I found Grandpa’s original village after hearing my Dad tell me he described it as “a blasted rock” and that it was called something like “porto re-all-ee”. I found a road map of Sicily at the downtown library and when my eye fell upon “Poggioreale,” I knew I’d hit pay dirt. I’d connected online with another descendant of the village, and he spends half his year there, and has been there long enough to do genealogy studies on the village. It was about 1500 people, and very insular, so I’m sure the family tree looked like an average Arkansas family tree. Robert told us that if we’d moved there, our grandchildren *might* be considered villagers. Marrying an outsider was highly suspicious. He told of a woman who married her husband 30 years ago, and he still wasn’t fully accepted.
There was an earthquake in ’68 or ’69 that took out several villages in the area. A new Poggioreale was built by the Italian government and the villagers were relocated there. Poggioreale Vecchio (Old Poggioreale) is crumbling now. This bell tower of the madre duomo (mother church) fell a few years after our visit. (There were seven churches in the village, we were told.) The Poggioreale mayor is trying to get foreigners to invest in Poggioreale vecchio and rebuild the old village.
I’ve seen a picture of this image from before the earthquake. It had the priest and a class of students lined up on the steps. This staircase empties into Piazza Elimo, which was the main piazza of the village. As I stood there on the piazza, I could hear the past in the whispers of the wind: children kicking a ball, women gossiping about the young couples strolling arm in arm, the men drinking wine and discussing the crops….
