Chapter 20 - "NONO" VECCHIO

I have spoken in my first chapter of David Hassan, a friend with whom I share the bond of same birthday as well as the same number of years we have been blessed to live. Seriously, there are several parallels between his life and mine. That also has brought us closer together. But there is another very close friend too, both mine and David's, and he may possibly not even need any introduction. His name is Isaac Tobelem, but he is known to one and all as Toby. 5 months younger than I, his birthday falls on the 29th of April and perhaps one day I can explain with his permission why the date is seared indelibly in my mind. But in this chapter, I will recall an incident we enjoyed together in the late 60s when the frontier was starting to get sticky.

Toby was the receptionist at the Old Victoria Hotel, where Victoria House still reminds us of it at the beginning of Main Street. The Victoria Hotel was owned by the Falquero Family. Should Toby care to reminisce, I'm sure he too will have many a story to tell of those days. This was before 1969 when the frontier closed. Gib would get many hitchhikers and student travelers, guys and girls, who would touch base in Gibraltar for a few days.

The world was a safer placed than today, for sure!

If they booked in at the Victoria Hotel and they were nice young ladies, Toby would ask them out for that evening and call me at TEO to let me know we were “on” for that night. Equally if young lady tourists would walk into the shop I would ask if they’d like to join us for dinner and a view of the Rock at night, especially the “end of Europe where you can see Africa from” (la Farola, to you and me!) and who would I call??? .... Nah! Not Ghostbusters, but Toby!

If there were more than 2 girls we could always count on David Hassan or the late Mark Hassan or any of our many friends. It was a neat arrangement which made everyone very happy. This was still in the semi-innocent years before drugs invaded our semi-innocent youth.

Let me backtrack a minute and speak of an elderly gentleman known as "Nono" Vecchio. Nono was his nickname but I never found out what his real name was. A very smart Gibraltarian gentleman who spoke Yanito like us but his English was very American. I can still see him dressed in a smart blazer with a silk pocket handkerchief, silk cravat, and always carrying a short shillelagh (pronounced Shi-ley-la). A shillelagh is a walking stick, or club, made from a stout branch of a particular tree – I think it grown only(?) mainly(?? in Ireland. It grows sets of hard thorns staggered along the sides and makes a good defense weapon too. I met Mr Vecchio in our TEO shop where he told me his story, a story interesting for both its romance and its entrepreneurship. He took a shine to me, despite a huge difference in age and I was always keen to serve him when he came to the shop.

This is the story he told me.

He came from a good old Gibraltarian stock, but after leaving school, in the 1920's I imagine, found himself aimless and no job had any attraction for him. His family was exasperated with this apparently lazy attitude from a young man with so much promise.

“David, the dream of any adventuresome young man in those days, was to go to the New World, America!”

Go West, young man, go WEST!

Somehow or other, he managed to convince his family to give him the money to sail across the Atlantic and there, find his future. Sail he did, but once there, he realised he hadn't crossed the pond just to get a job! For that he may as well have stayed in Gibraltar. So, he did what we know today as “market survey” and found that Americans, perhaps lacking the centuries of history of Europe, loved antiques.

"As soon as I realised that, I knew what I had to do, I had to come back to Europe!"

He did that but needed money to start this new venture and his family was loathe to give him any more, believing he was just wasting the family fortunes on …. gallivanting! But Nono was a smooth talker even then, in his very early years. He managed to get enough money to hire 6 donkeys in Spain, plus his own "Sancho Panza". Together they trekked across the small villages in the rural areas of Spain, stopping at every village, at every cottage, at every home. at every farm and buying the oldest home and farm and workshop instruments and utensils, kitchenware, field ware no matter what state these were in. He even bought old piss pots or spittoons (escupideras!) ..... and loading everything on the donkeys, made his way back to Cadiz, Gibraltar or Malaga, depending from where the earliest ship back to New York with leave from. His Sancho Panza kept the donkeys and was paid a handsome stipend for him and his family to tide them over until Nono’s return. But before that, between them, they crated all the purchases which he had bought for somewhat less than a song. Nono had the bargaining ability of an Arab camel trader, with smooth manners and a charming smile to boot!

Once back in America, he started selling these mundane pieces as genuine antiques from the Old World….which in a way, they were. Even then America was far advanced from Europe in many ways. To the heritage-hungry, nouveau riche Americans, the old plough, the washing board, the threshing table, the oil lamps and many other items, including piss pots which he decorated and sold as plant pots, were snapped up for many a dollar; items he had bought for just a few pesetas.
Nono was a very astute trader. He repeated these trips again and again and in fact open his own store of “European Antiques” in America, I think California unless I am mistaken. By then he was also buying old oil paintings and carvings which to his sharp eye he priced at the top of the range. And incidentally he had the world's biggest collection of piss pots in the New World...... and probably in the Old World too!

He married, had a family and when he retired, his sons continued the business. He himself would travel frequently back to his hometown where he regaled his friends with stories of his adventures, well lubricated by the many drinks he was invited to and he invited in turn.

Back to Toby and the tourists.

Toby called to tell me there were two Finnish girls he had befriended. One was a stunner, that was his girl of course. The other, Ingrid, was no slouch either, or as we say here "no estaba nada de mal tampoco".

I'm pretty sure it was a Sunday, after a successful (??) Saturday night together and we were taking the girls up the Rock to see the apes, St. Michael's Cave, always a romantic stop as you can imagine, the Upper Galleries where in St. George's Hall, amid the historic canons, we pledged our love for each other, at least until the girls went back into Spain or across the straights to Morocco. Just before we went down to Princess Caroline's Battery, I remembered that it was the day of my friend Nono Vecchio's funeral!

I felt really bad about this because I wanted to have been there to say a last goodbye to this erudite gentleman. Looking down to North Front I saw the funeral cortege arriving at the Christian Cemetery. I slipped a shilling (or was it a six pence?) into the slot of the tourist viewing binoculars and asked Toby and the girls if they had any more loose change. But no, that was the only shilling we had between us and while I looked, I explained to them why I was so keen on following the funeral since I could not be by the graveside as I would have wished and probably, I like to think, as Nono himself would have wished.

Now I didn't know how much viewing time that shilling would buy me but I doubt if it could have been any more than 5 minutes.

I was glued to the binoculars from the moment the hearse arrived. I saw pallbearers walking the coffin mournfully along the long path, followed by family and a considerable number of friends, the lowering of the coffin, saw the priest saying the prayers, the offering of condolences to the bereaved family..... and still the shilling lasted!

Neither Toby, Ingrid nor her friend, Pia, could believe I was still watching the whole event.

"Take a look yourself!"

As Toby put his eyes on the binoculars, he said

"Yes! I can see it..."...

and then, with a mechanical whir, the binoculars shut off!

It had lasted over 25 minutes!

To this day I still believe that Nono had a hand in it, that somehow, he wanted me to be there as he was lowered down to his last resting place.

But such is the enthusiasm and energy of youth, or perhaps the exuberance of two Finnish teenagers, we continued to have a good time together throughout that Sunday.

Ingrid ad Pia left on Monday morning, after we exchanged addresses, telephone numbers, birthdays, including horoscopes and even the hour of my birth, Ingrid was very into astrology!

But all good things come to an end, and with many lip-swelling kisses of undying love ….. or something like it…… we waved goodbye at the frontier gates.

You would think the story ends there, right?

WRONG!

Millennials would find it hard to imagine a time without mobile phones, fax, telex or any such now-ordinary advances. People kept in touch by snail-mail. Certainly, they were telegrams, but those were reserved for news of great import, and a bit like the Registry: for Births, Deaths and Marriages!

Even home telephones were not used late at night. It was unthinkable to phone anyone after 10:30 or 11 p.m.! In fact, if the phone rang at those times, or even before 8 a.m., it was usually because a relative had died, or there had been some catastrophe which needed to be shared with everyone in the family.

Anyway, November came around as it does every year and at home, the phone rang ..... AT FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE BLOODY MORNING! ! !

My father jumped out of bed.

My mother beat him to the phone.

I was just a couple of steps behind her.

"Hello????" Mum croaked in a trembling voice.

I could hear someone saying something on the other end, but it was unclear.

She looked up me ....

"At this time!" said Mum... it was not a question, more like a mixture of indignant relief and anger...

"Where are you calling from? ..... FINLAND! ! ! "
Mum could not believe it, we had no relatives in Finland, did we?

My Dad looked at me ... he was faster than us, even having been woken up so suddenly, and sussed it out. He lit an Albany cigarette (he was a 60-a-day smoker and the last thing he’d do before going to sleep was put out a cigarette, and the first in the morning even while still in bed, light up again)

"I have NOT forgotten it since then, and young lady, I am not forgetting this now either!" Mum sternly said into the handset.

Mum thrust the handset at me with thunder in her eyes.

"It is a certain….. Ingrid…. for you!" disdain dripping from every word.

I took the phone in my hand ...

"David?"

"Yes .... Ingrid?..."

"Happy birthday to you ... Happy birthday to you .... Happy birthday Darling David, Happy Birthday to you!"

".. eerrr ... thank you Ingrid ...but ... why now?..." I said, watching my parents shuffle back to their bedroom, giving me black looks

"I remembered you told me you were born at 4 a.m. ...and I thought it would be a lovely surprise to call you at the same time and wish you a Happy Birthday!"

I wonder to this day how does one say the word "tact" .... or the lack of it, in Finnish.

By way of apology, when they returned the following summer, Ingrid brought a magnum bottle of Aquavit as a peace offering to Mum .. it did not work.