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pan-cakes passed over a very long counter with extraordinary skill. I was fascinated, everything was so "typically American."

Fascinated, like my mother too, given everything that was "typical," I would often find myself in contrast with Mary who, sipping her evening martini, studied the menus and always ordered delicacies that could be found anywhere. Moreover, still guests of Papa, we saw no reason to make him spend twice as much to make us halfway happy.

I had been interested in discovering the last remnants of Prohibition in Alabama where, standing in front of a bar similar to those of Western films, big fat cowboys sipped white glasses of milk. I was intrigued by the cardboard sign found on the table of a restaurant in Mississippi with the words "Be free! Come to us!" next to the drawing of a little man with a sad air in a dotted apron washing a pile of dishes.

How many new or different things: the low motels surrounded by greenery; the skyscrapers of Miami between palm trees and the sea and machines in perpetual movement; the gleaming petrol stations; pinball machines and juke-boxes; the clothes, the gestures, the way people walked.

We had been to lunch at Marjorie Rawlings, the author of Cucciolo, the delightful story of a roe deer that had moved me so much as a young girl. A woman with a decisive appearance and brilliant conversation, she had entertained us on the problems that affected the life of a writer, while Mary underlined the one that affected the life of a writer's wife.

I was thirsty and since there was only alcohol in the living room, so as not to disturb the conversation, I headed for the kitchen. Upon entering I was stunned: a husband, a landlord who washed the dishes, moreover while there were still guests in the house, I had never seen this before.