Mind the Roses

By John Gerard Sapodilla

Uncle Michelino
Born in Pellezzano di Salerno from an affluent family in a very poor world, my uncle Michelino had known happy days before the failure of his father's flask factory. After the disappearance of his father, possibly due to suicide, he had to interrupt his studies and leave the safe haven of the Father Salesian School, about which he always had good things to say. If his luck hadn't run out, maybe Michelino could have become the king of flasks.
After a while, we see him as an immigrant in Rome with his whole family. Luckily, friends of friends found him a job as an office boy in a private patent and trademark office.
The life of a young office boy from a good family was hard. He ate dirt at work but mama's good macaroni at home. In his spare time, he joined the merry brigade of paesanos in Rome.
Uncle Michelino was not a daring guy, but luck helped him anyway because the main partner of the office had an only son of the same age with whom he made friends. At the time of military service friendships count, especially if Italy had just entered the Second World War. Uncle Michelino showed up for a medical check-up in the barracks with a strange fever, due to a cigar he had kept under his armpit. The military doctor was been whispered a name and all ends well.
Luck was not yet satisfied with Michelino. See what happened some years later. The Patent and Trademark office had a branch in Milan and it happened that its director could resist temptation, to the detriment of the partners. That director must therefore be replaced quickly, but the men were at war and an incredulous uncle Michelino was catapulted by fate around Piazza del Duomo, where he landed off as a manager. For years he will carry out his honest job as a pain in the ass to the office employees. Mists in winter and too dry heat in summer, this was Milan, a city where everyone runs, without knowing the reason. Uncle Michelino was seized by the neophyte syndrome, the renegade Southerner used to chat about efficient Milanese and loafer Romans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Gerard Sapodilla
• Release date: Nov 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005837839

John Gerard Sapodilla

Mi hanno detto che sapevo scrivere e io ci ho creduto.Il Cuoco del Miramare e L’uovo SbattutoIl cuoco non può sopportare zio Filippo, E’ un istinto naturale, sentimento diffuso tra i nipoti che hanno la sventura di uno zio di successo. Zio Filippo da parte sua non fa che rendere peggiore la situazione, col suo comportamento immobile da dietro il vetro tenuto dalla cornice, sarcastico fissa suo nipote. Zio Filippo è il cordone blu della famiglia, chef reclamato e blandito dai ristoranti di Parigi, Londra, New York, per l’insuperabile supremo medaglione alle erbe di Provenza in crema ai tre formaggi svizzeri.Come ogni mattina, prima di uscire al lavoro, il cuoco si mette in testa il cilindro da chef e al collo il cordone blu, si ammira tra estasiato e invidioso allo specchio, rimette a post e prende la porta. Anche lui un giorno avrebbe avuto un gilet e un orologio d’oro con catena come il fottuto Filippo.Quante volte, nel giorno di chiusura, furtivo e di soppiatto, il cuoco è andato alla cucina del Miramare a provare la ricetta del medaglione: tante volte le galline convocate all’assaggio ci hanno raspettato con le zampette per allontanarsi scotendo il capo.Tutte le creature hanno il loro segreto, la vergogna nascosta del cuoco è il guscio dell’uovo. Per fare l’uovo sbattuto è necessario frangere il guscio sull’orlo del bicchiere che accoglierà la chiara. Non si può fare altrimenti. Questa operazione causa una frattura nel sistema nervoso del cuoco, gli trema la mano.Per porre rimedio, egli a messo a punto un metodo innovativo. Aperto lo sportellino di una stia, la gallinella salta giù e si allontana disinvolta, il calcio nel sedere del cuoco la sorprende innocente, crack.

Book preview

Uncle Pasqualino

In the family, he was always mentioned as uncle Pasqualino. Strictly speaking, he was not my uncle. One day young guy Pasqualino emigrated to the States where he became a gangsta. Another day he presumably got killed because he stopped sending letters to Italy. Not sure. That’s all.

How exciting. I have no gangsters. Only border raiders after sheep and women."

Uncle Ciccillo, the Uncle I Always Wanted

I want to tell you about uncle Ciccillo from Naples.

Ciccillo was not really my uncle, but in the family he was always mentioned as Uncle Ciccillo. Born from a noble and rich family, which used to be received in Naples at the Bourbon Court. Ciccillo was possessed by the demon of the poker. A short happy life was that of my Ciccillo. His wife Anacleta had a judge declare him mentally unfit before he could lose all his properties. This leads us to talk about Aunt Anacleta and Aunt Evelina, the two sisters we all called auntie. Aunt Evelina had married the young officer Alfonso, who was my uncle for real.

Two ghosts always in slippers and dressing gowns, these were Evelina and Anacleta when I first met them. They never left the house, not even for Sunday mass. They spent the time with a fan in their hand blowing the embers of the charcoal fires. There was always something on fire, at least a pot of coffee. Upon my arrival in their home, once a mansion with stables, they welcomed me rushing with joyful steps and the local custom shout 'ooàà'. I must say that I was pleased. But they were two bastard scrooges, they didn't deserve my instinctive affection. They never gave me a gift, a shirt, a book. And they were still rich, after my dear Ciccillo one night bet and lost a hospital owned by the family.

Uncle Michelino

Born in Pellezzano di Salerno from an affluent family in a very poor world, my uncle Michelino had known happy days before the failure of his father's flask factory. After the disappearance of his father, possibly due to suicide, he had to interrupt his staudies and leave the safe haven of the Father Salesian School, about which he always had good things to say. If his luck hadn't run out, maybe Michelino could have become the king of flasks.

After a while, we see him as an immigrant in Rome with his whole family. Luckily, friends of friends found him a job as an office boy in a private patent and trademark office.

The life of a young office boy from a good family was hard. He ate dirt at work but mama's good macaroni at home. In his spare time, he joined the merry brigade of paesanos in Rome.

Uncle Michelino was not a daring guy, but luck helped him anyway because the main partner of the office had an only son of the same age with whom he made friends. At the time of military service friendships count, especially if Italy had just entered the Second World War. Uncle Michelino showed up for a medical check-up in the barracks with a strange fever, due to a cigar he had kept under his armpit. The military doctor was been whispered a name and all ends well.

Luck was not yet satisfied with Michelino. See what happened some years later. The Patent and Trademark office had a branch in Milan and it happened that its director could resist temptation, to the detriment of the partners. That director must therefore be replaced quickly, but the men were at war and an incredulous uncle Michelino was catapulted by fate around Piazza del Duomo, where he landed off as a manager. For years he will carry out his honest job as a pain in the ass to the office employees. Mists in winter and too dry heat in summer, this was Milan, a city where everyone runs, without knowing the reason. Uncle Michelino was seized by the neophyte syndrome, the renegade Southerner used to chat about efficient Milanese and loafer Romans. His drug, his intoxicating opium, was the time to sign the correspondence to be sent to clients, which included many famous multinationals. Unscrewing the cap of his fountain pen with the gold nib (for which I still feel sordid envy today) he corrected voluptuously any supposed mistake, when he found one or he thought he did. I suppose everyone in the office hated him for playing the tinpot dictator.

In Milan, he married a secretary in his office, a pretty girl called Iride. Aunt Iride was fragrant, elegant, smart. I was a child when she came to Rome to be introduced to mama in law. She looked like a fairy to me, instead she was false and vain. I'm glad my uncle later had an affair; at least that's what they said in the office.

Uncle Michelino used to return regularly to Rome, to report to the office owner and to carry out practices and paperwork, but also to visit relatives, especially his mom. During a visit, on a Sunday afternoon, he took me as a child to the football stadium. It was Roma versus Don’t Remember. I didn't understand what were the twenty-two players doing on the football field but I was happy.

Uncle, what is the name of the Roma goalkeeper?

Risorti.

Time went by. In another of these visits, I found myself with him on a bus that goes to Piazzale Flaminio.

We didn't buy the tickets, unca? I asked him.

But no, we stay here at the end he replied.

That must have been a time of elective affinity for sure.

At our bus stop, we stepped down and headed to Via in Lucina. Suddenly I saw flashes of despair and indignation on his face.

Did you know that the Municipality of Rome had billions and billions Lire of debts? He could not hide his anxiety and anger.

I kept quiet. What should I know about millions and billions Lire? I had a very simple family life, here in Rome. Sometimes I would wear sneakers and go to Via delle Fornaci, to the Parish of San Pietro flics, for fifteen lire you could see three movies in same night.

To amaze me, once he told me that bread leftover for lunch or dinner in Milan was thrown away

Years later fate took me to work in Milan, where I discovered that our good puffy roll Rosetta was called Michetta in Milan and was nothing good. In fact, I threw it away as soon as I bought it. In Milan there were no debts, but neither was there the great Pagnotta Casareccia.

At the end of a visit, when it was time to leave Rome and return to his office in Milan, Uncle Michelino used to give me five thousand Lire, which I would spend on comics. Over time and inflation, the five thousand became ten thousand Lire, which I spent in other ways. When I was working in Milan, Aunt Iride was forced to invite me for dinner once a month, and she bragged in a very boring way about what she had put on the table. So one evening I told her that all the fruit and vegetables in Milan were not worth the wonder we had in Rome. And then she put me on the blacklist.

Fate led me to spend the weekends just a few minutes away from his holiday home by the sea. He was walking lonely without even a dog when I met him the last time.

I still hear his desperate voice:

Gianni, they threw me out! Fired!

Because of his age, and because they couldn't stand him anymore too, he had been fired, very politely and with good manners of course. He couldn't understand how his office and the whole world could go on without him. Deprived of his job, his great love, perhaps his only love, he was a wandering rag. We could finally become friends, me and him, but I never saw him again.

Now years later, I regret not having asked him for his fountain pen with the retractable gold nib. That fountain pen never lost a drop of ink and made perfect flourishes. That pen in his hand, he felt like Tsar Ivan the Terrible checking and signing the ukase, the edict written by his advisers.

Uncle Michelino, do you remember that evening in Rome when we went to the house of a civil servant with the Fiat Topolino car lent you for a night by Uncle Michele? I was waiting for you down in the street, while you went upstairs to give the man a bribe.

Uncle Michele

The young girls wrapping candy one after another have disappeared, replaced by robot machines, so don't go and wait for the girls at the exit after work. In truth, everything disappeared from the large basement in the middle of Viale Giulio Cesare in Rome. To gain access you went down a steep and short staircase, just a few steps and immediately you could breathe in the taste of liquid chocolate and melted sugar. It was the Misar artisan factory and my uncle, Michele Sarno, was the founder.

To the right of the entrance hall, the girls in white bonnets and white gowns would wrap one candy after the next, as if shelling a rosary of curses towards Signora Maria, who counted and memorized how many wrapped candies each girl had poured into her own little basket. Thirty girls, fifteen on one side and fifteen on the other side of the long table, all wrapping candies by hand, under the blue icy eyes of my great-aunt Maria who would sit stiffly at the head of the table. A spinster, despite her natural platinum blonde hair, Aunt Maria could check from her seat both her thirty young slaves and the entrance door to the small factory. At every sound of footsteps from above, she looked at the entrance, hoping it was a long awaited suitor. Candy-wrapping girls no longer exist, replaced by automatic machines, and we are all happy for them.

Aunt Maria was the only sister of Uncle Michele, who was a good sensitive man. He began a humble life as a pastry boy in Baronissi, a little town in the South of Italy, to become one day the head and owner of his own small chocolate factory.

He married Rachele, a stupid woman and a bad cook. Rachele gave him two daughters and a son, who unfortunately inherited mind and brain from their mother.

My short uncle Michele had an entrepreneurial mindset. He bravely left his small town and moved to Rome, together with a tribe of relatives to start up a nougat, candy and chocolate craft workshop under a basement near the centre of Rome. The first years were hard, then the luck called war kissed him. It was the second world war. One man's misfortune is another man's luck. During the war, the shortage of cocoa pushed him to sell chocolate made with any available ingredient, and it was a jackpot for his business. At the end of the war, there were duties and customs in Italy, even transport was difficult. Consequently. the workshop did not suffer from competition but consolidated and became a small factory, the Misar in Viale Giulio Cesare. Uncle Michele joined the Liberal Party and became a member of the Lazio football team. Now he indulged in the habit of having the barber coming down to shave him every morning in the factory, as all the important people used to do in Baronissi.

Uncle Michele was now a little king of chocolate in Rome. He bought a fabulous penthouse in via Cola di Rienzo, near the city centre, and the whole family moved to the new house with him. The large abstract painting hanging in the entrance of the penthouse should not deceive the visitor. Uncle Michele remained a simple and good-natured man, the abstract painting was of little value.

The cold wind of competition arrived. Customs and duties disappeared, highways were built. The Misar factory was too small and the family-run business showed its limitations. An astonished Uncle Michele saw his creation destroyed, but the Goddess of Misfortune was not yet satisfied.

One day I happened to go down to the Misar Factory, the candy-girls had all disappeared, everything was silent. Uncle Michele welcomed me surrounded by his relatives, lost courtiers of a king without a kingdom. We talked about something and nothing and suddenly to my amazement he burst into tears. He told me about his son who had abandoned him. Uncle Michele's soul had remained in his small southern town where only the family matters. The Misar Factory had to surrender to competition from the big factories in the North of Italy. Honour to its soft chocolate bar with the first quality hazelnuts.

A Funny Not So Tall Man With a Moustache

The name he used to go by was Alessando Masucci but everyone in the family called him Zì Marchese (Uncle Marquis). He wasn't a marquis and not even my uncle. Maybe he was someone else's uncle but I never asked out of discretion. At that time he had the only pharmacy in town. A pharmacy founded by his great grandfather in 1850. His father and grandfather were also pharmacists.

Originally each pharmacy backroom was a laboratory with pestles, stills and other instruments for making drugs and natural medicines. There was no pharmaceutical industry at that time, just something medicinal that was bought by the friars. A row of beautiful porcelain jars contained the laboratory powder production. Each jar cured an ailment and a small dose wrapped in paper was sold to the customer.

Everything would have gone well if it wasn’t for the fact that the town doctors, more murderers than clinicians, usually misdiagnosed and the prescription poisoned the patient.

But it is time to explain how it was that our Alessandro, the last heir of the pharmacy, became a marquis.

So, Alessandro and his brother Enrico were sent to Naples to attend the University. Alessandro had to take his degree in pharmacy, Enrico had to help his brother spend the money for textbooks on women. In fact, the books were not strictly necessary. On the day of each exam, a basketful of a wonderful cheese, provole e and caciocavalli, arrived as a tribute to the examiner, and ensured tragic consequences were avoided. Attracted by their spending and spreading, the best Neapolitan families opened their doors to them.

The two said they were descendants of a noble family and the Neapolitans pretended to believe it. In Volturara, to tease them, friends from then onward called them the count and the marquis.

In the village the peasants hoed the land with great effort to keep the two rascals in Naples.

Zi Marchese had a niece who lived with him. She was a tragic figure, desperate for not having found a husband. A carabiniere had courted her for some time, until he had been transferred and so Goodby, my beautiful, goodby.

Every time that I met him, he was friendly and courteous but how he was before and after these times I don’t know.

The 1980 earthquake destroyed all the porcelain jars and the world they contained.

Tom and Pum

Having arrived at the intended place and once the sack ties are loosened, Uncle Alfonso incited the riotous creature inside to come out and play.

Finally, the rabbit, tired of hearing shouts and insults, threw himself out from the sack and fell into the lawn. After giving a sloppy glance at Tom and Pum, the two perplexed dogs, he began to graze on the grass.

At this point, Uncle Alfonso and his assistant Mastarrico believed they must begin the hunting training, by tapping the ground and terrifying the indifferent rabbit.With feral looks, mixed with inhuman and ferocious cries they excited Tom and Pum. The two dogs questioned each other dumbly, wondering where the two trainers wanted to end up with all this noise.

The kids have a tender heart, my cousin Gen and I started playing the Dog and the Hare, so that their uncle's day was not lost. I run in leaps and bounds while Gen followed behind me with terrible barks.

When Uncle Alfonso took two cartridges from his jacket and loaded the shotgun, the hare and the dog decided that it was time to put an end to the hunting comedy and found a shelter behind a dry stone wall, from where they repeat the solemn oath.

We will spit on his grave.

I Don't Remember the Color of the Thread

At the time of my paternal grandmother, poverty in the village was the same since the Middle Ages.

Our peasants slept under a blanket on the ground without a mattress. Grandparents, children, brothers and sisters, wife and husband all together sleeping in one room. Their room was completely devoid of furniture and furnishings. They had only one large earthenware plate and wooden spoons. In the evening they would eat together from this plate. The usual dinner was pasta, beans, potatoes and bread, perhaps a little wine that tasted like vinegar. Peasants had only one suit, the boys went barefoot, the women had rag shoes, only the men had real shoes. They all got up at dawn, to dig a hard earth with a hoe and returned at sunset.

One of them, Mastarrico, Master Enrico, was so called because he was a cobbler. He was lame, I don't know if due to illness or accident, so he couldn't hoe. In the afternoon, after lunch, my uncle Alfonso used to call Mastarrico, so that he would make him fall asleep telling a tale about the Saracens. Mastarrico would lie on the ground next to my uncle's bed and begin the story in a very strict dialect, as in a sung chant, which I found hard to understand, listening unseen from the door, ajar, of the room.

My grandmother Ernestina Masucci, my father's mother, gave birth to sixteen or eighteen children, no one knows exactly how many. Most of them died sooner or later of some disease. When I was born there were four of them left, three brothers and a sister. I saw my grandmother Ernestina only once. She asked me, according to the custom, if I was Gerardo's son, I said yes. She was sewing and she asked me if I could pass her thread through the needle’ eye. I did it quickly. I don't remember the color of the thread, but it must have been black or white. Her sons paid her a respect that no longer exists. The following year grandmother died and a whole world died with her.

This was the time of my paternal grandmother when in the village poverty was the same since the Middle Ages.

Running water in the houses was uncommon. The peasant women came back from the fountain carrying a large copper bucketful of water on their heads, which they protected from the weight by a black cloth circle.

We could call that place and that time The Donkey Age.

The donkey was overloaded with firewood. His hooves slid on the paving stones up the Via Campanaro ascent, the owner swore and shouted at the animal. Now as always the villagers rushed to help, pushing and encouraging the poor beast. The donkey was scared and tumbledseveral times but finally started up again.

Fresh Eggs and Chicken Legs

The doorbell rings, because it's four in the afternoon on Tuesday. I go open the door and warn my grandmother.

Grandmother, your paesano has arrived.

Once the door is opened, the paesano with the black bag appears. He has a fat and greasy look and he wears a jacket with only a single button hardly fastened. His trousers are short and leave his ankles uncovered.

My grandmother and the paesano use to relate each other formally.

What do you bring us, sir?

The black bag opens on the kitchen table.

Madam, I have here twenty fresh eggs and a chicken.

On every egg shell is glued a straw thread. The hen is plucked and cut into pieces. My grandmother weighs an egg and squeezes a thigh between her two fingers.

I take twelve eggs and two legs.

All that remains to do is the math. Our man takes a notebook and a copying pencil out of his pocket, He wets the tip of the pencil with the tip of his tongue.

For you, I price an egg at twenty-five lire, for the two legs give me five hundred lire.

A Boy Called Potassium

Potassio always wore sky blue T shirt and shorts. Maybe it was this detail that betrayed him. Hidden behind the front door of a building, he was waiting for the tram to come to Piazza Strozzi. It was not a good idea to change the route of Tram Nr 8 and force it to cross Piazza Strozzi with two sharp bends in and out. Indeed the two-carriage green tram had to slow down almost to stop. The strategist Potassio knew these weak points of the tram. He let the first wagon pass on so as not to be seen by the driver, but before the second wagon passed he would come out and expertly place a small bag on the track before under the last wheel. With a horrible bang the wheel made the harmless explosive mixture explode.

The driver, forced to stop the tram every time, stepped down, looked around and threatened the air with the track switcher rod. Finally defeated and furious he stepped up and went on.

Nobody lnew how Potassio got the mixture which was filling the bag.

The Goalkeeper Capoccia

We boys had a football team. The goalkeeper was known by the name Capoccia (Bighead) because his head looked like a pumpkin. I don't know what hooks and tricks had helped him to arrange a football match with the Parish of San Pietro team with only seven players per team because the pitch was small.

So the next Sunday morning we set off for San Pietro. Unfortunately, that morning our team lacked its best elements for one reason or another. The game began and the opponents emerged from all sides, piercing the unfortunate Capoccia. I was the left fullback with specs to see which side the ball was on. But I would have needed six eyes, not four, because of the following amazing reason. A few meters away from our goal a planted tree stood, not a sapling but a real tree with branches and fronds, and trunk wide enough to cover the advancing attacker. Changing the sides in the second half was of little benefit. Those of San Pietro knew how to defend their goal with the help of the tree.

Unto those who have, more shall be given. An evil individual, a priest, was both the referee and the coach of the San Pietro team We the losers were through 23 to 1.

Capoccia should have had to beg for forgiveness on his part, instead in the following days he assumed an air of superiority, then one day he disappeared for some time. It was known that he had attended an audition with the Roma Football Club. The selectors had told him he had no ability. He lacked catch, quickness and agility. And now, dear Capoccia, after so long a time I can give you my opinion. You were a dumb fatass.

Aunt Martha and Joe

An Aunt in New York. Sharing a Cab

Aunt Martha took something from the oilcloth black bag that she held between her legs and smiled at the girl.

Here you are, it is a boiled corn cob. We brought it from home.

The girl rejected the cob with her hand and continued to sob.

What a strange girl, she does not like boiled cobs, thought Aunt Martha, who took something else from her bag, trying to appear compassionate.

Maybe you would prefer a hard-boiled egg? It’s from our chicken, you know.

The girl showed no gratitude.

Look, Auntie, why don't you fuck off to your countryside with your egg and your cob? This morning I had a nasty argument with the guy I share an apartment with, because of his dirty socks on the fridge. I am now homeless. I arrived at my office and I heard that the head of personnel wanted to see me. I thought , maybe they give me a bigger office and a pay raise. Instead they told me that I had to go. Fired.

The girl began to sob again.

Aunt Martha tried to speak in a low voice. She wanted to whisper something to her nephew Joe sitting next to her.

Joe, who is this girl? Why is she in our cab? Couldn't she go crying at her mother's?

Joe smiled diplomatically:

.Aunt Martha, this is not our cab. It's a share cab. Once in a while someone who wants to go somewhere steps up and shares with us. As for this girl, I can hardly believe she has a mother around here. Girls leave their home and come to live in New York City.

Aunt Martha was not happy, not even a little, to hear the news, and Joe had to endure her resentment.

Joe, I just hope our neighbours down in Bumville will never know that we had to share a cab.

Auntie, enjoy the tour of the city for a few bucks, then something to eat at a Mexican restaurant.

Aunt Martha gripped her black bag.

And we may share the table with half a dozen peones to save money. No, Joe, we brought everything we need. We will eat in a park.

The girl stopped sobbing and studied the two country people. She addressed Aunt Martha, realizing that auntie was the one who decides.

You, say, madam, could I come with you to the country?

Aunt Martha had no time for the girl. Her eyes were fascinated by the meter on the instrument dashboard.

Hey you, driver, your contraption is broken. It does not mark how much we owe you.

So? I'll get it fixed one of these days. Don’t worry about it. I'll tell you how much it will cost you at the end.

Aunt Martha did not approve of the driver's behavior and continued with her nephew Joe.

Joe, give him a punch just above his nose and break his glasses. Then we will step down. I do not want to share a cab. You know those gossips down in Bumville.

Joe was not paying so much attention to auntie. Joe rather looked at the ankles of the girl. Girls have thin ankles here in New York. The girl smiled at Joe without being seen by Aunt Martha.

Look, Joey, I'm a decent girl, maybe you have a big house in the country and a lot of work to do. I could give you a hand.

Aunt Martha tightened her lips and examined the girl's brittle painted red nails. For now she had no time for her. She had to solve the problem of the meter.

Driver, how much do we owe you so far?

You are not to worry, Auntie, she will pay her share, and sooner or later some other passenger will step up to split the fare.

Aunt Martha was a smart country woman. She realized she was surrounded by enemies. The girl was trying to dupe her Joe, and the driver was a robber. Her strategy was to divide the enemies, starting with the side that seemed weaker.

Dollie, listen to what Aunt Martha tells you. You step down and we will pay your share.

A rain shower arrived, loud and sudden. A guy was trying to shield his hat under a newspaper. He came to the taxi front and the taxi stopped. The guy was now sitting next to the driver.

Thanks, man said the wet guy to the taxi driver.

This is a share taxi, you do not have to thank me.

Aunt Martha realized that it was a big mistake to come to New York, and now a wet stranger had appeared in the cab she believed to be hers.

Say, could you not carry an umbrella? Aunt Martha scolded the stranger drily."

The wet passenger swung around to meet Aunt Martha.

George, is that you? Take off that wet hat.

Gloria, damn, where did you get lost to? I have been asking for you everywhere.

The girl, Gloria, took off the hat passionately from George’s soaking head and shook it in the direction of Aunt Martha.

The cab stopped at a traffic red light. The rain stopped too. Gloria and George made a quick nod at each other, opened the doors and spun away.

Aunt Martha disapproved of the romantic getaway.

Joe, the two left without paying their share. How is this possible?

Never mind, Aunt Martha, the meter is broken after all.

Neither did the taxi driver mind, he held the two passengers hostage.

Joe's Birthday

The usual apple pie and a fleece jacket with red and blue squares as last year?

Aunt Martha anxiously shook her head before replying to her good neighbor Felicia.

No, this time we'll do something different. You can bring the usual basket of apples if you wish. I put them in the straw down in the basement. It will be good for the next holiday.

Mmm, no cake and no shirts, what will give this year Aunt Martha to her little Joe on his birthday? It's next Sunday, right?

"I'm really anxious, Felicia. Sit down here a moment. Joe is spending every night, all night, drumming. He says he wants to set up a musical band. As soon as he comes home, he begins to play that damn drum, shoeless, and in his left sock there is always a hole, where his big toe sticks out. He grunts when I bring him something to eat and drink to his room.

Oh, poor Martha, what a regrettable situation. This year you could give him a box of cigars and a pair of new socks.

Felicia, no. He needs something that will make him forget that cylinder covered with donkey skin or something. This year's gift is a bitch.

Martha, my goodness, you will not want to send little Joe alone to one of those places full of bad women?

Of course not. Do you think I am so stupid and inexperienced? It will happen here in this house on Sunday afternoon. The sheriff, who knows all because of his work, gave me a phone number. You stay here and I try to call.

Hello, Escort Service, what can we do for you? a sharp woman's voice replies."

Oh, we're here, my neighbor Felicia and I, we would like a good girl with good education and manners for my Joe's birthday.

How old is your boy, Aunt Martha?

It would be thirty-six just on next Sunday. We were wondering, Felicia and I, if the girl could not come after the lunch hour and stay with Joe until dinner, and if we, Felicia and I, could come and choose the right one for him.

Does your Joe have any particular inclination?

He plays the drum, but needs to improve. How much will the girl cost?

Uhm, say two thousand bucks all included. A special price for Joe and Aunt Martha.

There couldn't be something cheaper for my Joe?

I wanted to send you one of the best girls, but if you come to visit us you can choose something for less. Say, about one thousand eighteen hundred dollars. We really have nothing good for less.

I do not think I can afford so much.

You can always buy a new drum for your Joe. See you, Auntie.

A Scaglietti Car

No auto- body craftsman will ever make again a Scaglietti-like car.

Joe, did you ever wonder why your skin is almost black?

It's because of the sun in the fields, Aunt Martha.

I said, almost black skin, not dark or tanned.

I am not a black man, auntie.

Listen, Joe, I must tell you something about it. Do you remember your grandmother Evelyn?

Sure I do. She was blonde and thin, milk-white skin and hair of a yellow as a ripe cob.

And she liked to walk around the narrow paths among the cornfields. One day she heard a horn behind her and she saw Sidney, wearing large plastic glasses behind the wheel. Listen to them

Ehi, Sidney, What a noiseless car! how come it’s not puffing and creaking?

This car is a Scaglietti, Miss Evelyn, an Italian car.

Sidney was a smart, cute black man, tall, slim as a lightweight boxer.

Let me ride in your car, Sid. Tell me again where this Scaglietti car comes from Evelyn said with the air of one who was interested in cars, not in black drivers.

Sidney liked to talk about cars, without having the air of one who was interested in white girls with hair the colour of ripe corn cobs.

Oh, Miss Evelyn, just look at the original trademarks on the wheels and on the hood. When you open the door and sit inside, you feel like you are in a dream. You don't even hear a sigh from the seats. Start up the engine and the sound cannot wake you. Absolute silence, yet the engine is running. Every mechanical piece is lovingly polished by hand, as is all that leather upholstery! No one knows where Scaglietti got his cow skins. On the sale contract of each car, he promised not to reveal the secret. It was said that he used the skin of some cows from a Scottish farm which were fed with a secret blend of hay and grass. They said an English tannery was part of the supply chain and he provided certain vials prepared by the pharmacist of his village, to be added to the tanning vats. The final test happened at dawn. He and a music maestro, a music teacher, went to the top of a hill to catch every dissonant sound from the engine orchestra. A German mechanic waited behind them and would be called if required. It was said that Scaglietti required information about his customers before selling his cars, and he did refuse to sell one to a king