SANTA MARIA DI CASTELLABATE, Italy — I’ve been reading quite a bit that it’s hot out, but there aren’t many places as smoldering as southern Italy in summer. It’s the so-called Mezzogiorno region that I just happened to select as a vacation destination during what’s being billed because the deadliest heat wave since Vesuvius exploded and covered the world just a bit of north with molten lava.
For the past two weeks, I’ve been hanging in and around Naples and met with family within the hills far south of that tourist trap often known as the Amalfi Coast. For the unacquainted, these destinations are pretty south — and really hot. Upper 80s, into the 90s and sometimes near triple digits in the course of the summer even before so-called global warming set the world on fire.
Yet as we sat down at a restaurant outside the small mountain town of Laurito, I noticed something. It’s not only the sweat that’s pouring down my neck; it’s the air con — or total absence of it. And no fans buzzing either.
That’s the best way they do things here. At all times have. In the course of the summer, the oldsters on this hamlet and throughout much of the south have their midday meal (their version of dinner) without the AC blasting, or fans circulating.
After they mangia inside a restaurant or their very own homes (I did each with relatives), their AC is an open window and an occasional cool breeze. They call it naturale. I call it crazy but I come from a generation of Italian Americans that shunned much of this amazing culture. I never learned the language — nor lots of the traditions except pasta on Sunday and a couple of curse words.
In Italy, they use air con and fans sparingly in the course of the summer. Christopher Furlong
English isn’t widely spoken in these parts. So consulting my Google Translate, I ask in Italian what’s up with the AC situation — and the friggin’ heat. AC they tell me is bad for you. You’ll catch the dreaded colpo d’aria, which roughly translates to a “blast of air” that may cripple the healthiest amongst us if the AC is turned on, regardless of how hot it gets in the summertime.
The AC ailment has something to do with getting a draft. That is smart, kinda. Making more sense is what they said in regards to the weather: Heat is nothing recent and nothing to get too bent out of form about. It happens every 12 months around this time, and it gets even hotter into August and early September. It’s just the best way things are, so stop crying and get used to it. They’ve survived for generations and so will I.
Sweating it out
Message delivered and I went back to eating a pizza and sweating.
OK, perhaps the southern Italians are only that much sturdier than the common American or the dude working The Recent York Times climate-catastrophe beat. I’d wish to think so, given my ancestry. All those invasions over time, the Greeks, Romans, Normans, North Africans (excuse me for my cultural insensitivity if I left your people out of the fun) made people like me genetically superhuman in relation to the dreaded climate change.
But as my cooler head prevailed — the fan blowing cold air on my face inside my hotel room at this resort town little doubt helped — I also realized that the less pampered amongst us have greater things to fret about than a heat wave. The impoverished people of southern Italy needed to work, put food on the table and procreate. They didn’t have the posh to obsess in regards to the weather while pursuing survival.
It’s the identical reason so many southern Italians went to the US with almost nothing greater than the garments on their backs. They wanted a good shake at that kind of life that was for hundreds of years denied by their wealthy masters north of Rome or the local Mafia boss. It’s why my old man, second-generation American as he was, worked construction and never complained unless he couldn’t work.
Charles Gasparino discusses his Italian summer of warmth and pizza. Mr. and mrs. Black
Nowadays, southern Italians are less of an oppressed people, as they’re the recipients of the largesse from the Italian welfare state. Count that as one in all the large reasons many within the north wish to separate — they see their taxes eaten up by a system of patronage that siphons a bit of nearly every transfer payment sent down here. Plus crime is high, so is drug use, and, in fact, there’s poverty despite the cash that flows from Rome.
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And yet, a lot of the Mezzogiorno people still work hard. My relatives are bus drivers, carpenters and cops. They put their kids through college as computer programmers and lawyers. The persons are still amazing and resilient.
We within the US could use a few of that.
I’m no climate-change denier. Yet I actually need more evidence that it’s end-of-times stuff before I demand that ExxonMobil stop pumping oil with ever-expanding ESG policies that may cause inflation and deny the American Dream to the working class — within the US and going to the US like my ancestors.
Yes, I witnessed the southern Italians surviving what the mainstream media dubbed one in all most dangerous heat waves of all time, and without AC. It’s not because they’re superhuman, it’s because they discovered that it’s not end-of-times stuff.
For the chattering class, it’s today’s worry — and sure, something to handle. But once we figure it out — and we’ll, with technology and never ESG — we may even move on to the following neurotic obsession.
Within the meantime, it’s 1 p.m. and time for some macaroni.
