Americanata: Three Sisters in Italy in 1938

In 1938 I was twenty years old and living with my parents in Joplin Missouri. I was the youngest of four children with a brother and two sisters. The eldest, Harriet, had married an Italian and they were now living in Milan with their two young sons. Our parents decided to send me and my sister Blossom, 22, to Italy to spend a year with Harriet. It was the most thrilling year of my young life.

We found ourselves suddenly among the wealthy and sophisticated in Chicago, Washington D.C. and New York. We embarked on an ocean liner and cruised the Mediterranean, toured fascist Italy and saw Mussolini. We saw Europe as it slid inevitably toward war. We met people of many nationalities and religions as they fled or braced themselves for the terrible storm which approached. We enjoyed the warmth and generosity of the many friends we made. We fell in love and grew wiser.

This book was written for my Grandchildren and with the help and encouragement of my son, Mike. It has been a great joy to recapture the girl I was sixty years ago. I hope it brings as much pleasure to its readers as it has to its writers.

"A lovely, focused work with rich details and a sure narrative voice that keeps things moving. Well worth the effort. . . the charm and innocence of the sisters is appealing, particularly in these anxious times. It reads almost like a fairy tale . . . Escapist, yet grounded in a precise appreciation of the places and people she meets. Love, adventure, humor, grace, style - all amid the threat of war, reminds me of the movie Tea with Mussolini."

Robert T., New York

Reviewer: A reader from Vienna, VA USA

A trip of a lifetime, a one year sojourn into a world that would soon vanish, is the experience that Becky Landrum relates in this warm, lively memoir.

Two sisters in their early twenties travel from their home in America´s heartland--Joplin, Missouri--to pre-WWII Italy, where their elder sister lives with her husband and children. But travel in 1938 is not a matter of several hours in the air over the Atlantic. The trip itself is exciting and glamorous, first by train to New York, then by ocean liner to the
Mediterranean and exotic ports before reaching Genoa. Once at their sister´s home in Milan, the American "girls" (as Ms. Landrum refers to herself and her sister, Blossom) become part of the social whirl for foreigners there.

Ms. Landrum´s story (co-authored by her son, Mike) is about more than the cocktail parties, "dressing" for dinner, and nightclubs (though that is pretty fun stuff, to be sure). She is a lively tour guide, taking the reader along as she and Blossom climb the dome at St. Peter´s, eat at Alfredo´s and see Mussolini address the crowd from his balcony in Rome; or as they live every tourist´s nightmare and discover in the middle of nowhere that they are on the wrong train. She also writes about family and the strength that comes from that bond. Most appealingly, Ms. Landrum writes with candor and fondness about her young self. Her style is both direct and friendly--what you would expect from a plain-spoken Missourian.

The world as it was in 1938 is gone forever, but Ms. Landrum gives us a glimpse of it through young American eyes. It´s a great view.

Yes, I know I said I wouldn´t have time to read this lovely little book for weeks - but I made the mistake of reading "just the introduction" and couldn´t put it down. That is the best compliment I can give any book - when it holds my attention so completely that I finish it in two days it means I loved it!

The lovely conversational style, and the frank, unassuming speech of a no-nonsense Midwesterner who has seen the world and knows ´there is no place like home´ is more than a remembrance - it is a teaching of the values of a life completely and joyfully embraced.
I had some qualms about the souvenir membership cards to the Young Fascists - I could just see jittery customs agents finding them! I am glad that never happened!

To paraphrase Becky´s words, wonderful things must be enjoyed more than once to get full benefit of their beauty: I intend to sit down right now and start reading "Americanata" all over again!

REVIEW OF AMERICANATA

By Becky and Mike Landrum

This autobiographical tale told by one of two young American sisters on a year-long vacation in Italy in 1938 was a non-stop read for me. I
couldn´t put it down. How much of it was written by Becky Landrum, how much by her son Michael is anybody´s guess because the story is seamless,
but my estimate is that most of it is Becky´s, not only because she is listed as lead author but because it has the quality of a journal-not one of the blaséé and pretentious travel journals of Henry Adams and his ilk,
but the kind you or I might keep, unafraid to take an almost childlike joy in new sights and new people, or report embarrassing and potentially dangerous situations.

Becky´s succinct prose, while not polished and professional, was the perfect way to tell her story. (Here the trip diary worked in a positive way.) In 216 pages she offers a travelogue not only of Italy and a corner of Switzerland, but of the train stops and ship ports between Joplin,
Missouri and her dream vacation in Europe. Her description of peoples and locales were right on the money. Once in Italy, her observations frequently made me laugh, not only her explanation of the meaning of
"Americanata" (you should have the amusement of reading that for yourself) but also shrewd comments on society and the differentness of living in a foreign land.

I want to share two of these. The first appears on page 89, a description of a society "high tea" as observed by a no-nonsense young woman from the
American Midwest. No one could have better described the servants of prewar Europe:

"We were waited on by a starched, gloved, and uniformed team of servants who whirled silently around us as though on roller skates."

Those not fortunate enough to have traveled in Italy have heard of its wild road traffic, yet the following passage on page 111 took me joyouslyby surprise and must be one of the best one-liners I´ve ever read:

"[We sat] at a small outdoor café on a busy street. Bicycles made up half the traffic, and many of them were delivering merchandise. The most unusual were two men on bicycles holding an arm chair between them,
balancing it like a circus act. It was the most entertaining traffic I
had ever seen."

The dark side of this tale is the presence of Mussolini, the rumbling backdrop of Hitler´s thrust toward war, and the result it had on several of Becky´s friends, including one young Englishman she fell half in love with. But by and large Americanata is book full of joy, beauty, and rollicking good story-telling! Highly recommended.

-Sandra J. Fulton