… and they used to rinse clothes in the Ombrone

Many years ago in  Comeana people used candles in houses and did the laundry in the river.

A journey through the memories and the past. An old yellowed postcard or some pictures blackened by time may be enough to restore a corner of the village, with its houses, squares and monuments. To understand what the atmosphere was like, the sounds, the games and the meetings around it, it was necessary to make those who experienced them directly talk about them. With this basically simple idea, our journey to rediscover the province as it was, begins.
Comeana had a particular relationship with its river, the Ombrone, which, although it does not go through it from side to side, borders on the village passing very close to it. When running water at home was a luxury people would go there to wash clothes. They also used to bathe in it. The men took advantage of it during the day. “Us women” Norina Cirri who today is 86 years old , says “were allowed to do so only at night, when we did not risk being seen from the square. In fact, it would have been enough to lose one’s reputation or to be pointed at. That river was not as dark and muddy as it is today, it was clear and full of fish, instead Those were times when morals were definitely tighter: you had to be careful even to be seen with a guy or to enter a bar.
The streets were dark dirt patches. “Sometimes in the evening when I used to go to bring milk to
grandfather, I was scared,” Norina recalls . Around the twenties there were only four street lamps in all the village: one where the schools are now, one was at the church, another one was near the pharmacy and the last one was in the square, in front of the Post Office. There was a person from the village who was appointed by the Municipality to turn them on every evening. In many homes, up to 1945, we moved along with a candle and an oil lamp.
Of those distant years Norina, who now has pearl grey hair and still has curious eyes (though hidden behind two thick lenses) as well as several grandchildren, inevitably has fond memories. “We would live with the doors always open”, she recounts, and even though there were fields all around we used to play in the street. At most, in fact, just a few donkeys or some horse-drawn carts would pass in the morning. They would carry the paving material from the nearby mines of pietra serena stone to Florence. Almost all the men from the village, before the former N.O.B.E.L. powder magazine opening, worked in those mines until the end of the war. “Going to Florence or Prato was not a joke: there was the coach, but only once a week.

The alternative was the bicycle (for the lucky ones) or one’s own  feet. Children would play “campana” to “ciruli” or “stinchi filinchi in the street.” “In the morning when we got up, there was Diego with his goats in the square who was ready to milk the hot milk for anyone who wanted it.” “We also used to work hard, though”, the elderly woman from Comeana says .”Even when we were children we worked at home to make straw hats. Even washing the clothes was a challenge.   We lathered them up on the banks of the Ombrone”, she says and then we put them in large baskets to take them home and boil them with ash, Italian arum or lucerne: we took water from the drinking fountains scattered throughout the villages, standing in queues. There was one at “Bottega” in front of the schools, one just past the church in the square and another one at La Volta. A few years later they installed one at Chioccioli (now Via Vittorio Veneto – editor’s note). After boiling the clothes they returned to rinse them in the river. Often they hanged them out to dry there. “It was really hard work”, Norina recounts but they also got cleaner, in the end.”(wf)

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