It was my honor to wear a scarf around my neck for the Rest of my life!!

Why is he wearing that scarf you might ask???

Well to begin with, all my life I have honored my family and my friends and more importantly, honored God.

I’ve told of my life when I was young about my mother, about my father, but I really haven’t talked about when I was becoming a man. So into my mind comes me meeting a gentleman that came from Italy purposely to honor me with a Bianco family Tradition. He was known to my father as being a an executive in Italy for the Department of immigration.

Well he was delightful, a happy guy, and I was just 18. My mother had just given me my star sapphire ring, and I am now beginning the next important thing in my life. You may have noticed over the years, in any picture of me wearing a scarf around my neck. Well this gentleman is the one that asked me to wear it in honor of a great Bianco who lived five generations back. He was known to all, as “I’ll Tremelier”!!! With my father and mother standing alongside me, he just took out a scarf and proceeded to put it around my neck. He then told me of the history of this great Bianco.

It was when Italy was made up of city states and not a National country! So the northern cities which were rich and powerful decided that Italy should become a nation. In order to do it, they had to get the cities of the south to agree and be part of the new Nation of Italy, but wind up being controlled by those northern cities. So the people in the south refused and said they had no interest in unifying the country that they would lose the power of their own existence. This man, I’ll Tremeliere formed an army, no not like the armies of the north with powerful weapons and trained soldiers, but he had the people who he lived with behind him, understand that they had to fight to stop the unification.

Before this all happened he was making a living for himself and for his village by robbing, holding up stages that passed through the south from the Northern Rich cities, with his family’s scarf hiding who he actually was!! The monies he got from these robberies he shared with his village and they all loved him and would do anything for him! Besides being a stage coach robber, he “loved”the women in his town and it didn’t matter that they were married or their parents didn’t allow it, he just did it, and the women loved it.

Well, as the northern armies captured cities as they came to the south, he and his followers stopped them dead!!! Why? because they didn’t fight like an army, they fought in the woods like Robin Hood. No matter what the north did,  they could not get past his army, because they were nowhere to be found and the northern soldiers didn’t know how to fight this enemy, but died trying.

Well the leaders of the north knew the only thing that was stopping them was this crazy guy who led his invisible army. He had to go, and sure enough, money talks, they sent a man down to his village as just another man but he went to two of the closest friends of Il Tremeliere and paid them a fortune to get rid of him. And that’s exactly what they did while he wasn’t looking he was stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and died. But it didn’t end there because all the villagers found out about it and killed not only those two, but all the families of these two men even babies,  children, uncles, grandparents the whole family were taken and stoned to death as a group and the villagers screamed and yelled saying how could they do it. Well naturally without a leader, those northern cities conquered the south and turned italy into a nation. But from that time on a Bianco was chosen to wear the scarf of the robber and leader. His scarf hid his face,  but the scarf  became a tradition and it was the scarf of a robber protecting himself and his village. So with that said it was an honor for me to wear this scarf for 72 years!

I am now sitting in the sun on Saturday, November 5, 2022. On my newly set up deck facing my backyard facing the trees with all the faces that I could imagine. Well to tell you the truth it has been an honor to wear the scarf it became my status in the world. I am now 90 years old and because I’ve been wearing the scarf every day of my life never missing, cause if I did miss by mistake, wherever I was I went back and got my scarf. My wonderful wife Claire said to me, be smart carry an extra one in the car so that if you forget you have one. I did that but never did I need it because my scarf was the most important thing I needed besides breathing!!! “The end” Sal