A TUSCAN IMMIGRANT BUILDS A CITY IN ARIZONA

I spent so little time in the gorgeous state of Arizona that my memories only consist of a few, memorable images. The first is that of a church I saw emerging from the desert in the morning light and I admired for two hours until the sun was high in the sky. Dedicated to San Xavier del Bac,[1] it is Arizona’s most important and certainly most ancient church. It was conceived by the Italian Jesuit Eusebio Kino[2] and materially built by Spanish Franciscan friars with the labor of Indians. I also admired another kind of monument: this is not a church but a shopping center, namely the central market of a new city near Tucson. The builder is Sam Nannini[3][sic]. Everybody in Tucson, in Arizona and in Montecatini[4] knows him. It began at the local post office where I went to mail a certified letter. “Are you from Italy? Do you know Sam Nanini?” Then I went to the bank to cash a check: “Do you know Sam Nanini?” Even the barber who gave me a shave, a Mexican, asked me: “Usted es italiano…. Do you know Sam Nanini?” By the end I was ashamed I didn’t know him. So I asked a common acquaintance if he could try to contact him at my behest. I found out there had been some miscommunication: he had invited me to lunch for the day before but somehow the message hadn’t reached me. “We waited for you for three hours yesterday,” said his wife. “And it took me three hours to find you,” I replied. Everybody knows him but finding him is a different story…

He owns enough land to build an entire city, land he bought when the desert still cost peanuts. He is now building houses on it, two to three thousand feet from each other, all clustered along Nanini Street or something else named Nanini. In each one of these neighborhoods (or maybe they should be called farborhoods) things are named after him. After we entered the development my driver, who, he had assured me, knew Nanini, could not find his house. Finally, after knocking on several doors of houses built by him and sold by him we arrived at the shopping center. Right across the street, in a cute, nice, super-modern doll’s house we found him by the main door. He looked like a tenant more than the landlord. When we asked where Mr. Nanini lived, he answered with great simplicity that it was he, the Nanini, as if he were standing in front of a house in some small town in Italy. Nanini is a bit like those Tuscan farmers I used to see in Piazza della Signoria[5] in Florence on market days. The same sun-baked face, a little hat cocked to one side, a simple but good-quality suit, the same calm demeanor. I wasn’t there to negotiate a deal with him and maybe when it comes to business he is a different person, but, all in all, America has such a sedative influence on businesspeople that even a Tuscan must subject himself to it. After lunch he took his wife’s car and drove me around to visit “his town,” despite the fact that we could have walked, for it was so close.

This man, who, I guess, must have left Montecatini, or more precisely Borgo a Buggiano, some forty years ago in search for a better life, must have a lot of money and a wealth of perspectives. For sure he owes something to luck (after all, he could have died as soon as he arrived.) But when one thinks of the vastness of the country where he landed penniless; of the vastness of forces that must have opposed him, including the competition of people like him from every corner of the globe motivated by the same drive and goals; of the huge efforts and caution and patience needed to succeed; then Nanini’s life is definitely something to be saluted tipping one’s hat. I didn’t tell him that and maybe he will be surprised when he reads it, but the more I think about it, the more extraordinary this seems. Apparently he made money in Chicago building houses, god-only-knows how many and how horrible. But here, in Arizona, the local traditions and the freedom afforded to him by his wealth generated in him the ambition to create something more graceful or, as he says, more intimate. I didn’t challenge him on this word: Nanini is a cautious man, and understood that before you can build houses you need stores. This is the latest trend in America: those who can afford it are fleeing the cities, in a phenomenon called suburbanization.[6] Now, all suburbia [sic] are clustered around a shopping center.[7] He just finished building one that already houses a bank, a beauty salon, a market,[8] a jeweler that sells junk and a restaurant with a room for banquets. In short, all the amenities that American middle class expects are there. At that time, construction was under way for a huge parking lot. I imagine the entire area will be lined with palm trees. I was particularly struck by two factors: the gorgeous location, with mountain views in the day, and, at night the view of city lights; and the happiness of the people he was running into. His workers came up to him with questions about a lock or a window or whatever: he knew everything and was an expert at everything, implicitly sending out the message that nobody could fool him. A real Tuscan-farm foreman, I can assure you, not just with four pairs of oxen and a tractor, but in a city that was growing under his eyes. A city. Now his ambition is to be a Florentine (and, to an extent, he is succeeding): from the corners of his buildings hang street lights in the shape of those that adorn Palazzo Strozzi.[9] The overall style, though, has gone through the treatment of local architects and reflects a Spanish or Mexican influence. I liked the low walls of bare bricks without plaster, the low roofs on the low slung houses—although I just don’t think it is either intimate or particularly Florentine. The worst are the sculptures spread here and there, reminiscent of Via dei Fossi.[10] I don’t think he was aware of it and I fear that this man, so much on the defensive against the dangers of America, left himself vulnerable to those of Lucca and Florence. But maybe I am wrong. I am not an art expert and maybe these are authentic sculptures that go back to the time of the war of Pisa against Lucca. In Tucson Nanini is unanimously considered an honest man and, obviously, a pleasant man. It is a pleasure to find this kind of Italian.

Tucson, January 29, 1961