The Pope's Hat

Got acquainted with a nice old guy in Rome today.

He seems like a good chap.

His name is George, but he goes by Francis. His friends call him Frank. These Italians. Everyone has a nickname. My aunt Margarite was called Nac-a-nac, my aunt Stella, Mitzie, my Uncle (I don’t even know his real name), they called him Scunitsa. Had something to do with his being sneaky. My uncle Sammy was called Kelly. Kelly’s wife was Irish. I won’t tell you what they called her, but Uncle Kelly didn’t care. She looked like Marilyn Monroe. They even lived near Hollywood in California. She ran off with the guy next door. Too bad. After that, no one else dared marry Irish. 

Anyway, back to Frank. I figured he was a grandfather. Everyone called him Papa. I went to his house on the other side of the river. Big place. Old, but kept up nicely. Marble façade. Nice grounds. 

He’s Italian, but his folks immigrated from Piedmont to Argentina to escape Mussolini. My grandparents were in the US then. I heard they had to send the gold jewelry they smuggled out of Naples back to Italy to support Mussolini’s war. Not sure if it’s true. Maybe it was another one of Scunitsa’s schemes to extort money from the family. Turns out Frank was not totally on the up and up himself. I later saw his picture pasted on wanted posters all over Rome.

 

I should have know something was up when I saw the cops outside his house.

But the day was not a total loss. On the way home to the hotel, I was wandering through the side streets when I came across a little bakery/sandwich shop. I stopped in and used my best French to ask for un Jambone e frommage en baguette. They gave me the stink eye. I learned the French are regarded below the Irish, who, as it turns out are preferred to Sicilians.

So I switched to my dumb American act and asked for a ham sandwich with cheese on a roll. Well, the girl took out a prosciutto the size of the Pope’s hat (Now do you see where the title of this story came from?) and sliced off a half dozen pieces. She loaded up the freshest roll I ever had with the ham and some cheese, wrapped it in butcher paper and asked for something like "quarto ba chin doo te.”  I grabbed a cold coke, gave her a ten and hoped for change. I found a shaded spot next to an old castle

 

and had the best lunch I could imagine. 

I consider myself lucky. Certainly luckier than the poor beggar who had waisted away to nothing waiting for money.

 

Too bad he hadn’t met some nice old guy like Frank who would have taken him in. Speaking of nice old guys, as I was walking home after my sandwich, I saw a young boy with big brown eyes sitting on the curb crying. A nice old guy stopped and asked him why he was crying. The boy said in broken English, “I wanna do-a what-a the big-a boys do.” The old man sat down and cried with him.