Together with the Urban District of Commerce we met Ezio Lorenzi, owner of the so-called "Tutteria" in the Upper Town. Here is the story of his workshop:
Ezio Lorenzi bursts out laughing - ninety years in May and from 1956 in the upper town - when we tell him that his small shop of things in Via Salvecchio is known to the locals as the "Tutteria" aka somewhere that sells everything.
Usually people come to him because someone suggests "go by that place that has everything!" And he, like a Winston Wolf of other times, is for everyone, the man who solves problems: electrical, plumbing or DIY… You can find everything at his shop and he always gives good advice on how to proceed.
Behind the small counter of the shop, he looks like a ship's admiral, carrying goods of all kinds around the world. In reality, Ezio has hardly ever left his beloved Upper Town.
For a short time he lived in Lower Bergamo, but every morning he left the house to look at the profile of churches and towers and sighed with melancholy "Ada la cita olta – Look at the Upper Town" and so after a while he returned, never to leave her again.
Even today - and to this he says he owes his good health - every day he gets up before daybreak, walks around the walls for forty-five minutes and stops just in time to see the sun rise. "I like to see the dawn!" He says with his sky-coloured eyes smiling.
Then, at exactly half past seven, he opens his small shop full of things, with the shelves full to the ceiling. He closes only on the days of the inventory and, to see the quantity of materials placed everywhere, one would think that it closes for months. Instead he knows exactly what comes in and what goes out. With his forefinger, he taps his forehead and says "I have everything here and even when I fell from the roof my head continued to work".
He learned the trade during the summer, "acting as an electrician’s assistant ", and in the mid-fifties he was on the rooves of the Upper Town, putting television antennas on for everyone.
One day he had a bad fall and, thankful that he had been saved, he decided it was time to change jobs. But he sometimes returned to the rooftops, since he knew that "if you fall and you get scared then you don't do it anymore" and he didn't want fear to win.
Thus, first next to the Church of the Carmine and then in Via Salvecchio, he began to take care of small repairs, household problems and those of the traders in the Upper Town.
Even today, on the only morning he’s closed, he goes to some house to fix what doesn’t work, because everyone asks him and... how can you say no?
Ezio gestures little and often holds the palms of his hands in view. "You work with hands and head, but the hands are also used to make pacts and make good faith agreements" he says calmly.
At least it used to be like that. "There was more brotherhood and honesty and when someone could not pay, he came to warn you and you knew you had to just wait a little. We all had hard times. There was compassion".
He then says that caring for people was genuine. To make us understand what he means, he says that in the past it was common practice among merchants, when they saw their debtor pass, to withdraw and not be seen, in order not to humiliate them in a tiring time and to not make them ashamed of the bad situation they was experiencing.
And how is it today?
"Today, we are not good in general. There is less mutual care, but every night I see my friends from the Upper Town at the Cavour bar, we have a good chat and then I go home, I rest and wait for the dawn".
Together with the Urban District of Commerce we met Ezio Lorenzi, owner of the so-called "Tutteria" in the Upper Town. Here is the story of his workshop:
Ezio Lorenzi bursts out laughing - ninety years in May and from 1956 in the upper town - when we tell him that his small shop of things in Via Salvecchio is known to the locals as the "Tutteria" aka somewhere that sells everything.
Usually people come to him because someone suggests "go by that place that has everything!" And he, like a Winston Wolf of other times, is for everyone, the man who solves problems: electrical, plumbing or DIY… You can find everything at his shop and he always gives good advice on how to proceed.
Behind the small counter of the shop, he looks like a ship's admiral, carrying goods of all kinds around the world. In reality, Ezio has hardly ever left his beloved Upper Town.
For a short time he lived in Lower Bergamo, but every morning he left the house to look at the profile of churches and towers and sighed with melancholy "Ada la cita olta – Look at the Upper Town" and so after a while he returned, never to leave her again.
Even today - and to this he says he owes his good health - every day he gets up before daybreak, walks around the walls for forty-five minutes and stops just in time to see the sun rise. "I like to see the dawn!" He says with his sky-coloured eyes smiling.
Then, at exactly half past seven, he opens his small shop full of things, with the shelves full to the ceiling. He closes only on the days of the inventory and, to see the quantity of materials placed everywhere, one would think that it closes for months. Instead he knows exactly what comes in and what goes out. With his forefinger, he taps his forehead and says "I have everything here and even when I fell from the roof my head continued to work".
He learned the trade during the summer, "acting as an electrician’s assistant ", and in the mid-fifties he was on the rooves of the Upper Town, putting television antennas on for everyone.
One day he had a bad fall and, thankful that he had been saved, he decided it was time to change jobs. But he sometimes returned to the rooftops, since he knew that "if you fall and you get scared then you don't do it anymore" and he didn't want fear to win.
Thus, first next to the Church of the Carmine and then in Via Salvecchio, he began to take care of small repairs, household problems and those of the traders in the Upper Town.
Even today, on the only morning he’s closed, he goes to some house to fix what doesn’t work, because everyone asks him and... how can you say no?
Ezio gestures little and often holds the palms of his hands in view. "You work with hands and head, but the hands are also used to make pacts and make good faith agreements" he says calmly.
At least it used to be like that. "There was more brotherhood and honesty and when someone could not pay, he came to warn you and you knew you had to just wait a little. We all had hard times. There was compassion".
He then says that caring for people was genuine. To make us understand what he means, he says that in the past it was common practice among merchants, when they saw their debtor pass, to withdraw and not be seen, in order not to humiliate them in a tiring time and to not make them ashamed of the bad situation they was experiencing.
And how is it today?
"Today, we are not good in general. There is less mutual care, but every night I see my friends from the Upper Town at the Cavour bar, we have a good chat and then I go home, I rest and wait for the dawn".
