THE WINES OF OCTOBER

Some of the most pleasurable moments in my life have been those enjoyed during quiet evenings alone wrapped around a good book. No sounds except for occasional soothing background music. After a while of relaxed reading the seductiveness of the evening often eases me into a reflective mood and some late-night thoughts.

I had just finished reading the last page of Philip Roth’s recent novel “The Human Stain,” a riveting tale of the amazing life and experiences of its leading character Coleman Silk. A life odyssey full of surprising twists and turns, heights and troughs. I was particularly stirred by the stark yet tranquil word-portrait with which the book ended of a man set off against the sound and fury of his past and of the outside world:

Only rarely, at the end of our century, does life offer a vision as
pure and peaceful as this one; a solitary man on a bucket, fishing
through eighteen inches of ice in a lake that’s constantly turning
over its water atop an Arcadian mountain in America.

After reading this passage and reflecting on its overtones my thoughts drifted back to my Beech Street years and a particular scene. When I was around ten or eleven years young three of my friends and I occasionally went into the woods adjacent to the granite quarry behind my house to do some open-air cooking. Frankfurters, buns and mustard – occasionally joined by potatoes. Each of us would, through the actual or assumed generosity of his mother, make a contribution to these provisions. Oh yes, since none of us had been boy scouts we also brought matches and paper along.

Finding a suitable spot we gathered up dry branches and twigs placed them over the paper and started our fire. As it took hold we threw increasingly larger pieces of wood into it until we had a strong sustainable combustion. If we had potatoes we would place them in the ashes at the bottom of the fire, occasionally turning them over to brown or sometimes blacken them evenly, producing the most delicious, natural-flavor potatoes known to humankind. Each of us would find his own green branch, not too thick and not too thin, and with our pocket knives whittle down one end into a sharp point with which to pierce his frankfurter.

We sat around the fire extending the frankfurters-soon-to-become hot-dogs, just the right distance above the flames, a distance determined not from a cookbook but empirically from trial and error. At first there was quiet conversation then gradually as bubbles formed on the hot dogs and drops of juices began hissing into the flames a peaceful quietness enveloped the scene, the only sound that of crackling firewood. While this was occurring the outside world was restless about an eminent war in Europe and suffering the ravages of the Depression

Both of these scenes speak to me of what in the end and after all is said and done is the solitariness of the individual as he stands naked before the Cosmic Infinity. Not visible on the map of the earth as it spins around at a thousand miles per hour and circles the sun at a velocity of sixty-six thousand miles per hour, occurring in an unending void, nothing more than a globe of cooling gas, located among billions of stars in one galaxy out of countless other galaxies, sits a solitary man on a bucket fishing in ice eighteen inches thick atop an Arcadian mountain and four silent youngsters sit around a fire in the soundless woods of Fitchburg holding hot dogs over its flames each wrapped in his private world.

We learned to be resourceful in coming up with ways to entertain ourselves.  Stick-ball on the street, swimming at Parkhill Pond, Cowboys and Indians up in the Quarry. Then there was the B.A.B. (Bare Ass Beach) up on the Quarry, a pool of crystal clear water of unknown origin that formed between towering rock formations.  We guys swam naked. At times we knew there were girls hiding behind boulders at a safe distance who got a giggling kick out of watching us.  They would hurriedly disperse whenever we pretended to run in their direction.  We stopped going to the B.A.B. after we found a dead cat in the water.

We formed a club and actually built a club-house mid-way up a sturdy tree in the Palozzi yard on Beech  Street Lane where we had meetings of a sort. Experiences in the club showed that two traits of Italian character remained alive and well among the offspring of the immigrants.  The first was the historical fact Italians – unlike the other European countries – had never mastered the art of political stability and orderly self-rule. Every once in a while someone would bring up the subject of having club officers or leaders just as everyone else had in America. There was a general consensus that this should be done but being young we didn’t know much about what officers a club should have.  All we knew was that we had to have a President.  It was agreed that Alfred be given the job of finding out what officers a club should have. He reported back that besides the President we needed a Vice President, a Secretary of State, Secretary of Treasury and a Defense Secretary.  That’s what the book he read said that the United States had.  That’s when arguments broke out. Jasper said he wanted to be the Secretary of the Treasury because he had always dreamed about finding treasures, as a matter of fact he had read more treasure books that anyone else.   Everyone wanted to be the Secretary of the Treasury so we were stymied as to that position.  Rudy said he didn’t care what the others wanted and that since he was the toughest of all of us, he said he should be the Secretary of Defense, that way he could defend the club-house. He was booed down. There was agreement only on one point, a Vice President was a no-no because we had all been told by Sister Angela in our catechism  classes that vices were what bad people had and that they were the ones who would burn in the fires of hell.  In the end we threw out the whole idea