Rome
Capital City of Italy, Rome
Colosseum in Rome - Diliff, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons
Warning: Some pictures in this chapter on Rome are NSFW (Not Safe for Work)
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The capital city of Italy is Rome.
Rome's history spans 28 centuries. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it a major human settlement for almost three millennia and one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome
Introduction
In 1970, we moved from Vientiane, Laos to Rome, Italy.
While we were in Rome, we stayed in three different places.
Location #1 was a hostel like place called a pensione. One bathroom and shower per floor, ouch. It was located just across the street from the city zoo. Continental breakfast only, which means a hard role with marmalade and butter, and to drink, hot tea.
Location #2 was an apartment near the Rome Hilton Caviler hotel. A very classy place that I think was associated with the Hilton hotel chain as a secondary residence for VIP customers.
Location #3 was an apartment facing downward, one of the seven hills of Rome, with a good view of the Vatican and Hadrian's Tomb from up high. We were on the first floor, so we had a large courtyard just for us. From street level to down in our courtyard was like 15+ feet down.
At location #2 I got to meet a Swedish supermodel and actress, Anita Ekberg. Well meet, not so much, but I saw her.
At location #3 I got to meet Woody Strode and be a sightseer around the Vatican.
Anita Ekberg - Swedish Actress and Supermodel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Ekberg
Ekberg in September 1956 - Paramount-photo by Bud Frakes., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg; (29 September 1931 – 11 January 2015) was a Swedish actress active in American and European films, known for her beauty and stunning figure. She became prominent in her iconic role as Sylvia in the Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita (1960). Ekberg worked primarily in Italy, where she became a permanent resident in 1964.
The combination of Ekberg's voluptuous physique and colorful private life (such as her well-publicized romances with Hollywood's leading men like Frank Sinatra, Tyrone Power, Yul Brynner, Rod Taylor, and Errol Flynn) appealed to the gossip magazines, like Confidential, and she soon became a major 1950s pin-up, appearing in men's magazines like Playboy. Additionally, Ekberg participated in publicity stunts. She once admitted that an incident in which her dress burst open in the lobby of London's Berkeley Hotel was prearranged with a photographer.
Ekberg toured Greenland with Bob Hope, entertaining American servicemen. Hope spoke of her beauty, and John Wayne signed her to a contract with his Batjac Productions at $75 a week.
Anita Ekberg was born on 29 September 1931, in Malmö, Skåne (Sweden), the sixth of eight children. In her teens, Anita worked as a fashion model. Ekberg entered the Miss Malmö competition in 1950 at her mother's urging. This led to the Miss Sweden contest which she won. Despite speaking very little English, she went to the United States to compete for the 1951 Miss Universe title (an unofficial pageant at that time, the pageant became official in 1952).
The Happening
At the apartment #2, I got to see Anita Ekberg walking in the hallway, while going to do laundry with my mom.
Anita was wearing a black miniskirt, white blouse, and white thigh high go go boots.
http://www.debra-paget.com/anitaekberg/anita009.jpg
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8jr60LpqG1qm954lo1_1280.jpg
She walked past us and I nearly dropped my laundry basket. Once she had passed by, I turned to my mother, being awestruck, and said “Did you see that?”
My mother answered dryly, ‘Yes, I did”.
That vision of an actress and supermodel left me dazzled, for the rest of my life.
Woody Strode
The Visitor
I was home at Location #3, on a Saturday, and a knock at the door got me to talk to this tall and sophisticated stranger in a silk suit.
He said that he was there to see the piano.
My mom forgot to tell me that dad wanted to sell the Baby Grand, and that they advertised it in a Rome newspaper.
My mom then ushered in this super classy and bald-headed gentleman to sit at the piano and have a look see.
He quietly moved onto the piano bench, opened the lid, and instantly began playing Bach, Beethoven, or some classical tune.
His long, narrow fingers glided over the keys, and while he was playing I could tell he was studying this instrument closely.
After a few minutes he stopped playing, closed the lid, and bid us goodbye, with a promise he would call if he decided to buy the piano.
It all happened so fast, I could hardly take in this whole scene.
A decade later, I found out that the actor and athlete Wood Strode was our visitor that day.
He was a tall, rugged, slender, strong man that dressed like a superstar.
Tom Hanks Sheriff character in Toy Story is named after Mr. Strode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Strode
Fight scene in Spartacus between Woody and Kirk - https://www.watchtheyard.com/alphas/woody-strode-an-alpha-phi-alpha-badass/
Woodrow Wilson Woolwine Strode (July 25, 1914 – December 31, 1994) was an American athlete and actor. He was a decathlete and football star who was one of the first Black American players in the National Football League in the postwar era. After football, he went on to become a film actor, where he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Spartacus in 1960. He served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II.
Strode was a college track and football star at UCLA, one of the first Blacks to integrate the NFL, a professional wrestler, a Golden Globe nominated actor, and a WWII veteran. This man was the definition of a renaissance man.
Strode was born in Los Angeles on July 25, 1914, the son of a Creek-Blackfoot-African-American father and a Cherokee-African-American mother. He grew up in South Central and became so good at sports (track and field/football) that he made it to UCLA and played alongside Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington, both who broke the color barriers of baseball and football in the 1940s. His world-class decathlon capabilities were spearheaded by a 50 ft (15 m) plus shot put (when the world record was 57 ft (17 m)) and a 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) high jump (the world record at time was 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m)). While in college, Strode joined UCLA’s Alpha Phi Alpha chapter. Strode’s athletic physique was so appealing that a nude portrait of him was featured in Hubert Stowitts’s acclaimed exhibition of athletic portraits shown at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The exhibit was closed because the Nazis did not agree with the inclusion of black and Jewish athletes being show in such a powerful light.
When World War II broke out, Strode was playing for the Hollywood Bears Football team but quit to join the United States Army Air Corps and spent the war unloading bombs in Guam and the Marianas, as well as playing on the Army football team at March Field in Riverside, California.
Strode’s exercise regimen was that of a superhero and nothing more than epic. He performed 1000 free squats, 1000 sit-ups, and 1000 push ups every day until he turned 40, at which point he reduced the numbers to 500.
Strode was noted for film roles that contrasted with the stereotypes of his time. He is probably best remembered for his brief Golden Globe-nominated role in Spartacus (1960) as the Ethiopian gladiator Draba, in which he fights Kirk Douglas to the death.
By the time he died on New Year’s Eve, 1994, he had worked with such legendary directors as:
Cecil B. Demille (The Ten Commandments)
Lewis Milestone (Pork Chop Hill)
Stanley Kubrick (Spartacus)
Sergio Leone (Once Upon A Time in the West)
John Ford (Sergeant Rutledge, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance).
Strode died of lung cancer on December 31, 1994, in Glendora, California, aged 80. He is buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California.
https://www.watchtheyard.com/alphas/woody-strode-an-alpha-phi-alpha-badass/
Rome Catacombs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Rome
Capuchin Crypt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capuchin_Crypt
I toured this crypt with my friend from the scorpion adventure.
The Capuchin Crypt is a small space comprising several tiny chapels located beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini on the Via Veneto near Piazza Barberini in Rome, Italy. It contains the skeletal remains of 3,700 bodies believed to be Capuchin friars buried by their order. The Catholic order insists that the display is not meant to be macabre, but a silent reminder of the swift passage of life on Earth and our own mortality.
Santa Maria Immacolata a Via Veneto - Dnalor 01, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Santa Maria Immacolata a Via Veneto - Dnalor 01, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
As Capuchin friars died during the lifetime of the crypt, the longest-buried friar was exhumed to make room for the newly deceased who was buried without a coffin, and the newly reclaimed bones were added to the decorative motifs. Bodies typically spent 30 years decomposing in the soil, before being exhumed.
There are six total rooms in the crypt, five featuring a unique display of human bones believed to have been taken from the bodies of friars who had died between 1528 and 1870.
Crypt of the Resurrection, featuring a picture of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, framed by various parts of the human skeleton.
The Mass Chapel, as an area used to celebrate Mass, does not contain bones. In the altar-piece, Jesus and Mary exhort St. Felix of Cantalice, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Anthony of Padua to free souls from Purgatory. The chapel contains a plaque with the acronym DOM, which stands for Deo optimo maximo ("To God, the best and greatest"), a term initially used to refer to the pagan god Jupiter, but claimed by later Christians. The plaque contains the actual heart of Maria Felice Peretti, the grand-niece of Pope Sixtus V and a supporter of the Capuchin order. The chapel also contains the tomb of the Papal Zouaves who died defending the Papal States at the battle of Porta Pia.
Crypt of the Skulls
Crypt of the Pelvises
Crypt of the Leg Bones and Thigh Bones
Crypt of the Three Skeletons, The center skeleton is enclosed in an oval, the symbol of life coming to birth. In its right hand it holds a scythe, symbol of death which cuts down everyone, like grass in a field, while its left hand holds the scales, symbolizing the good and evil deeds weighed by God when he judges the human soul. A placard in five languages declares:
"What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be..."
The infamous sadist Marquis de Sade noted that he found his 1775 journey to the crypt was worth the effort, and Nathaniel Hawthorne noted its grotesque nature in his 1860 novel The Marble Faun.
Crypt of the Capuchins Rome
Going to OSR school
The Overseas School of Rome was the most advanced school I had ever been to. I had to memorize big chunks of the play Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. I also had a crash course in learning Italian. Furthermore, I was pretty much lost and confused the whole time, but it had a nice cafeteria as a saving grace.
Strikes - Food, public bus, taxi, milk, bread
Every day, our bus trip to school was an adventure.
The Romans took turn on a daily basis to decide which sector was going to strike. Never two on the same day.
One day it was the public bus drivers parked in the streets, blocking all flow.
Next day is taxi’s striking and parked blocking the streets.
If we made it to school on the bus, at lunch time their was no milk, milk strike.
Next day bread strike.
Next day pasta strike.
The locals acted like this insanity was normal.
Sometimes a little Fiat 500 passenger car would block a narrow curve in the ancient streets. The school bus driver's solution was to get 5-8 healthy young men off the bus and lift and move the little car up unto a sidewalk, out of the way.
Political Handbills
On every major street corner, there were paid operatives that stood at the corners, handing out handbills for various Italian and Roman political parties.
The handbills were half a sheet of paper, colorful, and covered in their political propaganda.
This included Socialist, Communists, Anarchist and various other parties.
I would collect these handbills and bring them home.
Once my father saw my collection, he yelled at me and told me to throw them out IMMEDIATELY.
On closer inspection, the handbills were littered with Soviet hammer and sickles, Nazi symbols, and other communist symbology.
Imagine if the Agency searched our apartment and found these handbills. Trouble for sure.
Roman TV was chaos
The RAI political TV shows were just hours of huge political groups, sitting and standing around a long table, just screaming at each other.
Canzonissima, the RAI TV musical variety show was a bit of a distraction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canzonissima
Shirley Bassey and Gianni Morandi were hit singers at the time.
Visit the US Embassy
On a Saturday, my dad decided to drag me along on some of his stops to make.
We arrived at the US Embassy, which has a huge stone staircase, and my father had to leave me there on the steps, because who ever he was going to visit, if I have revealed this info, it would have been a violation of Security Ops.
So I sat there for hours, bored out of my mind, watching people go by and my bottom losing circulation.
Suddenly, this American tourist couple approached me with a map and asked if I spoke English and if I could help them find the circled location on the map of downtown Rome.
I said sure, I would be their guide, knowing that if my father returned, and I was not there, I would be in big trouble.
After about 45 minutes of zigzagging through the streets of Rome, I lead them to the location.
They said it was the wrong location.
Turns out their map provided by their hotel had a miniature downtown map but with another tourist location circled on the map.
So we hit the road again and this time I was successful.
They were so thankful that they paid me a huge tip in Lira, and I returned to the Embassy steps.
When dad finally retrieved me, I never mentioned that I had left to be a tourist guide.
I wonder what the couple would have said if they knew that a teenaged Spy Kid was their guide.
I had a great disguise and cover.
Just an innocent school boy.
Scorpion Mount
My adventure in the city, looking for pottery, and discovering the scorpion mount.
Exit with no guides
Our family lived for less than a year in Rome.
I knew the tensions were high between my parents, but I did not know that we were on our way out of the government and headed to a new life in the States.
The Agency had to send in a “cleared” psychologist to work with my dad on his severe, gut-wrenching mental issues.
He wanted out of the CIA after Laos, but his management was not listening.
My mom said he finally got their attention by sending them a detailed suicide letter to bosses in the Agency. They say it is a cry for help to warn about the pending doom, and I am glad he got the attention he needed and deserved.
The poor Italian packers and movers got the brunt of his anger, when they showed up with a street level crane to pick up the baby grand piano. The crane straps hung over the street level rails and into the courtyard 15+ feet below.
It was like watching a silent movie of Keystone Cops in fast motion, pure chaos and nothing funny about it. The movers down in the courtyard with us were trying to simultaneously crate up the piano and then secure the straps in a load balancing way to the crate.
Once the crane got tension in the straps and the piano started being lifted to street level, the crate started to spin midair, and all hell broke loose.
My father was fluent in cussing in Italian and English.
The verbal barrage echoing in our canyon like courtyard was deafening.
Luckily, no one got hurt or assaulted, and the piano crate made it safely to a port city for shipping, destined for North Texas.
It was an ugly and sad way to end our European years, between Frankfurt and Rome.
I really knew nothing about civilian life, the Agency was all I knew to this point, being 13 years old.
Again, I wish I had an instruction guide on how to navigate the next few years.
I did not have a clue.
I know military families have to adjust to this kind of churn all the time, but I never felt more alone on this planet.
Neither of my parents talked to my brother and I about was happening or what was about to happen.
I had no support system, being in a strange land. No friends, relatives, or church family.
CIA Agents that I knew by their first name only could not help me.
The only certainty was change.
Radical, painful, mind-numbing change.
On our way out of the CIA, our whole family needed counseling and therapy to cope with and adapt to this “new normal”.
Collectively, we got none.
Zero.
I pray that my story can help someone else navigate similar storms.
Other Links
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)