The first stop along the coast was Monterey, after which we headed down the most beautiful part of the California coast, along Highway 1: the Big Sur area. This region, so beloved by Kerouac, with the Santa Lucia Mountains looming high above the breaking waves, is absolutely spectacular. Then we pulled into the more heavily touristed Santa Barbara, where the pleasures that awaited us were perhaps earthier and less poetic but still quite noteworthy. We found ourselves in a restaurant with a funny logo, an owl with two eyes wide open, forming the two letters O of the name of the place: Hooters. We had never heard the name of this particular fast-food chain. We thought we’d tried them all, from Mr. McDonald to Miss Wendy to Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken. No, Signore Hooters was a new entry as far as we were concerned. We took a quick look inside and remained somewhat nonplussed by what we saw—agreeably nonplussed, let it be said. There was a crowd of young women in uniform and on roller skates serving the happy customers. That wasn’t all: the outfits of the young waitresses, all in their early twenties, consisted of nothing more than a skimpy white tank top, two sizes too small and with a neckline cut so low that it seemed wrong to call it a neckline, and a pair of super-short orange shorts that left little indeed to the imagination. And that wasn’t all. All of the waitresses seemed to have one thing in common—or perhaps I should say two things in common: immense, savage rotundities were swelling and pressing to explode from their necklines, so low that perhaps I should refer to them as waistlines. And their skimpy tank tops were doing very little to contain these amazing round phenomena. The bra size of the least pneumatic of the girls was at least the size of Dolly Parton’s. In short, a panorama that could make Hugh Hefner himself go white as a sheet.
In two minutes, Signore Hooters was already another of our all-American heroes!
The following morning, we set out for our first swim in the ocean—not just any ocean, but the Pacific Ocean. It was quite a daunting undertaking for three young men accustomed to the placid, tepid waters of the Mediterranean Sea. I had barely dipped my big toe into the blue Pacific when I realized that there was no way I was getting into that water. The temperature was subarctic, and even ten liters of good Italian vin brulé would hardly suffice to warm my blood and restore my circulation if I took a dip in those icy waves. Corrado was braver than me. He was in the water for a total of two-tenths of a second, but he did in fact go in. It was a full twenty minutes, however, before his body got back the color of a living human being.
We wandered around the city until the middle of the afternoon, then climbed back in the car to head south to Los Angeles. On the radio “Ventura Highway” was playing, my favorite song by America, and when I noticed a sign reading VENTURA, I could hardly believe my eyes. We were listening to “Ventura Highway” on the Ventura Highway!
Los Angeles was an immense metropolis, and we weren’t crazy about it. It was so big you never knew where you were. But how could we miss going to Beverly Hills and taking a look at the front gates of billionaires’ and movie stars’ mansions? Or taking a walk along the Hollywood Walk of Fame and strolling nonchalantly over the names of famous movie stars?
Best of all, a short tour of Rodeo Drive: that was the road where Julia Roberts, one of our personal goddesses, went shopping in Pretty Woman. I would give anything to see her smile and her unaffected beauty in person—what would I say if I happened to run into her? Would that ever happen in my lifetime? Probably not, but it doesn’t hurt to dream . . .
I emerged from the dream when I noticed, not far away on Sunset Boulevard, a Tower Records, my favorite record store. Whenever I see that logo, my mouth starts to water. I had to go in, no matter what city I was in, to find all the records I’d never be able to find in Rome.
After leaving LA, we headed south toward our final destination on the Pacific coast, San Diego; a couple of hours’ drive down the San Diego Freeway would get us there. San Diego was a magnificent city, with a hot, dry climate and colors and scents that reminded you Mexico was just a stone’s throw away. Endless beaches with piers extending out into the ocean, stretches of breathtaking coastline reminiscent of Big Sur, with mansions and houses perched above the waves—like at La Jolla, living up to its name as “the Jewel”—and a sense of freedom and peace that made me fall in love with the place on the spot. After the requisite stop at SeaWorld we took the San Diego trolley from downtown to Tijuana, the “Door to Mexico.”
We had expected a village with little white adobe houses like those we had seen in the Speedy Gonzales cartoons. We stood speechless after crossing the border on foot. Where we’d expected a village, we saw a vast metropolis. We walked onto the Avenida Revolución, a street the size of New York’s Fifth Avenue. We soon learned that you could find whatever you wanted—cheap—in Tijuana: tequila, cigarettes, marijuana, sex, food, drugs, you name it. We settled for round after round of margaritas and wonderful fajitas. With a few cartons of Marlboros tucked under our arms, we wandered back over the border to San Diego.
The next day, as I was strolling toward the Gaslamp Quarter, my eyes almost bulged out of my head: at the corner of Fifth and F streets, I saw a sign reading CROCE’S. It was Jim Croce’s restaurant, currently run by his widow, Ingrid. The great man had died in 1973, and I never would have dreamed I’d find a restaurant dedicated to his memory here, in San Diego.
It was just incredible. Anywhere I set foot in the United States seemed to give me a musical gift; it was as if I were following a path marked out by the notes of the songs I loved best.
The next day, after all the walking and exhausting touring, it really was time to enjoy the beach—sunshine, hot sand, cold waves, and nothing else. We chose Mission Beach and Ocean Beach. At the end of the day, looking out at a breathtaking sunset over the Crystal Pier and the Pacific Ocean, we really had no choice but to take the wise advice of another American hero of ours, Forrest Gump: Since we’d gone this far, we might as well turn around, just keep on going!
It was time to start our coast-to-coast trip back to New York.
11
Highway Song
So we hopped on our Greyhound and headed for Las Vegas. Along the road, the bus made a rest stop, and as I got out I felt the most incomprehensible blast of heat I’d ever experienced in my life. For the first time, I knew what the desert really was.
Once we got to Vegas, we certainly weren’t about to miss our opportunity to tour the casinos. My lucky numbers were 28 and 11, 11 and 28. I was ready to make a killing and leave Las Vegas a wealthy man. I was going to make a sound investment in the roulette wheels of Nevada: fifty bucks. More than that, I couldn’t afford. And so, having performed all the necessary rituals to ward off bad luck and propitiate the gods of fortune, and encouraging one another in turn, we three operators from Ocean’s Eleven walked out onto the Vegas Strip ready and eager to choose the unfortunate casino where we would doubtless break the bank. Fate selected the Excalibur.
We walked in with the swagger and determination of born winners, and sat down at the roulette table. I couldn’t think of anything but my lucky numbers—28 and 11, 11 and 28—and so I laid down my first stack of chips on those numbers. No luck—neither number was a winner. On the other hand, both Corrado and Alessandro came up winners. Winning, however, exposed their extreme ignorance about roulette, and they both lunged to grab their winnings. Neither seemed aware that the croupier was responsible for distributing the winnings. With a look of disgust on his face, the croupier clearly would have happily hit them over the head with his stick.
In return, I’d have happily punched him in the nose, as he kept singing out “Place your bets” but never seemed to hit a 28 or an 11. Ten minutes later, my fifty greenbacks had vanished into the thin desert air. To make things even worse, in fact, they’d been won by Alessandro and Corrado, who happily continued to place one successful bet after another. Crushed, I abandoned my friends at the roulette table and went to phone Giuliana:
“Darling, I’ve lost all my money! But Alessandro a
nd Corrado are winning like the sons of bitches they are!”
I barely had time to finish the phone call when I saw Alessandro’s silhouette in the distance as he came running toward me: “I lost all my money! But Corrado is winning like the son of a bitch he is!”
It was self-evident: fortune was blind, but disaster could see us perfectly. We consoled ourselves with the thought that we were certainly lucky in love. At that point, we decided that Corrado would take revenge on our behalf and went back in to cheer him on. And since we Romans always exaggerate—in our actions, in our obsessions, in our mannerisms—we rooted the way we had at Yankee Stadium. Corrado wound up winning over a hundred dollars. At least he had broken the bank at the Excalibur!
The next day was devoted to the Grand Canyon. The road leading there proved to be beautiful: desert, scrub, the Hoover Dam, uphill and downhill in blistering hot sunlight. Once we were near the park, though, it didn’t strike us that we were any closer to our destination—we hadn’t seen any ridgelines, mountains, or deep valleys that might suggest there was a canyon in the vicinity. Because if there’s a canyon, you notice it. On our right, running parallel to the road into the park, there was a thick wall of bushes. We noticed a succession of familiar forms sticking out of the bushes: the rear ends of one human being after another! This series of people, for some reason that eluded us, had chosen to jam their heads into the bushes.
Overwhelmed by our curiosity, we parked the car and pushed our heads through the bushes. What I saw on the other side was indescribable: a red-rock canyon plunging hundreds of yards down from a perfectly flat horizon into the distant depths, where a tiny Colorado River meandered along.
It didn’t look real. It looked like a spectacular painting done by the hand of God. It was immense, with a varied gradation of hues—red, yellow, orange, pink. The surface was a perfectly flat line, from which sheer walls descended straight down, eroded by millions of years of flow of the waters of the Colorado River. It was a deeply shocking experience—I felt as if I’d lost all sense of depth and proportion.
We stayed for as long as the daylight would permit us. When it was completely dark, around nine at night, we got back in the car to head back to Las Vegas. We left with a deep sense of gratitude and respect for the gift our new friend, the Grand Canyon, had given us.
It was about eleven p.m. and I’d been driving for a couple of hours while my two friends slept. In the distance, I saw a strange glow that you might say resembled the northern lights or E.T.’s spaceship. As we got closer to Las Vegas the glow increased, but it was only when we drove over the top of the last hill before entering the city that we understood what that glow was: it was Las Vegas itself! It looked as if a volcano had erupted and its glowing lava had covered the city in a giant luminous blanket. Once again, we were struck dumb—this time, in the presence of an incredible man-made creation: a sea of light in the middle of the desert.
Our trip eastward would continue the following day. Given the experience we had already accumulated and the fact that we’d become accustomed to traveling hundreds of miles every day without effort, we opted for the cheapest but also the least comfortable option: three days by Greyhound, from Las Vegas to New Orleans.
Because the bus made plenty of stops, we managed to get a glimpse—a short one, admittedly—of many American cities, from Phoenix to Tucson (which cities made me think of Dan Fogelberg, another favorite of mine) and then El Paso, San Antonio (I got out of the bus whistling Dan Seals’s “San Antone”), and finally Houston. And then we reached our destination: New Orleans. We went for a walk and stumbled onto a place called the Cat’s Meow, which struck us as funny. Inside, a furious karaoke battle was under way.
In Italy, I’ve always hated karaoke, but here I was in seventh heaven. As I leafed through the book of music, I found the Beatles, James Taylor, Dan Fogelberg, the Eagles, Alabama, Jackson Browne . . . As we drank one toast and then another, the place filled up. An audience was shouting with excitement, ready to applaud the performance of aspiring singers.
At some point in the evening, I stepped away to visit the bathroom, and when I came back I was greeted by a situation that might reasonably have caused a nervous breakdown: everyone in the club was looking expectantly in my direction, as the blond emcee had just called my name to come up on the stage and sing! My two bastard friends had put in my name while I, all unsuspecting, was off in the bathroom. They were happily applauding from the safety of the far end of the club. I hovered there, undecided whether to take to my heels or accept induction into the Hall of Shame.
I opted for the latter—I certainly couldn’t disappoint a roomful of screaming fans. The emcee was whipping them into a frenzy, urging them to “give it up for Luca from Rome,” while I stood there shaking like a leaf, microphone in hand, waiting to be told what I would be expected to sing. My anguish was short-lived. After a few seconds of a twelve-string guitar riff, soon joined by a wailing electric guitar, I recognized the piece. Overjoyed, I summoned all the voice I could muster and belted out: “Well, I tried to make it Sunday, but I got so damn depressed, that I set my sights on Monday and I got myself undressed.” It was “Sister Golden Hair” by America, and there, in New Orleans, for a few enchanted minutes, I was Gerry Beckley. The audience smiled, clapped, and gave me the thumbs-up while on the monitor the lyrics of the song spooled by—though I had no need for them. Luca Spaghetti was singing “Sister Golden Hair” by America at the Cat’s Meow in New Orleans, and no one seemed to be making a move to toss him out of the place! At least, not yet.
When I finished my rendition to a wave of applause, I was in a state of complete exaltation. I wanted to stay on the stage for the next three days, like at Woodstock. I wanted to serenade New Orleans with one song after another, but my own good sense and the angry glares of the other singers on the list suggested it might be time to get the hell off the stage.
I went back to the table and embraced my prankster friends. I thanked them for volunteering my services. They said nothing; they just handed me the tape they had just made of my performance.
That evening, determined to miss nothing, we went to the temple of New Orleans jazz: Preservation Hall. A truly classic venue where patrons could savor authentic traditional jazz, it was run by a group of exceptional musicians who would take any request from the audience, for the donation of a dollar. The band was led by an old woman playing the piano, and they shared some unforgettable musical memories with us. I didn’t know the titles of a lot of those songs, but I had heard them dozens of times in my own home on my father’s record player. That night at Preservation Hall is still one of our most beautiful memories of that trip, for the music we heard and the magical atmosphere of that historic place.
From New Orleans, still aboard our trusty Greyhound, we continued north to Nashville, the capital of Tennessee and of country music. I forced the guys to tour the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Grand Ole Opry with me. We spent the evening at the Wildhorse Saloon, where we watched a line dance class. Now, if there’s one thing I have absolutely no gift for, it’s dancing. A broom handle on a dance floor would probably be more graceful than me. Still, I was fascinated by line dancing. It was a group dance, everyone moved in unison—old people and young people together—and, of course, only country music played in the background. Maybe I’d give it a try someday. But not that night. It was too late, and my friends—more because they were sick of country music than genuinely tired—made me say good-bye to Nashville and we set off for our next destination.
As we drove northward, I almost felt as if we were inside the lyrics of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads”: “Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze.”
We drove through Washington, D.C., and into Philadelphia, where we would finally meet up with Bernie.
12
Country Road
Bernie was an American friend I’d met during his time in Rome a few years earlier; he was spend
ing that summer at home in Philadelphia. Bernie must have been around forty and was our height, about six feet, but instead of weighing 165 pounds he weighed quite a bit more. His physical bulk and his amiable face made him resemble John Goodman.
Bernie was a priest. He spoke seven languages, including American sign language, and was very proud of the fact. We had met him in Rome, at our parish church. At noon every Saturday, playing soccer with our friends on the little field, we could hardly help but notice this odd overgrown lad dressed like a Boy Scout. Only later did we discover he was a priest, and extraordinarily likable.
Equally out of the ordinary were his dreams and ambitions. One of his dreams, for instance, was to become a character on Star Trek: the chaplain of the Starship Enterprise . Unfortunately, when we met Captain Kirk in New York, we hadn’t managed to put in a good word for our friend back in Rome. But Bernie never gave up. Every year he attended the STIC Convention, the meeting of the Star Trek Italian Club. All the fans and experts on the Star Trek saga show up dressed as their favorite characters. We always knew in advance what Bernie’s costume was going to be. Every so often we got a glimpse of his creations. We were always bowled over by the incredible attention to detail he lavished on them. We wondered how his big, clumsy-looking hands could cut, glue, and stitch things the size of a pinhead. It was astonishing.
He also had a deep and abiding love of trains. Real trains and model trains. He knew absolutely everything about trains. He was proud that he had actually driven more than one real train, and we were proud of him after seeing what he was hiding away in the basement of his house in Magnolia, New Jersey, near Philadelphia: a giant model train set the size of the entire basement, with tiny trains chasing each other along yards and yards of winding tracks, whistling feverishly the whole time. It was an entire city built down to the smallest details by his miraculous hands, his patience, using tons of model trains and other various accessories purchased over the years.
Un Amico Italiano Page 9