This Dummy Pulls His Own Strings

1. Closer to the Tuscan Sun – Italy

Once on the autobahn, a four lane road, with cars speeding along, either not being able to read the speed limit or ignoring it, we just had to watch for the exit to Lucca. We easily found the exit to Lucca but there were several of them and Gill had warned me about some construction going on. My instructions were to take a specific exit and drive until you run into the wall around Lucca. You can’t miss it because it goes all around Lucca. Our first obstacle was a toll booth to exit the autobahn with instructions in Italian. After 15 minutes of trying to get the arm to rise with no success, I noticed a slot for a credit card or at least I hoped it was for that and that it wouldn’t capture my credit card and keep it. I tried it, hoping I was pushing the right buttons, the arm lifted and even returned my credit card. Later when checking my credit card statement, it only charged me once.

Now we were closing in on our destination but it didn’t get any easier. We found Lucca and missed most of the construction but couldn’t find that elusive wall that was only about two to three stories tall and circled the city. After driving around aimlessly for a while with stomachs growling in hunger and in protest of the anxiety, I received another helpful tip from the not so silent majority. Why don’t you call Gill and get instructions. What I wanted to reply was, why don’t you call Gill on a pay phone that is not multi-lingual, but of course it made sense for me to call her because I was the only one she had communicated with and was driving so should be the one to get the instructions. So I found a pay phone and proceeded to try to figure out how to make it work and feed it the right coins and dial Gill. I was successful and Gill couldn’t quite figure out where exactly we were from my description. She had some good advice though, just find the wall and follow the road around until you come to this road that will take you to Cappella. OK A little more driving around and more advice from the majority, stop and ask directions. Well, everyone knows men don’t ask directions because they never get lost. We just take alternate routes. I surrendered my manhood and stopped to ask directions. I previously described that conversation or lack of one. At this point it was beginning to get dark and my eyes don’t like to function at night. As long as I had already surrendered my manhood, I asked Kim to take over driving and I would take over co-pilot and shotgun. Now things started to come together. I attribute it to my abilities as co-pilot. We found the wall, followed it around until we found the road we were to take that even had a sign pointing to Cappella. We arrived at Cappella and found the road leading to the villa (Quaranta). Kim was doing a great job of driving due to my excellent skills as co-pilot. It was still light enough to see the road was leading directly to the mountain in the near distance. Along the road were vineyards and olive orchards. As we started up the mountain the road turned into a one lane switchback with no guard rails and the only place for vehicles to pass one another was where there was a driveway into a private home, church, vineyard or olive orchard. The switchbacks were less than U turns and were more like V turns. Kim did OK on the first ones but didn’t quite make the turn on one so had to back up a couple feet at a time and go forward until she could make the turn. All the while the back end of the car would be hanging over the downslope of the mountain with nothing to keep you from rolling off the road down the mountain. She did great but there were a lot of prayers and swearing coming from the back seat but not a lot of advice. We passed a huge stone church built into the side of the mountain that Gill had told me about so we knew we were on the right road and about half way to our villa up the mountain. The practice was to honk your horn when you came to the switchback so a car going the opposite direction would know you were there. If and when you met a car, one of you had to back up until you found a spot wide enough to pass by one another. This didn’t happen often but it did happen. Obviously, not a well-traveled thoroughfare.

Eventually we arrived at the villa with the sign, Quaranta. Kim stopped the car on the road because the drive up to the villa was a steep incline and I don’t think she wanted to try going up it. Gill walked down to the road to greet us and affirm that this was the right place. We all got out of the car and the former Hoffman sisters were emulating their father and grumbling and complaining with a little cursing and perhaps praying thrown in. Gill picked up on this and said in perfect Queen’s English, “ A bit daunting, eh?”. Without missing a beat, Kathy replied in perfect Queen’s English, “A bit Daunting? Holy Mother, Sweet Jesus”. Now Kathy is neither Catholic nor Southern Baptist so I was a little concerned that she had switched from praying mode to swearing mode. I quickly whisked Gill out of earshot before Kathy switched to North Dakota farm girl cussing with perhaps a few drunken sailor phrases thrown in, she may have picked up from me. After the Hoffman ladies had settled down and became the ladies we know and love, Gill and I wandered back over to rejoin them so Gill could show us our quarters and explain things to us. Things like where the main circuit breaker box is in case of an electrical storm that causes the main circuit to kick off. After all we are at the top of a mountain and a lot closer to the source of the lightning as well as God. Perhaps this is what they had in mind when the song, Nearer my God to Thee, was written.