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High School, being fluent in English, French and Italian, but still speaking
the Ligurian dialect at home.
Bart grows up in his grandparent’s house as Louise worked as a secretary
when Bart came to the stage, so he was left at home with his grandparents
during the day and he could learn the Ligurian dialect from them. Years
later Louise always remembered how Bart, as a child, was pointed out as
very talkative in the dialect with all the neighbors.
Bart studied at school as any other American child and went to college,
but he was always very close to his grandparents, a source of affection
important to him, and obviously he kept speaking the dialect with them.
The Italian language was not so important for Bart, it was the dialect
which kept him in tune with his Italian origins, Italy for Bart meant
Liguria, nothing else.
Bart was 18 when he visits Italy for his first time. It is his grandfather
Luigi with Luigi’s brother , Pietro who accompany Bart on this trip to Val
Graveglia and Leivi, visiting both sides of the family. At those times, the
beginning of the sixties , Bart, Luigi and Pietro travelled by plane, what a
difference from the trips on boats Luigi and Pietro experienced years
before!! It was 1962, Italy was booming economically, Portofino, not far
from Chiavari, Leivi and Val Graveglia, was becoming a symbol of Italy’s
Dolce Vita’s, but the rural areas of the Ligurian coast were still very poor
and backward. Bart is accommodated at his relatives, whose house had
running water only in the kitchen, and only cold. The toilets were literally
“outhouses”, with no running water, and “chamber pots” were still
standard in the bedrooms, a dramatic difference from the comforts and
facilities Bart was already used to in San Francisco, but for him these
Italian habits were just an enjoyable adventure. Fresh handmade pasta and
savory traditional foods , cooked in smoke blackened kitchens, were the
same he had already experienced at home in San Francisco.
As fate would have it, Bart is employed very young by a major airline
company in San Francisco and works for them for thirty five years until his
retirement in 2000. Through these many years Bart and his family often
visit Italy. Chia, the eldest daughter, whose name was given in honor of
Chiavari , due to the parents affection for this town, first visits Italy at the
age of 9 months where she takes her first steps. In the years following
Chia and her younger sister Brianna spend many vacations either in
Chiavari and with their cousins on the farm in Val Graveglia.
Since I moved from Milan to Leivi I had many occasions to explore the
different areas around Chiavari, discovering their culture and traditions but