully committed to helping us. She quickly looked through the Rolodex of old phone numbers and acquaintances and found Enzo Indelli, one of the Indellis that Grandma had listed on her contact card. She also confirmed that the older Indelli's, the ones Grandma knew the most, had passed away years ago. Their son Enrico still lived somewhere in Salerno, but she didn’t have his current contact. So instead, she called Enzo, although she told us it was likely he was either in Salerno or along the coast since it was vacation time for most people in Campania.
To everyone’s surprise, Enzo was actually in Oliveto! He was overseeing some renovations to the family home that they still owned, even though nobody lived there. I guess it was a way to keep connections with the family roots, even though, as Enzo put it, Oliveto was “in the middle of nowhere.” As we waited for Enzo Indelli, the gas station owner asked us where we were from, and we mentioned Chicago. She informed us that almost everyone who ever immigrated to America from Oliveto went to Chicago. Like they all went to Chicago. Even she had distant relatives in Chicago! She also mentioned that there was a group of Italian-Americans with relatives in Oliveto who had created some sort of club/organization that travels to Oliveto every decade or so. Crazy!
Every once in a while, the older man working with her would quip in and add something. Oh yeah, sorry I forgot to mention him. He must’ve been around 80 and still worked at the shop pumping gas. He’d go out to pump gas for customers and then come in again to sit and listen to the conversation. After about 15 minutes, Enzo arrived. He was a commanding man in probably his upper 50s or low 60s. A bit funny since when Grandma had met his cousin Enrico she described him as “young.” Enzo looked through our documents and practically couldn’t believe his eyes. He couldn’t believe some random kid from America had his address and phone number from the 90s! Of course, that had long since changed. He also mentioned that Enrico was probably on the coast now on vacation and not in Salerno as we had hoped. He also looked at Grandma’s family tree and confirmed everything on it. In fact, there were connections on it he never even knew about!
He mentioned that most of the Indelli family had moved to Salerno in the earthquake's aftermath but still tried to keep in touch with people in Oliveto. I guess that’s how Grandma had met them back in the 90s. Enzo simply couldn’t understand why the heck some kid from America would travel all the way to the “boring” town of Oliveto to find distant relatives. It absolutely blew his mind. He remarked that long ago, he had wanted to visit Chicago, to do a classic Route 66 trip on a motorcycle. However, a motorcycle accident here in Italy ended his motorcycling days. He had been to the US once, to Miami in the 80s, and remembered it fondly. It was partially his trip to Miami that encouraged him to buy a boat, which seemed to be where he spent most of his time now. He docks it in Salerno to travel up and down the Amalfi Coast and then swims ashore to visit the towns and beaches. Seems to me like the ideal way to travel Amalfi for sure.
He also mentioned how there seemed to be an “age limit” in Oliveto. There were no young people anymore in the town. They had all left to find jobs in the north. The station owner also quipped that she wondered what would happen to the town after the elderly passed. Who would keep up the houses and the traditions of generations if nobody remained?
It was at this moment that some random old guy entered the store to sit down and talk. He must’ve seen a small gathering in the station and decided to waltz in. He must’ve been at least in his upper 80s (possibly even 90) and plopped himself down on one of the old chairs in the store where everyone was sitting. Chiara mentioned later that she could barely understand what he was saying because he spoke with such a thick Campanian accent. And so, Chiara and I found ourselves in a small town gathering that quickly seemed to be attracting more people from the street.
This was why we couldn’t stop at the main church to see the baptistry. We had wanted to stop by and potentially go to mass, but we found ourselves sucked into a hilarious and fortuitous conversation that lasted for literally hours. I think we must’ve spent at least two to three hours inside the petrol station talking to Enzo, the owner, the pump attendant, and the random old guy off the street. As the sun began to set across the horizon, the station owner excused herself and said she’d be closing up shop soon. Enzo then offered to drive Chiara and me back to our Airbnb (after remarking that he should do the same thing and make some money with his family house). He also gave us the Southern Italian tip of not wearing seatbelts because “we don’t wear seatbelts down here.” Not that I could even try, he had removed all the seatbelts from the car.
We said goodbye to Enzo and then walked back into town to thank Salvatore for helping us with the leads. While we were talking to Salvatore, his cousin came by. It just happens that his cousin had actually lived in Chicago for a few years with some other people from Oliveto. And guess where? Bridgeport, of course! She had lived there for a few years during the 90s and remembered loving the city and its people, but got homesick and eventually traveled back to Oliveto to stay. That was the other part of the immigration equation that some people don’t mention. Some people traveled to Chicago but then returned to Oliveto because of homesickness, failed visas, or something else. In many ways, we are lucky in that the Naponiello ancestors stayed in Chicago despite all the hardships.
It was in Oliveto that Chiara and I ate yet another pizza and had the best prosciutto and mozzarella of our lives. The nearby town of Battipaglia is well known for its buffalo mozzarella, and let me tell you it was amazing. We also had unbelievable fresh olives from the groves at the base of the hill (none of that unique olive flavor that some people dislike).
The following morning we woke up early because we needed Antonio’s dad to drive us to the neighboring town to catch a bus back to Salerno. Long story short, there used to be many more buses to Oliveto. Despite Enzo’s frequent quips about how poor the region still was (and he’s right, for sure), it has gotten wealthier over the years. Nowadays everyone has a car and the local government has cut almost all bus services. Even the federal government in Rome cut all train services to the area. Now the lively train station in Contursi is empty, save for an iconic dog. Thank god that Antonio’s dad was nice enough to drive us to the station because there was literally no way to get from Oliveto to Contursi on a Sunday other than driving (oh yeah- no seatbelts once again).
Once at Contursi, we waited in the parking lot of the disused train station, hoping and praying that the scheduled bus would actually arrive. If something went wrong we’d be in serious trouble, there was only one other scheduled bus (at four in the afternoon), and we had a late train to catch in Salerno. We passed the time by watching one of the most enormous dogs I have ever seen waddle over near us and rollover. Sadly I didn’t think it prudent to pet her since it looked like she might have about half the world’s fleas and a variety of diseases. Fortunately, the bus arrived in Contursi on time and whisked us away to Salerno, with no payment as usual.
Even though it was one day, I’ll never forget our time in Oliveto. The generosity of the people was amazing, as was the ability to experience true southern Italian village life. I also can’t thank Grandma enough for the information she gave. Without it, there was no way we could have met Enzo or talked with almost anyone else in Oliveto. Oh, and I couldn't have done it without Chiara, either. Fortunately, she seemed to love the experience as much as I did! It truly was an experience I’ll never forget.
What an amazing experience - Grandma will be so thrilled to read the blog and talk to you about it! The people of Oliveto sound so genuine and welcoming and how great you met Enzo! Who knew a petrol station could be a place to make memories! Thank you for making it happen Nick (and for Chiara being such a good sport and for her Italian).
ReplyDeleteYeah who knew! It was a totally unexpected experience, but one I'll never forget. Couldn't have done it without Chiara!
DeleteUnbelievable. Thanks to you and Chiara and all the people you met along the way as that means so much to Grandma that you found some relatives. Unforgettable!
ReplyDeleteYou’re trip to Oliveto brought back some beautiful memories Thanks for the memories! Xoxo
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