Calabrian Quest In Cosenza

This post is a recounting of my attempt to retrieve the birth certificate of my maternal grandfather, Serafino Porcaro, from the government archives in Cosenza, Italy.  Although the story does not have a happy ending in the conventional sense, I would like to memorialize my appreciation and admiration for the Italian civil servants who gave it all they had.

The thought of attempting to obtain a copy of Serafino's birth certificate never crossed my mind until last December when I wrote to my cousin Louie's widow, Carole, to ask if she had any touristy recommendations for Calabria, the "toe" of Italy's "boot."  I knew she and Louie had once belonged to the Calabrian Club in Chicago, and went with that group to southern Italy at least twice.  Carole replied that on one of their trips Louie tried unsuccessfully to obtain the birth certificate of our grandfather.  She apprised me of Serafino's birthday, August 28, 1878, and his place of birth, Cosenza, a city of about 70,000 people located in north central Calabria.  I should note here that Louie was the oldest of Serafino's nineteen grandchildren -- I was the eighth -- so I felt confident that the information he'd passed on to Carole was accurate.
 

Fodor's travel guide describes Calabria as "poor" and the "least trodden of [Italy's] regions."  Maybe so, but the lack of tourism is one of the factors that appealed to our party of four: traveling buddies Admiral Bob and Madame Cipolle, Momma Cuandito and me.  Our theory was that there could be an inverse correlation between tourism and authenticity; this was an opportunity to experience the real Italy.  Rather than head directly from the Amalfi Coast to Sicily, where we would spend the majority of our sixteen day vacation, we decided to make Cosenza a one night layover.
 

The first clue that we were in a city not accustomed to hosting tourists was that the receptionist at our hotel, the Royal, did not speak English.  It was quite entertaining to watch Madame, fluent in French, converse with the friendly lady behind the desk.  Facial expressions and gesticulations came in handy -- no pun intended -- and enough was gleaned from the combination of French and Italian to figure out where to park our rental car and how to find the nearby pedestrian mall.
 

The open air mall extended for over half a mile, with stores on each side.  A grooved rubber track about eight inches wide ran along each edge, presumably to use if the pavement became slippery.  Detailed sculptures, some resembling mythological characters, others too bizarre to label, decorated each block. The two most notable establishments on the walkway were the Bulldog Bar, the mall's only tavern, and Magazzini Rossella.  Who would have guessed that my mother-in-law owned a business here in Cosenza?
 

We arrived around 5:00 at the end of the mall, where we noticed what appeared to be a government building of some sort across the street.  The three story structure was at the back end of an unadorned pavement plaza.  The windows on the top two floors were narrow slits.  The flags of Italy, the European Union and Calabria flew above the recessed front doors.  The employees were gone for the day and the building was locked, but we determined this would be our starting point the next morning.

***

After breakfast we made the fifteen minute walk to the government building.  Inside we encountered a small group of office workers.  Once again language differences presented a temporary inconvenience.  We learned that birth records were not kept in that building.  We would have to try our luck at a different place, about four or five blocks away.  Rather than just point us in the right direction, one of the workers accompanied us to the second destination, crossing a couple of busy streets to do so.  Naturally this was way beyond the call of duty, but we got the sense that he was disappointed he could not better assist us.
 

The second building, metallic with green trim, was an even more non-descript edifice than the first.  I did not see any identifying signage on the exterior.  If not for our helpful new friend who escorted us from the first office building, we may never have landed at the second.  We climbed a staircase to the second floor to find a stale working environment which looked like it hadn't been changed since the day it was opened for business decades ago.  Institutional green and beige were the predominant colors.  The office was supposedly the repository for official records of all kinds, such as birth, marriage and death certificates.  After a short wait, a male clerk took the card on which I'd written my grandfather's name and birthday, looked at it carefully and disappeared into a back file room.  He did not seem phased at all by my request for a certificate from the nineteenth century, giving no hint of the prospective impossibility of the task. This is going to be easy, I thought to myself.  My optimism was short-lived.

 

The clerk returned empty handed, but just as was the case in the first building, another employee came by and suggested yet another, third government archival office where we might find what we sought.  He took us out on the balcony and pointed to an old church on a hill almost a kilometer away.  It was there, he declared, where the city's oldest, and therefore least requested, records were kept.

 

At that point we'd been at it for well over an hour with nothing tangible to show for it.  I wasn't even sure what I would do with my grandfather's birth certificate had one been produced.  I also kept reminding myself that my cousin had already tried (and failed) to accomplish what we hoped to attain.  Therefore, I offered to call off the search at that point, before walking to and hiking up the distant hill, possibly to no avail.  My three companions would not accept my offer, reasoning that we'd gone this far in our search; we'd probably never return to Cosenza again, so now was the time.  Besides, this was an adventure!

 

We did not start out on the right foot, or should I say the correct route.  We ended up at a dead end, blocked by a fenced-in set of railroad tracks.  How do we go from there to the hillside church?  Once again Madame, the linguist, obtained directions from one of the locals who happened to be passing by.  We would have to do an "end around," first backtracking a little, then crossing a bridge over the tracks and the scenic Crati River, then ascending the hill on which the old church was perched.

 

After guessing incorrectly once or twice on which of the church doors to enter, our tired but intrepid quartet gained admission.  The final and most humorous part of our morning was about to begin.

 

Let me preface this "chapter" by stating that, up until then, the highest degree of security to which I'd ever been subjected were the two or three times my job required me to enter the Wells Fargo Operations Center, located in an unmarked building on the corner of 4th Street & Second Avenue in downtown Minneapolis.  If you did not know the name of your great uncle's pet goldfish, and answers to questions of similar ilk, you'd be denied access.  It turned out Wells had nothing on the Cosenza archivists.

 

Immediately inside the church door we were welcomed by cautionary signs, ropes and small barricades.  Behind a glass wall to our left were four women whose main job appeared to be scrutinizing aspiring entrants and, if said newcomers passed muster, granting admission to the second floor records storage area.  Each of us had to present identification and submit to inquiries such as place of birth, home address, occupation, and relationship to the person whose records we sought.  One of the women actually transcribed some of the information from our drivers' licenses onto a pad of paper.  No word if she filed that paper under "A" for Americano, "V" for visitatore (visitor), or some other category.  The whole procedure reminded me of an incident I'd read about in David Greene's non-fiction story Midnight In Siberia, where he described the triplicate forms required to be completed by customers dropping off and picking up their laundry at the dry cleaners.  I learned then that the Russians, and now learned that the Italians, absolutely love their paper trails.

 

Two or three of the women came out from behind the glass walled office.  Thankfully one of them, whose name I recall was Maria, spoke very good English, thereby advancing the whole process as expeditiously as their rules would allow.  She was adept at the art of small talk, so our fifteen minute wait for her co-workers to do their thing -- whatever that was -- did not seem such a grind.  In fact, it was rather pleasant.  Maria asked me if I knew my grandfather's name was a reference to angels, the seraphim.  Sure, I'd heard of seraphim, but had never connected the dots.

 

As I related above, Cosenza is not exactly a tourist mecca, so having four Americans at their office doorstep may have been a rarity for the employees, or at least something to tell their families about when they went home that evening.   Finally, they issued each of us keys, engraved with a number which no doubt matched a number somewhere in a row or a column on one of their office forms.  We inferred an important message: Woe to the person who loses his key!  All of us figured the keys would be used to open a file drawer or a container similar to what one would find inside a safety deposit vault. Wrong!

 

Maria led us to a lift  which creaked upward to the second floor at hospital elevator speed.  A twist here, a turn there, and we found ourselves in an anteroom occupied by three or four more workers, a different group from those on the first floor.  I'm not sure what they were doing to pass the time before we showed up, as the people in our foursome were the only non-employees there.  We presented the keys we'd been safeguarding which we then found out opened little square wooden cabinets for our jackets.  I really wasn't going to shed my jacket, but the Italians had gone through so much work to issue the keys I did not want to disappoint them by leaving my assigned cabinet empty.  However, Momma Cuan had no choice but to keep her coat, as her cabinet was at least six feet off the ground!

 

Soon we were escorted into the larger back room.  I was impressed by the wood paneling, the glass casings and the computer equipment.  This area was appointed like a small research library, which in fact it was.  Another handful of researchers were at desks. Maria got one or two of them started on looking for Serafino's birth record.  I could see them flipping the pages of long thick ledgers crammed with handwritten entries.  The workers meticulously combed through page after page to no avail.  Naturally, they performed some of the investigation on computers.  They found 531 Porcaro birth records, but none with a matching correct first name and birthdate.  Maria approached with more questions.  Was I sure I had the correct spelling?  The correct birth date?  Was Serafino known by any other name?  Was he born within the city limits of Cosenza or, instead, in the surrounding rural region?  Did I know if he had siblings, or what the names of his parents were?  Did I know when he emigrated to the United States?  I was not much help.  All I had to go on was the minuscule information which Carole had relayed to me.

 

A few more employees joined in the project.  They were absolutely giving it their all, working at different stations and eager to try different approaches.  They even invited Admiral Bob and me to try our luck at one of the computers.  We were all in that back room close to a half hour.  Finally we agreed to throw up the white flag.  It certainly was not from lack of effort.  In fact, I felt bad for the Italians that they felt bad for me!

 

***

 

We were in Cosenza for only twenty-one hours, yet I have several memories that are going to stick with me for awhile.  The crowded church where the archbishop presided over a solemn Wednesday evening ceremony to bless the holy oils which would be used for the coming liturgical year; the Admiral, approaching a pub called J. Joyce Irish Pub, only to discover it was closed (I have a funny picture which captures that disappointment); shortly thereafter, enjoying a beer while sitting on wicker chairs outside the Caffe Telesio, watching the regular old timers, including a nattily dressed older gent in a fedora, tell animated stories to each other; the nuns who appeared behind the cafe after the church ceremony, seeking a ride to their vehicle; the superb dinner we enjoyed at a corner table at Calabria Bella Ristorante; the cars zooming up and down the old city's narrow alleys on which people were walking for lack of a sidewalk; and the nightcaps we drank at the Bulldog before heading back to the Royal.  The topper, however, was the mission we did not quite accomplish looking for Serafino's birth certificate.  I will always remember the Italian civil servants who took on the task of aiding our search with the same degree of seriousness, vigor and concern as if he had been their own ancestor.