My Father
A few days ago was my father’s ninetieth birthday… or to be more precise… would have been… he died a few years ago… We were far from being close… but he was my father…
When my father, Ennio Attias, was eighteen he told his father, Raoul Attias, that he wanted to be a car mechanic… instead of working in his father’s Import Export business… Being the only son that passed very badly with the family…
My father went to the Ford dealer in Alexandria, Egypt looking for a job… he was assigned an engine and told to clean it thoroughly… being alone in that section he was unable to find someone to help him pick up the engine from the floor… so he picked the engine on his own…
He fainted and woke up in the hospital after having gone through emergency surgery… Unfortunately the surgeon had left a scalpel in Ennio’s kidney… It was discovered a while later after intensive bleeding and a messed up kidney for the rest of his life…
After that he went to work with his father…
When my father divorced my mother… I was angry… and stayed angry for a number of years… but I was polite with him and with his wife… even though I hated her… for stealing my father away… but I was always courteous…
Years later when I was in Milano I used to see them on Saturday afternoons, unless it rained, at a café in the Parco Sempione… It was very relaxing, surrounded by green… with a medieval castle in the background… It’s the closest to nature that we can find in Milano… my father used to say…
Years later after I moved to the US… I usually scheduled my weekends in Milano for a variety of reasons… one of them was go for a haircut… go shopping…and have lunch at my father’s… On one of these trips my father told me that his business had gone sour… due to market loss to the Japanese…
His business was the export of rubber sole presses to shoe manufacturers… Apparently there were some five or six Italian manufacturers who held a quasi monopoly of these presses… One day they got an order from Japan… and a year after delivery the Japanese offered the same press for half the price…
My father had to close the business and look for a job…
Trying to help I spoke to my Italian distributor, Pietro Bonoldi, and asked him to see if he could find my father a job… whether in his company or with one of his associates…
In doing this I knew that I was leaning very heavily on Pietro… but I had to do my best… Ennio was my father after all… even though he was in his mid sixties…
He was hired as account receivable manager and stayed with the company for fifteen years until it was sold and went out of business…
A few days ago was my father’s ninetieth birthday… or to be more precise… would have been… he died a few years ago… We were far from being close… but he was my father…
When my father, Ennio Attias, was eighteen he told his father, Raoul Attias, that he wanted to be a car mechanic… instead of working in his father’s Import Export business… Being the only son that passed very badly with the family…
My father went to the Ford dealer in Alexandria, Egypt looking for a job… he was assigned an engine and told to clean it thoroughly… being alone in that section he was unable to find someone to help him pick up the engine from the floor… so he picked the engine on his own…
He fainted and woke up in the hospital after having gone through emergency surgery… Unfortunately the surgeon had left a scalpel in Ennio’s kidney… It was discovered a while later after intensive bleeding and a messed up kidney for the rest of his life…
After that he went to work with his father…
When my father divorced my mother… I was angry… and stayed angry for a number of years… but I was polite with him and with his wife… even though I hated her… for stealing my father away… but I was always courteous…
Years later when I was in Milano I used to see them on Saturday afternoons, unless it rained, at a café in the Parco Sempione… It was very relaxing, surrounded by green… with a medieval castle in the background… It’s the closest to nature that we can find in Milano… my father used to say…
Years later after I moved to the US… I usually scheduled my weekends in Milano for a variety of reasons… one of them was go for a haircut… go shopping…and have lunch at my father’s… On one of these trips my father told me that his business had gone sour… due to market loss to the Japanese…
His business was the export of rubber sole presses to shoe manufacturers… Apparently there were some five or six Italian manufacturers who held a quasi monopoly of these presses… One day they got an order from Japan… and a year after delivery the Japanese offered the same press for half the price…
My father had to close the business and look for a job…
Trying to help I spoke to my Italian distributor, Pietro Bonoldi, and asked him to see if he could find my father a job… whether in his company or with one of his associates…
In doing this I knew that I was leaning very heavily on Pietro… but I had to do my best… Ennio was my father after all… even though he was in his mid sixties…
He was hired as account receivable manager and stayed with the company for fifteen years until it was sold and went out of business…
1 comment:
The way I remember the story being told, Ennio fainted and had surgery because he tried to lift an entire CAR by himself... Funny how stories grow!
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