The Biography of Elvira Ruocco  (by Elvira Ruocco)  Chapter 4

From Portello to Arese

Problems of family organization had brought me, although unwillingly, to seek a talk with the Personnel Management to be transferred to the new Arese factory.
In the meantime my work was going well, the atmosphere was more and more friendly and sometimes there were novelties as those brought by some foreign stagists. I remember with big fondness a Nigerian engineer, great Alfa Romeo enthusiast, who told, in his very insecure Italian, to belong to an aristocratic family and everybody gently took him for a ride, by saying that he should have had to show the proof of what he claimed.
He was a man of great, unique charm, he had arrived with other two Nigerian colleagues and, together, they had become, I venture to say, the attraction of the whole Servicing Management School (DIASS). Everybody vied in passing the break with them and I remember that we waited for each other to go together to canteen, after the sound of the bell which announced the beginning of the pause. We walked very quickly, almost running, through a quite dark tunnel which was a very convenient shortcut, especially when it was cold or raining, where the workers’ dressing rooms overlook and where along the walls there were a row of long washbasins. Thin pipes passed through them in order to warm the water, in which the workers who did not go to the canteen used to heat up the meal container whose name here in Lombardy is ”schiscetta”.
When we ran into the canteen, we stopped our run due to the dread to slide on that slightly greasy floors and we looked hard to find free seats in which there were no ready-made dishes. To give you an idea I tell you how it worked. Hence, there were some very long tables and women handing out meals were pushing trolleys between one table and the other and, in order to optimise the service, they filled up the dishes so that people as they poured in sat down and started to eat without waiting. I did not like myself to find the dish already prepared and almost cold and, thus, I sought a corridor where the trolley had not come yet and we vied with each other who would have found it first.
I feel an infinite nostalgia for those days, and in particular for my job at the Portello, but I am also fully aware of having lived a wonderful and unique period, also because of the enthusiasm and hopes of my young age.
However let us come back to the Nigerian engineer who claimed to be of noble birth. Well, how he had over and over repeated to whom challenged him to give proof of his noble birth, at the end of his stage period he came to say goodbye to us wearing the costume of his lineage and a headdress studded with precious stones he had it expressly arrived from Nigeria, how it can be seen from the picture.
On February 8, 1974, I also gave a farewell party, worse luck! After a round of talks with Dr. Agazzi of the Personnel Management, I succeeded in getting the transfer to Arese, and precisely to the Industrial Vehicles Management, where I would have had to help Mr. Arpino who was in charge of assigning heavy vehicles to the different Branches.
In that cold morning of February 8, I stopped for buying pastry and bottles to toast with all my male and female colleagues from DIASS who, sorry for my decision, presented me along with a dear goodbye a very fine leather handbag and a supermodern belt.

...stay tuned!

Elvira Ruocco