The Wolves and the Mandolin: Celebrating Life's Privileges In A Harsh World

by Brandon Vallorani

  Old men sit out on their balconies smoking, drinking wine, and watching the passersby on the street below. Wouldn’t you love to understand their bantering commentary? Street markets abound with fish, farm-fresh vegetables, and baked bread. Meals last forever, or seem to, with much laughter and conversation finished off with a shot of sambuca. It’s very romantic, very peaceful. A sense of calm washes over you as you slow down to enjoy the moments of pleasure brought by a strong café and a small plate of tiny dolci (sweets).

  Yet this rocky soil and mountainous region has also been an unforgiving landscape for past generations. Difficult to farm, with snow falling as late as June on occasion, this area my ancestors came from sent many of its inhabitants to America during the nineteenth century in hope of better opportunities, as did many countries.

  It is interesting to reflect that the long, rocky road my ancestors traveled to find success in America was a loop I’d close with my own life’s path, which has taken me from a fast-paced modern life back to my roots in Italy. I’ve come to embrace a lifestyle of slower, smaller pleasures: a glass of wine, a good cigar, a great cup of coffee. I’m enjoying every step along the way, including the opportunity to share this philosophy of life with you.

  Writing this book has been one of my first four major life goals. The first goal was to get married and have kids because I love children and the joy of a full house.

  The second goal was to get my MBA because I knew I wanted to be in business. I accomplished that just past my thirtieth birthday, right on target.

  My third goal was to be my own boss and financially independent, owning a business that could produce income for me so that I could take time off without affecting operations. I wanted to achieve that by the time I was forty, and I thank God I did since it has allowed me immeasurable freedom to spend time with my family and my kids and to give them unforgettable experiences.

  The last goal I set was to write my life story before I turned fifty. Though I have just reached the age of forty-three, I already have so much to write about that it’s probably good I’m getting an early start.

  My life story isn’t just about me. It’s about the people who have gone before me, whose examples inspired me to become an entrepreneur. It is about those who will follow, who I hope will be inspired to savor small privileges. It is about the mandolin moments in life that make fighting the wolves worth it.

  During my career, I’ve served as the executive vice president for two nonprofit organizations. My father and I started a publishing venture that reprinted a historic treasure that has sold more than one hundred thousand copies in the past decade, and in 2007, I founded a media conglomerate that is now a five-year honoree on the Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies.

  Along the way, I became more and more appreciative of life and the enjoyment of life’s privileges. Inspired by mandolin echoes in the Apennine foothills, I found my true calling in promoting a lifestyle that savors life’s small moments: simple pleasures found in a good cup of coffee, a glass of great wine, the draw of a superb cigar. A new idea began to form in recent years: the Vallorani name as a brand. It makes perfect sense.

  Companies work so hard to create marketing angles and stories around their brands. Yet here I am, with pages of stories to tell about my family heritage that tie back to our roots in Italy where the story of the wolves and the mandolin originated.

  It is a privilege to be alive, to enjoy. Though life is full of wolves, it’s up to us to find the music of the mandolin that calms them and keeps us sane. So now, I am building the brand, Vallorani Estates, to curate hand-selected, high-quality, boutique products that encourage the enjoyment of life’s mandolin moments. My next life goal is to make Vallorani Estates a household name.

  I came by my entrepreneurial drive naturally, as the stories I’m going to share with you will show. Everything I am I owe to those who went before, the courageous ones who faced hardships almost unimaginable to us today in order to come to America to make better lives for themselves and their families.

  I find myself wanting to mirror Jack Welch’s statement in Straight from the Gut: “Business is a lot like a world-class restaurant. When you peek behind the kitchen doors, the food never looks as good as when it comes to your table on fine china perfectly garnished. Business [and life] is messy and chaotic. In our kitchen, I hope you’ll find something that might be helpful to you in reaching your own dreams.”

  When you look back in history and read these true stories that epitomize legend and lore, it is my hope you’ll find how you too can keep the wolves at bay through the sweet strain of the mandolin. If they could do it, so can we!

  What I Know to Be True

  The world can be a cold, dark place full of hungry wolves biting at our ankles. Should we lock ourselves indoors and hide? No. We should pick up our mandolin and stride onward, bringing joy to our fellow travelers on this earth.

  We must learn to find the moments in which we can enjoy life’s privileges. It is up to us to take risks, reap the rewards, create beauty, and share the good we find with others.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “A Pretty Tough Guy”

  Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; therefore be shrewd as serpents, and gentle as doves.

  Jesus Christ

  In his mellow old age, my late grandfather, Big D, enjoyed sipping a glass of wine and telling stories about his life and his father, Luigi. “Tell us about Luigi, Big D. Please tell us about Luigi,” we’d beg him, like little kids, although by that time we were grown men.

  He would pause, take a sip of wine, and look off into the distance, smiling at an old memory. A small appreciative laugh would follow. “He was a pretty tough guy, my dad,” he’d say. “Luigi was pretty tough.”

  As you’ll see from these stories handed down from my grandfather, Luigi was a pretty tough guy. His tender side came out when he was a much older man spending his days tending tomato plants. It is evidenced in his proud smile captured in a photo as he walked his two daughters down the aisle to get married on the same day.

  But what my grandfather knew firsthand about his father concerned the warrior Luigi, the immigrant Luigi, and the survivor Luigi.

  Originating in Italy, the name Luigi means “renowned fighter,” a name my great-grandfather Luigi surely lived up to, though he was born Louis Vallorani. Traditional Italian naming practices would require that, as the second son, he be named for his maternal grandfather, who was still living. First sons were named for their paternal grandfather. It is quite common for nicknames to be used when so many of the same name live close together!

  In those days very few had the means to own their own property and would, instead, tend the land of the wealthy for a share in the harvest. Though this feudal system began to disintegrate with the unification of Italy’s provinces, just a generation before Luigi’s birth, the majority of land was still owned by the wealthy and worked by those who were not wealthy.

  Born to an impoverished farm family in the Marche Province, outside the small village of Offida, young Luigi vowed that he would not remain an uneducated poor farmer eking out a meager living among the rocky hills of his youth, struggling through life, always battling the wolves of hunger and low returns for his hard labor.

  In 1911 the Ottoman Empire ruled great swaths of land in parts of Europe and North Africa. Boundary disputes and the ideological and religious differences of the Muslim Turks were considered great threats to the young Italian nation of Christians.

  The Turks were proud of the inventive tortures they used on their helpless prisoners before “busting” them, one of the most barbaric and gruesome forms of execution, involving two swords cutting from shoulder to shoulder, beheading (or busting) the prisoner in the process.

  As so many others of his generation had done, Luigi got his opportunity for adventure and heroism—and escape—when he was conscripted into military service to fight the Ottomans and their Muslim allies. After a brief
military training, he found himself on a transport ship sailing to Libya where he would be a foot soldier in a hot, dusty invasion against Arab horsemen wielding swords.

  At Benghazi and Sciara (Tripoli), bloody battles were fought. Thousands were lost. On one particular day, Luigi stood against charging horsemen and shot them one by one with his bolt-action rifle until he was trampled by the oncoming horses and rendered unconscious. When he came to, he found himself with a large group of other captured Italians, all of them bound and tied to boards as they waited to be sliced by Turkish swords.

  Luigi watched grimly as the enemy gleefully and brutally killed the Italian survivors, one after another. Cursing and spitting at his captors, he prepared to die next. But just before the Turks could finish their bloodthirsty slaughter, an Italian counterattack halted the executions. Once freed, Luigi quickly recovered a weapon and charged back into the fray. I’ve always paused to consider how differently it could have gone. I wouldn’t be here today if the timing had been just a little off!

  Soon after, a peace treaty between the Ottoman Empire and Italy was established. The Ottoman troops agreed to remove themselves from Libya and allow Libya to remain under Italian oversight. It was a great victory for the Italians, who returned to Rome to march in a victory parade reminiscent of their ancient Roman forbearers.

  The war over, Luigi set his sights on going where he believed the streets were paved with gold. He needed to find a way to sail for America. Like many young Italians of that day, Luigi thought of America as the Wild West—and he wasn’t far from wrong.

  In the early twentieth century, the Pittsburgh steel mills of western Pennsylvania had plenty of opportunities for newly arriving immigrants. Today, mere remnants of a bygone industry loom on the Monongahela riverside, but when Luigi arrived in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, it was the fastest-growing town in the country, with plenty of work in the steel mills for immigrants and ripe with possibilities for a young, entrepreneurially minded Italian. It was Luigi’s goal from the beginning to work as a laborer only as long as it took to save enough money to start his own business.

  He kept to himself, living in a boarding house and carrying with him his hard-earned money, at all times, to avoid having it stolen. One of the first purchases he made in America was a set of pearl-handled six-shooters, which he hid under his pillow in the room he shared with a roommate. What was his was his, and he intended to keep it that way.

  He did not, at first, speak English very well but learned quickly and was soon able to distinguish English words well enough to understand conversations around him. It was because he was a sharp listener that he became aware of a plan his roommate was hatching with an accomplice to kill him and rob him of his hard-earned cash.

  Thinking Luigi couldn’t understand their English, the thieving, would-be killers made the mistake of talking about the plan in his presence. Luigi heard his roommate referring to the “dumb dago,” and he began to eavesdrop on their plotting. His roommate planned to wait for him to fall asleep in their second-story room and then open a window to allow his accomplice to climb a ladder and enter the room. While the accomplice held Luigi down, the roommate would slit his throat and steal his stash of money. Both men would then flee out the window and down the ladder.

  That night, Luigi feigned sleep with one of his loaded six-shooters clutched in his hand under the blanket. He listened intently as his roommate quietly opened the window to let in the accomplice climbing up the ladder. As soon as the climber’s shoulders came through the open window, Luigi jumped up from his bed and shot the intruder point blank in the forehead, killing him instantly and sending his body and the ladder tumbling loudly to the ground below. Luigi then turned to his lunging roommate and pulled the trigger a second time, killing his would-be assassin. They had intended to show no mercy to Luigi, and Luigi showed none to either assailant. His descendants have owned one of the pearl-handled six-shooters to this day.

  Even though he had killed in self-defense, Luigi knew he should slip away and go where people didn’t know him. An old friend who had served with him in the war had also come to America and sought solace from his wartime memories by becoming a Catholic priest in a small Kentucky town. Luigi joined him there and quietly worked in a coal mine, saving every penny he could.

  After a year, he felt it was safe to return to McKeesport. To serve the bustling Italian neighborhood there, he decided to open an Italian restaurant with the money he had been saving. One day, while he was strolling through the town, he heard a lovely girl named Maria DelMastro singing a beautiful song. Maria was a singer with a small band that performed in public parks where many immigrants and their families would gather to enjoy a pleasant Sunday afternoon. Luigi fell in love with Maria and, after obtaining permission from her father, married her.

  Because Kentucky had less frigid winters than Pennsylvania and more opportunities to conduct business in less-crowded venues without as much competition, Luigi determined to sell his restaurant and return to Kentucky. One story has it that on the evening a prospective buyer came to investigate the restaurant, Luigi invited all of his friends to come in for a free meal. That night, the restaurant was crowded and bursting at the seams, so Luigi made the sale easily and headed for the hills with his wife and the two six-shooters to protect the cash he carried.

  Once resettled in Kentucky, Luigi briefly went to work again as a coal miner in order to realize his latest dream of opening a grocery store. The hills surrounding the coal mines were notorious for murders and robberies in early twentieth-century Kentucky. Luigi, ever mindful of danger, carried his firearms strapped to his sides at all times. One morning, on his way to work in the predawn darkness, he encountered a would-be robber. Those pearl-handled pistols saved his life once again.

  But fate dealt the young couple a tragic blow when their first child, only months old, took sick and died during a return visit to McKeesport in 1920. A second child born in Kentucky two years later died only eleven days after his birth. When Maria became pregnant a third time, she went back to McKeesport to stay with her family so she could have her mother and sister with her to help with the baby. Maria gave birth in July 1923 to Eugenio Vallorani, who survived to become my grandfather. Once again, a sobering thought of how precious life is: only one of three babies survived, and I would not be here today if he had not.

  Luigi finally opened his grocery store. He had no pity for his competition. When the grocer across the road lowered prices to try and put Luigi out of business, Luigi sneaked across the street after dark and raised the prices back up on the chalkboard outside the man’s store. Times were hard, and he had no qualms about doing whatever it took to keep his family fed and safe—to keep away the wolves baying at the door.

  The wolves were never gone for long. Tragedy struck again when Maria died giving birth to a stillborn child in 1925. There seemed to be no peace in America, after all, and raising a child on his own was a daunting prospect. Tired of adventuring, and looking for a mother for his one surviving son, my grandfather, Luigi sold his store and took Eugenio back to McKeesport in the hope that Maria’s family would care for him. Luigi had his heart set on returning to Italy. He wanted to marry an Italian woman, not an American woman, because he thought Italian women were less spoiled than American women.

  When Maria’s family couldn’t agree to care for Eugenio for what would have been several years, likely because times were tough and he was so young and yet another mouth to feed, Luigi booked passage back to Italy for himself and his son.

  Back in Italy, he settled in a farming community and used his American savings to buy farmland, vineyards, fruit orchards, and another grocery business. He found that Italian wife too. Agatha loved and cared for Eugenio, treating him as if he were her own son. And my grandfather loved his stepmother. Luigi and Agatha had three daughters—what a privilege it has been to meet two of them and their children and grandchildren. One of the daughters visited us in the USA in the 1980s, and another I met in Italy,
twice, in 2011 and again in 2016.

  Luigi never set foot in America again. We don’t know why Luigi never came back to America. The year I was born, in 1973, he even applied for a US social security number from his home in Rimini, which suggests he meant to return, or at least to keep that possibility open. Whatever his reasons for choosing not to return, he certainly did not give up his entrepreneurial endeavors.

  He achieved his goal of becoming a wealthy businessman and was greatly respected as the padrone of his village. He had true allegiance only to his family and those who depended on him. As he began to grow up and attend school, Luigi’s young son was keenly aware of his father’s status. Eugenio knew his father had big plans for him.

  As Luigi’s only son, Eugenio was also treated with respect in the village. When a fellow student bullied young Eugenio, Luigi went to the home of the bully’s father and gave the father a choice: either the father would punish the bully, or Luigi would do it for him. The father punished his son right there in front of him rather than chance Luigi’s temper.

  On another occasion, during harvest season, young Eugenio was watching his father order one of the workers to stop his children from stealing fruit from the trees in his orchard. The worker made the mistake of picking up a clump of dirt and throwing it at Luigi in response. Luigi struck back by pummeling the recalcitrant worker. Then Luigi picked the man up, slung him over his shoulder, and carried him up a ladder with the apparent intention of throwing the disrespectful thief into the threshing machine. The other workers stopped Luigi before he did so, but the message was sent. Nobody stole his fruit after that.

  Luigi disliked bullies, but during those days the biggest bullies of the twentieth century were rising in power: Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini. My grandfather was required to join a military youth group and was sent to march in a parade in support of Mussolini and Hitler. Luigi wanted no part of his son being pressed into the service of fascism. Having survived the horrors of his own wartime experience, Luigi was determined to keep Eugenio from the impending slaughter. He knew the only chance his son would have to avoid the political upheaval and ensuing bloody war was to be sent back to America to live.