Angiolino Papi's story (in Italian interviewed by Lino Pertile and Anna Bensted)

 

Translation

AP – I’m Angiolo Papi. I was born in Reggello in the Province of Florence on January 3, 1935. My first contact with I Tatti came about after they received the farm… to do the work that had to be done at the time. Then we returned on various occasions…we returned in September, October, and then from the first days of January 1954 we came to live at the Villa, where the Biblioteca Geier is now. The entire family came, and there were a lot of us. I was the youngest of the family. Anyway, we came to the villa to…to work on the farm, it required a lot of hard work. We were four brothers, and our father was still young, so we were able to tackle all the jobs of the countryside at the time, of the farm, what was needed…all of us together.

LP – and how was the work organized? Was there a sharecropping system?

AP – Yes, sharecropping. We were sharecroppers. And therefore, when each product was harvested, the farmer - Mr Giofredi – came to divide everything in half. One half went to the sharecroppers and the other to the administration.

LP – Ah, I understand. But did you manage to get by with that half?

AP – Not always. It wasn’t easy. Because production…sometimes…not much is produced, and when that little is divided in two, it becomes even less. And we were a large family, we could have done with…a bit more ‘substance’. And that’s why I, with the permission of the administrator, decided to go to work for a while away from the farm, to earn a little bit of extra cash, because it just wasn’t possible to live like that. And the administrator said to me: “Go ahead, Angiolino, you try your best. And if it doesn’t work out, come back here…this is your home”. And so after a couple of years or a little more - my father died in this period, he was young, he was 63 years old when he died from a terminal illness - and my brothers remained. One had left home because he had begun to work in garbage disposal in Florence. So two of my brothers remained, and me. But I said to the farmer, “what will we do, there’s not enough to eat” and he said “you go, and if it doesn’t work out, then come back. And so, after little more than two years, he saw my wife one evening and said to her, “tell Angiolino that I’d like to see him”. I’d worked for him for several years…always as a tractor driver because that’s how I’d started, on the tractors etc. – to give you a better idea. And….and I went to see what he wanted. And he said “Listen Angiolino, I want to speak to you like a son. I’ve taken care of your brothers. I’ve found one a job in garbage disposal, and he’s doing well there. He works for the Comune di Firenze. He’s getting on well. The others… Alfredo, I’ve put to work at Bartoli’s house” –(there was a farmer by the name of Bartoli – and when he was too old to work my brother went to work there, in the house near the villa now, I suppose…there). “The other I’ve put in Corbignano in Ciullini’s homestead. So you’re the only one left out, and I don’t want you to be left out. I want you with me”. “And how?” I said to him. “You’ve always driven tractors. You know the borders of the farms like the back of your hand. You don’t need to learn anything. You just come back to work with me and that’s it. As soon as I have a house I’ll give it to you. At the moment I don’t have one, but as soon as I have one, I’ll give it to you. But you just have to come back to work with me. Don’t say no, because I want you working with me”. That’s how it was. At that point, I said yes. This was a person I knew very well, and so I said “I’ll come back” and I returned to work there. I’m talking about the early days of 1967. I left in early 1964…. Anyway, I was away for roughly two years. And then he called me and told me that I was to return there, with him. The early years were quite difficult, because the wages were poor, but after…

LP – so you were no longer a sharecropper?

AP – No, I was no longer a sharecropper, no. I was…

LP – from 1967…

AP – from 1967 I became classed as an agricultural worker. A bit of a jack of all trades…in the cellars, in the oil store….everything….everything and more. And that’s how things went. After two years a house became free and he said to me “I’ll fix up the house as much as I’m able to, and then the house is yours. You go there, and get on with your work”. And that’s how it went. We went ahead with the work, the work became more difficult because the farmer was quite old and it wasn’t easy for him to deal with all the business of the farm…to make some decision or other, and to be in charge of all the workers because there were five or six of us. And so he said “Angiolino I need your help. Give me a hand, and try to run this farm as best you can. You and I can talk one evening per week towards the end of the week to catch up on the situation and that’s how we’ll go ahead.” “But don’t give up”, he said to me, “Because you’ll find things difficult. Don’t give up. I need your help”. And that’s how things went. We went ahead, always doing a little more…always a little more, and I’m delighted to have done what I did. Just delighted.