Monday, July 08, 2002 8:52 PM
Lawn Bowling to you, Boules to the French, Bocce to Me

Take me back O! gaming muse to the alley of a hot summer evening behind my childhood dwelling at 33 Carver Street, Larimar Avenue District, East Liberty, Pittsburgh, USA, World, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Universe, World Without End Amen. (Thank you, Stephen Daedalus). Old men, at least to my young brain, would move from the helpless humidity sweating their back porches and sweet smelling coolness of grape arbors out into the black cinder heat of the alley. This alley was at best an avenue of careless lumps, bumps and holes. Car traffic had, over the hard years, caused a massive mountain crest midway and ruts deep enough to swallow half a 1950 car wheel. When those old guys congregated, black pants, white shirts, gray whiskers and liquored, it became a Bocce Court.

I remember them as dour, stern, serious guys. I remember the passion with which they treated these nightly matches. It frightened young me that someday I would have to join such an adult world. Where game was high drama and serious as murder. Games are games; I shrug, now, dismissively. My life is a game. The thought of entering such intensity, witnessed as a child so many years ago leaves me weak kneed and panting. Perhaps it is a fault. It seems like it when I insecurely tick off all the slack solutions to my problems on a sleepless night.

I wish I could remember their names, their faces. I know that they did not come from my father's generation but my father’s father’s. Maternal grandfather died when my mother was young, paternal when I was still cutting teeth. Having little direct connection is the probable reason I remember them as shadow.

By high mystery, akin to what I witnessed in the mass on Sunday, somber Latin rising with the blue incense to a reproduction of Michelangelo’s touch in the dome, they broke into teams. Those who were waiting in the wings to play would line the side of the alley, leaning against fences that were held upright by green vines and dragon popping flowers, would drink basement prepared wine out of unlabeled bottles and jelly glasses. They were a wonderfully boisterous expletive included, albeit in some dialect regional Italian, crew. Some of their bocce balls were made of wood, some of steel, taken I guess from Homestead or Braddock Works. They were not the modern gaily colored red and green with yellow lines balls that are shelved at We Are Sports stores, but a murky brown or gray dark with dirt, age and use. Camouflage in the alley. I could never distinguish one team from the other.

Opposing teams would either toss a coin or play mora, that rock, scissors, paper staple of Italy, throw out a number of fingers, one through five, against an opponent who would violently thrust a digit count at your midriff. You both cry out an amount that predicts the two handed count. Italian number words would be sung out with a cadence, Cinque, five, would become Cccchhhhinnn Kwaaaayeee! and instead of ten, dieci, deee-aaaaaa-chi, but the cognoscenti would yell Tutti, all. To this day this distinction between dieci and tutti is how I know if a veteran or relative new comer is playing. The winner would throw the pulleen. I know now that this small object ball, called the jack in more Protestant circles is properly named the pallino. But these guys threw the pulleen.

Placed with rolling care in that precarious humped street the game would begin. Volo, the air shot, with back English so that the ball would hit, cause damage to the opponents position and stick close to the pulleen, against Puntata, the rolling shot better suited to a manicured lawn and in desperation, raffa or smash shot, all the explosive force of a hand grenade, lobbed or thrown overhand. Not much finesse, but powerful collisions. I am sure that this is how Enrico Fermi got the idea to split the atom.

The truly wonderful thing is, as I sit here in the backyard typing, I see that it is Bocce at the neighbors this Monday evening. There are loud guys over across the orchard, white tee shirts, bellies extended over their belt buckles, black or tan slacks, yelling as they play on the posh Bocce court built by my Plumbing Contractor neighbor. Earl just scored a point, I heard the yell. I probably should walk over, behind the vegetable garden next to the tar paper, wood window and two-by four shed, in front of the carefully high stacked grasshopper winter fire wood and the swing that delightfully flies out over the forest valley below.

I just threw out my right hand.
Tutti!