I have been in Italy for eight years now, going back and forth, and I have heard all sorts of stories. This one, I think, will be very funny, and I sometimes tell it to friends.
As you know, Italy never had communism, and everything a family owns passes down by inheritance. I think you all know the company Ferrari and what it makes: unique, expensive cars capable of going fast. They are also rather beautiful. But you cannot fit many things into such a car, let alone serious luggage. If there is a boot at all, it is tiny, because this kind of transport is meant for rich people who travel light. I would call a Ferrari more of a leisure car. Twenty to twenty-five litres of petrol per hundred kilometres is the cost you will have to bear if you sit in one. The figure gets even more impressive if you decide to drive it through city traffic. But let us skip the details.
Our hero is called Vincenzo and he is a plumber. An ordinary guy who, like most of the working population of the country, earns a salary of 1,000 to 1,300 euros. Vincenzo turns up for jobs in his old Fiat van, having loaded in everything he needs.
One morning a courier came to Vincenzo and handed him a summons to appear before a lawyer. Though puzzled, he decided to go, already imagining the worst: that he had done something wrong for someone somewhere and was being sued for negligence. Plumbing is no joke: if a pipe bursts, you will have problems to spare.
In fact it turned out not so terrible. Though there was little to be happy about: when Vincenzo visited the lawyer, he was told that a distant relative, an uncle, let us call him Giuseppe, had died suddenly and left him a Ferrari F50 Spider.
This is what Vincenzo saw when he walked out of the lawyer’s office: a brand new Ferrari. Naturally his joy knew no bounds. Obviously a man like our hero could not afford such a car. Nor could he maintain it. The insurance on a car like that is simply unaffordable, about ten thousand a year, and not everyone can fill that monster up.
A joke for the occasion (translated from Italian):
A man is standing at a petrol station filling up a Ferrari.
He fills it for an hour, a second, a third.
At which point the attendant cannot take it any more, walks up to the owner and says: maybe switch off the engine, otherwise you will never fill it up.
But since Vincenzo’s insurance on the Ferrari still had a year to run, he decided not to sell the car yet, to take his girlfriend for a ride and to admire the half-a-million machine himself, and only then sell it. And then one fine Tuesday morning, unfortunately, our hero’s own car broke down. While it was being repaired, Vincenzo did not think twice (the customers were waiting) and drove to work in the Ferrari.
I want you to picture this clearly:
Morning, seven o’clock, an elderly gentleman calls a plumber from a newspaper ad. He says his pipes have badly worn through and need replacing. Vincenzo says he will be there in five minutes.
The old man comes out onto the porch to wait. And then a red sports Ferrari comes round the corner with plastic pipes sticking out of it, and not merely sticking out, they are visible from afar. Out climbs our Vincenzo in a dirty overall. He takes his toolbox from the passenger seat and starts pulling out the pipes. The old man and the neighbours he flooded are baffled. There is only one question on every face: “How much does this plumber charge?” It is funny from the outside, but in our town everyone still remembers the plumber in a Ferrari.
PS: Vincenzo sold the car and bought himself a house. I do not know what happened to the rest of the money, but he did not quit the job.