The Lodi family and my family
This is the human story that bound two families with a bond of friendship.
In Bologna - in 1944 - several families, those who could, were thinking about how to get away from the city. They asked neighbors and acquaintances for news and advice about safety in the towns of the province, those far from the most important communication routes that were subject to frequent aerial bombardment.
Even more worrisome was the situation of those who lived , like my family, near the railway station, even then one of the busiest hubs.
Even among railroad workers in Bologna, these questions were frequent; they were discussed among colleagues. My father, who worked at the locomotive depot, knew several train drivers for reasons of service, including Pietro Lodi, the father of Vincenzo and Giuseppe.
It cannot be ruled out that in those conversations there was talk that my family had already moved to Gaggio, also because we had no other choice. Our house was small, old, without the most basic amenities but, at the time, it seemed to be in a quiet village.
The family members of Mr. Romualdo Bettini, a railroader in Bologna and our neighbor, namely his wife Adolfa and son Virgilio, had also settled in Gaggio. And so, almost certainly, thought Mr. Pietro did as well. And they came to Gaggio.
Virgilio Bettini and Vincenzo Lodi soon became acquaintances and friends. They were temporarily hosted by some families, including Vittorino Poggi's; then by the Cecchelli family in Cà del Ponte, where the friendship between seminarians Don Giuseppe Lodi and Carlo Cecchelli was born.
But the house was crowded, so in the evenings Fr. Pino went to sleep in the rectory with Archpriest Fr. Oreste Marchi.
Almost every day, Mrs. Abbondanzia Borruto - called Dina - Pietro Lodi's wife, would climb laboriously up the street and stop in front of my abode, either to regain her strength or to exchange a cordial conversation with my mom. What could the two moms talk about? Only about their children!
About my brother, a soldier in the railway police, from which he later deserted, carrying, together with another colleague, two backpacks full of weapons and ammunition to the partisans of Montefiorino.
And Mrs. Borruto? Of her two sons: of Don Pino recently ordained subdeacon by H.E. Cardinal G.B.Nasalli Rocca and Vincenzo who had had to interrupt his university studies in medicine.
But even on the road through the center of town, trucks pulling cannons and those full of German soldiers began to pass southward. The Lodi family preferred to settle away from the road and went up toward the Ronchidos area.
Then the aerial bombardment of Bologna intensified.
Pietro Lodi and my father, as railroaders, were militarized. They suffered the bombing, taking cover as best they could.
From Gaggio I could see numerous air formations heading toward Bologna.
One day a fact terrified me. The passage of so many large planes very close to each other, albeit at different altitudes, cast a shadow over the houses of the village.
For some brief time after the bombing of Bologna, my father would telephone the public telephone post that existed in Cirillo's house at the end of the village. There was fixed to the wall an old but working crank telephone, and so we were reassured. One day we were informed that a bomb had fallen on the window sill of my house,in Bologna, had not exploded, but the displacement of the air had destroyed the apartment.
Then the telephone line was cut off. Then my father using the internal phone of the FF.SS. called the station in Porretta. His colleague in Porretta would phone my father's brother, the only employee of S.B.E. (today's ENEL), in Porretta, and so the news continued to come in. Then my father defected, Mr. Pietro also left his job, both risked the death sentence, and they found themselves in Gaggio.