By Anita Garner
When this year’s Vermont Country Store Christmas catalog arrived, I saw this page and thought of Itsie.
Italo Luigi Orlandi lived one canyon over from me in Mill Valley, California in a huge house on a hill. In his 80s he was still sprinting up four flights of stairs from the steep driveway in the redwoods to his kitchen door.
Itsie loved oilcloth and always had one covering his old kitchen table. He sat with a visitor sharing instant coffee from chipped cups (“No need for a fancy coffee maker. It’s just me here. I know how to boil water.”) One of his hands was always in motion soothing the tablecloth while he talked. The oilcloth was frayed, nearly bare in places. It had already been turned and turned again so there were no more fresh surfaces to see.
He’d recently given up driving his big blue van around town, quit driving voluntarily, said it was the responsible thing to do since his vision wasn’t what it should be. I drove him places and had the pleasure of his company and his stories from decades spent buying property all around us.
He finally agreed he needed a new table covering. I mentioned some nice ones in the Vermont Country Store catalog. Plenty of patterns and colors to choose from. “How much?” I said their prices are reasonable and their dry goods are impeccable. I’ve been ordering from them for years.
Before any more tablecloth talk, let me show you the home where this old kitchen table and worn oilcloth resided.
Itsie lived alone in this enormous home in Corte Madera Canyon
No he wasn’t going to pay for a finished tablecloth. He’d rather buy from a bolt at the yard goods store and have it cut to the right size. I pointed out that ready-made oilcloths last for years and have a nice backing, but he insisted we go to Joann Fabrics in Corte Madera. That way we could stop at Safeway on the way and get him a can of soup too. A few minutes later at the fabric store he chose a new pattern. He had his exact table measurement with him. I insisted on a bit extra for overlap so it would drape.
His eyes lit up at all the new patterns. I tried to talk him into getting two cut to size so he could switch them around. “Nobody needs more than one tablecloth.” But oh how he loved the new one! He ran up the stairs ahead of me, eager to put it in place.
Then he immediately took it off the table and trimmed it so it barely covered the edge, removing the overlap. He liked to save scraps and in this case I watched him create scraps on purpose. Scant as these oilcloth strips were, he’d find some use for them, he said. He was a handyman at heart with a huge attic and a full-floor workshop, both kept orderly and organized, down to the last scrap of whatever he’d saved. He knew where to find everything and everything would be used eventually.
Itsie lingered at the bottom of his steep drive, trimming plants, waiting for neighbors to come by. It was his habit to invite them upstairs for a cup of coffee. He’d soon be telling the story about the morning spent choosing a new tablecloth, including specifics about how much money a person could save having oilcloth cut to measure like his.
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What a wonderful story! One of the signs of a gifted writer is the ability to take the simplest moments and turn them into fascinating prose. If those stories also spark pleasant memories in the reader, then the writer has made an indelible contribution to the human experience.
Most of your writing has more than adhered to these ideals. Bravo, Anita!
Bless you for these words, Steve. Connecting is one reason we writers write, isn’t it? Lately I seem to be wanting to share details about indelible personalities I’ve been honored to know.
The daily interactions with family and our dear neighbors are so valuable to me. I’m glad you had a great neighbor like Itsie. The play “Our Town” shed light on it, how the mundane can be a treasure.
Absolutely, Allison. When “Our Town” was assigned as high school reading for the Grand in Freshman year, I was excited to find my copy in the family library to share with her. Eventually she also watched the Hal Holbrook version. It began as a school assignment but you and I know that what that play represents is impossible to forget.
What a great memory. I was in the Palo Alto HS play of Our Town. We thought it was wonderful.
Grace, and I’m sure you were wonderful in it.
I remember your frequent comments of days spent with Itsie. He sounds like a terrific guy. This essay does justice to the man’s character and personality. Well done!
Dave, Itsie turned out to be family to my girls and me. Everyone in town knew who drove that big blue van and he was known by all to be feisty. To us he was also loving and kind. The first time the girls came to visit me in the cottage in Mill Valley they brought their pup, Charlie Brown. Before they arrived Itsie brought over his tools and scanned every inch of the old, old grapestake fence to make sure there were no gaps a tiny dog could squeeze through.