Scenes from a tourbus window
As we ride the backroads and autostradas of Italy, from south to north, we see a few things:
1. The bumpy spine of the Italian peninsula, the Apennine Mountains, always to the West, a few capped with snow.
2. Grape vines bare where they wrap around their wooden supports, and just coming into leaf.
3. The red tile roofs that blanket almost every house, apartment building, and barn. Some have faded to rose or beige.
4. Signs for Shell, Esso, and Agip gasoline at the next truckstop.
5. The reflections of our friends across the aisle in the bus window.
6. Sheep sleeping in grass taller than they are.
7. Auto dealerships gone bankrupt, with no cars in their lots or behind the huge, green showroom windows.
8. Cisterns under the corner eaves of farmhouses.
9. The silhouette of a leaping stag, in the middle of a red circle, on a road sign as we zip through a forest.
10. Behind us, the sounds of our friends on the bus, singing along to their iPods, whispering, a few laughs.
11. Fallow fields that are gray in the south near Sorrento, brown near Rome, and sandy red near Florence.
12. The curved, barrel-vault ceiling of a mile-long tunnel, the walls black from years of leaks. A big drop spatters on
the window and runs down it.
13. The sides of semi-trucks, sheathed in rubbery plastic, not steel, that ripples in the highway wind.
14. Huge rolls of green silage left in the middle of fields, food for the cattle and sheep and horses in winter.
15. Our own reflections in the bus window, but only in silhouette.
–Prof. Charles Israel, Jr.
