My Family Doctor Told Me At Our Last Meeting . . .
. . .that my health issues and ailments are pretty well age-related.
When I asked what I can do about that,
he said I should just lie about my age.
— Cecil Scaglione
No Baloney in Bologna
Fountain of Neptune anchors Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore.
Story & Photo
By Cecil Scaglione
BOLOGNA —- Bologna’s location is one of its major attractions, said Na’ama, the young Israeli economist who came here to study at the oldest university on the continent.
“From here,” she said, “you can get on a train and in a short time be in Parma or Ravenna or Rimini.”
There’s also Turin, Venice, the Italian lake country, Padua, and Florence all within a two-hour train ride.
After a 45-minute ride, we debarked onto the comfortably clean streets of Parma and fine-tuned our noses to hone in on a local delicacy — not parmesan cheese but prosciutto di Parma. Cut thin enough to almost see through, this version of the Italian cured ham is tender on the teeth and has a keen flavor that still lingers.
The following day, we headed in the opposite direction to Ravenna, just off the Adriatic coast.
Before tracking down a site to gorge on a plate of overflowing seafood, we made our way to the Basilica di San Vitale to view 1,500-year-old mosaics that reflect the town’s tenure as capital of the Byzantine Empire in Europe for three centuries.
We stopped by Dante’s tomb on the way. Dante was tossed out of is native Florence after he picked the wrong side in the ongoing battle with the papacy. In exile, he wrote “The Divine Comedy” after taking up residence in Ravenna.
Incidentally, you won’t find any baloney in Bologna. The model for the U.S. version of the large round ground-pork sausage is mortadella, which houses delectable chunks of fat and, when copied on this side of the Atlantic, was dubbed bologna/baloney.
And the street-and-sidewalk no-baloney bustle convinced us we weren’t in the typical town when one thinks of somnolent sunny Italy.
The desk clerk gave us a polite but brisk “Bon giorno.” The fellows who put together our coffees, rolls and fruit in the eating emporium down the street must have known we weren’t fully awakened to local prices. The bill for a banana was more than $4, which taught us quickly to ask the locals where they munch.
The clerks in the bank where I set off alarms by trying to exit through the wrong door did not take operatic offense. They just politely pointed me to the designated door without much more than a polite shrug.
The point is, Bologna is as much business as badinage. But it’s still as much about food as finance.
For our introduction to what Bolognese boast about — tortelloni made on the premises — we checked with merchants in the old quarter. A florist suggested Trattoria da Gianni, a hole in the wall down a little alley that we would have overlooked. The proprietor ushered us to a table crammed amongst many jammed with men and women in office attire who gathered here for the same reason we did. The fine food.
After getting fortified with the local specialty, we moved on to visit the two leaning towers that anchor the historic downtown. While not as attractive nor as storied as Pisa’s I Torre Pendente, these two monoliths lounge unruffled by the hurrying hordes and beeping buses rumbling around their bases. They appear more attuned to the music and musings that emanate from the nearby University of Bologna grounds, where Copernicus and Dante once scurried to class.
There’s an outdoor market every Friday in the Piazza dell’ VIII Agosto on the rim of the commercial hub that offers everything from boots to bracelets. Merchants in the nearby market-and-bakery complex display an array of fruit, vegetables, breads and sweets to match all the sights and scents of one’s dreams.
Among them we found a fist-sized roll with thumb-sized studs poking out in all directions. They appeared on our table at Trattoria Fantoni, another enticing hole-in-the-wall eatery, where we watched other diners break off these protuberences and eat them as breadsticks.
Asked what these rolls are called, our server said: “Sputnik.”
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Cruising for Bargains
By Cecil Scaglione
A recent conversation with a travel agent revealed cruise packages can be had for as little as $75 a day.
But hold on before you pounce on the phone or crouch by your computer to nab the first bargain you can find. Taking a cruise takes a bit of thought.
First of all, where do you want to go? If you can’t answer that, ask yourself where don’t you want to go. If you aren’t comfortable in cold climates, booking a voyage to Antarctica isn’t going to be enjoyable even if it costs only $1 a day.
Once you’ve settled on some sailing sites, check on what you’ll need to pack. You won’t be getting a bargain if you have to stretch your plastic to the limits to acquire the proper cruise costumes.
You also have to ponder what you want to see. If you choose a Mediterranean package, do you want to see the pyramids in Egypt, Vatican in Italy, or castles in Spain? The on-board bargain price does not necessarily translate into inexpensive excursions. On-shore outings can be brutal, both physically and fiscally.
Choices range widely from line to line. Is your interest archeology or architecture, churches or
cuisine? If you pick a Caribbean cruise, do you want to splash in the surf or go shopping?
Do you want to grab photographs of such renowned icons as the leaning tower in Pisa
or Parthenon in Athens, or would you rather pick out spots not pictured on postcards?
There are some caveats.
You could wind up in port with one or two other liners, which means hordes of hundreds of cruise customers milling around the community competing for cafe tables and native crafts at the same time. Check schedules while you’re hunting down bargains.
In major cities, end-running the tours touted by the cruise line’s excursion director can be
rewarding. You can probably get your own ground transportation to an attraction without having to be packed into a tourist-packed van or bus. This will also give you freedom to investigate on your own rather than being locked into the schedule directed by the guides.
On our first cruise several years ago, we found a few couples who shared our interests so we arranged to share cabs and other group costs when we left the liner. This was not only cheaper than the ship-sponsored tours but we avoided the lines of the debarking crowd and had more time to experience and explore on our own.
Doing some homework can save you dollars at the docks but, if all you want is to enjoy being catered to, booking a cruise can be worth the experience at any price.
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2010
Gorillas We Almost Missed
Story & Photo
By Fyllis Hockman
Mature Life Features
BWINDI NATIONAL PARK, Uganda —- The eight of us huddled together, staying close and quiet as we were warned. A soft cough escaped from one of our party and the guide shot us a glare. We were told that, if we were scraped by a stinging nettle, don’t even think about screaming.
And be sure to stay at least 25 feet away.
That rule was to protect both us and the gorillas. Because they share 98.4 percent of our DNA, gorillas are susceptible to human-borne illnesses. We’re carriers and they have to be protected from us. They’re wild animals, so we have to be protected from them.
You have to really want to see them because it involves at trek of up to seven hours, depending upon where they are.
There are about 880 mountain gorillas in the world. Almost half are in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in southwestern Uganda,
The hike is intimidating. You need sturdy hiking boots, gloves for the nettles, and plenty of water. A walking stick is mandatory.
We were feeling pretty good about ourselves as we maneuvered through the steep climbs and slippery descents traversing narrow ravines.
Until we entered the forest.
There was no semblance of a trail. The guides chopped one with machetes. The rocks, roots and brambles beneath our feet were not visible because of the thick underbrush.
With walking stick in one hand and the porter’s hand in the other, I kept moving, though at times the porter was either dragging me up or saving me from sliding down steep slopes.
I felt my arm might be pulled off by the porter or my legs by the clutching vines.
By the time we got to the designated area, the gorillas had left.
But down another steep embankment about 15 minutes later, we came into view of a couple of gorillas chowing down in the bush. They were fun to see but were mostly hidden in the trees and bushes and several of us felt it hadn’t justified the arduous journey.
Suddenly, the mammoth silverback — the alpha male of the group — turned from chowing to charging. It came very close before the tracker waving his AK-47 quickly sent him into retreat. Both tracker and silverback remained immune to our pleas to try that again after we got our cameras ready.
It was 4:30 p.m when we got back to our bus, which we had left at 9:30 a.m.
While our half of the ElderTreks group was hacking our way through the jungle, the other eight members were mingling with a group of the great apes on a road right near our lodge.
After hearing of our experience, they said they felt a little guilty but were happy to explain they saw their first gorilla within 20 minutes of leaving the lodge. Fifteen minutes later, they reached a banana plantation that a group of 19 gorillas was gleefully dismantling.
Good for the gorillas, bad for the farmer, though the trekkers did take a collection to compensate him. At one point, they said they were totally surrounded by gorillas. So much for the 25-foot rule.
While gorilla-trekking is touted as a highlight of the trip, it was only part of a 16-day adventure that included safari-game drives on both land and water in multiple wildlife reserves, chimpanzee tracking, scenic terrain, cultural outings that included a meeting with members of a Pygmy tribe and a demonstration by a traditional medicine man who used indigenous herbs to cure almost any ailment, and a lunch of native Ugandan delicacies prepared by a farmer and his wife. For more information about the list of ElderTreks destinations for travelers 50 and over, call (800) 741-7956 or visit eldertreks.com online.
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Added to Newspaperboy Confessions: Ch. VIII
The perks of roaming the streets of downtown North Bay peddling the daily Nugget during the mid-‘40s were wide-ranging and the lessons long-lasting.
As I cited earlier, it developed street smarts in a 9-, 10- and 11-year-old who’d just moved into town from the bucolic burg of Feronia that was about an hour’s dirt-road drive away.
We had no electricity (our substitute was coal-oil lamp) indoor plumbing (an outhouse, of course, and washtub for once-a-week baths) central heating (piling and chopping wood and kindling for the stove was a daily chore) nor storm windows.
Our main connection with sidewalk civilization was our twice-a-month (1st and 15th were paydays) rides – we used the bus in winter because my father put the old ’30 Nash coupe on blocks – for groceries and quick visits with friends, and our battery radio that was turned on only for the nightly news.
So diving into the ‘Bay’s commercial core and culture was fantastically eye opening and educational. Without realizing it, I got to know many of the movers and shakers in the city of 18,000. I’d run in and out of the soon-to-be mayor’s jewelry store and sell him a paper if someone hadn’t beat me to him. I’d crash highly animated political (I didn’t know then that’s what they were about) debates in several of the sports and shoe shine shops along Main Street.
And I’d see Mr. Smith sneaking some suds in the Continental Hotel with a paramour Mrs. Smith ostensibly knew nothing about. These encounters usually resulted in a sale because it seemed like the cheating husband felt buying a paper sealed my lips. I never intended to hunt down his wife and tattle, but I was pleased that he thought I might if he didn’t buy a paper.
We unwittingly made life-long connections because everyone remembered you as the kid who once sold papers. In some cases, that wasn’t so good.
Among the things I learned was how you could sneak into the theaters to watch movies. A fellow paperboy said his older brother, who was an usher at one of the cinemas, told him to buy some confections once you slipped by the ticket taker. The theater made more money on the candy bars and Cokes, he said.
And there were immediately-satisfying events. Like the time I found a crumpled-up $5 bill right in front of the check-out counter at the Arcadian Grill. FIVE DOLLARS! That was about what I made in a month of newspaper sales. I showed it to the restaurant manager, and he said no one reported a loss, and then ran across the street to show it to Hector Bentley (he operated a magazine stand in front of the Post office and used crutches to get around but was always dressed in a hat, suit, shirt and tie with shoes shined at all times) and he said no one had mentioned a loss to him. It was a remunerative as well as memorable day.
Another sweet memory is stopping by Central Bakery on the way home. It was right on the bend where Main Street angled north into Klock Avenue (later Algonquin Avenue) that turned into the two-lane highway reaching north to the precious-metals mining towns of Kirkland Lake and Timmins. On most days, there would be a couple of sugar-dipped doughnuts still soaking in the sweetness at the bottom of the tray slanted in the window for display. Because it was near closing time, I would get them for half price. Even thinking of them now, they surpassed their weight in gold.
When I joined a local senior softball league a few years ago, the first team I played with was sponsored by a local doughnut shop. Their array was sweet-toothsome, but no match for those Central Bakery “leftovers” from so long ago.
– 30 –
In Our Constant Battle to Save Civilization . . .
. . . our wars are killing us.
–– Cecil Scaglione
Some More Newspaperboy Confessions: No. VII
One of the most utilitarian tools I ever had in all my years was a canvas bag for my newspapers made for me by my godfather.
He was Augie Cicci, a close friend of the family who owned and operated a shoe-repair shop on Algonquin Avenue for several decades. It was closed a few years after I left North Bay when he was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital in critical condition when a robber failed in his attempt to kill Augie with one of his own cobbler hammers. (Augie eventually became lucid enough to greet visitors from his hospital bed and the cowardly crook caught and jailed for a time.)
But back to the bag.
I’d been peddling the North Bay Nugget for about a year and was picking up more and more to, of course, make more money. I would pick up 20 or a couple of dozen that were the maximum I could arm-carry comfortably while foot-padding around downtown and in and out of restaurants, shops, and beer parlors. On good days – payday, Friday and Saturday — I usually rushed back to the Nugget for a second load.
Augie’s shop was on Algonquin Avenue (it was Klock Avenue then) next door to what would become my high-school hang out – Demarco’s Confectionary (the family-owned-and-operated shop finally closed down a few weeks ago after some eight decades of accumulating customers). It was across the street from the Pro-Cathedral of the Assumption a couple of blocks off the western end of downtown. About once a week, usually the quiet Wednesday afternoons when retailers shut their shops to stock their shelves for the upcoming weekend, I would trot down and visit with Augie for a bit. This was long before I realized Demarco’s was a hangout. We always saw each other at Christmas, Easter, Italian weddings and several weekends in between when our folks exchanged visits. That’s how he came to be my godfather for my confirmation when I was 12 or 13 at St. Rita’s Church, so he wasn’t yet my godfather when he made my newspaper bag.
My mother had a piece of canvas big enough to turn into a pouch large enough to hold as many papers as I could carry without my knees buckling. She gave it to Augie and he worked it through his heavy-duty sewing machines and produced a bag with a leather strap that allowed me to carry 30-plus papers with ease.
I learned quickly that it made several downtown merchants uneasy. You see, it was also large enough for a wily little street rat to tuck stolen candy bars, toys, cigarettes or most anything you could think of into that bag without being seen.
When I found that out, I enjoyed several of the sweetest moments on my forays downtown.
A fellow named Maroosis, owned a sports-equipment store about mid-town. His window display included baseballs and hockey pucks and catcher’s mitts and team sweaters and so on. And so did the shelves in his store. I used to drop in occasionally and putter with a fielder’s glove or a pair of skates or other piece of sports equipment I would dream of owning. He never bought a paper from me and rarely talked to me but was always exceedingly friendly to most of the other customers who were either jocks or, of course, bought stuff. He supplied both local high schools with their team jerseys and jackets as well as equipment and for most of the fastball and hockey teams in town. He was the main game in town. (When I was older and got more involved in sports, I bought my equipment — skates, gloves, pads, hockey sticks, ball mitts, etc. at Mr. Lefebvre’s, who was much friendlier and allowed me to make purchases with some money down and regular payments.)
To Mr. Maroosis, I was just a nobody kid – and he taught me how to have fun with that.
When I entered his store and no one else was in there, Mr. Maroosis would head into the back and leave me out there alone. Dicey, wouldn’t you think, to leave me out there with all that stuff and my great big newspaper bag? I would have thought so if I hadn’t spotted very early on that he had a peep-hole through the wall dividing his sales counter from his stockroom. So I knew he was watching me – and probably hoping I’d do something stupid so he could collar me and kick my ass into the arms of the nearest cop. So I would pick up a ball glove and punch my other hand into it making believe I was playing ball and then pick up a handy ball and pop it in and out of the glove and then put the glove down and try on another one and, every once in a while, look over my shoulder without glancing at the peep-hole. I’d do this for probably only 10 minutes or so because that’s a long time for a kid. And then I’d sorta sigh and drop whatever I had wherever I was at the time and slip silently out the door pretending I was unaware he was watching. I’d scoot into the entrance-way of the shop next door from where I could see his reflection in his store windows as he came right out to collect whatever I had been toying with and put it where it belonged — and to make sure nothing was missing.
I’d drop in and visit his store again the next afternoon — I always (ALWAYS) asked if he would buy a paper and he never (NEVER) did — and the evening after that and then the following afternoon and – well, you get the idea.
If for no other reason, I’ve thanked Augie hundreds of times for that bag.
-30-
Seems Like the San Diego Chargers . . .
. . . have got a lot better at playing hardball than football.
— Cecil Scaglione
It is always easier …
… when somebody else does it, 
or when “it” happens to somebody else.
— Cecil Scaglione
Still More Newspaperboy Confessions Ch. VI
Billy Larochelle and I rarely bumped into each other after I relinquished my spot in the waiting line for Nuggets to rumble off the presses six days a week in downtown North Bay. I moved to the other end of town and we went to different high schools. He also matured into an excellent multi-sport athlete. He wasn’t much bigger than I, but he had many times more talent, athletic skill and toughness.
But we spent a lot of time together for a couple of years pounding the downtown pavement selling papers and conning passersby.
The conning began rather innocently. While scurrying into and out restaurants, shops and saloons peddling our papers – he and I leap-frogged each other in our chase for customers – I managed to lose my money one day through a hole that developed in my pants’ pocket. (When I started newspaperboying, my mother gave me a little change purse but it wasn’t designed to use for gathering coins and providing change while maintaining control of an armful of papers so I did like my colleagues, I banked on – and in – my pants pocket.) I lost more than usual because it was a payday Saturday and I was near the end of my second batch of papers. I’d bought 20 papers to start and ran back for another armful. The papers cost 2 cents each and we sold them for 3 cents. On paydays, we’d get quite a few nickels “and keep the change.” So I’d lost about a buck.
I told Billy my problem — and that I’d probably get what-for going home without any money. We were sitting on the curb in downtown Main Street and Billy thought for a minute. Then he said, “Cry.” I said, “What?” And he repeated, “Cry.” So I put my hands to my face and started “sobbing.” A couple of people stopped to see what was wrong and Billy told them I’d lost my money and that I’d get a licking if I went home without any dough. And he added some eloquent embroidery by adding that I’d been beaten up by bigger kids and my family was poor, and whatever else came to his mind.
It wasn’t long before a lady gave us — me – a quarter to buy one of my remaining papers and a couple dropped a couple of extra nickels to buy the remainder. Then a guy who’d been drinking a bit stopped to listen and he popped a $1 bill – A $1 BILL!!! — out of his pocket and said, “Here, kid.” Hallelujah! Billy had saved my skin. But he wasn’t through. He said, “Keep going.” So I did and after a few more encounters, I – we – wound up with almost five dollars.
Billy wasn’t concerned about getting a fair share or an even split, he was just going to enjoy what we had. So we hopped to a nearby restaurant and got ourselves each a tin roof sundae (a scoop of vanilla ice cream topped heavily with chocolate sauce and handsful of salted peanuts). Then we went to a movie and got ourselves each a candy bar and a Coke. And we stopped for another tin roof after the theater. I still had about $3 left and offered to give him one dollar but he said, “Never mind.”
What he did do was have me run the same scam a few more times before we parted ways when I no longer sold papers. None but he and I ever knew about our venture. And it was certainly fun while it lasted.
When we did bump into each other on occasion around town as we grew up, one of us would just say “Cry” and we’d both break out big grins.
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Mature Life Features 