So, after I lifted my jaw up off the floor along with everyone else who was listening . . . . .

[Stinky The Clown]

I made a trek to the Italian importing store this morning. It has been in business, in the same location, by the same family, since 1906. People drive for miles and miles to go there. People from the neighborhood are there almost daily. You walk in and take a number. You shop while you wait, stacking your booty on any bare spot of checkout counter you can find. Then you wait for your number. Sometimes that can be a half hour or more. No one minds. It is a social event. A local teevee reporter was in there today, complete with his teevee windbreaker on, and he was just yammering away with everyone else. It is just that kind of place. Lots of us goombas and goomas, but lots of other ethnicity, too.

In comes this guy. Maybe 40-ish. He is with a far younger woman, but she is clearly his wife or girlfriend. It is her first time there and he is pointing out the sights ("pancetta is Italian bacon." "That capacolla is hot." "See that big stainless barrel? That's olive oil they import in bulk." Etc.). Okay. You see this kind of thing a lot, as if the place is a tourist attraction - which it sorta is, actually. The place smells like it should and they still wrap the meat in paper and write on the outside in #2 pencil the product and the price for the cashier to add up by hand on the tongue of one of the packages. Its very quaint and very authentic.

Anyway, all that is background. Happy crowd. Lots of different conversations at once. The guy says to his girlfriend/wife how much all the road construction is a pain in his ass. He then proceeds to blame it all on that socialist, Obama. (!!) In his view, it is a bad thing that so many construction projects got funded. I mean, who's gonna pay for this? Not HIS taxes.

I have no idea what the socioeconomic profile of the crowd was, but if it is like any other Saturday morning, it could be anyone from a school custodian to a college student, a judge, a doctor, an unemployed person.

**Everyone** went quiet. They looked at him. He continued for another sentence or two. Eyes were rolling. Disbelieving smiles grew. People looked at each other and were laughing silently. No one confronted the guy. But he went silent.

The moment passed. People sort of gave him a bit more space. Conversations resumed, and when asked, he told the guy behind the counter, "No, that's all I need."

The mood quickly lightened. No one said a word about it.

None was needed.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Great story, Stinky.....thank you!

On edit: Recommended.

[RandomThoughts]

2. What I need, is for the concept of my need to be my choice.

And also within my ability to change. Based on learning, thinking, reason, and heart, with concepts of justice.
I need money for beer and travel, and many experiences :) See how easy that is :)
Although I will not give up other better thoughts that I enjoy to get those other things.

[Ozymanithrax]

3. Stinky, you should consider writing travel pieces...

That article catches the sense of place and character so well that I am in awe.

It is also good that a lot of people know an idiot when they here one.

[monmouth]

4. Ah, an Italian import store and all I got was a Green Market this

morning at a high 60ish temp. in Florida. I envy you...

[elleng]

5. Great story, and great neighborhoood! So good to be here, eh?

:fistbump:

p.s., about to travel thru some of that construction! Love it!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. Delightful.

Now, where the HELL is that store. I don't care where, I'm gonna start driving there. :D

[tabatha]

7. Word painting. Love it.

Also, great the way you captured the mood of the people without their having to say a word.

[DemocracyInaction]

8. Now, if we could get the crowd..

..out to vote! I think way too many people have been sold on the idea that there are a zillion Tea Partiers out there that are just going to swamp the voting booths and therefore, there is no use showing up. Obama is going to be fighting these clowns until 2010 and they are going to get worse.

[HipChick]

9. That's interesting...I heard the same dribble from a RW co-worker

as we were driving to a customer site and stuck in traffic due to road construction...I shut him down quick...he was silent for the rest of the trip

[RagAss]

10. Stinky, I wish I had a nickle(no, a vote) for every time a Slapdick like this goes silent.

Time and again, scenes like the one you describe get played out in my daily experience. Let's hope it translates to votes.

[Desertrose]

11. Idiots can be amusing...up to a point...

after that they are just idiots.

Good story Stinky.

[BrklynLiberal]

12. Sometimes it shows a great command of the English language to say nothing at all...

:thumbsup: :hi:

[Jade Fox]

13. I wonder if we will be able to reverse the trend of idiocy in this country.....

where grown people think they can have everything without having to pay for it, and ignorance is the new authenticity, to borrow a phrase from this article:

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/10/14/ignorance-as-authenticity/

[mainer]

14. Silence sometimes is more powerful than any argument

We should rely more often on the simple disapproving silent treatment. A look. A raised eyebrow. Maybe a snicker. That's all it takes to let someone know they're an idiot.

[NBachers]

15. Sounds just like Lucca's Deli here in San Francisco

What a treasure of a place, and it's right down the street. Staffed by professional guys with white aprons and still old school- not one of those ersatz places.

Thanks for the story

[Kang Colby]

16. Riveting tale, chap nt

[pgodbold]

17. Great story! I would have loved to have seen that. thank you.... nt

[66 dmhlt]

40. It can get annoying after a bit, but let's make the Bear dance ...

[pgodbold]

60. Great! I had not seen the animated Bear Dance! Good one.

[B Calm]

18. I would have said, buddy those taxes are the cost of living in a civilized country.

But then it's damn hard for me to keep my mouth shut whenever there is an ignorant right-wing nutcase speaking loudly!

[mysuzuki2]

19. Gloriosos on Brady Street in Milwaukee?

[Stinky The Clown]

21. No, Trinacria, in Baltimore

And I seem to have lied - 1908, not 1906. :)

This is pretty much the whole retail part of the store.



http://trinacriafoods.com/Index.aspx

[undergroundpanther]

22. I've been there

Before,got some mozzarella there..

[Stinky The Clown]

23. Their mozzarella is fresh, fresh, fresh, sold in bags right from the brine/whey

[Johnny Noshoes]

39. Oh yeah

It must smell so great in that place.

[femrap]

42. Oh....what I'd give for some

real Italian bread. I read recently that the wheat that is grown in Europe is very different from the wheat grown here in the US...we grow a variety that likes to be Wonder Bread. Maybe you could ask the store owner if he knows anything of this.

When I was in Italy, years ago, I ate so much of the hard-crusted bread that the skin off the roof of my mouth peeled off. It was worth it.

Each country's bread was different...the French make great bread as well. The only decent bread I can get in the US is sourdough...which I love.

Thank you for the lovely story...I'm glad to see that this Waste of Flesh still has a shred of SHAME and left promptly.

[toadzilla]

54. omg I miss that place so much.

I used to live right across the street. many mornings I would run over there and get the most amazing and giant mozzarella sandwich to take for lunch.

so much god food, and cheap too!

[Hardrada]

20. Great story! I was in a German (and general Central European)

import store this evening and had a good chat with the proprietor. He was pissed at Walmart and I heartily agreed. They had tried to screw him on some order and he wasn't going to deal with them again. A sensible man!

[tavalon]

24. Wow, that was amazing

It's too bad we can't manage that kind of social ostracizing on a national level. We try, but it doesn't work anywhere near as well as that did.

[compassion now]

25. Sorry, don't believe it.

Sadly, there are lots of people who think Prez Obama is a 'bad' socialist. He's a socialist, sure, but a good, all-american socialist!

P.S. Obama/Hillary 2012!

[ChoppinBroccoli]

26. Isn't A "Gooma" Somebody's Mistress?

That's what I gathered from watching "The Sopranos."

[MorningGlow]

43. No, it's a mushy version of "comadre"

which means "female friend" (literally "countrywoman"), just like "goomba" is a mushy version of "compadre" (for male friend).

Not sure of the slang for "mistress", but there's "putana", which means "whore".

Editorial comment (speaking as someone with four Sicilian grandparents): A pox upon The Sopranos, the Godfather movies, all other gangster movies, and every other form of entertainment that makes a hash of Italian culture. :P

[Stinky The Clown]

48. In The Sopranos . . . .

. . . they used "gooma" to mean a mistress. That kinda pissed me off because it was never that in my growing up. Goomba and gooma were the male and female version of "close friend" . . . which I suppose could also mean "mistress" in an ironic way. Goomba and gooma also meant godfather and godmother. Neither are actually Italian words, but rather, American dialect corruptions of Neopolitan, and maybe also Calabrian, accented Italian spoken in the greater New York area at, and maybe 40 years after, the turn of the last century.

[madinmaryland]

27. Dammit, Stinky! Why couldn't you have posted about that Deli in my post

in the MD forum six years ago!

:hi:

[Stinky The Clown]

50. Hehehe . . .

You gotta ask for what you want. :) That thread was about restaurants, not delis.

To be honest, I don't look at it as either. I look at it as a market. I think calling it a restaurant is a stretch. They serve food but it is all to go. No place at all to eat inside the place. Far too crowded. I also (personally) define delis as fundamentally Jewish, like the ones (that used to be) on Lomdard Street. I think only one of them still survives.

[mistertrickster]

28. The RepubliCON running for CONgress where I live claims that "gov't doesn't create jobs."

Oh really.

The Grand Coulee Dam. Tell me that didn't create any freaking jobs.

[spanone]

29. great story and encouraging too.

[Mira]

30. This was a poem. Thank you, and recommended!

[jotsy]

31. You told that marvelously, STC.

A much better tear than you pulled from me when the gulf disaster peaked. See how desperate I am for the littlest sign of hope?

Sure I rec'd it.

[apocalypsehow]

32. That's a nice story. n/t.

[kevinbgoode]

33. I'm so glad I wasn't there. . .

the people handled it beautifully....but I'm afraid I would be apt to respond with something like..."so..how did you get here? By witchcraft?"

[apocalypsehow]

35. And he told it so well. n/t.

[kevinbgoode]

34. I honestly think that, if any teabaggers win on the local/state level

that those who VOTED for them should be singled out for the greatest hardship when funding is cut for such things as streetlights and pothole repairs and essential services.

Cut the streetlights first on the blocks filled with teabaggers. Cut pothole and street repairs in their neighborhoods, and when they start whining, tell them to pay for the repairs themselves.

[Major Hogwash]

36. That's a great story. Someone was bitching one day at the grocery store I was at last week about

the road projects going on here and he was about 35 years old or so, when a much older man, one that wsa about 70 years old I guess, turned to him and said "don't you drive on the same roads I do? What's that matter with you, don't you want the shitty roads around here fixed?" About 8 people at the two checkout stands snickered or started chuckling because the roads around here are atrocious, they are notoriously famous for being so bad.
And this is the first time in over a dozen years that we have had any major roadwork done on the freeway through this part of the state.

I guess they don't like driving on "Obama's stimulus package roads".
But, I have to tell you, the ruts that were in those lanes on that part of the freeway were getting to be so bad that I avoided that part of the freeway. When trucks get caught in those ruts and they start to make their trailers rock and rll from side to side, you know it is bad enough to get fixed.

Not to mention all of the construction jobs that were saved to fix these roads.

[apocalypsehow]

37. Wasn't it though? I was particularly enamored of this *deus ex machina*:

"**Everyone** went quiet. They looked at him. He continued for another sentence or two. Eyes were rolling. Disbelieving smiles grew. People looked at each other and were laughing silently. No one confronted the guy. But he went silent."

Hanging on tenterhooks I was, I tell yah. But it all got resolved so neatly & sweetly, and I do confess I misted up a bit. :thumbsup:

[lillypaddle]

38. Good job, Stinky

great writing.

[Celtic Merlin]

41. For an Italian store JUST LIKE THIS ONE in the Pittsburgh area . . .

Stop in at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company (better known as "Penn Mac") on Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh's "Strip District". I've been going there since I was a little kid, holding my mom's hand as we walked through the place. And the SMELL of this store! Best described as a heady and inviting an aroma.

Note to the author:
Helluva good story, Stinky! By the time you were done with the "background" part of this, I thought I was standing in Penn Mac and you were standing next to me in line there. That this moron realized - through everybody's instant silence - how much of an ass he was being was the best part of it.

Grazie!

Celtic Merlin
Carlinist

[Enthusiast]

44. Thanks, Stinky.

Thanks for sharing that.

[CTyankee]

45. We have several smaller markets in New Haven that have the cannister of olive oil

for people to fill, using their own bottles from home. Ditto balsamic vinegar. I just wish they had sfuso's for wine...that would be ideal...a Chianti Classico would be just fine...

[Stinky The Clown]

49. There were lots of these places all over Southern and Western CT when I was growing up.

My parents moved to Hamden after we kids left. (Bridgeport was turning into a war zone and looked like Beirut.) They had a place there they went to up into the 1990s, at least (that's when they died . . . don't know what's still there.)

My aunts and uncle in NJ still go to places like this.

[MorningGlow]

46. Eeeeexcellllent

:applause:

Thanks for this, Stinky. (I've got a few of those classic Italian groceries near my mom's house. There's one called Rubino's--the only place I buy my meat. I make a special 40-minute drive just to shop there. I love walking in there and inhaling deeply. Reminds me of my childhood, when we were at one or another of those places every Saturday afternoon.)

And hey, similar thing happened yesterday:

My cousin Helen died. She was 93 and in poor health, so it didn't come as a surprise. My mom and my aunt were invited to the small memorial service. I figured my aunt, who's what I like to call a fundie Catholic (very Church Lady-esque)--and a stick-up-the-butt, Bush-worshipin', Obama-hatin', Beck-listenin' repug to boot--had her nose out of joint because the family wasn't giving Helen a Catholic mass funeral.

But when my mom called afterward, she didn't say whether my aunt was having a fit about the lack of a mass. Instead, she related a choice tidbit (quite gleefully, I might add) about the conversation at the restaurant afterward. They were seated with several members of Helen's family--people we don't see very often. Apparently my aunt brought up politics, as she is wont to do in social groups large and small. She started complaining about the current state of the nation, gleeful as always to get a good rant on, and, as usual, assuming everyone shared her views...aaaanndd...

The entire group jumped down her throat. "Are you CRAZY???" etc. My aunt is used to her echo chamber--Fox News on TV and on the radio at home, and "yup yup yup" uber-conservative friends--and definitely not sharing space with anyone of a differing point of view. Those of us who are liberals just don't talk politics around her, because she gets kind of foamy-at-the-mouth.

So she was shocked--SHOCKED!--that anyone would have an opposing point of view. She tried to slam Obama and got "God bless that man!" "But he messed up the country--" "The country was a mess when he was elected! And don't defend that piece of trash Bush!" etc. etc. etc.

My aunt was eventually overpowered and just shut up and stewed.

My mom was really, REALLY happy at this turn of events. To be honest, I wish I had been there to see it too.
:rofl:

Oh yeah--and on the way home my aunt commented about how one of our cousins who had just lost her job was receiving a shockingly small amount of unemployment. Hey, isn't that some kinda SOCIALIST program??? ;)

[elleng]

56. Great tale, MG!

[BlancheSplanchnik]

58. MG!! I love this story!

Like I love the OP story!

This is great!!

Like, the social network is beginning to function again? People are beginning to SPEAK UP!

The fear of doing that during the buush years helped idiots spread their disease.... but language is a virus, and these stories are so encouraging!

:hi:

:hug:

[Bluenorthwest]

47. All I could focus on in the OP was the store itself...

oh how I miss having something like that available. One of the perks of the East Coast. I want their cheese, their oil...a true resource.

[woo me with science]

51. Good story.

But it's rude to put your booty on the counter.

:hide:

[Kalyke]

52. I have absolutely NO idea why people my age (I'm 40) are

among the most brainwashed in this country.

In nearly every age poll, my age group has a higher percentage of Republican voters, despite socio-economic background. It's insane.

The only thing I can think of is that we were "tweens," teenagers and/or young adults during the 80s and have some misinformed fairy-tale notion of Ronnie Raygun. I saw right through that putz when I was 10 and he won the election and I continued to hold that world view as I grew up, listening to U2, The Jam (if you've never heard of them, please see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WAsDUiI4e4 ) and other bands who celebrated the fact that, yes, Virginia, there is a class war and we working class are losing!

[stubtoe]

55. Who knows, really. Same thing happened to boomers.

Ought to get some sociology grad student to do a thesis on this phenomenon.

[crim son]

53. I thought you were going to tell us the store was closing but no! A happy ending instead. n/t

[BlancheSplanchnik]

57. SILENT (sane) MAJORITY!

Love this story!

It's encouraging too, in another way:
out in rural western NY state, there are alot of Palinno signs, along with other scum rw/teabag signs.

It can make you start to think they're taking over, until a story like yours reminds me that there are FAR MORE lawns and medians with NO signs.

The loud empty vessels are...loud and empty.

[bertman]

59. Great story. Thanks, Stinky. Rec. nt