He said: "Man that no look neat, no good. I no like him, girls no look
at him. Bah!"
I was almost always offered some food from the bursting dinner buckets
of my friends: a tomato, some sausage, a green pepper, some lettuce and
cucumbers. I accepted gladly for it was always superior to my restaurant
provender.
Tony told me one day that Jimmy had come over "too late from old
country, to learn speak English and be American." He was thirty-one
years old. He was going back this Christmas. And Tony was going too, but
just for a visit. They were going to Rome. We had talked it over a good
many times, all Italy in fact, people, women, farms. Tony turned to me:
"You come Italy with Jimmy and me this Christmas? We go see Rome."
I assented quickly, wishing I somehow could, and was extraordinarily
proud of that invitation.
I must not forget the occasion of the green pepper. One noon I sat
beside Jimmy during the lunch hour. The whole Italian wing were
together, sitting on benches in the brick shanty. Jimmy reached among
the loaves of bread in his bucket, and hauled out a green pepper as big
as an orange. He offered it to me and I accepted.
Treating it like my old friends the stuffed peppers, I bit deep. The
whole shanty watched eagerly for results. I hadn't reckoned its raw
strength and instantly felt like a blast-furnace on all heat. Despite
all efforts I couldn't keep my face in shape, or resist putting out the
fire with the water jug. The pleasure I furnished the Roman mob was
enormous.
After that I learned to eat green peppers rationally and agree with my
friends that they are beneficial. Beyond their health qualities they
have an economic justification. With their help you can make a meal of
cheap dry bread. Plain and unbuttered it costs you but six cents a half
loaf which is a full meal, and hot green peppers will compel you to stow
it away in self-defense. As Tony phrases it:--
"Pepper, make you eat bread like hell!"
Tony thinks that Americans eat too much that is sweet; it makes them
logy and sleepy. I think he is right. Joe claims that the people in
America do not know how to make bread; the wheat he says is cut when it
is too green. The gang, of course, bring Italian bread in their buckets.
It is certain that the American lunch of a soggy sandwich and piece of
pie leaves a man heavy for the afternoon. The average dinner bucket in
the shanty contains: a loaf of bread, a piece of meat,--lamb, beef,
chicken, or sausage,--three or four green peppers, a couple of tomatoes,
a bunch of grapes, and some vegetable mixture like tomatoes chopped with
cucumbers and lettuce.
One day the gang got absorbed in stunts, climbing a ladder with the
hands, giving a complete twist to a hammer with grip the same, the usual
turning trick of a broomstick held to the floor, etc. My contribution
was squatting slowly on the right leg with the left stiff and parallel
with the floor. John complained of a lame thigh for three days after, I
am gratified to say.
With Tony I occasionally picked a wrestling quarrel; he has a terrific
grip and one day very nearly squeezed the life out of me in a fit of
playfulness. I called him "Orso" afterward for his squeezing attribute.
Tony's make-up includes a sense of humor. One day when he had rolled
about on the floor in front of Number 3, he said: "Ain't you 'shamed,
Charlie, you young man, fight old man like me. You twenty-two,
twenty-three, me thirty-seven!"
Tony could put me beyond this vale of tears with his left hand.