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that he could sleep with someone's wife but nobody could sleep with his since he did not have one. Some other anecdotes of religious overtone were also amusing. For instance, there was the story of the man with a sorb tree. This man had a huge and beautiful sorb tree that never produced any fruit. Because it had a straight and large trunk he decided to cut it down and sell it to a sculptor who had expressed interest in it. The artist cured the trunk and carved a beautiful statue of St. Nicola from it. Since St. Nicola was the saint patron of Villa Santa Maria, our neighboring town, the statue was sold to that town and placed in the church. After a few years this man went to a country fair in Villa Santa Maria and decided to visit the church to see this famous statue that everybody admired. When he entered the church he quickly saw the beautiful statue above the altar of the chapel. As he approached he saw a very old woman kneeling in front of the statue, tears in her eyes, sighing occasionally as she fervently prayed. He approached her, gently tapped her on the shoulder and whispered to her ear: "Grandma, I would not waste my time praying to him, I prayed to him for twenty-five years when he was a sorb tree and he never give me a single sorb apple, I don't think he will grant you what you want even now!".

Another well known story in the village was that of a woman who was constantly in church often neglecting her housework and her family. Francesco, who was a very witty man, one day met this woman in the
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street. He greeted her respectfully and then told her that he had dreamed of God. With ecstatic eyes the woman implored Francesco to tell her what our good Lord had said. Francesco cruelly replied: "He told me that since you are constantly in church He does not have a moment of privacy any more and that He would appreciate if you left Him alone once in a while".

Scandalized and hurt ,the woman chased Francesco with her walking stick and never spoke to him again.

Some other men just ignored the church, even though they would always take off their hats when they passed in front of the church or when the bell would strike the "ventunore". Basically, most villagers followed a certain moral code based on religion or a natural sense of justice of the "do unto others as you want them to do unto you" type. They succeeded in following this basic morality most of the time because life in the village was often like an open book, because they were too busy scraping an existence, and most of all because there was no real opportunity to commit what we would call a serious legal crime. Of course when opportunity rose there were a few cases of infidelity committed by women (men were absolved from such sins), some fruit or legume sometimes stolen for survival, or some less gifted offspring slightly cheated from his rightful inheritance. Some women meanwhile were abused and exploited with total immunity. Many villagers,