A Remarkable Adventure

It started as an adventure to show Loreto Aprutino, a picture postcard hill- city nearby, to my husband's cousins from Ireland. Well, it ended as an adventure, too, but not the adventure we planned. It was instead the "oh, oh, we've driven our car down the wrong narrow street and it ends in stairs and now we can't back it out because it's soooo narrow and curved and steep" kind. So, the adventure had to do with experiencing the generosity, kindness and persistence of our Italian neighbors. Big time!

Alone, we just succeeded in making yucky smelling smoke pour out the front of the car while we tried to back it up the very steep incline, around the corner 6 inches wider than the car without going over the stone wall in front of us. Really. So the nice young man out walking his dog stopped to help and then went to get the town policeman to help who then called the local mechanic to help who called the servicio assistanza man to help. All of whom were advised and encouraged by the local older men who get involved in whatever is going on anywhere. And, when all else failed, a local guy with a tractor was called and hauled us out inch by inch by a rope tied to the end of the car. All of this took about 1 1/2 hours.

In the end, there were back slaps and handshakes and grazie's all around and everyone refused any other kind of compensation. Everyone. Absolutely. The policeman then led us out of town and waved good-bye. I think we gave them a good story to tell in the cafe! But, we had a great story to tell as well- of people taking time out for strangers and sticking with it until the job was done and continuing to call for help until the job was done and finding all the satisfaction they needed in the job finally well done and the strangers finally okay. Remarkable.