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Home on the Range
Joey Colosa is 6 ft tall with a tan, chiseled face and a
salt-and-pepper mustache. He and his wife Connie, a real
estate broker, have lived in Tucson, Arizona for 27 years.
Now an architect, Joey is living out his lifelong dream
to be a cowboy. He has acted in western movies, has an agent,
and from time to time is asked by tourists to pose with
them. They want to show their friends a picture of themselves
with an authentic American cowboy. Joey certainly is the
real deal—you’ll be hard-pressed to find any Italian from
Brooklyn who wears a 1940 Stetson, carries a loaded Colt
.45, wears cowboy boots, and generally looks more like a
dyed-in-the-denim cowboy than Joey.
It’s ten o’clock at night and Joey and Connie and their
friends Sam and Dianne and my wife, Elinor, and I are sitting
around a fire Joey has started with a bunch of logs in the
middle of a circle of rocks adjacent to his house. The sky
is ink blue and a full moon is throwing some light down
on us to complement the glow from the raging fire.
Joey is standing up and we’re all sitting on metal chairs
around the rocks. Joey rolls some tobacco in cigarette paper,
takes a few puffs and passes it to Sam and Dianne, who take
a few deep drags and pass it back to Joey, who takes another
puff and flicks it into the smoldering logs.
The Tucson night air is chilly, compared to the warm desert
air of the day, and the gentle heat of the fire feels good.
Joey tosses another log onto the pile. Ashes fly around
and one lands in Connie’s hair. She swats at it and says,
“I don’t smell anything burning. I think I got it!”
Far off, down the dark, stark hill, beyond the cactus plants
and rocks, we see the lights of downtown Tucson stretching
across the horizon. Tall cactus plants and bare trees rise
up in the foreground. You almost expect somebody to pull
out a guitar and start crooning “Don’t Fence Me In,” like
a Hollywood cowboy in a 1950’s western movie.
“I never used to like those old cowboy movies,” says Connie.
“Remember those movies when we were kids? The good guys
wore white hats, the bad guys wore black hats. Then there
was all that singing and stuff. I called those guys pretty-boy
cowboys.’”
“Do you know what a penknife is?” Joey asks me.
“A small knife?” I say, suspecting that this is probably
the wrong answer.
Joey disappears into his house and returns, crouching between
me and Elinor. The brim of his big, weathered Stetson hat
almost touches my face. He shows us a narrow three-inch
piece of a dark wood and a small blade sticking out.
“This was what guys in olden days used to use to make a
pen out of a quill,” he says. “They used to put the quill
in here, snap off the end, then push out the blade to carve
a point. That’s a penknife!”
Joey says the penknife is from the 1700’s—probably pre-Revolutionary
War days. He got it from an old man he used to do errands
for in the neighborhood. “It was in his family for generations,”
Joey tells us. “He had no children and gave it to me before
he died.”
Recollection of interesting artifacts we all dug up over
the years reminds Connie of a story. “You’ll love this,”
says Joey.
Connie recalls the time she lived in Forest Hills, Queens,
New York, and went into the basement of an abandoned house
in the neighborhood. Managing to open a locked dresser drawer,
she pulled out a treasure trove of medals and paraphernalia
from pre-World War II Europe. The owner of the dresser,
who had died years earlier, was apparently a dealer in collectibles.
He was also a German Jew who fled his country in 1938. Connie
found his passport stamped with a swastika that allowed
him to be one of the fortunate few who saw Hitler’s handwriting
on the wall and set sail for America.
Metal medallions and plaques from Germany, Austria and England;
coins with Napoleon’s portrait on them; plaques with references
to Kaiser Wilhelm: all these and more were in the collection
that Connie unearthed. She’s sold some things over the years,
she says, but has kept a lot of items that she thinks has
value.
Joey starts talking about his cowboy experiences. “I was
at the airport once to pick up a friend,” he recalls. “Some
Japanese tourists saw me. I think that they thought I was
Sam Elliott [a rugged, mustachioed actor who often played
in western movies]. I told them I was his brother, Joey
Elliott!”
Joey says that he towered over the Japanese visitors and
let them take pictures of themselves with him. The women,
especially, were fascinated by Joey’s six-shooters and wanted
to touch them.
Joey lets out a hearty laugh and rolls another cigarette.
Connie passes me a plate with a piece of cheesecake that
she and Joey bought for dessert at the steak restaurant
we just left. “This is amazing!” she says. Elinor and I
each stick a fork in the piece, which we can barely see
in the dark, a little too far from the glow of the fire.
I chew into the thick, gummy cake. “It’s got the consistency
of paste!” I say. Joey laughs and passes his joint to Dianne,
standing near him. “It’s a real cream cheese kind of cake,”
says Connie. “Like you get in New York.”
Suddenly, everybody gets quiet. I look at my watch and nudge
Elinor. It’s 10:30.
“I think we ought
to be moving along,” I say. “We’ve got to pack for tomorrow
morning.”
We say good bye and Joey walks us to our rental car, a four-door,
silver Chevy Impala. We exchange hugs and kisses, promise
to keep in touch, and drive down the hill, back to our hotel.
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An Encounter in Brussels
CAROLINE IS A TALL, SLIM, LONG_HAIRED WOMAN who has just
opened her second lace shop, this one off the Grand Place,
the beautiful town square, in Brussels, Belgium. We are
sipping wine and eating brie and trout patte and sushi at
the opening reception at her new shop, as guests of Caroline’s
friend, Magda, an employee of Pfizer in Brussels. We met
Magda on a bus to the Grand Place, started talking to her
(in English), and she invited us to join her since we asked
how to get to the very stop she was bound for. We arrive
at the stop and Magda leads us to her friend's shop. Upon
entering, she is greeted warmly by Caroline.
"I brought a couple of people from New York," Magda says.
"Oh," exclaims Caroline. "New York! How wonderful! How long
have you known Magda?"
"Oh," I say, "we and Magda go back at least ten minutes!"
Everybody laughs.
Magda used to live over Caroline’s first lace shop in another
part of the city, and she used to help run the store when
she wasn’t working. Caroline says there are many lace shops
like hers in the Brussels area, but she says hers offers
everything handmade and the prices are modest. It is time
for my wife and I to move along with our sightseeing, so
I ask Magda how to say “Good luck!” in Flemish, Caroline’s
native tongue. I surprise everybody with my accent. Caroline
smiles and hugs me and my wife after I say the appropriate
Flemish words, which, of course, I forget the moment I utter
them.
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That Unforgettable Taxi Ride!
OUR TAXI DRIVER IN SORRENTO, ITALY collects us outside our
hotel and heads for the Cappodichino Airport in Naples.
He is a slim, native Sorrentino, a smile on his face, and
he speaks fine English, although when we compliment him,
he says, seemingly embarrassed, “You flatter me!” He learned
English in school and knows a good amount of American slang
and culture. He’s surprised and amused when we tell him
that we notice some words in Italian that have negative
connotations in English. “Baby On Board” stickers in the
U.S. become “BIMBO ON BOARD” stickers in Italy, “bimbo”
meaning “child” in Italian (but "cheap slut" in English!.
Similarly, when our taxi passes the “Hotel Albatross,” we
tell him that in English, an “albatross” means a bird, but
implies a deadweight, a burden, certainly something not
desirable.
As we zip along with three hours to our flight, we suddenly
hit a roadblock. Literally. Traffic in the two-lane roadway
grinds to a standstill. An accident on the autostrada has
closed that main artery, which would have allowed us to
reach the Naples airport in only twenty minutes from where
we stopped. “I am afraid the drive will take longer than
usual,” our driver informs us, with sadness in his voice.
Then, seconds later, after assessing the situation, he adds,
“A lot longer.” We start sweating. Sure enough, a 40-minute
ride from our hotel to the airport becomes a frustrating
crawl with the promise of another hour or more to our destination.
Now, two hours have elapsed since we entered the taxi in Sorrento. We start
talking seriously about missing our flight to Brussels and
making other arrangements. We don’t want to stay in Naples.
We’ll stay at the airport. CAN we stay at the airport? What
about the reservations? Can we get a flight out the next
morning? What if it’s fully booked? Now we are sweating
in earnest. Our flight leaves at 2. It’s an international
flight. They say arrive two hours before. It’s now 1:25.
More sweating.
Finally, at about 1:30, traffic starts moving on our road.
We’re near the entrance to the autostrada, ahead of where
the accident occurred. Our driver speeds onto the highway
entrance and we’re off, as he concentrates on serious motoring.
We keep quiet, letting him focus on his driving. He speeds
along at speeds over 60 mph, passing cars, weaving around
trucks, flashing his lights to cars ahead of him in the
left lane. Like cars making getting out of the way of fire
trucks, they smoothly glide into the middle lane as he barrels
along, feet, then inches behind vehicles that don’t move
to the side, which eventually they do. We’re really moving—60…65…70….We
start seeing signs to the airport; he veers to the right,
drives onto the exit ramp. We feel like diplomats in a motorcade.
Miraculously, he pulls up to the terminal with fifteen minutes
to spare, jumps out of the taxi, returns with a cart, loads
our luggage, and wishes us well. I have my euros out, a
generous tip included, shake his hand and dart off to the
departure lounge. We make our plane with two minutes to
spare!
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Looking For Food In Amalfi
IN THE PICTURESQUE COASTAL VILLAGE OF AMALFI, ITALY, we
get off the ferry and look around the port. It’s crowded
with cafes, tourist shops, taxis, tour buses, people hanging
around, waiting for something to happen. Heeding the advice
of the guide books, we search out a side street, any side
street, where, one book says, we can discover quiet restaurants
off the familiar, tourist-trod path.
We head down one narrow, promising street and turn around
to see an American-looking couple behind us. I turn to the
woman, who is carrying a camera: “Do you know where this
leads?” I ask. “No,” she laughs. “We’re following you!”
We walk into a cul de sac; at the end of it there’s a small,
quiet restaurant. It looks empty. The proprietor, a dead
ringer for the former American baseball star player Pete
Rose, is standing in the doorway. He eyes us, looking at
the menu written on the blackboard propped up outside. Our
eyes meet and we feel compelled to go in. He informs us
that he is the new owner of this place and he has prepared
a special dish at a special price for tourists: some seafood
and pasta concoction that sounds appetizing. We order it
and it’s excellent.
The doors are wide open and the American couple who followed
us sees us. They’re from Delaware. The woman offers to take
our picture and I give her my camera. We pose at the table
and she takes the picture. Meanwhile, Pete Rose’s wife comes
out of the kitchen, a chunky pink-faced woman with stringy
black hair and a big smile. She brings us bread and we ask
for “burro”—butter.
A British couple passes by, looks in, looks at us, and enters.
The man is tall, silver haired, dressed in fine casual,
gentlemanly walking clothes. We overhear them talking; he
sounds like he stepped out of an Alistair Cooke documentary
about the House of Lords. We’re surprised to learn they’re
from Ireland. It’s like a guy with an Italian accent saying
he’s from Mexico.
As we leave the restaurant, the British Lord says “Quite
good. Glad we followed your lead.” To which I, a New Yorker
who must have the last word, respond: “Now we’ll watch where
you have gelato!” We all laugh and we leave.
On the way out, I tell the owner, “You look exactly like
the famous American baseball player, Pete Rose!” Pete shouts
something in Italian to his wife, then he turns to me, smiling:
“I no look like Pete Rose,” he says, puffing himself up.
“Pete Rose look like me!” We laugh and wave Ciao!
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