Adventures on Contrada Calluzzi

Contrada Caluzzi is a small country road in the town of Feroleto Antico (CZ) in Calabria where my mother’s family is from. My brother, sisters and I spent many summer vacations and made lifetime memories there. Here’s a small window into summertime on Contrada Caluzzi.

Feroleto Antico 2008

If the rooster failed to wake us the dogs would finish the job. The summer heat in Calabria could be felt early in the day and mom and nonna would already be hard at work with the daily chores when we woke. Nonna would break from her work to feed us warm milk and biscotti and a slice of bread drizzled with olive oil when we asked but soon after she would usher us outside…. there would be no staying in the house, which was just fine with us. The houses were angled slightly facing each other like 2 sides of a triangle with an old stone barn situated at the corner between them. The barn’s weathered wooden door doubled as a goal when we kicked the plastic ball around as we pretended to be our favorite soccer players (I was always Paolo Rossi or Cabrini) but a hard shot against the old door would make an awful rattle and a few hard shots would bring nonna to the front window yelling at us to go find another place to play… unless Zio Peppe was playing with us as he could usually convince her to let us play 10 minutes more.

The Old Barn

As you drive through the gates of the property, the pebble driveway with a lone olive tree in the center will bring you directly in front of my family’s home. My grandparents live in one house and my two uncles split (upstairs and downstairs) the other with their families. Less than 100 yards down the road a third uncle built his house on the property as well and that meant plenty of cousins to play with when we arrived for the summer. There was ample adventure and trouble to be found each day on the 20 or so acres and we did our best to find it. The property consists of olive grove, fruit trees, gardens and vineyard. I would start the day looking for my cousins who were often doing chores of their own and sometimes I would help out or keep them company until they were done. After chores we would have a meeting of sorts as we all had ideas of what we wanted to do. We would swim, play soccer, visit one of the many fruit trees on the property, walk to the vineyard, build forts, throw rocks at bees nests, chase lizards and much more but my favorite adventures were the ones that we took off the property. We would put on a pair of old shoes, take along a plastic bag and a pocket knife and head into the woods to find mushrooms, or pignoli nuts or change into clean cloths and walk the mile or so into town to get a gelato and play video games at the local bar.

E at the gate with her boots on a muddy day

The days continued like this throughout the summer with occasional trips to the beach or Nicastro to go shopping. After dinner we would all sit around the mimosa trees where nonno had built his benches and wobbly chairs and listen to stories under the stars until it was time for bed.

Some mornings we would wake to my aunts gathered to make tomato sauce or my nonno plucking feathers from a chicken or my uncles heading off to the vinyard and we were eager to help. The days we were all together were my favorite as I would listen to the stories, learn and laugh and then, like all good things it would come to an end and we would return home…. with a little oil and a lot of coffee, a bag of oregano and a few pieces of cheese, some dried olives, a jar of nutella, and a pocket full of memories.

to read about my father’s town: Adventures in San Michele