From the origins to EMAK:
a history of life and business success
by Nello Salsapariglia
Introduction.
If I had listened to Father Giovanni Alberigi when I was a child, I would have gone to the seminary. He loved me very much, that Father. I used to go with pleasure to San Michele’s church, a little village nearby Bagnolo in Piano, in the lowlands of Reggio Emilia: I went there every time I used to bring our two cows’ milk to the cheese factory. I was 8 or 10 years old at that time. Almost every day when we were on holidays, or at Saturdays and Sunday mornings, I used to start walking by pushing the cart on which my father loaded the milk can. We left Fosdondo’s house, where my family lived; then we reached the cheese factory and on the way back home I used to stop at the church.
Father Alberigi taught us catechism, said Mass then he let us children play in the oratory. I used to go there very often and knew almost all Mass in Latin by heart, so one day the priest asked me if would like to go to the seminary. I thought about it a little while and he used to always repeat his invite, but it was someone else I met in San Michele that made me change my mind and changed my life forever.
At that time didn’t exist the church and the oratory in that village only. Not too far from the church there was the shop of a friend of my father, Giovanni Diacci, who used to repair ancient tractors. Giovanni’s son, Settimo, was one of my schoolmates and thanks to him I could go for the first time in his father’s shop. This shop was later rented to Walter Tondelli. When I was almost 12-13 years old I used to go to Tondelli’s very often to see how the work went on and to ask them if they needed help. I was fascinating by that job. I really liked seeing mechanical parts, vehicles’ interiors. I used to listen to mechanicals’ talking about how to solve problems or how to cut or repair a broken piece. I still didn’t know, but those experiences, those speeches I was listening to, would have been in a future time very important for my professional preparation. Soon Father Alberigi stopped asking me if I would go to the seminary. I had already found my way, even if I was almost a child and it was too early to say what I would have done once I grew up. But the discovery of mechanics had already changed my life.
Taking that decision, though, it wouldn’t be an easy choice and to be borne easily. My family was really attached to earth. My father Francesco used to work as a sharecropper in Fosdondo, last house of Correggio, on the borderline of Bagnolo in Piano. My mom, who’s name was Regina Vecchi, used to help him and take care of me and my brother – I was born in 1926 and my brother in 1933. As all farmers’ children at that time, I attended to the nearest elementary school: for few years in San Michele and for the rest in Pieve Rossa. At the end of fifth course I quitted school, but I’ve still been keeping books of History, Geography, Religion, Italian and Mathematics.
In those years my father always needed my help in working fields as there was a lot of work to do: mowing grass, take care of animals and cultivations… but my head was very far away. I wasn’t interested in working fields, my future was in the workshop. My father understood everything and didn’t keep insisting on that: I wouldn’t ever been a sharecropper like him, but I would worked anyway. So at the age of 15, in 1941, my father asked his friends - Messrs Nibbi and Pratissoli owners of the homonymous workshop in Reggio Emilia - to let me work in their shop in winter time. My father didn’t care how much they would have paid me, but he would me to learn a job and, in fact, I really liked it and it would have become my life.
My father and Pratissoli were friends since childhood as their houses were close one to each other. Daddy introduced me to his friends (who finally became one of the most famous businessman in Italian agricultural mechanics) by saying: “Look, this guy doesn’t like working in fields, could you take him to your workshop?”. In this way I started my adventure in factory, even though it seems too exaggerate to call it factory… Nibbi and Pratissoli’s factory in the early 40s was based in Ramazzini Avenue in the north outskirts of Reggio, in Santa Croce’s block where it could develop thanks to its closeness to Officine Meccaniche Reggiane. The “Nibbi and Pratissoli” consisted in three big rooms attached to a stable and mostly made pieces on behalf of Reggiane only.
Bruno Nibbi and Leonida Pratissoli used to work for Reggiane and go to their factory at Saturdays and Sundays only. At the beginning worked with them three workers and Nino Bonaccorsi, who later became a politician and was elected as Piadena’s mayor, near Cremona. It was a fantastic period for me and I still remember that great atmosphere. Nibbi was a curious guy even if he was a little frightening for me: sometimes when he came to me while I was working, for the awe I made a wrong piece. He immediately got angry, but later he used to teach me how to do by making me calm: “you don’t have to be frightened of me, I teach you how to do” it was his phrase. In the evening then me and Mr. Nibbi used to come back home by bike. He lived in Pratofontana, almost three kilometres far from the workshop, so we made a small piece of trip together; then I continued a little bit more till my family's house in Beviera road, where I lived with them. After dinner I used to go to the cinema in Correggio with some friends of mine, which were all farmers. We didn't feel any tiredness as we were used to work a lot and always moved by bike. At Nibbi's, for example, I was working 10 hours per day and my pay was one lira per hour; I used to stop one hour for lunch only just to eat what I was bringing with me from home. I've been working there for three years, since 1944, when War World Two renewed outbreak and consequently was really dangerous to go out at night. In those years at summertime I stared working as a mason: I earned double as before - 20 liras per day - moreover the good aspect of that job was that I always had lunch with farmers. It was 1941 and I was only fifteen. I found my first job as ploughman in Fosdondo with Lusetti and Cattini, then in 1942 with Messrs Rosselli in Bazzarola, a place near Reggio Emilia; in 1943 I worked for Mr. Amedeo Bertozzi and later with Mr. Pratissoli in San Michele della Fossa.
Driving agricultural vehicles was really a passion to me, even if I had to wake up at three in the morning, Saturdays and Sundays included. I had learnt it by watching carefully workers which were working with my father: I “stole” them the secrets of that job. I just got the real driving license in 1945 only, but at those times there were no problem: you started driving by practicing only. Especially tractors, which were really few at the end of the world and people who have them were considered middle class people.
The secret of a good ploughing it was not just in the way of driving tractors, but in the way you have to plough a field and in your passion. You could reach this knowledge with experience and listening to the ancient and more experienced people. The most difficult thing was to manage in reverse with a plough as there were many trees in the fields that were delimiting each fund; so driving a tractor with a mechanical plough requested certain skills mainly on the borders… I really worked a lot but I was very happy in doing what I preferred most. There was a big demand of machines at the end of World War Two, and there were probably five or six tractors only used for more than 300 acres per year. I was really lucky because I was never enlisted during the war. I had to go the military visit each year and in the end in 1945 I was finally dispensed as I had physical problems. Thanks to this, I had the possibility of working without attending to the military draft.
Looking back to those years and to the business challenge that brought to Emak’s birth, I realised that my history looks like to a pioneer tale of the mechanical agricultural industry in Reggio Emilia, from the post war to nowadays. Looking back I can feel the enthusiasm and the emotions of those years, I live again success and failures through which we became what we are today, without loosing the spirit and the will of always building something new.
