Centennial Church Welcome Greetings

Something

Let me recall an emotion that has its roots in the distant childhood.
I knew that there still existed and how many times I walked past, but that Sunday afternoon I saw with other eyes, and it worked for me as the madeleinette of Proust. Thus, 'as in that game in which the Japanese amuse themselves immersed in a water-filled bowl of porcelain pieces of paper hitherto indistinct, that, when immersed, relax, take contour, stain, differentiate, become flowers, houses, human figures consistent and recognizable, "built an entire world around me when I stopped to look a little 'wonder, a world memory that had the same strength as the real one.

along Via Fratelli Cairoli cycling, as indicated by the arrow in the satellite photo (taken from Google Maps , like the others that use in this text), when I saw him there on the left, surrounded by in a lush green, and I found myself enchanted in Bicester fifty years ago.
It is the well No Fidenza an aqueduct, still miraculously intact in a city where many precious testimonies of the past, even recently, have been destroyed and replaced by new buildings, often, unfortunately, very bad. Here it is shown in detail in the image of the canvas and portrayed in a photograph I took a few days later.

In the photo, the circular well in the cement behind the low gray building access to the shaft and the turbine hall, the yellow building higher the electrical box .


anything left, I said to myself, while I found myself on the edge of the well child, in which I could not quite get. My father took me with him on the back seat of his Gilera, when he had to do maintenance work, with other workers and idraulici.Io I had to stay on the grass and, from above, heard their voices and their calls echo in the bottom. The men wore mythological names from Greek and Roman epic: Paris, Enore, Aegisthus, Olinto, Dionisio. Some of the younger boast of nicknames are also somewhat legendary: the Giant, die cutting, Shearing.
For us, that we were their children, infants and children between the '40s and '60s, the work of the aqueduct and the epic stories told that these men were educated in life and is told in sentimenti.Come below, the "Vasconcelos" has just turned seventy years, and now no longer performs any function hydraulics, but in those decades was young and all the activity was still growing.

Next to the gigantic mushroom, in the corners of the wide fence enclosing it, there were two buildings that are still there, unchanged. Lived there three families of those architects of the city's water supply and for us, their children, boys and girls, seemed to live a great adventure. In the small building that combines
i due caseggiati, c’erano l’officina e il magazzino, cosicché il grande cortile brulicava di persone indaffarate e ferveva di lavoro.
Tutti noi bambini e ragazzi, prima o poi, e anche i nostri amici ed amiche, siamo saliti fin lassù, sulla terrazza più alta, ad ammirare uno splendido panorama.





Dall’album di famiglia: nelle due foto d’epoca, alcuni protagonisti di quella stagione sul tetto del “vascòn” e, sullo sfondo, una Fidenza molto diversa da quella di oggi (sono passati 70 anni e si vede)



Ora molte cose non ci sono più. Per esempio, la centrale di distribuzione «nuova» degli anni ’60, costruita in Corea, a fianco di Casa Rabaiotti, è stata abbattuta per far posto ad un palazzo che dà praticamente in strada.
La stessa costruzione d’avanguardia del serbatoio pensile, unica per l’originalità della forma, ha rischiato di essere demolita. Anche se, per fortuna, in tempi di telefonia mobile si rivela di nuovo utile e sul tetto brulicano le antenne.
Qualcosa è rimasto, dunque. Ma quel che rischia di scomparire è il ricordo e, oserei dire, il mito di quell’epoca e di quegli uomini, molti dei quali sono oggi scomparsi.
Un pensiero particolare vorrei dedicarlo al piccolo grande Olinto, detto familiarmente Olindo. Quando faceva the night shift, monitoring the machines, many of my evenings as a student passed the pre-teen in his company, listening to his wonderful and exciting stories.
Another great teacher, one of the youngest, was Dionysius, a poet and painter. He still lives in the same building where have I been up to twenty years and, best of me, could be the singer of that great season.
But I wonder: why, for example, do not put a plaque on Via Cairoli remember that the well No Fidenza an aqueduct? Among other things, are not even sure that the preservation of the site is impeccable. The green area of \u200b\u200bthe old complex is accessible to individuals from the rear. There a gap in the wire fence of the building of the parallel Via Pisacane No 6, which allows access (indicated by the arrow in photo below) in an area that should be public and still be a small historical heritage of all citizens. We have placed a small table and chairs which, even by satellite, looking good, are identified.



A well from which water flows is still a miracle of nature to be admired even when it has finished to perform its function.
The picture below gives an idea of \u200b\u200bliving expressed satisfaction that those authors "heroic" in the first municipal water supply and climate villagers adventurous and pioneering that characterized that era.

A photo of June 30, 1959: you test a well that has a capacity of 60 liters per second. At the center of the engineer Vittorio Chiapponi.

The director of civic until 1972, Mr. Vittorio Chiapponi, which appears in the photo, was also a witty writer and his great adventure that has a dedicated his book, which is now a bibliographical rarity: I sinquant ' Ani's "Vasconcelos" 1937-1987 leading eloquent as subtitle: "Short memories on water supply in Bicester.




And then I get more questions: why not use the premises abandoned workshop and warehouse of the old aqueduct, and on the same basis of the fungus, to create a kind of historical museum of the distribution of water in the Village?






In the photo, the base of the "mushroom", which was occupied by water filters and, in the basement, by the turbines. Behind the building down, the doors and two dark windows of the old workshop.

I cultivate an idea, however, more sock and, therefore, I fear, totally impractical for some economic or bureaucratic impediments. However, I ask it anyway: you could not use the tower as a tourist attraction and to pick up there, or even up to the railing you see in the picture below, those who want to enjoy the views of Bicester?

In the 50s and 60s, it happened that even school children were allowed to visit the entire complex and to experience the thrill of reaching the highest point of the tower.

Scolari in 1951 teenagers. In the background to the Via Emilia Parma

certainly what we would see now is not more beautiful than once, but retains the interesting aspects, despite the ravages and insults architectural and urban planning that, unfortunately, has not even be finished.