You can't go home again - 10/20/15

My mind is a jumble of mixed emotions. I need time to process what we've experienced and I need Lou to take time as well. And then I need him to share with me. We attempted to revisit his past and sometimes that just can't be done. New roads are built, street names change, construction takes place and time marches on. No matter how many times you've "driven" down a road on google maps, it's not the same as doing it in person. (Having a completely out of date TomTom became an issue as well.)

We left Milazzo this morning in the rain which didn't help matters. I had imagined so many of the photos I'd be taking. That didn't happen. First we drove to Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto. It would be inaccurate to say that it has been built up since we were last there 17 years ago. Rather it was more crowded and certainly less easy to navigate. Traffic was horrible and there was no way we'd have been able to park and walk around. Plus... it was raining.

Lou started rattling names of places for me to plug into the TomTom. Some I was able to find, many I could not. We drove down the road across from the house where Lou was born. I suggested we figure out how to get closer to the house.

We were across the road - and across the field.

It wasn't until we'd turn down a steep road, driven under a bridge on a dry river bed, and turned on to a dirt road that we discovered the house had been abandoned. Since there were morning glories growing on citrus trees in the field, more than likely the fields are abandoned as well.

I wondered about the house. How old was it? How many families had called it home over the years? When was it abandoned?

We started looking for a place (street? town? neighborhood?) called Maceo. We saw a sign and followed it. It led us to a road near the sea where we spotted Dominick, the Sicilian donkey, and a fairly nice-looking hotel seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Okay, yes, it was on the sea.

The young woman at the hotel was able to give us directions to Maceo but it didn't really look familiar. Nor did it look like what Lou has been studying on google maps. It was time to end our rainy explorations and head to Lou's cousins' house for lunch.

TomTom once again steered us wrong but we finally found the street - and the house number - but couldn't find the house. It took phoning Carmelo and asking him what the house looked like to be able to find it.

Carmelo and his wife, Lucia, made us a scrumptious lunch and we had a lovely visit. It had stopped raining after lunch so Carmelo brought us outdoors to see some of the things he grows.

Clever way to keep our shoes from getting muddy in the garden.

Lovely figs splitting on the trees and being eaten by birds.

Gorgeous avocados had me green with envy!

Some of the persimmons were ripe enough to eat.

Lou and Carmelo got to talking about having olive oil shipped to the US and the next thing I knew, we were following Carmelo to Barcellona to leave our car and hop in his to drive to see the brother of the husband of another one of their cousins. We learned that like a whole wheel of parmigiana reggiano, there is no easy affordable way to ship olive oil. I think Lou was disappointed (is frustrated the better word?) but I was fascinated observing the process of people from the community pulling up with bags and/or crates of olives to have Philip's brother (I never did catch his name) press into olive oil. What a busy place. The price he gets for pressing the olives is 10% of the resulting oil. This is a seasonal gig. The rest of the year he's a hair stylist.

Bins of olives with the receptacle for the oil on top

Part of the pressing process. Here the olives are cleaned.

We rode back to our car in Barcellona, but before Carmelo was to leave us, we were going to visit another cousin, Maria, at her gift shop. I guess at one point she had two shops because we walked to the one shop close to the car only to find a sign that said the shop was located somewhere else. We followed Carmelo through the town, got to the store and went in. Maria seemed very happy to see Lou. It wasn't until after we'd left that he told me she had him confused with his cousin Frank

Driving back to Milazzo, Lou asked why I wasn't yelling at him for some of the crazy driving moves he was making. Simple. My eyes were closed. I'm a horrible passenger in the best of circumstances and to me, these Sicilian drivers are insane. I don't need to see it.

Once in Milazzo, TomTom had us all over the place. Part of the problem seemed to be that some streets that were previously two-way are now one. But the biggest, hugest problem is that the big main road is closed in both ways due to repaving. We were stuck n such a traffic jam, and we weren't even sure where we were. Once we hit a familiar piazza and still couldn't find a spot, Lou once again backed into a one-way street to park. Interestingly enough, the trees planted by the curb were planting in the street rather than on the curb making parking much less efficient.

The crowds in Milazzo were crazy. You'd think it was a Saturday night in the height of summer. Since it was a Tuesday night in the middle of October, I wonder how crowded it might be at another time more associated with leisure.

We stopped into a jewelry store to see if we could find earrings for Caitlin. Off the bat, the owner starts trying to upswell us. Once we realized she had nothing that we wanted, we walked out. She was persistent, though, and followed us outside telling us she'd take the posts off one pair of earrings and put them on another. She just couldn't take no for an answer.

There are others who can't take no for an answer either. While at Maria's gift shop, a foreign-born guy walked in trying to sell us cigarette lighters. We said "No thanks." We said, "No." We told him we don't smoke. He just didn't want to leave. Similarly, there are foreign-born young men walking in and around bars and restaurants trying to sell roses. They don't seem to understand that no means no.

So ends another day. We'll see what the weather is like in the morning and then play things by ear. Buona notte.