‘I was always playing at the San Pietro as a young boy. My father was a carpenter on the construction site when the hotel was being built and he would take me with him to work. After the San Pietro opened, my father continued working in the maintenance department, so naturally, I was always around.
One day, when I was nine years old, Carlino handed me 50,000 lire and told me to go buy myself some nice shorts and shirts and report to the beach area for work. That was my first summer job, as a beach boy, washing dishes, putting out towels and umbrellas and helping clients. At the end of the season, Carlino’s nephew, Salvatore, who handled the finances, gave me 10,000 lire, my first salary. That was 44 years ago and I have been at the San Pietro ever since, so I guess I really have passed most of my life here and worked with all three generations of owners. 
I have many fond memories of each of them through the years. For example, I remember once Carlino took a group of us with him to Rome to help on some restoration work at his apartment there during the winter. His girlfriend at the time asked him, “Why have you brought these guys all the way from Positano to Rome?”
“They’re my artists!” He enthused. “Of course I must take my artists along with me.”
It was lunch time and she told the cook to get us something to eat. He brought us some ham and bread, you know, the usual stuff you put in a panino. When Carlino saw what we were given, he went through the roof.
“How sad is this! Come on,” He told her. “We gotta get them real food. These boys have to work!” He went down to the nearby roastery and bought prosciutto, pork, mortadella, chicken, everything in the shop. I was just a young boy at the time, and my eyes were wide as frisbees at all the food. I asked Vito recently if that roastery is still there, and he told me that it is.
I used to play tennis together with Vito and Carlo as boys, or we’d go night fishing for octopus and squid. Since we grew up together I know them as well as my own siblings. I know, for example, that if Vito lets off smoke, there is never any fire. Or when Carlo is quiet, he is swimming in a pool of thought.
There were a whole bunch of us who played together as kids after school, including Carlo and Vito, who are the owners now, my cousin Pasquale, who works at the pool, Raimondo, who is the boat captain, Michele, who is a waiter, Roberto, who works up at the carpark and many others. We would kid around, wrestle, play football, all the usual games young boys got up to.
Now we are men with our own children. Our hair is graying, we are not as sprightly as we once were, but we are still together just as much as when we were boys. We are colleagues, but we still like to kid around. Above all else, we have grown up with the San Pietro and that makes us family.
