THE TURKEYS

All drawings by: Samuel, Sara, Manuel, Aurora, Arianna, Simone, Elia, Diego.

At the beginning of the Twentieth century , in Livorno there was everything a beautiful city could desire. There was the sea (and it's still there), a beautiful promenade and a splendid harbor, which was the fifth most important of Mediterranean.

Then the War came,the terrible one,the Second World War, Livorno was bombed 100 times in less than a year and a half.

So my beautiful Livorno found itself

in rubble,physical and moral

In 1950 I was 20 years old. The war was over and I used to do all kind of jobs, I delivered bread for an industrial bakery. In February I got married and in December 1950 I had a son, Alberto. In October 1952 the bakery where I worked closed (it never opened again). Before Alberto's birthday I was destroyed. I didn’t have any money not even to buy my child a present.

On Alberto's second birthday, the weather was awful. A strong wind swept the sea. It was almost Christmas.

John Baxter was the captain of a merchant ship which in December 1952 sailed to the port of Livorno, loaded with all the good things, to be destined, on Christmas day, to an American Military Camp; it was sailing without too many problems, until, three miles from the coast, the wind at one hundred and ten kilometers per hour violently pushes it towards the land out of control.

The show, from the shore, was crazy and many of my fellow citizens stood there glaring at the boat without even a ticket in the clearing in front of the church of San Jacopo, to witness with their eyes the tragedy in progress. 

The show, from the shore, was crazy and many of my fellow citizens stood there glaring at the boat without even a ticket in the clearing in front of the church of San Jacopo, to witness with their eyes the tragedy in progress. “It’s going to run into us!The wind is going to smash it on the ground!” People said. Instead, the ship stopped, as if by magic, half a mile from the ground. But it was not a miracle of San Jacopo, no. Suddenly there was a huge bang. The ship wasn’t as expected, but on a rock, small but sharp, about 7 meters long. The crowd screamed. Fright. Fear. And now? Will it sink? Will it spill over? What about the crew?

Easy to imagine what happened around me, never seen so many people having a bath fully dressed on December 23rd with seven degrees. Somebody dived, somebody went to look for a net, others  asked to those already in the sea: "Take me that! I've seen it before! Take one for me too! "

Jonathan Baxter had become our personal Santa. With his wrong maneuver he gave us food for a week and a great story. The one in which the turkeys came from the sea on my son's birthday, offering me the present I couldn't buy him.

THE END