By Ralph Pace

Every year, for as long as I can remember until the time that I moved from Sicily to Torino in the northern part of Italy, my family would go on vacation for a week to a location on the Mediterranean Sea called Seccagrande.  (The English translation of Seccagrande is "a place where the waves are very small.") On Ferragosto (the fifteenth of August) my parents and their friends would take their families to Seccagrande for a week of fun and relaxation.  Ferragosto is an important day in Italy.  Most big companies and many factories are closed during the second and third weeks of August and Italians will go on vacation somewhere on the ocean beaches or mountains.
 

There weren't too many cars traveling in Sicily when I was growing up.  Most of the cars were owned by wealthy people or the Armed Forces (police and Italian army).  The only way for a family to travel was by horse or a ciucciu (the Sicilian name for a donkey) attached to a carriage, or as it is locally called, "carretto Siciliano."
 
So, the week of Ferragosto my father, with the help of my brothers and myself, packed our clothes, bathing suits, the military tent that my dad received when he was in the army, sheets, pillows, and a few other items that would make our stay on the shore somehow more comfortable.  My mother took care of the food for the week: pasta to be cooked, bread, olives, different types of cheese, a couple of jars of homemade jelly, etc.  My father would carry his rifle (locally called "scupetta") with him as a way to protect us, but also to hunt for fresh meat.
 
We left for Seccagrande very early in the morning before the sun rose and it became too hot to travel.  My parents sat in the front of the carretto Siciliano, and we kids sat in the back.  Following us were usually three or four carretti with other families traveling to the same location.  It was an image that I will never forget, like a parade of horses and ciucci pulling their carretti along the road.
 
When we reached the sea shore, each family set up and planted their own tent, which, of course, for all of us became home away from home.  My mother would change and wash the sheets that she put on the ground where we would sleep at night.  We were not too comfortable sleeping on the ground, but we played ball in the sand every day and swam in the sea.  Now, I would not trade that tent for the best hotel room in the world!
 
And, that's the way it was somewhere in time in Sicily.