Italy says farewell to the Tobacco Factory
was only one factory, ending December 31
And she disappears even a piece of our history
When in high school back in the forties of last century, many of my friends used to smoke secretly in the toilets during breaks between the other a lesson. I, although I had great desire, I did not. Not because I was afraid caretakers of the spies, but because I felt the nervousness of illegal immigrants would have halved my pleasure. So, I promised myself to smoke in the sunshine, he turned eighteen. My classmates came
smokers typically having a single cigarette held within the pages of a book. They had bought from a tobacconist before going to school, because then the cigarettes are sold mainly in bulk, a whole package of ten (there were no packs of twenty) a cost figure that their pockets could not afford.
The cigarette smoke was not entirely at once, but split into at least three. The latest, in order to be consumed up to the end without burning your fingertips, it is slipped over a pin.
Cigarettes were the most commonly consumed Popular and National , mainly because they cost less, made of black tobacco untreated. Then, during the war, came out Milit , a byproduct of the popularity, which were distributed almost free of the armed forces. It was deadly cigarettes from which issued a dense smoke and often, younger brother of one of the coal-fired locomotives, capable of dropping the stick-flies. I am convinced that some of our military defeats are due to the use of these cigarettes from genocide. Many preferred the Milit extracting smoke tobacco and inserting it into the bowl of his pipe as if it were a fine strong.
was not very widespread use to roll the cigarettes themselves using fingers and maps. If anything, in lean times, you roll the cigarette butts that were taken by carefully because during the war years tobacco was rationed. And he used strange mechanical contraptions for those who were incapable of good use your fingers.
the way, remember to have seen the work of a true virtuoso Rolling, a English sailor. He held in one pocket loose tobacco, papers and matches. Slipped his right hand in his pocket and after some 'ready-extracted a cigarette, was enough to give it a lick to paste the map. Then again put his hand in his pocket and pulled out with a match that lit el'unghia rubbing it between your thumb and index. Very popular were the Macedonia, lighter than the first two, with a tobacco here and there softened by a few shots of the sun. Cigarettes were middle class, those who smoked my father. I bought the finest
Serraglio that were slightly shorter and flatter than the others and were contained in elegant cardboard packages, while all the other packages were of thick paper. For super fine Xanthia there were very expensive and rare.
few women smokers in those days it was unthinkable that a woman smoked on the street for example, was created for them a very elegant package, white with the brand, Eve, written in gold letters.
All these cigarettes were produced by our factories working the tobacco grown in our area. I do not remember having ever seen for sale at tobacconists, at least those in the South, foreign products. During the war the German soldiers stationed in Sicily, we were very stingy of their cigarettes, perhaps with tobacco fared badly and their rations not largheggiavano. However, I never saw my friend smoking a cigarette in Germany.
And here I must confess that I have never smoked cigarettes, none of which I spoke. Because when I turned eighteen and began their first cigarette between your lips it was a blonde Senior Services English. Yes, because a month the Allies had landed in Sicily and foreign cigarettes abounded.
For complete information, I will say that I soon switched to Camel and Philip Morris to those who still smoke.
But I want to conclude by recalling that the most common type of tobacco grown in Lecce was the Xanti-Yaca . To it, Valerio Bondini , poet and Salento great translator of Garcia Lorca, has dedicated a beautiful poem. I will mention some ways, as an elegy for those crops to tobacco for ever lost: "At the other war peasants and smugglers / they put leaves Xanti-Yaca / armpits / to fall ill. / Artificial fevers, malaria alleged / of which were trembling and his teeth chattered, / were their opinions / governments and the story "
© Andrea Camilleri
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