It was late July 1969 and a madman with a corkscrew and a bottle of wine had trapped our entire family in the main dining room of the Excelsior Hotel in Rome, Italy. We finished dinner several hours later than normal, and with the exception of grandfather, were now fully prepared to enjoy the comfort of our beds. However, despite our exhaustion after a day of sightseeing and inaccurate translations, there were two bottles of inexpensive, yet very tasty, Italian wine, still on the table and the lunatic had frozen us in our seats.
"We paid for six bottles of wine and we're going to finish them!" Grandfather slammed his palm onto the table. He looked up and back at identical pairs of bloodshot eyes and shook his head in dismay. "How many times do you think you are going to sit in this dining room? When do you think you will ever return?" He uncorked one of the bottles and poured himself a glass. "Drink! No one leaves until these bottles are empty!" His edict passed down the table and the glasses were refilled.
He had finished most of the first two bottles by himself while we cleared our palates with water. Not that we didn't like the wine, but after the four bottles of Chianti for lunch, the three small bottles of Marsala at two pm while grandmother tried on shoes, twelve shots of Grappa in the late afternoon on the pool deck, and the before-dinner drinks at the hotel bar, most of our group was having difficulty remembering their names.
Mother had spent almost ten minutes trying to sprinkle grated cheese from a shaker before she realized she was holding it upside-down. Grandmother, who had done her best to stay with the pace through the second pasta dish, had taken out her dentures and refused to eat or drink anything else until breakfast. And even with the training received during my first year of frat parties, I was an amateur in a land where the average twelve-year-old could suck down a bottle of red table wine faster than I could shoot a can of cold beer.
Father pulled out his wallet and, taking a full glass of wine with him, marched off toward the cashier to settle the score. He dumped his drink in a weeping fig tree by the coat room and left the empty glass on a waiter's tray. I took a deep drink of my glass and slid out of my chair, "I'll be right back," I muttered, and trotted out the door without waiting for questions.
While father converted lira to dollars and groaned at the price of six bottles of wine, I reclined on a red velvet couch in the lobby identical to the three dozen I'd seen in one too many palaces during the week. This one, however, had the comfort of a first-class airline seat. It allowed me to stretch out as much of my body as possible without setting my feet on the fabric. It was the force of habit, having been well-trained at home, to keep the seat clean.
On the carved black walnut table alongside the couch laid the only English language newspaper available to us in the past ten days. A six inch high, underlined, all capital letter headline jumped off the page. "They're landing on the moon today!" I grabbed my father's arm as he walked past and shouted at him, "Look at the paper. Just after four this afternoon!"
"That's ten pm here." He glanced at his watch, "ten minutes from now. Go get mother and your grandparents. I'll find a TV."
"I'm not going back in there alone," I protested, but father had already taken refuge in the hotel's men's room.
Rome in the summer of 1969 was still in the dark ages in terms of communication technology. An overseas phone call was possible, but only if it was scheduled in the morning for sometime that night. In most cases, it was easier to visit the pope or talk to god than it was to check on the family pet. I sent postcards from every hotel on the itinerary to myself at home just to see which would get there first. There were transistor radios throughout the city, AM only, and they were usually blaring in places where some peaceful reverence would have been requested. It was humorous to listen to an Italian radio DJ get excited over the latest Beatles release as his vocal pace increased and his pitch rose in anticipation of the music. All of the words were Italian until he got to the name of the song which he proudly announced several times in perfect English, over the first seven bars. I waited hours to laugh at his multilingual combination of "Coca-Cola della bevanda, e meglio."
Televisions in Rome were as rare as cautious taxi drivers, and with only a handful of broadcasts available, the libraries and the live theatre still held the high court. The Excelsior, once the finest hotel in Rome, catered to wealthy Americans in garishly colored Bermuda shorts, knee-high black socks and new sneakers as well as opulent Europeans, who had discovered khaki and unbuttoned shirts a full decade before the rest of the world. But even this grand hotel had only one working television that summer. Mounted in a position of eminence over the polished mahogany bar in the hotel's marbled lobby, was a glowing twenty-one inch deity: a primitive black and white Zenith. The bar was open to the street on one side and the hotel lobby on the other so the television was equally angled to give everyone at least a partial view.
Because we came from the United States and had baseball, football, and basketball, we were blissfully unaware the rest of the world had soccer. The annual Italian soccer championship had, at the bare minimum, one hundred times more viewers than those who watched the Superbowl. In a city where deities occupied every street corner, the players were worshipped with the same reverence one showed to the good Lord himself. Children began head-butting soccer balls during kindergarten recess, teenagers could run down an avenue passing a ball back and forth faster than a Fiat could run a red light, and grown men slipped into open-weave team jerseys just to drink a glass of wine with fellow fans after work. That particular summer there was a local team in the Italian Championship finals.
And oh, by the way, the Americans were landing on the moon.
Remote controls as we know them today did not exist back then, well at least not in Rome, hooked up to the old Zenith on the shelf over the bar in the Excelsior. Without a remote and with a bar larger than a row boat between me and the television, I had no control over the channel. The gentleman who did, wore a stained tuxedo shirt with three unlit Cuban cigars sticking over the upper rim of a soiled waiter's apron, and doled out libations from lunch to well after midnight behind the bar.
The bartender had what I would call a "working vocabulary" of English words. He knew "Coke" and "Gin and Tonic" and was most adept at saying "Ice cold Beer". "Change the channel" and "moon landing" could have been Swahili to him. I showed him the newspaper and even read the headline, slowly, several times, in the hope his dormant English-speaking gene would suddenly kick in. I got a fresh Coca-Cola, no ice, for my efforts.
In desperation, as the clock ticked incessantly toward ten pm, I ran to the concierge desk with my newspaper in hand. The night concierge had just taken his post. His knowledge of the English language, a step or two above the bartender, bordered on non-existent. He was able to translate "moon" into "luna". However, my "walking" back and forth in front of his desk led him to the conclusion I wanted to take a moonlight stroll. He produced a map and a yellow hiliter from the top drawer of an old marble desk and outlined several local streets and a winding river that changed from blue to green with the yellow tint from the marker. I assumed he was giving me directions to another television set that would be surrounded by Americans watching one of our country's greatest achievements take place. But, this was not to be. His route was along the river bank to the top of a scenic hill with all the important tourist sights and Kodak moments clearly labeled - in Italian.
With his map in one hand and my newspaper in the other, I sprinted to the front desk. Surely someone could communicate with me there? An attractive brunette with her hair pinned back wearing a white blouse with high, starched collars that must have made her neck itch, smiled and said in perfect English, "What can I do for you sir?"
"We're landing on the moon," I panted. "Can you ask the bartender to change the station on the TV?"
She looked across the lobby. "The television in the bar, sir?"
"Yes," I groaned. "Please hurry, it's probably happening right now!"
We strolled to the bar - never urge anyone in Italy to hurry, it's not in their vocabulary or habit after the sun sets or between the hours of noon and four, unless you're in a taxi. By the time we got to the bar, a small group of American tourists had gathered around the television and were trying futilely to communicate their wishes to the bartender. He continued to offer them "gin and tonic" in return. My bilingual desk clerk pointed at the television and made our wishes known in her native tongue. The bartender looked at her in disbelief and gave his response, complete with several flailing hand gestures and a crooked frown.
"He says you have to wait until after the match," the desk clerk explained.
"What match? There are astronauts landing on the moon." I looked at her in disbelief. "What match is he talking about?"
She pointed to the Zenith. "Rome is in the final match of the season right now. That is what everyone is watching on the television. It's the championship match."
I gazed around the bar and out to the sidewalk where every seat was occupied. People leaned against the walls while cigarettes drooped from the corner of their mouths and beer mugs drizzled on their shoes. Several held rolled newspapers in hands with hair-covered knuckles and permanently tanned fingers. None of them looked like tourists. Few of them had smiles. Their glassed-over eyes were locked on the soccer match on television and I doubted that a naked priest with a machine gun and a flashing neon rosary could have made them look away.
I kicked a fallen napkin and turned to the desk clerk. "You're not seriously going to tell me they think a soccer match is more important than seeing man land on the moon, are you?"
She fluttered her eyelids and adjusted the collar of her shirt. "Sir, Rome is playing the most important game of the season."
"Yes, but men are landing on the moon!" I shouted. "How often does that happen?"
She turned back to the bartender and repeated my request and its degree of urgency. The bartender was amused as he turned to his regular customers sitting at the bar and relayed the conversation to them. In unison four heads turned and looked at us as if we were either insane or perhaps visitors from the moon. One of them spoke to the desk clerk in sputtering Italian, wagging his finger and smacking his forehead in the basic form of Italian punctuation.
Several beads of sweat formed on her brow. "He says that no one cares about some crazy men in the moon and you should be careful not to cause a problem." She gulped and wiped the sweat with a handkerchief. "And what kind of crazy people go to the moon anyhow?"
Grandfather chose that moment to stumble into the bar and push into the crowd. From the look on his face, and the elegant dance he performed to get into the bar, you could tell he was unhappy and his pal 'trouble' followed closely behind. It was a given that every wine bottle on our table was now empty.
I could envision the battle about to take place in the hotel bar of the most elegant hotel in all of Rome. The alcohol propelling him threatened to turn this into an international incident of biblical proportions. In the time it took him to reach the bartender, I considered several thoughts of spending the remainder of our vacation in either a hospital or jail and wondered how many of these locals were armed. He rolled his three hundred pounds through the crowd, shoving people with the urgency of a bowling ball and took up a position directly in front of the bartender.
"Is there a problem here?" he shouted and slapped both extra-large hands on the bar, spraying a large puddle of beer waste at the bartender. The voices, in all languages, went silent as grandfather, without any personal restraint on his own part, burped loud enough to wake the tourists on the top floor, and again sent remains of the beer slick over the top of the bar. The bartender grabbed a bottle of wine from the rack behind him and brought it around just a bit too fast. Grandfather, sensed an attack, but fortunately in slow motion. He lifted a bar stool and prepared to parry the thrust with this four-legged, wooden sword. Grandmother put her teeth back in and screamed...
The television had plans of its own.
The screen shifted from a soccer field with a bunch of ants running amok to the talking head of a newscaster with raven-black hair, dimples and teeth whiter than a new pair of gym socks. As she spoke, in Italian of course, the scene changed to a grainy image taken through the window of an American spaceship landing on the moon. It was bad quality for television, even in those days, but it was live and it was coming from outer space. There were people counting in English in the background, along with the newscaster's translation for the local audience. We had a brief view of the command center in Houston and then back to the live shots from the lunar lander.
Our eyes and ears were riveted to the sounds and pictures coming at us not only a quarter of a million miles away on the moon, but from a small, overcrowded room in Houston, Texas, USA as well. The local viewers, at least the ones on the sidewalk, moaned as one and spat out phrases which needed no translation.
The hotel side of the bar was, by this time, filled with tourists. Mostly American, but a small contingent of Japanese had shuffled over upon hearing the commotion. Three of Her Majesty's subjects had taken up the bartender's offer of gin and tonic several times that evening and had laid claim to one corner of the bar. They began to bang their not quite empty shot glasses on the bar in cadence with the countdown. The rest of us were silent, trying to make out the words being broadcast in snippets of a language we could grasp.
Then we heard it. "Houston? Tranquility base here... The Eagle has landed." For a few brief seconds the only sounds heard were the confused grumblings of the sidewalk patrons as the newscaster, now back to a full head shot, passed on the information. At the same moment of realization, both tourists and soccer fans ripped out a raucous cheer. The reality of the event struck us all colder than the first shower on New Year's morning. Mother, who cried at supermarket openings, burst into tears and hugged a man she mistook for father.
All of the Japanese tourists snapped photos of the television, the crowd, and grandfather shaking hands with the bartender. There were high fives and the clink of glasses. Someone popped a bottle of cheap champagne and filled any shot glass within reach. The bartender offered us all Coca Cola's, not the ones from the lukewarm display case behind him, but cold ones, real cold ones he kept in the refrigerator hidden under the bar.
It came to a halt as quickly and without warning as it had begun.
The television station popped back to the soccer match just in time to see the opposing team score, but no one stopped cheering for several seconds. Father tipped the front desk clerk his last ten dollar bill and ushered us all off to bed. We had a long day ahead of us, several amphitheaters, a dozen churches, and an afternoon of shopping for more souvenirs. The man on the moon show was over for us for tonight. It would be just after three o'clock in the morning, local time, when Neil Armstrong would set foot on the moon and utter his now famous phrase. Had he only said "Coca-Cola della bevanda, e meglio" instead, he would have become a wealthy man. I would read about it in the late edition the next day and see taped video of it several days later when we returned home. The three Brits drinking gin and tonic would still be sitting at the bar watching soccer replays at three am. Grandfather sat there with them and drank another bottle of wine. Fortunately for us, he missed most of the next day.
And somewhere in Rome, while the stars slid silently across the night sky, a small group of soccer fans uncorked another bottle of Chianti to celebrate the winning goal, and laughed about the crazy American tourists and their men on the moon.
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