Who is Carlo dalMasso

Who is Carlo dalMasso?

“Let me see,” Pinky insisted.
“None of your business,” I replied, pulling down my bike shorts.
“You said you were a little saddle sore.”
“So? We did ride 50 miles, you know.”
“Aha! I got a peek. You have baboon ass again. I saw red.”
“I’ll be fine. So let’s have a look at yours, smarty pants.”
“Not on your life, buster. Mine is fine. You didn’t rinse the soap out of your shorts last night. That’s why you’re sore. It takes three rinses”
“Tonight then. Three rinses, no more soap.”
“I can make you feel better too,” she said. “It’s right next to the toilet. I’ll run some warm water in it for you and you can just soak a little.”
“No way. I’m not sitting in that thing.”
“Nobody will know. It feels good. You’d like it if you would just try it. Come on, just have a little soak. The Italians all use them. Ask Carlo. I bet he has. I’ve used it twice.”
“I am not asking Carlo.”
Carlo was our host at La Soffita, a Bed and Breakfast in Schio, Italy. We were traveling in Italy on our bikes. I wasn’t going to ask him any kind of personal question, especially not that one.
“I’ve known him for about twenty four hours, and I’m not asking him if he sits in a douche bowl.”
So began our second night in at La Soffita. Why had we come here? The art, history, and the cuisine; we had the usual laudable reasons. Those were really the excuses for spending money. On arrival in Venice, the real purpose of our trip had been: Find a three pronged adapter for the standard European two prong plug on Pinky’s hair dryer and my battery charger. Perfect, our trip was a success within 48 hours. We could have gone home – dry haired, charged, and satisfied. But Pinky now had a new purpose for her trip: to get me into the bidet.
I had my own mission: a Reverse Amerigo Vespucci Mission -- Prove the existence of Italy. My approach was existential. I presumed that no part of Italy been discovered if I had no photographic record of it.
“I would like to burn the Venice photos onto a CD so I can start over with empty memory chips in the camera. Carlo is home now. I’m going down stairs,” I said .
“Isn’t his computer at work?” Pinky wondered.
“It is, but Federico’s coming over tonight at ten.”
Frederico was our host’s son, a computer scientist, and I hoped he would have the equipment I needed to burn the CD.”
“That Carlo is something else isn’t he?” The internet junkie had impressed her.
“He’s not playing ‘Donkey Kong’ online. He likes the cerebral stuff.”
“Who would ever download ‘Quantum Computing and Sentient Behavior’ or whatever it was, for entertainment?”
“More amazing is that he read it.”
“I’d say he might be your kind of guy, Mr. Webmaster,” she teased. “And you have other things in common with Carlo, one son with a Ph. D. in physics, and other who is a computer geek like his Federico. Plus Carlo rides a bike to work.”
“Yep. I love this guy already.”
“Who pays for the paper he prints everyday, not to mention his time?”
“I’m not sure. But, I get the idea that he may be the one asking questions at work.”
“The Boss? Nah, I bet he puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. Besides, if he’s the boss, why is he running a Bed and Breakfast?”
“I don’t know. It’s like asking a CFO at Shell Oil Company who pays for his computer paper -- when he would probably be thinking more about the merger with British Petroleum.”
“His wife works at the Care Center in Malo. He’s probably a working stiff exec.”
“Maybe. At any rate, he’s a great guy.
I recalled the pleasant introduction to Carlo. We had barely arrived, when boom – he was home from work. We chatted a little about our families, then he asked whether we needed a recommendation for dinner.
“Well, yes,” I admitted. We knew next to nothing about local restaurants.
“What type of meal do you prefer?”
“Close, for the biccicleti a notte,”
“And probably something cheap,” Carlo smiled.
Pinky had laughed about that. “Did he have you figured out or what?”
“He did,” I told her. “but I’m not alone. He put a smile on your sweet little face with the ‘Al Paiolo’.”
What a meal. The people at the restaurant had ransacked their kitchen to find a paiolo to show us how they grind polenta. They went an extra mile, in my opinion.
After dinner,they invited us into the back where they were preparing herring for their polenta festa in the village on Saturday. “Taste; e Vino, .. wine… oh, e polenta,” the owner told us, gesturing a little space between thumb and index finger; then zap, the waitress appeared with these accessories to our tasting of the herring – another meal.
When we got back to La Soffita, Carlo told me he and Marielena have never eaten there. We decided they might not eat out very much, or maybe they ate at nicer restaurants, although I don’t know how it could get much better than Al Paiolo.

After sharing an after dinner drink of Grappa with Carlo and his wife, we realized we had many things in common. We got to know them well on that first night.
Pinky had remarked that their daughter, Emma, was a cutie.
“Yes, she’s absolutely the most beautiful Chemistry major I’ve ever seen.” Emma was the one who actually met us and signed us in, passport numbers…so on, and then giving us directions to the pizza place, ‘firs-ta you go on this-a streeta to the T, turn left-a, then next a right-a, there will be a bridge-a.’, perfect English but with some ending vowels to give it a comfortable rhythm.”
“I love the accenta” Pinky experimented with her own vowel additions. We were becoming more Italian every day.
“I love it, too. Well, we have some new friends, Italian friends. And I’m going downstairs with the memory chip” I said.
“So, go,” she shooed me out of the room. Probably so she could rinse her shorts in peace.

Downstairs, Carlo told me that he spent a lot of time in front of a computer at work, and when he saw my face light up, he said he was a user, not a computer person. He said he works with recycling; explaining that he was involved in manufacturing paper from recycled paper products. He has been staying close to home for the last several years because his mother is pushing ninety, and his dad is 93. They live in the apartment, the several rooms just beyond the kitchen, totally self contained and separate but tangent, as are their lives. What a good son, I thought. It was good planning, and good luck to be able to carry it out.
We shared some of our experiences. Pinky told them about moving her parents to the nursing home in Mount Vernon, the vagaries of caring for dementia, and I told them my recent bout as executor for my mother’s estate. We talked about my latest website projects. Federico is 24 and did La Soffita’s website, but does much more sophisticated things. He is flying to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks on Microsoft’s dime and is anticipating a related employment opportunity. That is globalization of the tech industry up close and personal, our son being concerned that Sun Microsystems will have a third round of layoffs.
Marielena rolled her eyes back and moaned, “Physick. Oh no.”, as her Carlo and I launched into a discussion of the book Chaos by Gleik. She and Pinky found their own things to talk about. Pinky learned that Carlo and Marielena built the house and have been there about 15 years. Marielena works two days a week, but is off this week. Emma is 19, in her first year of university in Padova and goes on the train. Marielena is from Thiene a few miles east, and Carlo is from the tiny nearby town of Zane. They are about 10 years behind us and married for 27 years. Emma would like to do an student exchange program to the U.S., maybe for 6 months or a year, and we told them about Lewis and Clark and PLU.
Emma sat on the arm of the couch leaning on her mom while we drank grappa. Carlo was a little worried about Emma. He thought she was a little intimidated, a little uncertain after her first day at the university. But he recalled that Federico was very uncomfortable until his first college midterm exams, then told Carlo he’d figured it out just like high school, went to the top of the class where he stayed. Neither of the kids is married, and Emma was without a regular boyfriend. We told Carlo it couldn’t be long. “Hopefully without blue hair, and multiple piercings,” he begged. Blue hair and piercing…the whole world has them. When we went upstairs to bed that first night, I told Carlo that my short stories were on my website.
On our third night, Carlo had found a story which he had downloaded and read. He wanted to know how much was true.
“Cut it all in half,” Pinky told him.

He had asked me how far we usually rode in a day. He took the 50 mile number I gave him and he had several suggestions for bike rides. We went for his first offering: Marostica – Bassano – Schio loop. Marostica has a town square is laid out as a chess board and their festa every other year is a pageant with a chess game having live participants as the pieces: knights, kings, queens, bishops, etc. We used maps Carlo had printed to navigate through intervening towns to Bassano where there was the famous covered wooden beam bridge and the well regarded grappa distillery with its local outlet. We then made a detour up into the hills above near Conco and back to Schio. When we got back after dark, he was waiting. He claimed he was getting ready to call 911.
They sent us off to the Pizza place where Emma had been an employee. When we got back we had the espresso and grappa ritual, and we summarized our trip. We described our adventure getting Italian instructions at the alimentary (small grocery store) in the tiny town of Zane. The little store’s proprietress, a lady dressed to the nines, gave us each a chocolate after directing us to Schio. She would not have us go out in the dark empty handed.
“I have checked the weather,” Carlo said, “and it is supposed to be good. I think that tomorrow you should do the other trip that I told you about.”
“The bus to Lavarone and the ride back down through Asiago?” asked Pinky.
“Yes,”
“Carlo, you have a friend for life,” Pinky gushed. She loved that word “down” as it would have been a challenging climb the other direction. Our cycling buddies at home would roast us for riding the bus up and coasting down, but Pinky was not about to care.
“You can put the bikes on the bus. Folding is not needed,” he said. “And I have another map here to show you how to get to the bus station in Schio. There also is an opportunity for a bicycle trail into Schio that begins right behind the building where you had pizza tonight,” said Carlo spreading out the map.
I was able to get Carlo talking about paper manufacturing. I learned that the non-drying ink on newsprint is removed with bubbles that are stabilized by chemicals that are also solvents for the ink, and that environmental disposal of that is not too difficult. I was pretty excited to tell him that he could put a portable computer and a wireless network with a web camera in a factory with internet availability and save some traveling to make adjustments to their equipment in South America and China. Taking it a step further: that with some programming he could possibly get data from transducers inside the machinery to the wireless network. It would be more difficult because of the requirement for custom programming. He said, “Programming is not a problem. We have a many programmers.” Getting custom programming sounded like calling the janitorial staff for a spill in the cafeteria.
“Where do you work?”
“It is very close. I am able to show you in the morning,” he said. He revealed only little clues about exactly what he did, a trail of bread crumbs. Conversation shifted to hobbies and vacations. They had a Euro-wide motor home in the driveway covered with a tarp. He said that it was unused over the last several years but they used it a lot when the kids were younger. He had bought it used at a good price and fixed it up. I couldn’t tell if he was holding the wrench or had it done. He and Marielena also had a hobby of collecting videos of old American movies. Their favorite was Lucille Ball in the Long Trailer. What nostalgia! They remembered many of the details from these movies that we had seen as kids, and we laughed hard.
They were anxious for comments on their B&B service. “They say, ‘If there is something you like, tell somebody else. If there is something you don’t like, tell us,’” Carlo said smiling. “Was the breakfast is good? Is there something you would like?”
I told him it was good, and we got what we needed.
“Well, maybe a second cup of coffee. But it’s great, no other requests,” Pinky told him. And we were suddenly nodding off so we went upstairs.
As we were getting into bed, I said, “He talks and behaves like a manager, an important one. He thinks like one. If he isn’t pretty important he is going to be. But they drive one, small car.that I’dd guess is four years old. He’s just as close to a nickel as I am. I can’t tell whether he owns the place or he works in the mail room.”
“Ask,” she said. It was not an interesting problem to her.
“I’ve been trying. It’s more fun to try to figure it out, without being blunt as a pig’s nose. Ouch!” I had turned over, landing on a sore spot.
“Please,” She said rolling over, “Try it once. Don’t be so narrow-minded.”
“I’m not getting in that thing.”

As predicted, it was a bright blue sky morning –fantastic for a ride in the mountains. I got tickets to Lavarone as the bus pulled up. The driver opened the door to the bus, and I forgot every Italian word I had learned. I finally broke through and blurted out “Ho due bigletti per Lavarone arriva a undici mezza.” He looked down at us. He eyed my bike. He didn’t relish handling the bike. He gave me rapid fire Italian, listing his stops, and I recognized none of them.
“Cambiamo?” I was guessing we had to transfer.
I couldn’t understand his reply, “Asiago,” I guessed.
He shook his head. “Prossimo.” He told us it was next bus.
We missed this 11:30 bus, and left at the crack of noon by another bus to Asiago where we had a four star Italian lunch. Then we did a modest climb from Asiago to Lavarone, where we turned for home just before dark. Above Lavarone we crested the pass and marveled at the sight of the snow covered Alps, laid out before us as if planted in a cloudless sky. In the mountain towns the architecture changed, and it felt like Switzerland. The long downhill ride for home through a canyon of a river (T. Astico on the map), was spectacular. What a beautiful ride. We arrived Schio about 8, and were busted again by Carlo for late riding. Due to darkness he was about to call 118 (the Italian 911). So instead of explaining to the cops, we ate left over pizza from the night before and went straight to the espresso and Grappa with Carlo and Marielena.
We reported on our day again. Carlo began asking me about what I had done before retirement. I told him radiology and we covered the usual FAQ’s. I told him about interpreting diagnostic x-rays, ultrasounds, CT, MR, and Nuclear Medicine. I explained how I injected the patient with radioactive material and made images. I described arteriograms and interventional prodecdures. We spent quite a bit of time on MR – lots of Physick involved, so he loved it.
Meanwhile, I heard Marielena and Pinky talking about Palladio, the architect; and all the buildings he did in his native Vicenza, an hour’s train ride away.
Carlo and I began comparing our medical care delivery systems. He has been satisfied with their care, but says in some of the more populated areas it can be very difficult to get an appointment, and there are long waiting lists. Pharmacy cost and physician availability is not a problem in Schio. He didn’t know much about statistics for things like coronary surgery, transplants, marrow transplants and other high end procedures.
“Tonight is a full moon,” Carlo said, “When that occurs we often go into the mountains, and it is quite beautiful in the night. We have some things to eat and then we come home. Please, can you go also?”
“That would be wonderful,” Pinky and I said, almost in unison.
“We have to leave by about 5:30, so we must talk about your plans tomorrow.”
“I can’t believe you’re worried that we’d be late.”
He gave me a look. “I recommend to look at the map for a shorter ride. Or if you want to rest a day, Vicenza is very nice.”
“We could see all the houses Palladio did,” Pinky said. Marielena had my architect’s daughter hooked and reeled in, an hour earlier. “And there is this really cool theatre, the Olympic Theatre.”
“Sign me up” I said. We drained the Grappa and headed upstairs.
“First shower,” she said at the top of the stairs. “You could try…”
“Don’t start.” I was laughing, and the last drop of Grappa went up my nose.


I flatted on the bike path, and we were late to the station. We missed the train, but the taxi driver was standing right there and told Pinky that he could take us for 25 euro, or we could wait two hours for the next train. After some difficult negotiation…with Pinky, I handed him a 20, and showed him my open palms. He shrugged his shoulders, picked up Pinky’s backpack and we walked to the car. Vicenza was as advertised, worthwhile. The Olympic Theatre with its famous set having 5 Venice sized streets converging on center stage (so acclaimed on the opening performance in the theatre centuries ago, that it has never been taken down). It had the stone semicircular seating and the life-sized statues along its walls depicting each of the many donors who paid the bill for the original construction. On out tour of the town, the Palladio buildings were many and in his characteristic style. They look like Monticello (Tom Jefferson was a copycat).
As we waited to cross the street to the train station going home, we were recalling Carlos’ comments about cross walks, “If you stand at a cross walk in England, cars stop as soon as you appear and the cars wait. If you do that in Italy, you will be there all day.” There was an Italian lady next to us. As soon as she advanced her foot, we did too. A woman in the first arriving car stopped abruptly, and was hit from behind by a larger car. There was modest damage, and a huge and very exciting argument between the drivers. Strangely, they were not angry with us. There is nothing like a good Italian argument. The split decision went, on points, to the more verbally agile woman (Pinky voted twice as is the custom). We felt bad and causative, but we made the train.
Back in Schio, the weather gave us another great day for our hike in the mountains with Carlo and Marielena. The trail was a road which had been blocked off. In the mountains above us we could see other similar roads which had been used by both sides in World War I to defend the Italian-Austrian border. The lights were beginning to sparkle in the towns below, whose names Carlo and Marielena gave us. About half way up, we met three couples who were Marielena’s buddies coming down. They had planned to go with us, but had to return early and had to leave well before we did. They were so happy to see Marielena, and we got to meet some of her friends — very chatty and fun. The end point was a refugio. It was a nice warm building with a bar and restaurant located on a mountain trail. The moonlight dinner at ten in a remote mountain restaurant, was an adventure. We started back at 10:30. All the vegetation appeared black, and the sheer walls of the mountain were glowing white and spectacular. Everything seemed right with the world. We could see why Marielena liked it so much.
On our return, as we climbed the stairs, I said, “Another day better than the last.”
Pinky nodded her head at the top of the stairs as she stepped through the door, looked wistfully into the bathroom. “You know what would make it perfect? Let’s take a little dip, what do ya say?” I put toothpaste on my brush and declined.
I woke up early and went down stairs. Carlo had the newspaper in front of him. The headline said, “New Evidence Shows Universe is Finite Size, Comprised of 13 Galaxies”.
“It never stops,” he said.
“I’m embarrassed. All the talk about setting up wireless networks. I forgot about cell phones. For 160 dollars in the US, we could buy a cell phone that has a camera and a screen. You can talk on the phone and take a live video.”
“They will be in Italy soon.”
“We want you to come visit us in Mount Vernon.”
“I used to go to the U.S.” he said. “I haven’t been in 5 years”. He is feeling the paper between his index finger and thumb, assessing the quality of the news print.
“In my business, the U.S. is no longer competitive. They make paper. But they have lost control of the manufacturing technology.”
“There is no recovery?” I asked.
He shrugged. “The last manufacturer of the type equipment that we make was Beloit, and it went Chapter 11 last year.” He leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. I had some dreams, but…” and he stopped. “You can put a man on the moon, but…it’s sad.” He was sincerely sad.
“Who is the competition?”
“Germany and the Nordic countries.”

Pinky came down the stairs and it was time to go. “Well, come visit us
if you can. Thanks for the wonderful hike last night and all of your kindness.”
“We will keep in contact by email.” We shook hands.
After breakfast, I put the bikes back in their suitcases while the neighbors watched. We each got our picture with Marielena. We watched the shepherd and his sheep crossing the field.
“Pecore,” Marielena gave us their Italian name.
“Did Carlo ride his bike today?”Pinky asked.
“Yes”
“He must have been late.”
“No, it’s close, right there,” and she pointed. It was about ¾ mile. A white building said “Comer” in blue script on the side.
“It is really nice that you could build your house so close to his work,” Pinky said.
“Oh, no,” said Marielena. “The house was first. The office moved here later,”
“Pretty nice,” Pinky smiled as the taxi pulled up.
We were in and on the way to the train station and I asked, “So the corporation just happened to move that office building to Schio next to his house?”
“I guess so.”
Our trip went on. We went by train to Florence , then by bicycle to San Siena, Assisi, and Vitiano near Arezzo. The Cathedrals and Palazzi of Venice, Florence, and Siena ran together in my mind. Art museums were many, fast, and fabulous
In Assisi waiting for the bus to Spello, we met Elena, the beautiful hard working single mom, a Ukranian artist from Kiev. She creates one or two intricate paintings per year (her total output), brings them from the Ukraine to Switzerland, banks some money, and returns to the Ukraine to do it again. We spent an afternoon and evening with her.
In Vitiano, our friends in the neighboring apartment spoke Italian and had learned that there was an olive oil bottler working on the hill up our road. I found it and enquired. They let me watch for a day and two afternoons. They told me how they did everything, how each machine worked – in Italian. In addition, Giancarlo Gianinni, the owner and il capo, gave me an Italian-sign language tour centering on the history of the plant and on his family history. The plant looked like an abandoned warehouse from the outside, with no sign, no logo. The machinery inside was breathtaking, highly automated and computerized with high speed slotted counter-rotating plates crushing the olives and seeds, huge mixing bins stir it to a homogenous, runny paste; then the goo is pumped through a 3660 rpm centrifuge extracting nuts and water, and a second set of centrifuges for final water extraction. It was bottled and labeled in the building next door. The olive oil was all exported, sold mainly in Germany and England. It was fabulous. I wished I had worked harder on my Italian.
We met a few people that made our trip, largely because we were traveling at bike-speed, poking into things looking for opportunities to get into lives of people where we stayed.
“You really liked the olive oil,” Pinky said. “but, Carlo in Schio is your main man in Italy.”
We got home, and a couple of days later I entered “Comer” in Google. Comer Industries has a website in English and Italian. They are an engineering operation. They make many things, including a division making planetary gear dirves for the Stationary industry. They have a Mechatronics Research Center and operating headquarters in Riggiolo, Italy. They reported 170 million in revenues and 5 million net profit with 924 employees with offices in Charlotte, NC; Desford, Uk; Thibaultd des Vignes, Fr; Zug, Switz; and Shanghai, China. Is my man Carlo in that 924?
“That’s it,” I said to Pinky
“That’s what?”
“The mission for my trip to Italy.”
“So…?”
“My mission is to figure out ‘Quien e Giancarlo dal Maso?”
“What?”
“Who is my friend, Carlo?”

Epilogue—
Subsequent email Carlo tells me that I had the wrong Comer website, and the correct name of his company is Comer S.p.A. (comertech.com), and that he is one of 100 employees. So he kept me from straying far from the truth, but didn’t really solve the mystery. In the subsequent year I know from his emails that 2004 was a good in that he filed for several patents, that he and Marielena have put in a garden, and that he will be “independent for vegetables by next year”. What do you think? Why is the company a stone’s throw from his house? Does he have a corner office with a window or an office in the basement? He has read the story, and he won’t tell me.