When you boil it all down, I guess I’m a pretty poor excuse for an Italian. I’m only half-Italian, really, as my mother was a Euro-mutt: half German, and the other half English and Irish. The ethnicity we most identified with as a family was Italian, though, and as I look at and listen to the other Italian “kids” I know, my life was comparatively devoid of Italian customs and traditions.
I think I know the reason for this. When my father’s parents came over from Italy — on their respective boats, and about fifteen years apart by my best guess — Italians were the “dirty” immigrants washing ashore in waves and glutting the job lines, relegated to the filthiest, least glamorous, lowest-paying jobs to be had, just so they could feed their families and establish a foothold in their new world.
And I think that sensitivity was bred into my father and his siblings, because to a person, none of my uncles or my aunt seemed to be very “Italian.” I believe they each — either by instruction, or by their own initiative — abandoned their Italian identities and clung to everything “American” that they could grab. They spoke English to each other, though they all could speak in their parents’ Abruzzese dialect. They cast off most of the old customs and traditions. They adopted the American versions of their Italian names — well... all except for Uncle Guido — Maria was Mary; Giovanni was John; Francesco was Frank; there was the stalwart Guido; Remo was Ray; Giuseppe was Joe, though everyone has called him Chooch forever. My father is the mystery. The handwritten name on his birth certificate is indecipherable. It’s either Vincurzio or Vincurzino, but certainly not Vincenzo, though he was James Vincent — Jimmy to his friends and family — all his life.
Throughout my life, our “Italian-ness” was more of a distant background than a foundation. Just about the only things Italian that my family honored was that we were all baptized and raised Roman Catholic, and Italian food. At the holidays. Only. Made by my non-Italian mother!
Most of the other Italian customs and traditions I knew of were what I heard from other Italian kids at school and around the neighborhood, the right-off-the-boat (plane, really, I guess) Italian family that lived across the street and a few doors down from us and Italians whose homes I visited with my father when he dragged me along on his handyman or traveling barber errands.
There was always a smell in these homes, an aroma not of cooking, but yet the suggestion of food. I never smelled this aroma in my own home, but it seemed so pervasive to me in these other Italian homes that I identified it as the “Italian smell.”
I smelled it again today when I picked up an elderly couple in my taxi. The gentleman apparently wasn’t feeling too well, and they were on their way to the emergency room at the local hospital. The moment their garage door opened (yes, the garage), that aroma reached my nose before the sound of the woman’s voice reached my ears, and even had I not already seen their name on the dispatch order, I could have told you their ethnicity.
That aroma — which now as an adult I can identify — is anise. The couple’s name? Mattiuzzi.
With that first breath, I was once again briefly in every Italian home I have ever visited since I was a kid.
But not my own.
°
Monday, January 17, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Karmagical
Lately I have been working straight days. Well, "day" is a relative term, as I still start at 3:30 a.m. — in darkness — and quit around 6:00 p.m. — in darkness. I still work just about every day, so, lately, on Saturdays I "sleep in" until 5:00 a.m. or so, and plan usually to work until 5:00 or 6:00 p.m.
It was a pretty sleepy Saturday morning — yesterday — as I headed out to Arlington Heights, my usual cruising grounds in the taxi. It was seven o'clock. I had just started; the cabin of the car was still cold. A zone number popped up on the dispatch computer screen indicating an open fare. It was still a good ten minutes away from me, so I left it alone, but it stayed up there. Indeed, a sleepy morning...no other taxis out yet, or they all worked overnight. So I claimed the fare.
It was just an address, with the message "church, PU main entrance." When I arrived it became clear that the church was also a part-time homeless shelter, which, I learned moments later, provides a hot evening meal, a warm place to sleep and a simple breakfast to those it shelters from the cold.
I had picked up the guy about six to eight weeks before from another church in the area. He looks to be about mid-forties to mid-fifties — the gruff, weathered skin of his face makes it difficult to judge — white, with longish, straggly hair and a light, scruffy beard, and somewhat portly, though it could just be layer upon layer of clothing to keep him warm. What had struck me then was that he wore on his feet a pair of open shoes — open like sandals, but in a shoe shape with a mouth that snugged around his ankles — over white socks. He wore the same shoes Saturday. He loaded a couple of plastic shopping bags into the trunk of my taxi, along with his backpack. He directed me to the Mt. Prospect train station, and along the way I asked him if the shelter fed him. He spoke appreciatively of the hot meal they provided the night before. I asked him about breakfast, and he said that sometimes they provide a hot meal, but it's usually bagels and pastries and coffee and juice. So I made up my mind.
When we arrived at the train station he reached into his pocket to pay the $6.00 fare. I turned to him and said, "Keep it."
Before I could say more, he looked at me with a startled expression. "Huh?"
"Keep it," I said. "Make sure you get something to eat today."
He was very grateful, repeating several times, "Thank you very much!" As he began securing his plastic bags to his bicycle, which he had left locked up at the train station, he said to me, "Thank you very much! Have a good day!"
It seemed an odd thing to say to me as, I thought, there's little that could happen to me that would make the coming day worse than the one coming to you, sir, as you tool around on your bicycle looking for places to stay warm — and alive. The thought came out of my mouth as, "You have a good day!"
And I went on about my business.
It was very quiet the rest of the morning, but then things started to pick up around eleven o'clock. By one o'clock in the afternoon it was pretty much non-stop, with very little time to nap, or play on Facebook at the newly-discovered (by me) WiFi hotspot from the Holiday Inn Express across Arlington Heights Road from one of our posts.
By four o'clock, I was contemplating calling it a day, as, for a Saturday day shift I hadn't done too badly. But I chastised myself for being lazy, and decided to stick it out for at least the twelve hours I planned to work.
A couple of fares later it was around six o'clock in the evening. Usually, when I set a quitting time, I'll start about an hour before that time, working my way west, toward my gas station of choice, near my home, with the dispatch computer still available to receive fares. I call it "trolling," as though I'm a fishing boat moving while dragging a line in the water for whatever I can catch. At 6:15, when I was about five minutes from the gas station (where I would have then booked out of the dispatch system), I received a fare to pick up not five minutes from my location, but to the south.
I picked up a guy who looked to be in his fifties, but with long hair and a kind of stoner look about him — and he reeked of reefer smoke. He had me take him to a 7-Eleven store about a mile and a half from his house where he picked up a couple bottles of wine, and then had me take him back home.
On the way back to his house I saw on the dispatch computer a fare open up in the zone where I live. I figured it was probably a local, and that would be just fine. I was ready to go home. As we approached the guy's home I notified via the dispatch computer that I was just about to clear a fare, and that I would like to take that open fare.
As soon as I dropped the stoner dude off and booked back in to the dispatch system, my computer sounded with the fare I had requested, and I accepted it. But it was not a local. It was to take 4 people from Hoffman Estates to Northbrook! Twenty-two miles!
It was a Polish family heading to some party — probably a wedding reception — and they were very nice. Not great tippers, but, what the hell! The fare came out to $62.20! The dad paid with a credit card, and told me to make the total out to $65, but I goofed on the math and the card was run for $66. I pointed out my mistake and offered to give him a dollar back out of my pocket, but he said, "No. Iss okay!" and signed the slip. My day went from a respectable gross of $168 to a quite admirable $234!
It didn't occur to me until I was all the way back home and getting gas that I had started the day by giving away a paltry six dollars to a guy I figured needed to keep it in his pocket way more than I needed to get it into mine. I had taken the last fare on a whim because it was close to home; I was otherwise just headed home.
In telling others about this, I jokingly mentioned Karma, but I don't really believe in that. Another quoted scripture to me in an attempt to explain it, but if you've read here long enough, you know I don't believe that. I could use the $6 charity/$66 fare - 666 correlation to undo her explanation — and perhaps frighten her, but I don't believe that either!
It's just a coincidence, and the rare occurrence of a Good Day for Tony!
°
It was a pretty sleepy Saturday morning — yesterday — as I headed out to Arlington Heights, my usual cruising grounds in the taxi. It was seven o'clock. I had just started; the cabin of the car was still cold. A zone number popped up on the dispatch computer screen indicating an open fare. It was still a good ten minutes away from me, so I left it alone, but it stayed up there. Indeed, a sleepy morning...no other taxis out yet, or they all worked overnight. So I claimed the fare.
It was just an address, with the message "church, PU main entrance." When I arrived it became clear that the church was also a part-time homeless shelter, which, I learned moments later, provides a hot evening meal, a warm place to sleep and a simple breakfast to those it shelters from the cold.
I had picked up the guy about six to eight weeks before from another church in the area. He looks to be about mid-forties to mid-fifties — the gruff, weathered skin of his face makes it difficult to judge — white, with longish, straggly hair and a light, scruffy beard, and somewhat portly, though it could just be layer upon layer of clothing to keep him warm. What had struck me then was that he wore on his feet a pair of open shoes — open like sandals, but in a shoe shape with a mouth that snugged around his ankles — over white socks. He wore the same shoes Saturday. He loaded a couple of plastic shopping bags into the trunk of my taxi, along with his backpack. He directed me to the Mt. Prospect train station, and along the way I asked him if the shelter fed him. He spoke appreciatively of the hot meal they provided the night before. I asked him about breakfast, and he said that sometimes they provide a hot meal, but it's usually bagels and pastries and coffee and juice. So I made up my mind.
When we arrived at the train station he reached into his pocket to pay the $6.00 fare. I turned to him and said, "Keep it."
Before I could say more, he looked at me with a startled expression. "Huh?"
"Keep it," I said. "Make sure you get something to eat today."
He was very grateful, repeating several times, "Thank you very much!" As he began securing his plastic bags to his bicycle, which he had left locked up at the train station, he said to me, "Thank you very much! Have a good day!"
It seemed an odd thing to say to me as, I thought, there's little that could happen to me that would make the coming day worse than the one coming to you, sir, as you tool around on your bicycle looking for places to stay warm — and alive. The thought came out of my mouth as, "You have a good day!"
And I went on about my business.
It was very quiet the rest of the morning, but then things started to pick up around eleven o'clock. By one o'clock in the afternoon it was pretty much non-stop, with very little time to nap, or play on Facebook at the newly-discovered (by me) WiFi hotspot from the Holiday Inn Express across Arlington Heights Road from one of our posts.
By four o'clock, I was contemplating calling it a day, as, for a Saturday day shift I hadn't done too badly. But I chastised myself for being lazy, and decided to stick it out for at least the twelve hours I planned to work.
A couple of fares later it was around six o'clock in the evening. Usually, when I set a quitting time, I'll start about an hour before that time, working my way west, toward my gas station of choice, near my home, with the dispatch computer still available to receive fares. I call it "trolling," as though I'm a fishing boat moving while dragging a line in the water for whatever I can catch. At 6:15, when I was about five minutes from the gas station (where I would have then booked out of the dispatch system), I received a fare to pick up not five minutes from my location, but to the south.
I picked up a guy who looked to be in his fifties, but with long hair and a kind of stoner look about him — and he reeked of reefer smoke. He had me take him to a 7-Eleven store about a mile and a half from his house where he picked up a couple bottles of wine, and then had me take him back home.
On the way back to his house I saw on the dispatch computer a fare open up in the zone where I live. I figured it was probably a local, and that would be just fine. I was ready to go home. As we approached the guy's home I notified via the dispatch computer that I was just about to clear a fare, and that I would like to take that open fare.
As soon as I dropped the stoner dude off and booked back in to the dispatch system, my computer sounded with the fare I had requested, and I accepted it. But it was not a local. It was to take 4 people from Hoffman Estates to Northbrook! Twenty-two miles!
It was a Polish family heading to some party — probably a wedding reception — and they were very nice. Not great tippers, but, what the hell! The fare came out to $62.20! The dad paid with a credit card, and told me to make the total out to $65, but I goofed on the math and the card was run for $66. I pointed out my mistake and offered to give him a dollar back out of my pocket, but he said, "No. Iss okay!" and signed the slip. My day went from a respectable gross of $168 to a quite admirable $234!
It didn't occur to me until I was all the way back home and getting gas that I had started the day by giving away a paltry six dollars to a guy I figured needed to keep it in his pocket way more than I needed to get it into mine. I had taken the last fare on a whim because it was close to home; I was otherwise just headed home.
In telling others about this, I jokingly mentioned Karma, but I don't really believe in that. Another quoted scripture to me in an attempt to explain it, but if you've read here long enough, you know I don't believe that. I could use the $6 charity/$66 fare - 666 correlation to undo her explanation — and perhaps frighten her, but I don't believe that either!
It's just a coincidence, and the rare occurrence of a Good Day for Tony!
°
Saturday, January 01, 2011
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