16/06/2019
Leaving school.
The end of the lessons, like the beginning, was another ritual.
We ran outside, in a Campo San Canciano crowded with parents, looking for the mother or father who were waiting for us, often with a bag of pizzas to cheer up the end of the lessons. If I came home alone, I took advantage of it and slowed down my path to browse around the area.
Immediately I sneaked in from Natalina, the tobacconist on the corner, to peek through the latest Disney releases: not just "Mickey Mouse", but also "Donald Duck", "the Classics", "the Great Classics". More "the Tascabilone", a quarterly that proposed old stories of half-known characters such as Compare Orso and Fratello Coniglietto.
My next stop was Superplastica, a shop of household goods still present, of which I scrupulously combed the shop windows: an entire column was reserved for Game Boy games that at the time, given the number of resident children, were sold a little everywhere.
And if time allowed me, I would make a quick visit to Franco ("color queo") to supply me with batteries which, considering my inordinate use of electronic video games, were never enough at home.
It was a shop of other times, crammed with frames and paint cans; the manager, with his omnipresent blue shirt, had reserved a corner for the various types of batteries behind the cash register.
And if I really wanted to challenge the patience of mum and dad, already around the table waiting for my return from school, here I stretched my path to Molin, for all of them "Il ponte dei Giocattoli". There the Game Boy games were kept under the glass counter. The only way to get an idea about a title was: fix the design on the cover and arm yourself with so much imagination. Sometimes, if the owners weren't too busy, they would take out the boxes and let me look at the back for a few seconds.
On the left there was then a small TV connected to a device that allowed to choose between 10 Nintendo NES games in trial.
A different Venice.
There is no need to specify the kind of reception that was given to me by the parents who saw me coming home well beyond the school timetable, despite my inevitable climbing on the mirrors that gave the delay to some kind of excuse. And that were never enough to justify the cold pasta dishes in front of the TG1 that was now coming to an end. When mobile phones were still the prerogative of a few and everything was still based on trust and respect for schedules.
But it was a different Venice, made up of Venetians, of neighborhood shops; a Venice where everyone knew each other by name, where the Salizada was nothing but an extension of the domestic walls.
A Venice that, silently but inexorably, had already begun its haemorrhage of inhabitants: in 1990 it had 78,165 residents, 17,000 fewer than in 1980, and that in 2000 would have reached a negative balance of another 12,000.
The Sisters Imeldine
And at the expense of it could only be the elementary school of Imeldine: with the advent of the new millennium, the sisters decided not to form new classes anymore, limiting themselves to accompanying at the end of the school cycle those already present.
Thus, year after year, Campo San Canciano and the Salizada began to empty themselves of the presence of children and their parents, reaching 2003 with the total and definitive closure of the "Imelda Lambertini" or of what was left of it.
The premises were abandoned, the marble plaque was removed. The lost Venice. The Sisters Imeldine and the school in San Canciano which no longer exist
At the cheerful voices, colored aprons and bags with snacks took place only a bleak silence, alternated by the uncertain steps of the small groups of tourists who had lost their way towards San Marco.
The grocer closed Toni, closed the two butchers in Salizada; they closed Rosa Anna dei confetti, roasting, Franco dei colori, the curtain shop, the Plip dairy and that of Santa Maria Nova; Finotello bakery closed.
In 2007 Molin also lowered the shutters, which with his toys had become a topographical reference point for the entire city.
The last to cease the activity was the Baretton grocery, putting an end to an agony lasting several years, made up of Bellini and small bottles of water for tourists.
Paraphrasing Gino Paoli, who in "La Gatta" sang "everything has changed, I no longer live there", the demands of life have led me to move to another area of Venice, but although I have not moved from the Historic Center, the my San Canciano no longer exists.
It has been rumored for years that the former Imeldine school will become yet another hotel, but for the moment the building remains there, abandoned and unused.
Nothing remains of my childhood Salizada, except the name on the nizioleto: the last time I passed by, a sad and anonymous expanse of snack bars, bazaars and junk shops worthy of the outskirts of a any European city. All with foreign management, with the same neon signs that invite tourists to enter.
That's why, in order not to suffer, I prefer to go around wide.
Nino Baldan
(Seguito dell'articolo "La Venezia perduta. Le Suore Imeldine e la scuola a San Canciano che non esistono più") L’uscita da scuola. La fine delle lezioni,
