Once upon a time

Well then, I refer to the begining of the fifties, teachers couldn’t afford the luxury of a car, but when the person in charge of assigning places in schools arrived at my name, and even though the post assigned to me was in one of the most far away places in the lower reaches of the Apennine Mountain in the county of Parma, I remembered the words of my father, and I immediately accepted the post. My mother wanted to accompany me to see the place “where I was to end up” and so a few days before the begining of the school year, we decided to leave. After a long journey from Parma by bus, to get to the Council Town Bardi, we found ourselves sitting on a mule which took a small dirt track that would take us to my posting. I can’t explain how much I trembled on that mule, who slowly but surely, trotted on the edge of the dirt track which hung over the River Ceno’s Valley. Afterwards the mule’s owner explained to me that it was a habit of mules to stay on the edge of roads and that I should stay calm!! Mimma (translate by Diliana)