Spending time in old newspapers takes you down some interesting roads. Or rabbit holes, depending on how you look at it. I highly recommend it for everyone suffering from delusions of “good old days.”

I was looking at an edition of The Knoxville News-Sentinel from December 17, 1939. The U.S. was not yet tied up in the war going on across the Atlantic. That December day was a Sunday, much of the front page and other coverage was devoted to the Tennessee Volunteers’ pending showdown with the University of Southern California Trojans in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.

One headline read “Neyland Will Test Cafego Tuesday,” meaning coach Robert would be figuring out if his All-American half-back “Bad News” George would be recovered enough from an injury for a stern practice session. It didn’t work out for the Vols in the Rose Bowl, USC won 14-0.

Other items of interest were the release of Gone with the Wind and a Lonsdale Elementary teacher, who’d been fired by Knoxville City Schools for getting married, winning her case in the Tennessee Supreme Court and getting her old job back.

But on the very last page was a story of the times they were in. Joseph Lobetti, Italian immigrant, naturalized citizen, long time building manager of the Holston/Hamilton National Bank (now Holston Condos) was interviewed about the letters he was receiving from his brother Richard from Italy. Richard had immigrated to the U.S. and made his way to Knoxville as well. For more than 25 years he and his friend, brother-in-law and business partner, John Gorini, owned and ran Lobetti Vineyards. Their wives were sisters.

Yes, we had Italian vintners in Knox County on Ball Camp Pike and what is now Lobetti Road. Papers at the time referred to that area that we call Karns as Hardin Valley, probably as more of a topographical reference. Regardless, the Lobettis and the Gorinis had all come to America, become citizens and were making their own successes here.

Then some bad timing intervened. Richard’s first wife needed to return to Italy to settle her parents’ estate. The Vineyard was sold and both couples returned to retire back in the homeland, settling back in the Tuscany resort town Viareggio on the Mediterranean coast. Sounds pretty dreamy.

There was just one very large problem and his name was Benito Mussolini. The Lobettis and Gorinis had missed out (mostly) on all that fascism had to offer while living here. They had barely arrived in Italy and were already planning to wrap it up and head back to the states according to Joseph. The bicycles were the last straw.

The bicycles? Well, Richard had managed to get a new car, but couldn’t drive it. Fuel scarcity/prices had him looking to use a motorcycle to get around. That wasn’t even a plausibility. Richard informed his brother in a letter that he was too advanced in years to be tootling around a bicycle again. They were coming home, planning to return in spring of 1940 with the security of their American citizenship in tow.

The spring of 1940 turned into the spring of 1946. Mussolini was joined at the hip with Adolph Hitler and Italy’s entrée into World War II prevented them leaving until it was over. They endured guerilla warfare, bombing raids, deprivation and twice were detained as enemy spies. By the time Richard made it back to Knoxville, his first wife had passed and he had remarried one of her other sisters. He did not make it back in time to see his brother Joseph again. He died in 1942.

He told a reporter not long after getting back that he was looking forward to starting life again. The Lobettis and Gorinis settled into a house downtown on Hill Avenue, and Richard took a job as an elevator operator at General Hospital. He was barely back a year when he died suddenly after an evening of playing cards at home on March 14, 1947.

I’d love to see a picture of that vineyard.

Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.

Sources: McClung digital collection-Knox County Library, Knoxville News Sentinel digital archives, National Archives