Show One Italian Town Illustrates Worlds World's Problem B By Fred Sparks Chicago Daily News Service CHIOGGIA CHIOGGIA Nor Northern the I n Italy I March 27 A 27 A family I have been speaking to in this slum of an Italian town has 10 children One Ones is s an idiot two have tuberculosis one is a cripple and two arc are homo homo- sexual The other four seem normal normal normal nor nor- mal if slightly underfed What is the reason for their misery 1 The official medical report report re- re port ort blames it on intermarriage Mother and father are first cousins and their parents were also re- re Unwinds Thread The idiot boy about 19 sits on the he primitive kitchen floor winding winding wind- wind ing ng and unwinding a spool of thread Mother whose eyes are going joing bad squints as she knits a doily she will sell for export for lOc Father a fisherman wads newspapers into one of his torn boots Intermarriage is not uncommon in n this large fishing village which claims more people per acre than any my place short of teeming Asia I has become common through generations of pigsty housing i blankest illiteracy and morale- morale draining unemployment Naked Sickly This is my daughters daughter's child says ays the neighbor holding a naked sickly skinned olive-skinned kid Daughter Daugh- Daugh ter er about 15 smirks Where is your husband 1 I asked the girl She looks away Her mother laughs showing three yellow teeth teeth bounces bounces the baby aby and says Who Vho ever knows in n Chioggia 1 There are many marriages between between be- be tween first cousins and scores of children hildren are born out of wedlock by y even closer family relationships Tube Test With my interpreter I came here ere because it seemed to be a living iving tube test-tube sample of the worlds world's primary problem Too many people to feed house and clothe lothe And more coming coming a year is Italy's increase My stomach turns as we walk through narrow sunless alleys and step tep over open sewers An old man manin manin mann in n rags brutally kicks a mongrel dog og picking at the of an overturned garbage can The dog yelps elps with pain and scampers off The he old man si sits ts down and examines examines ex- ex amines mines the garbage My interpreter reads from a municipal h handout a and n d o 0 u t If Roughly three quarters of the persons persons per- per sons ons on one of the three isla islands ds that hat make up Chioggia are named Boscolo the rest Gray Rats We Ve turn down an alley and three gray ray rats race across our path A L woman sleeps in a dank door- door way ray There are screams from a story second window A boy of 1 12 2 sits in the gutter behind a girl about bout 7 and picks lice out of her hair air I A city official explains that 15 of f all citizens have the hacking TB cough There are only 1401 p I beds eds in the one decrepit hospital I During last years year's typhoid epidemic epidemic epidemic epi- epi demic they shoved two and three patients In one bed Three men in boots repair a net stretching between two poles A woman washes a pair of dungarees in n a trough built for horses She has las no soap and beats the dungarees dungarees dungarees dun dun- on a flat rock Two men sit on m a stoop playing chess They use se a marked a-marked and pebbles for or chess pieces Dont Don't Return The primary school runs classes from rom 7 am a.m. until 11 pm p.m. says says' the tie official If Little children in the evening sessions often dont don't return home lome until midnight In a school we see three children share hare one slate A weak electric bulb barely lights the room I Iannot cannot annot read the on the blackboard from 10 feet away The sanitary facility is an open ditch in n the yard As you can see says the city cite official getting this town on its feet is a big job As we wait for the ferryboat back to Venice two barefoot kids fight ight with each other to pick up my butt |