joseph engraver
11-23-2025, 05:36 AM
One day an engraver named Mimo asked me if I would like to meet a woman who spoke English, he said. “She’s not married and she’s very intelligent.”
I agreed that I would like to meet her, he promised to come by my hotel at 8 p.m. on Thursday. At 8 p.m. I was dressed in clean jeans, maroon turtleneck sweater, freshly laundered jacket, bathed, shaved, and wearing the recently polished Justin boots.
Mimo arrived in his Alf a Romero; he was meticulously dressed, looking more
or less like a short Cary Grant. He had been engraving for twelve years and it was against him that I mentally competed at school. My goal was to become a better engraver than Mimo.
He took my continuous examinations of his work with a magnifying lens as a
compliment.
I would study the cuts made by his chisel, looking for mistakes or
rough cuts, memorize his work, go to my vise, then practice the cuts he
made, trying to duplicate them. One day I finished cutting a very small English
scroll, about the size of my fingernail. Every cut was perfect. The spirals
in the scroll were so smooth and well cut that I could not resist taking the
plate out of the vise.
I took it over to Mimo for him to examine. Handing him my loupe, I offered the plate for his examination. After studying the work, he took the plate, put it in his vise .Then without magnification proceeded to cut a perfect scroll half the size of the one I had finished.
He handed my loop and the plate back to me. I looked through the ten-power lens; every cut he had made was perfect, nothing else needed said.
Mimo had put me in my place.
The place Mimo was taking me that night was a pizzeria called The Corral.
It was the owner’s imaginative creation of a western bar .Mimo parked down the street in the first empty space he could find, locked the car, and then led the way to the entrance of the pizzeria. I walked behind, trying to control the limp of my right foot.
Man, I sure looked good in those boots I had written that bad check for in Lynchburg and with every painful step I vowed one day to make it right.
Mimo opened the door and I followed him into the bar.
Bang! I was suddenly in some western bar!
Paintings of mustangs racing across the prairie covered one wall.
There were long plank tables with benches. A neon jukebox from the fifties occupied center stage.
The air was laden with the aroma of expensive perfume and cigarette smoke.
People at the tables were all eating, drinking, laughing, and having a greatime.
“Hey everybody, here is the guy I was telling you about. He’s here to learn to
engrave , but he’s too old, and I think he’s crazy.”
That was his introduction.
I was shocked to find out what he had said several years later.
The whole bar suddenly became dead quiet.
Everyone there was dressed equally as well as Mimo. Beautiful women , handsome men, all in their twenties and early thirties. I think I was older than the bar owner.
At one of the tables sat five beautiful women. They made space for me. I took the seat opposite from a lovely golden haired, blue eyed woman, who had the complexion of polished alabaster and her English speaking companion with luxurious black hair and the most beautiful dark brown eyes I had ever seen:
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Franca.”
It was so good to hear someone speaking English. I had so much bottled up
Inside me and no one to express myself to. I shook her hand and sat down.
Franca’s first question took me by surprise.
“Do you have identification?” she asked.
“Yes,” I had my passport and answered by digging it out of my jeans pocket and gave it to her. We talked for only a few minutes but during that time, I studied her carefully. She was elegantly dressed in a dark brown silk frock decorated
in yellow and orange flowers. She wore a simple gold chain around her finely
arched neck, matching earrings hung from her delicate earlobes. Tossed carelessly over the back of her chair was a luxurious beaver coat.
“She is definitely a city girl.” I thought and smiled …
I had recently received a letter from Marshal Williams, the Virginia lawyer who did the legal work in becoming just Joseph. He wished me success, saying how much he admired the determination it took to learn engraving.
Enclosed in the letter was a ten-dollar bill. The letter ended by saying,
“Have a pizza or something on me. Your friend, Marshall.”
I offered to buy Franca and her friend Fiorella a beer, and ordered one for me and Mimo.
“ No thank you,” Franca replied politely. “I’m leaving early tomorrow morning
for the Canary Islands for two weeks. Then I shall be going on to Dubai, and
after that to Hong Kong. I will be back in about two month’s time.
It was nice to meet you; perhaps we shall meet again, Goodnight.” And with that, Franca and her good friend Fiorella left.
“Put her out of your mind, pal,” that inner voice said to me, “She’s definitely way out of your league.”
Mimo was having a good time with his friends so I retired off to the corner,
finished the beer, listened to music for a while, and then went back to the hotel
that was just a short distance away. The pain in my foot was becoming too intense to ignore any longer.
From my journal:
Last night, nightmares again, not much progress in my engraving. Today will be a
better day. The boots have become a real problem for me but I have no alternative.
Even a country boy finds it difficult to walk barefoot in cold and snow.
One spring evening after school I was hobbling along the street headed
to the hotel when a car pulled up alongside. I paid no attention to it or its
driver. Suddenly a feminine voice says to me,
“Hey honey, where are you going?”
I thought, “Who in the hell could be calling me honey?”
I looked up to see Franca in her little white Fiat Panda pulled over to the
curb. I recognized her but didn’t recall her name.
“Hey, nice to see you, when did you come back?” I asked.
Instead of answering my question, she asked me, “Why are you walking so
funny?
I answered, “These boots hurt my feet.”
“Why are you wearing them if they hurt your feet?”
“Lady, it’s the only pair I have to wear.”
“Oh, I see,” she answered, then said “Would you like to go somewhere with
me this Saturday afternoon?”
“Sure, I’d like that,” I answered.
“I’ll pick you up in front of the hotel at four.”
Smiling, she put the car in gear and roared off up the hill, leaving me standing with my mouth agape in wonderment.
Saturday, I was standing in front of the hotel. Just as the church bells began to ring the hour, Franca flew into the square and the Fiat squealed to a stop. I was truly surprised. The woman had actually shown up on time.
I was impressed. I walked over to the car as she rolled down the window. “Get in,” she said. “I want to take you somewhere.”
I barely seated myself when we were off with a squeak and a lurch. Franca
chatting on about my school and how was I doing. She seemed oblivious to
the traffic, pedestrians, bicycles, and the very narrow and winding streets.
She kept that beautiful foot of hers pressing on the accelerator while she continued
chatting away.
I was holding on, expecting a head-on collision any second. I was
positively sure she was going to kill someone.
I kept thinking, “I made it all the way to Italy, and this crazy woman is going to kill me in her car. This is not funny, God, not funny at all.”
Finally, to my relief she stopped the car.
I had no clue where I was. I had been so very busy watching the traffic, expecting a crash, that I had lost my sense of direction.
I know we were several miles from the hotel. Still I was seriously considering walking back.
“Come into the house,” Franca said.
We got out and walked into someone’s home. I expected to meet a relative or
a friend. “Sit down in that chair please,” Franca, said to me. “I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared through the curtains of a doorway, soon reappearing with a
man carrying boxes of tennis shoes.
“Now please take those boots off.”
I was flustered. “What?” I asked.
“Please take those boots off. I want you to try on these tennis shoes.”
“Me, take off these boots? No ma’am, I’m not going to do that.”
“I want to buy these shoes for you,” she insisted.
“No ma’am, I don’t take charity.”
“I want to buy them for you as a present,” Franca insisted.
Presents I could handle, I began pulling off the boots. My sock was an embarrassment. It was bloody and smelled not that nice. She insisted that I put on new socks before trying on the shoes.
With much professionalism, the clerk measured my feet, selected a pair of white tennis shoes, and slipped them on.
“Stand up and walk around,” said Franca. Numbly I followed her instructions.
“Walk over here. Walk over there. Turn around. Are they comfortable?”
Comfortable was not an apt description. My feet had left my body and ascended
to heaven.
April 22 1982
Today my engraving took a large step forward. I received many encouraging words from some of the other engravers. I am in fine and good spirits. Thank you for loving me.
Although I was grateful for the tennis shoes, I had no intention of
becoming involved with Signorina Franca Facchetti. She was pert, sexy, independent, and free spirited. Exactly what I was looking for in a mate, but neither of us was looking for permanency.
I considered the gift of those shoes kind-hearted, but I was deep into my engraving career and that took all priorities.
Franca lived three blocks from the Piazza Gardone and the hotel .We
occasionally met, She returning from work, and I from school.
I clearly recall our first so-called date. She took me for pizza, ribs, and wine at a restaurant called Oasis, owned by one of her ex-lovers. Each meeting between us would become a little more sexual than the last, holding hands, laughing, looking into one another’s eyes.
The end of each encounter would find me alone, in the room in the attic, lying naked on the cot, masturbating. Some old habits never die, they say.
I may not have been in love but I was certainly in lust.
One very wet and cold evening the mountain town of Gardone shone white with soft falling drizzle of snow. Franca and I had been invited to a mutual friend’s house for dinner. Our friend’s names were Anna and her husband Evaristo; He had lived in Morocco, Amsterdam and various other places. He spoke some English, loved to drink, shoot pool, and play soccer. He wore his hair in a long ponytail.
Evaristo and I would shoot pool together before I had even met Franca.
They lived in the same apartment building. Getting to know Franca, I learned that she had lived in that very same apartment for the better part of her life. She, her two sisters, her mother and gunsmith father had shared the small four-room apartment for twenty-six years. She had a fine job, traveled all over the world first class, had her own car and recently acquired in the same building an apartment of her own, she spoke three other languages and had no addictive habits.
She, like me, had no interest in a permanent relationship. That was about the
only thing we had in common. I was so unstable, so naked in my emotions. I was still sleeping half-awake. Having horrible nightmares, and had not slept with a woman in months.
After dinner, Franca decided to walk with me back to the Albergo Gardone Hotel. We walked slowly down the street slippery with the new-fallen snow.
Franca was bundled up in her fur coat, dressed in a comfortable pair of warm
boots and a brown wool skirt. She held tightly to my arm as we slipped and slid
over the wet cobblestones down to the hotel. I can still visualize her
standing in the swirl of sparkling snowflakes, the dim lighting from the shops
made the setting postcard perfect. We stopped at the iron gate of the hotel.
“Well,” she said squeezing my arm. “Goodnight.” She released my arm and
started to turn around.
“You’re not getting away that easily,” I said.
I put my arms around her waist pulled her close to me and kissed her fully on those beautiful lips. I held her gently, our lips pressed together, tasting each other until I felt the resistance leave her body.
“Goodnight,” I said, released her, and then entered the hotel.
On the following Saturday, we went out for dinner with more friends and the
evening passed quickly. After walking Franca to her apartment, I turned downhill
to the hotel. When I got there, the shutters were down and the huge iron gates to the courtyard, locked. I hurried back up the hill to Franca’s apartment. I got to the gate and rang the buzzer. In a moment, Franca appeared at the door. I
explained my circumstances. The gate clicked open.
1982: Sunday
Today I was supposed to paint the large iron gates at the rear of the hotel but it is raining. I’m glad of that, for I feel tired and I’m going to stay in bed all day.
I now have $40 left but my room is secure for another month, as is my food. Therefore, I am very rich. I have met a wonderful person here in Gardone. Her name is Franca and she seems nice. She is good to me and has asked nothing from me, for the first time in my life, I feel at peace with myself.
“Watch yourself, Joseph, you’re falling in love. No, I will not let that happen again. It is much too painful. How can I ever trust a woman again?”
All these thoughts were going around in my head while walking up the winding mountain road to school the following day.
“I’ll enjoy the affection but I’m not going to leave my heart unguarded. She is
nice though.”
I enjoyed the fresh early morning air, the new tennis shoes giving
wings to my heels.
I do not know exactly what happens when someone enters into a relationship.
Perhaps you smile more, walk differently, or glow. It did not take long for my art teacher to notice. The whole school knew the American had met someone.
In fact, the whole town knew.
Signor Campanelli, my art teacher, was my friend at school. We could
communicate by drawing.
“A woman?” he asked.
I nodded my head. He smiled and patted my shoulder.
Signor Giovanelli’s youngest daughter Maria was about to celebrate her seventeenth birthday. A party for her to be held at the villa and all the students could bring a guest. I decided to ask Franca to accompany me.
That night after school, I walked up to her apartment and rang the gate bell. Suddenly two heads appeared over the third story balcony, Franca and her younger sister Giuliana.
They looked down and started laughing. Franca had just noticed that I was quite bald.
“Would you like to go to the school Thursday night with me? One of the students
is having her birthday party.” I asked.
“What time is the party?” The giggling Franca replied.
“7 p.m.”
“I’ll pick you up at the hotel,” the still-smiling Franca whispered, as she disappeared behind the balcony doors.
Thursday evening, I had just taken an icy shower and was naked except for a
towel; I hurried back to the room to towel off and dress for the party, my skin
covered with goose bumps from the cold. I entered the room, shut the opaque
glass door, stripped off the towel, and started drying my body. Suddenly, I heard
Franca’s voice from the other side of the closed door.
“Are you in there, Joseph? It’s me …”
She is twenty minutes early. I have never known a woman to be early in my
entire life.
“Just a minute,” I called out while grabbing the towel and re-wrapping my
body just as the door opened.
I could not stop myself from staring. She was so beautiful.
In her arms, she was carrying a large bouquet of flowers composed of gladiolas, ferns and a flower I had never seen before called a “bird of paradise.” Not knowing what to do, I just stood there open-mouthed, hanging onto the towel.
“You can’t go to Maria’s birthday party without bringing her a present,”
Franca said. “I brought these for you to give her”
Bang! I fell in love with her at that very moment. I knew she was created for
me. It was not long after that she invited me to live with her in her apartment.
She has been my constant friend, confidant, and advisor since that day.
June 20th, 1982
Dear Universal Mind
Thank You for answering my prayers. I am happy. Happier than I’ve ever been in
my entire life, Franca is wonderful, full of life, honest, loving, caring, and intelligent.
Everything I have dreamt of. I promise I will love and cherish her until I die …
That I will always be honest and truthful, that I will live my life in such a manner
That You shall be proud of me.
I know that you exist and that you care for your creations provided they care for
themselves
“LOVING AND LEAVING ITALY”
Gone with my loneliness were also the last obstacles at school. Soon I was learning
the more advanced techniques of engraving: precious metal inlay, relief,
sculpting, and the art of printmaking were also part of my studies. I was impatient
to cut my own designs.
Like any other artist, I wanted the work to be my own, to be original. Maestro Sanzgoni would not allow me that freedom.
“If you want to be a good engraver, you must copy the other engravers
works,” he kept reminding me
“Here,” he would say pointing to the photo of a model 70 Winchester rifle floor plate. “This is good engraving. You copy this.”
The months at school flew by. My time with Franca and her gentle ways
started the healing process and I stopped having those horrible night mares.
Franca would always pay for our trips to restaurants, weekends in Florence, days on Lago d’Iseo, a trip to Bolzano, Rimini.
Every time we would go somewhere, I would protest that she was spending too much money.
“I’ll pay now. You can pay later. She would say. You cannot worry about
money. You must concentrate on your engraving.”
Dear Universal Mind,
Please grant us these three wishes:
That we will always remain deeply in love
That we will always have good health
That we will have enough wealth to enjoy the world you created.
Joseph and Franca
My love for Italy, its people, its food and culture grew with every day that
passed.
In August after the summer holidays, I returned to school and started engraving my own plates. The plate I had been working on at school was a very thick block of steel. When one side was full of practice, engraving the plate was taken to the machine shop where it was milled down of the work and the apprentice engraver would start over. I knew that one day I would be leaving school and I needed to have a portfolio of my work. I asked my Maestro if he could get some stainless steel plates for me to engrave on.
The day of departure from Giovanelli’s Bottega d’Incisione came sooner than
I wanted. Franca and I were really starting to discover one another. We would
hike in the hills of Gardone, laughing and holding hands like children. She was
carrying the weight and I was worry free. One morning at the start of school,
Cesare Giovanelli sent for me and informed me that school was over. I shook my head not understanding. School was supposed to take three years. I loved school;
I did not want it to end.
His interpreter explained to me that I had been an exceptional student and had learned all there was. That it was now time to return to the United States where my work would become my teacher.
From my journal:
Have decided to leave Italy about September 15. But before leaving I will cut six
more practice plates and make each one better than the last. When the last one is done it will be some of the finest engraving seen in a long time.
The realization that I must soon return to the United States carried with it a
bag of mixed emotions and decisions. Franca was in the middle of it.
I was very much in love with her. I was sure she was in love with me.
She referred to our first meeting as me being a naked man. I had no hidden agenda. I thought of her as a woman who was honest. If she could love me at the lowest point of my engraving career, she would not destroy me once I had become successful.
I also knew that getting started was not going to be easy. I had no passage
back to the United States. I was planning to return by working out passage
on a freighter or if that failed, throwing myself on the mercy of the U.S.
Embassy.
I agonized over what to tell her. She had such a beautiful life when she
met me. I did not want her to end up as wreckage in my life. I had all I could
stand of those types of emotional traumas.
I had no problems in taking care of myself. However, Signorina Franca Facchetti was another matter.
First, I decided it was best to leave her a note. I would disappear like a thief in
the night, it would be best. She would forget about me in a short while, I could
not let her be hurt.
Finally, I decided to tell her that school was over and I would be returning to the United States. I was very sure of the skills I had learned;
I knew I was a good engraver, having studied enough of the other engravers
work to know good work from bad. I decided that on my return to try the gun manufacturers on the East Coast for employment.
During my studies at Giovanelli’s I had met some of the important people of
the firearms industry: several executives from Winchester, the famous firearms authority Larry Wilson, along with several people from Beretta USA. I was sure to find work. It was more a question of how long it would take, and as we all learn, time is money.
A month before my departure I talked to Franca, explaining how I felt about
her, the trip back, and my insecurities. The ever-practical Franca’s answer was,
“I’ve always wanted to visit the United States. I will sell my car to my sister,
then give notice at my job. I have wanted to quit for some time now, and this is a good time to do it. I will sublet the apartment to my friend Fiorella and her lover Carlo, then I will go with you.”
From my journal:
September 1st, 1982,
Schooling is almost complete. September 15th, Franca and I will be leaving Gardone.
To the best of my knowledge, I will be going to work for Winchester on my
return.
As the departure date drew nearer, I continued to work on my portfolio. I had
no photos of things I had engraved. Actually, I had engraved two cheap handguns in my entire professional career and would never admit to anyone that the work was mine.
From my journal:
Today I made my first prints from my engraving. Now I am positive that I can do
it. There are many mistakes and still a long way to go to become a great artist
engraver, but I can do it.
Dear Universal Mind,
Thank you for helping me with all your blessings. They have been many.
many times when I felt so sad and alone and misunderstood.
If you had not been my strength, I would have given up.
Whatever life has in store, I will always remain your servant.
The engravers at Giovanelli were all considerably younger. Yet, all had been
engraving for several years and most of them had taken the time to engrave a
plate in the banknote style or what the Italians call bulino, a method of engraving in which the steel plate is covered with microscopic dots made by a handheld burin. The work is slow and very tedious but the results are so exquisite, the
work, very impressionistic.
I had made friends with all of them. Each engraver gave me a print off a plate they had engraved as a going away gift. I had no way of thanking them, so I made my last plate at school a print plate done with a portrait of a setter dog surrounded by arabesque scroll. The plate took three weeks to cut.
I can still feel the excitement of that day, my last days of school.
I carefully inked the plate and wiped it clean of the surface ink, positioned the plate in the center of the intaglio press’s heavy steel base, carefully took a dampened sheet of French rag paper and laid it on top of the plate. Then placed the layers of thick wool felt on top of that single sheet of paper. When all was ready, I ran the whole sandwich of plate, ink, paper, and felt under the steel rollers of the huge iron press.
Tons of pressure forced the paper into each and every cut made on that two inch square piece of polished steel, picking up the ink that remained in those thousands of pinpricks, how my heart raced with pride and joy when the felt was
removed, exposing the paper.
The print was to determine my future.
Was I truly able to be a great engraver?
Signor Giovanelli lifted the print from the plate. Holding my first creative
effort under his loupe, he began to examine the print. Every cut stood out clear
and sharp. The work itself had beauty and sensitivity in its rendering. He smiled
and then said he would be pleased to write for me a letter of introduction.
I printed about a dozen copies of that plate and gave them to the other engravers
and one to Signor Giovanelli as well. To Mario Abbiatico I also gave a print.
His words to me on that very day were.
“Joseph, when I first saw the work you had done in the United States,
I thought you were hopeless. Then after I found out how you had arrived here, I
thought you were crazy, but now that I know you, I think you have the largest
pair of balls of any man I have ever met. You have the three things that it takes to
be a great engraver: heart, passion, and strong hands.
God bless you and Franca on your return to the United States.”
We shook hands and embraced. I felt that familiar lump in my throat.
I smiled and walked away with an autographed copy of the book that had brought
me to Italy, held proudly in my hands.
Like every awaited moment in life, the time for our departure finally arrived.
Franca had many friends in Italy.The last few days were spent eating out, drinking,
toasting , hugging, kissing, and some weeping on the part of Franca’s mother.
Maria Teresa, Franca’s older sister, who was sure I was an escaped felon, kept
insisting that this was a big mistake. Her boss was telling her the same thing but
Franca with her unusual courage and determination decided to go.
September 17th, 1982,found us in New Haven, Connecticut and the plane trip back was nothing like the trip over. I was no longer a sad desperate man. I was a different person totally. My biggest personal concern was Franca.
We arrived in New Haven in a rented car, then found a clean and inexpensive
motel for the night. That evening we went out to a Chinese restaurant for our first
meal together in the United States.
Early next morning I left Franca at the motel and arrived at the corporate
offices of U.S. Repeating Arms Company with my portfolio of engraved plates.
I explained to the receptionist who I was and what I wanted and gave her the schools letter of recommendation. She in turn brought me to the personnel director’s office.
After looking at my work, he contacted the head of the Winchester custom shop, a man named Pardee, who looked at my work and then contacted his boss, Mr. Carl Hummel.
It was about two hours later that I was offered a job.
“Yes, we need an engraver. You have a job with us,” Carl said.
“What is the salary?” I asked.
I have forgotten the exact amount it was, around $9 or so. I was disappointed.
I thought back to school and the bloody boots. I decided to bluff.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not interested. I already have an appointment with a
company in California. I just stopped to see if you were interested in me.”
What did I expect to receive as compensation for my work, the personal director
wanted to know. I held my breath for a moment and then asked for $30,000
per year. They asked me leave the meeting.
Richard Pelton, president and CEO of U.S. Repeating Arms Company came into the conference room about that time and shook hands with me. After a careful study of my portfolio, he explained employment at that salary would have to be a corporate decision.
I wanted to know when I could have an answer. After a brief meeting, they told me that the decision would take a week. A week of meals and motels would quickly eat up all of Franca’s money. I bluffed again.
“I’m sorry. I cannot stay that long. I have to be in California in a few days.”
The truth was there were no appointments with anyone. If I lost this gamble, I
could lose it all. I had gone too far to back down.
“Where are you staying?” President Pelton asked.
Not wanting to say I was staying at a motel 2. I answered, “In a small motel
near town.”
“Would you consider postponing your trip to California until we can make a decision if Winchester puts you up in the Park Plaza Hotel? Of course we’ll pick
up all the expenses.” I explained that I had a friend with me. “Not a problem,” he
told me.
I do not think I have ever had a bigger smile on my face.
“Yes sir,” I answered, shook hands all around and went back to get Franca and
tell her the greatest news. After we had returned the car, then checked into the
hotel, laughing and dancing in the lobby as though we were at a carnival.
When the desk clerk said “Welcome to the Park Plaza Mr. Joseph, have a wonderful stay”
Franca whispered, “I’m so glad I met you Amore.”
From my journal:
September 18th, 1982 Hartford, Connecticut
Since arriving here, Franca and I have been guests of U.S. Repeating Arms Company.
We are staying in the nicest hotel room I have ever been in, in my life. The room
cost $145 per day and my bill here for at least four days is going to be over$600,00—more money than I have earned in the last year.
A few days later, the personnel director came to the hotel with an employment
contract for me to look over. Winchester had met my salary demand, made me a
part of the company’s executive staff, in charge of the engraving department, with the title of Master Engraver.
In addition to all of this, there was a $1,000 dollar bank draft to help us settle in.
Two weeks later I returned to Lynchburg and paid for those blessed boots.
I agreed that I would like to meet her, he promised to come by my hotel at 8 p.m. on Thursday. At 8 p.m. I was dressed in clean jeans, maroon turtleneck sweater, freshly laundered jacket, bathed, shaved, and wearing the recently polished Justin boots.
Mimo arrived in his Alf a Romero; he was meticulously dressed, looking more
or less like a short Cary Grant. He had been engraving for twelve years and it was against him that I mentally competed at school. My goal was to become a better engraver than Mimo.
He took my continuous examinations of his work with a magnifying lens as a
compliment.
I would study the cuts made by his chisel, looking for mistakes or
rough cuts, memorize his work, go to my vise, then practice the cuts he
made, trying to duplicate them. One day I finished cutting a very small English
scroll, about the size of my fingernail. Every cut was perfect. The spirals
in the scroll were so smooth and well cut that I could not resist taking the
plate out of the vise.
I took it over to Mimo for him to examine. Handing him my loupe, I offered the plate for his examination. After studying the work, he took the plate, put it in his vise .Then without magnification proceeded to cut a perfect scroll half the size of the one I had finished.
He handed my loop and the plate back to me. I looked through the ten-power lens; every cut he had made was perfect, nothing else needed said.
Mimo had put me in my place.
The place Mimo was taking me that night was a pizzeria called The Corral.
It was the owner’s imaginative creation of a western bar .Mimo parked down the street in the first empty space he could find, locked the car, and then led the way to the entrance of the pizzeria. I walked behind, trying to control the limp of my right foot.
Man, I sure looked good in those boots I had written that bad check for in Lynchburg and with every painful step I vowed one day to make it right.
Mimo opened the door and I followed him into the bar.
Bang! I was suddenly in some western bar!
Paintings of mustangs racing across the prairie covered one wall.
There were long plank tables with benches. A neon jukebox from the fifties occupied center stage.
The air was laden with the aroma of expensive perfume and cigarette smoke.
People at the tables were all eating, drinking, laughing, and having a greatime.
“Hey everybody, here is the guy I was telling you about. He’s here to learn to
engrave , but he’s too old, and I think he’s crazy.”
That was his introduction.
I was shocked to find out what he had said several years later.
The whole bar suddenly became dead quiet.
Everyone there was dressed equally as well as Mimo. Beautiful women , handsome men, all in their twenties and early thirties. I think I was older than the bar owner.
At one of the tables sat five beautiful women. They made space for me. I took the seat opposite from a lovely golden haired, blue eyed woman, who had the complexion of polished alabaster and her English speaking companion with luxurious black hair and the most beautiful dark brown eyes I had ever seen:
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Franca.”
It was so good to hear someone speaking English. I had so much bottled up
Inside me and no one to express myself to. I shook her hand and sat down.
Franca’s first question took me by surprise.
“Do you have identification?” she asked.
“Yes,” I had my passport and answered by digging it out of my jeans pocket and gave it to her. We talked for only a few minutes but during that time, I studied her carefully. She was elegantly dressed in a dark brown silk frock decorated
in yellow and orange flowers. She wore a simple gold chain around her finely
arched neck, matching earrings hung from her delicate earlobes. Tossed carelessly over the back of her chair was a luxurious beaver coat.
“She is definitely a city girl.” I thought and smiled …
I had recently received a letter from Marshal Williams, the Virginia lawyer who did the legal work in becoming just Joseph. He wished me success, saying how much he admired the determination it took to learn engraving.
Enclosed in the letter was a ten-dollar bill. The letter ended by saying,
“Have a pizza or something on me. Your friend, Marshall.”
I offered to buy Franca and her friend Fiorella a beer, and ordered one for me and Mimo.
“ No thank you,” Franca replied politely. “I’m leaving early tomorrow morning
for the Canary Islands for two weeks. Then I shall be going on to Dubai, and
after that to Hong Kong. I will be back in about two month’s time.
It was nice to meet you; perhaps we shall meet again, Goodnight.” And with that, Franca and her good friend Fiorella left.
“Put her out of your mind, pal,” that inner voice said to me, “She’s definitely way out of your league.”
Mimo was having a good time with his friends so I retired off to the corner,
finished the beer, listened to music for a while, and then went back to the hotel
that was just a short distance away. The pain in my foot was becoming too intense to ignore any longer.
From my journal:
Last night, nightmares again, not much progress in my engraving. Today will be a
better day. The boots have become a real problem for me but I have no alternative.
Even a country boy finds it difficult to walk barefoot in cold and snow.
One spring evening after school I was hobbling along the street headed
to the hotel when a car pulled up alongside. I paid no attention to it or its
driver. Suddenly a feminine voice says to me,
“Hey honey, where are you going?”
I thought, “Who in the hell could be calling me honey?”
I looked up to see Franca in her little white Fiat Panda pulled over to the
curb. I recognized her but didn’t recall her name.
“Hey, nice to see you, when did you come back?” I asked.
Instead of answering my question, she asked me, “Why are you walking so
funny?
I answered, “These boots hurt my feet.”
“Why are you wearing them if they hurt your feet?”
“Lady, it’s the only pair I have to wear.”
“Oh, I see,” she answered, then said “Would you like to go somewhere with
me this Saturday afternoon?”
“Sure, I’d like that,” I answered.
“I’ll pick you up in front of the hotel at four.”
Smiling, she put the car in gear and roared off up the hill, leaving me standing with my mouth agape in wonderment.
Saturday, I was standing in front of the hotel. Just as the church bells began to ring the hour, Franca flew into the square and the Fiat squealed to a stop. I was truly surprised. The woman had actually shown up on time.
I was impressed. I walked over to the car as she rolled down the window. “Get in,” she said. “I want to take you somewhere.”
I barely seated myself when we were off with a squeak and a lurch. Franca
chatting on about my school and how was I doing. She seemed oblivious to
the traffic, pedestrians, bicycles, and the very narrow and winding streets.
She kept that beautiful foot of hers pressing on the accelerator while she continued
chatting away.
I was holding on, expecting a head-on collision any second. I was
positively sure she was going to kill someone.
I kept thinking, “I made it all the way to Italy, and this crazy woman is going to kill me in her car. This is not funny, God, not funny at all.”
Finally, to my relief she stopped the car.
I had no clue where I was. I had been so very busy watching the traffic, expecting a crash, that I had lost my sense of direction.
I know we were several miles from the hotel. Still I was seriously considering walking back.
“Come into the house,” Franca said.
We got out and walked into someone’s home. I expected to meet a relative or
a friend. “Sit down in that chair please,” Franca, said to me. “I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared through the curtains of a doorway, soon reappearing with a
man carrying boxes of tennis shoes.
“Now please take those boots off.”
I was flustered. “What?” I asked.
“Please take those boots off. I want you to try on these tennis shoes.”
“Me, take off these boots? No ma’am, I’m not going to do that.”
“I want to buy these shoes for you,” she insisted.
“No ma’am, I don’t take charity.”
“I want to buy them for you as a present,” Franca insisted.
Presents I could handle, I began pulling off the boots. My sock was an embarrassment. It was bloody and smelled not that nice. She insisted that I put on new socks before trying on the shoes.
With much professionalism, the clerk measured my feet, selected a pair of white tennis shoes, and slipped them on.
“Stand up and walk around,” said Franca. Numbly I followed her instructions.
“Walk over here. Walk over there. Turn around. Are they comfortable?”
Comfortable was not an apt description. My feet had left my body and ascended
to heaven.
April 22 1982
Today my engraving took a large step forward. I received many encouraging words from some of the other engravers. I am in fine and good spirits. Thank you for loving me.
Although I was grateful for the tennis shoes, I had no intention of
becoming involved with Signorina Franca Facchetti. She was pert, sexy, independent, and free spirited. Exactly what I was looking for in a mate, but neither of us was looking for permanency.
I considered the gift of those shoes kind-hearted, but I was deep into my engraving career and that took all priorities.
Franca lived three blocks from the Piazza Gardone and the hotel .We
occasionally met, She returning from work, and I from school.
I clearly recall our first so-called date. She took me for pizza, ribs, and wine at a restaurant called Oasis, owned by one of her ex-lovers. Each meeting between us would become a little more sexual than the last, holding hands, laughing, looking into one another’s eyes.
The end of each encounter would find me alone, in the room in the attic, lying naked on the cot, masturbating. Some old habits never die, they say.
I may not have been in love but I was certainly in lust.
One very wet and cold evening the mountain town of Gardone shone white with soft falling drizzle of snow. Franca and I had been invited to a mutual friend’s house for dinner. Our friend’s names were Anna and her husband Evaristo; He had lived in Morocco, Amsterdam and various other places. He spoke some English, loved to drink, shoot pool, and play soccer. He wore his hair in a long ponytail.
Evaristo and I would shoot pool together before I had even met Franca.
They lived in the same apartment building. Getting to know Franca, I learned that she had lived in that very same apartment for the better part of her life. She, her two sisters, her mother and gunsmith father had shared the small four-room apartment for twenty-six years. She had a fine job, traveled all over the world first class, had her own car and recently acquired in the same building an apartment of her own, she spoke three other languages and had no addictive habits.
She, like me, had no interest in a permanent relationship. That was about the
only thing we had in common. I was so unstable, so naked in my emotions. I was still sleeping half-awake. Having horrible nightmares, and had not slept with a woman in months.
After dinner, Franca decided to walk with me back to the Albergo Gardone Hotel. We walked slowly down the street slippery with the new-fallen snow.
Franca was bundled up in her fur coat, dressed in a comfortable pair of warm
boots and a brown wool skirt. She held tightly to my arm as we slipped and slid
over the wet cobblestones down to the hotel. I can still visualize her
standing in the swirl of sparkling snowflakes, the dim lighting from the shops
made the setting postcard perfect. We stopped at the iron gate of the hotel.
“Well,” she said squeezing my arm. “Goodnight.” She released my arm and
started to turn around.
“You’re not getting away that easily,” I said.
I put my arms around her waist pulled her close to me and kissed her fully on those beautiful lips. I held her gently, our lips pressed together, tasting each other until I felt the resistance leave her body.
“Goodnight,” I said, released her, and then entered the hotel.
On the following Saturday, we went out for dinner with more friends and the
evening passed quickly. After walking Franca to her apartment, I turned downhill
to the hotel. When I got there, the shutters were down and the huge iron gates to the courtyard, locked. I hurried back up the hill to Franca’s apartment. I got to the gate and rang the buzzer. In a moment, Franca appeared at the door. I
explained my circumstances. The gate clicked open.
1982: Sunday
Today I was supposed to paint the large iron gates at the rear of the hotel but it is raining. I’m glad of that, for I feel tired and I’m going to stay in bed all day.
I now have $40 left but my room is secure for another month, as is my food. Therefore, I am very rich. I have met a wonderful person here in Gardone. Her name is Franca and she seems nice. She is good to me and has asked nothing from me, for the first time in my life, I feel at peace with myself.
“Watch yourself, Joseph, you’re falling in love. No, I will not let that happen again. It is much too painful. How can I ever trust a woman again?”
All these thoughts were going around in my head while walking up the winding mountain road to school the following day.
“I’ll enjoy the affection but I’m not going to leave my heart unguarded. She is
nice though.”
I enjoyed the fresh early morning air, the new tennis shoes giving
wings to my heels.
I do not know exactly what happens when someone enters into a relationship.
Perhaps you smile more, walk differently, or glow. It did not take long for my art teacher to notice. The whole school knew the American had met someone.
In fact, the whole town knew.
Signor Campanelli, my art teacher, was my friend at school. We could
communicate by drawing.
“A woman?” he asked.
I nodded my head. He smiled and patted my shoulder.
Signor Giovanelli’s youngest daughter Maria was about to celebrate her seventeenth birthday. A party for her to be held at the villa and all the students could bring a guest. I decided to ask Franca to accompany me.
That night after school, I walked up to her apartment and rang the gate bell. Suddenly two heads appeared over the third story balcony, Franca and her younger sister Giuliana.
They looked down and started laughing. Franca had just noticed that I was quite bald.
“Would you like to go to the school Thursday night with me? One of the students
is having her birthday party.” I asked.
“What time is the party?” The giggling Franca replied.
“7 p.m.”
“I’ll pick you up at the hotel,” the still-smiling Franca whispered, as she disappeared behind the balcony doors.
Thursday evening, I had just taken an icy shower and was naked except for a
towel; I hurried back to the room to towel off and dress for the party, my skin
covered with goose bumps from the cold. I entered the room, shut the opaque
glass door, stripped off the towel, and started drying my body. Suddenly, I heard
Franca’s voice from the other side of the closed door.
“Are you in there, Joseph? It’s me …”
She is twenty minutes early. I have never known a woman to be early in my
entire life.
“Just a minute,” I called out while grabbing the towel and re-wrapping my
body just as the door opened.
I could not stop myself from staring. She was so beautiful.
In her arms, she was carrying a large bouquet of flowers composed of gladiolas, ferns and a flower I had never seen before called a “bird of paradise.” Not knowing what to do, I just stood there open-mouthed, hanging onto the towel.
“You can’t go to Maria’s birthday party without bringing her a present,”
Franca said. “I brought these for you to give her”
Bang! I fell in love with her at that very moment. I knew she was created for
me. It was not long after that she invited me to live with her in her apartment.
She has been my constant friend, confidant, and advisor since that day.
June 20th, 1982
Dear Universal Mind
Thank You for answering my prayers. I am happy. Happier than I’ve ever been in
my entire life, Franca is wonderful, full of life, honest, loving, caring, and intelligent.
Everything I have dreamt of. I promise I will love and cherish her until I die …
That I will always be honest and truthful, that I will live my life in such a manner
That You shall be proud of me.
I know that you exist and that you care for your creations provided they care for
themselves
“LOVING AND LEAVING ITALY”
Gone with my loneliness were also the last obstacles at school. Soon I was learning
the more advanced techniques of engraving: precious metal inlay, relief,
sculpting, and the art of printmaking were also part of my studies. I was impatient
to cut my own designs.
Like any other artist, I wanted the work to be my own, to be original. Maestro Sanzgoni would not allow me that freedom.
“If you want to be a good engraver, you must copy the other engravers
works,” he kept reminding me
“Here,” he would say pointing to the photo of a model 70 Winchester rifle floor plate. “This is good engraving. You copy this.”
The months at school flew by. My time with Franca and her gentle ways
started the healing process and I stopped having those horrible night mares.
Franca would always pay for our trips to restaurants, weekends in Florence, days on Lago d’Iseo, a trip to Bolzano, Rimini.
Every time we would go somewhere, I would protest that she was spending too much money.
“I’ll pay now. You can pay later. She would say. You cannot worry about
money. You must concentrate on your engraving.”
Dear Universal Mind,
Please grant us these three wishes:
That we will always remain deeply in love
That we will always have good health
That we will have enough wealth to enjoy the world you created.
Joseph and Franca
My love for Italy, its people, its food and culture grew with every day that
passed.
In August after the summer holidays, I returned to school and started engraving my own plates. The plate I had been working on at school was a very thick block of steel. When one side was full of practice, engraving the plate was taken to the machine shop where it was milled down of the work and the apprentice engraver would start over. I knew that one day I would be leaving school and I needed to have a portfolio of my work. I asked my Maestro if he could get some stainless steel plates for me to engrave on.
The day of departure from Giovanelli’s Bottega d’Incisione came sooner than
I wanted. Franca and I were really starting to discover one another. We would
hike in the hills of Gardone, laughing and holding hands like children. She was
carrying the weight and I was worry free. One morning at the start of school,
Cesare Giovanelli sent for me and informed me that school was over. I shook my head not understanding. School was supposed to take three years. I loved school;
I did not want it to end.
His interpreter explained to me that I had been an exceptional student and had learned all there was. That it was now time to return to the United States where my work would become my teacher.
From my journal:
Have decided to leave Italy about September 15. But before leaving I will cut six
more practice plates and make each one better than the last. When the last one is done it will be some of the finest engraving seen in a long time.
The realization that I must soon return to the United States carried with it a
bag of mixed emotions and decisions. Franca was in the middle of it.
I was very much in love with her. I was sure she was in love with me.
She referred to our first meeting as me being a naked man. I had no hidden agenda. I thought of her as a woman who was honest. If she could love me at the lowest point of my engraving career, she would not destroy me once I had become successful.
I also knew that getting started was not going to be easy. I had no passage
back to the United States. I was planning to return by working out passage
on a freighter or if that failed, throwing myself on the mercy of the U.S.
Embassy.
I agonized over what to tell her. She had such a beautiful life when she
met me. I did not want her to end up as wreckage in my life. I had all I could
stand of those types of emotional traumas.
I had no problems in taking care of myself. However, Signorina Franca Facchetti was another matter.
First, I decided it was best to leave her a note. I would disappear like a thief in
the night, it would be best. She would forget about me in a short while, I could
not let her be hurt.
Finally, I decided to tell her that school was over and I would be returning to the United States. I was very sure of the skills I had learned;
I knew I was a good engraver, having studied enough of the other engravers
work to know good work from bad. I decided that on my return to try the gun manufacturers on the East Coast for employment.
During my studies at Giovanelli’s I had met some of the important people of
the firearms industry: several executives from Winchester, the famous firearms authority Larry Wilson, along with several people from Beretta USA. I was sure to find work. It was more a question of how long it would take, and as we all learn, time is money.
A month before my departure I talked to Franca, explaining how I felt about
her, the trip back, and my insecurities. The ever-practical Franca’s answer was,
“I’ve always wanted to visit the United States. I will sell my car to my sister,
then give notice at my job. I have wanted to quit for some time now, and this is a good time to do it. I will sublet the apartment to my friend Fiorella and her lover Carlo, then I will go with you.”
From my journal:
September 1st, 1982,
Schooling is almost complete. September 15th, Franca and I will be leaving Gardone.
To the best of my knowledge, I will be going to work for Winchester on my
return.
As the departure date drew nearer, I continued to work on my portfolio. I had
no photos of things I had engraved. Actually, I had engraved two cheap handguns in my entire professional career and would never admit to anyone that the work was mine.
From my journal:
Today I made my first prints from my engraving. Now I am positive that I can do
it. There are many mistakes and still a long way to go to become a great artist
engraver, but I can do it.
Dear Universal Mind,
Thank you for helping me with all your blessings. They have been many.
many times when I felt so sad and alone and misunderstood.
If you had not been my strength, I would have given up.
Whatever life has in store, I will always remain your servant.
The engravers at Giovanelli were all considerably younger. Yet, all had been
engraving for several years and most of them had taken the time to engrave a
plate in the banknote style or what the Italians call bulino, a method of engraving in which the steel plate is covered with microscopic dots made by a handheld burin. The work is slow and very tedious but the results are so exquisite, the
work, very impressionistic.
I had made friends with all of them. Each engraver gave me a print off a plate they had engraved as a going away gift. I had no way of thanking them, so I made my last plate at school a print plate done with a portrait of a setter dog surrounded by arabesque scroll. The plate took three weeks to cut.
I can still feel the excitement of that day, my last days of school.
I carefully inked the plate and wiped it clean of the surface ink, positioned the plate in the center of the intaglio press’s heavy steel base, carefully took a dampened sheet of French rag paper and laid it on top of the plate. Then placed the layers of thick wool felt on top of that single sheet of paper. When all was ready, I ran the whole sandwich of plate, ink, paper, and felt under the steel rollers of the huge iron press.
Tons of pressure forced the paper into each and every cut made on that two inch square piece of polished steel, picking up the ink that remained in those thousands of pinpricks, how my heart raced with pride and joy when the felt was
removed, exposing the paper.
The print was to determine my future.
Was I truly able to be a great engraver?
Signor Giovanelli lifted the print from the plate. Holding my first creative
effort under his loupe, he began to examine the print. Every cut stood out clear
and sharp. The work itself had beauty and sensitivity in its rendering. He smiled
and then said he would be pleased to write for me a letter of introduction.
I printed about a dozen copies of that plate and gave them to the other engravers
and one to Signor Giovanelli as well. To Mario Abbiatico I also gave a print.
His words to me on that very day were.
“Joseph, when I first saw the work you had done in the United States,
I thought you were hopeless. Then after I found out how you had arrived here, I
thought you were crazy, but now that I know you, I think you have the largest
pair of balls of any man I have ever met. You have the three things that it takes to
be a great engraver: heart, passion, and strong hands.
God bless you and Franca on your return to the United States.”
We shook hands and embraced. I felt that familiar lump in my throat.
I smiled and walked away with an autographed copy of the book that had brought
me to Italy, held proudly in my hands.
Like every awaited moment in life, the time for our departure finally arrived.
Franca had many friends in Italy.The last few days were spent eating out, drinking,
toasting , hugging, kissing, and some weeping on the part of Franca’s mother.
Maria Teresa, Franca’s older sister, who was sure I was an escaped felon, kept
insisting that this was a big mistake. Her boss was telling her the same thing but
Franca with her unusual courage and determination decided to go.
September 17th, 1982,found us in New Haven, Connecticut and the plane trip back was nothing like the trip over. I was no longer a sad desperate man. I was a different person totally. My biggest personal concern was Franca.
We arrived in New Haven in a rented car, then found a clean and inexpensive
motel for the night. That evening we went out to a Chinese restaurant for our first
meal together in the United States.
Early next morning I left Franca at the motel and arrived at the corporate
offices of U.S. Repeating Arms Company with my portfolio of engraved plates.
I explained to the receptionist who I was and what I wanted and gave her the schools letter of recommendation. She in turn brought me to the personnel director’s office.
After looking at my work, he contacted the head of the Winchester custom shop, a man named Pardee, who looked at my work and then contacted his boss, Mr. Carl Hummel.
It was about two hours later that I was offered a job.
“Yes, we need an engraver. You have a job with us,” Carl said.
“What is the salary?” I asked.
I have forgotten the exact amount it was, around $9 or so. I was disappointed.
I thought back to school and the bloody boots. I decided to bluff.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not interested. I already have an appointment with a
company in California. I just stopped to see if you were interested in me.”
What did I expect to receive as compensation for my work, the personal director
wanted to know. I held my breath for a moment and then asked for $30,000
per year. They asked me leave the meeting.
Richard Pelton, president and CEO of U.S. Repeating Arms Company came into the conference room about that time and shook hands with me. After a careful study of my portfolio, he explained employment at that salary would have to be a corporate decision.
I wanted to know when I could have an answer. After a brief meeting, they told me that the decision would take a week. A week of meals and motels would quickly eat up all of Franca’s money. I bluffed again.
“I’m sorry. I cannot stay that long. I have to be in California in a few days.”
The truth was there were no appointments with anyone. If I lost this gamble, I
could lose it all. I had gone too far to back down.
“Where are you staying?” President Pelton asked.
Not wanting to say I was staying at a motel 2. I answered, “In a small motel
near town.”
“Would you consider postponing your trip to California until we can make a decision if Winchester puts you up in the Park Plaza Hotel? Of course we’ll pick
up all the expenses.” I explained that I had a friend with me. “Not a problem,” he
told me.
I do not think I have ever had a bigger smile on my face.
“Yes sir,” I answered, shook hands all around and went back to get Franca and
tell her the greatest news. After we had returned the car, then checked into the
hotel, laughing and dancing in the lobby as though we were at a carnival.
When the desk clerk said “Welcome to the Park Plaza Mr. Joseph, have a wonderful stay”
Franca whispered, “I’m so glad I met you Amore.”
From my journal:
September 18th, 1982 Hartford, Connecticut
Since arriving here, Franca and I have been guests of U.S. Repeating Arms Company.
We are staying in the nicest hotel room I have ever been in, in my life. The room
cost $145 per day and my bill here for at least four days is going to be over$600,00—more money than I have earned in the last year.
A few days later, the personnel director came to the hotel with an employment
contract for me to look over. Winchester had met my salary demand, made me a
part of the company’s executive staff, in charge of the engraving department, with the title of Master Engraver.
In addition to all of this, there was a $1,000 dollar bank draft to help us settle in.
Two weeks later I returned to Lynchburg and paid for those blessed boots.