Café Franco's is an Italian restaurant which my
husband and I frequent here on the island because the atmosphere is pleasant
and the food is good. No;
actually, it's great. Homemade yeast rolls are served hot
from the oven alongside a dish of fragrant Italian spices and olive oil. The dishes of homemade manicotti and
ravioli arrive at the table with the hot cheeses still bubbling. Every meal is served by friendly,
smiling wait-staff, some of whom are members of Franco's family. And Franco? He is in the kitchen, always, a serious man making from
scratch seriously delicious Italian dishes.
Here it is in Franco's own
words: "Café Franco's is a
traditional Italian restaurant inspired by the uncomplicated and laid-back
lifestyle of the Italian people – good food and a good meal are essential to
the human spirit…."
It does seem like that, on days
when Ian and I head there with our hunger, putting aside for a moment our busy schedules and allowing ourselves
to sink together into a booth, the little café lights shining softly overhead, and the smells of rustic
tomato sauce drifting out from the kitchen.
Good food and a good meal DO seem essential to the human spirit on days
like that. And Café Franco's does both exceptionally well.
I could go on raving about the
food but the thing that has my attention today is a tall post stuck in a potted plant
near the front windows. On it are
five hand-painted lavender planks of wood with the names of cities – all but one of them in Italy – and
the mileage to each from Café Franco's :
Venice 4671
miles
Rome 4757
miles
Florence 4684 miles
Ocracoke 84 miles
Palermo 4819 miles
The closest city to us is
Ocracoke, and it's really more a small village than it is a city. It's also the only American city named on the sign. Ocracoke is one of the small islands that make up the Outer
Banks of North Carolina. It's
south of here – farther south even than Hatteras Island – and a place only
accessible by ferry. The thing I know about Ocracoke is that it houses a
remnant of the Banker horses: horses protected and cared for now by the
National Park Service. Seventeen
ponies remain today of the herd of small, sturdy horses that arrived sometime
in the 16th century with Spanish explorers, seventeen descendents of a herd of
unusual horses who are physically-distinct from other wild ponies on the Outer
Banks: the ponies bear a different number of vertebrae and ribs and a distinct
shape, posture, color, size and weight that sets them apart from other
ponies.
Those Banker ponies? They are my connection to Ocracoke. What
Franco's particular connection to Ocracoke is, I cannot say. Maybe it is as tenuous a connection as
that frail acknowledgment which exists between immigrants, between those who
have left the countries of their births and find themselves in a new country.
All the other cities named on the
sign-planks are somewhere in Italy.
Palermo, though, has the
distinction of being Franco's hometown.
What I know of Palermo could fit into a thimble: it is situated on the
island of Sicily - a large island at the toe of the boot that we identify on
maps as "Italy." I
remember something about a general named Garibaldi and his troops known as
"The Thousands" who entered the city and took it back
from the Bourbons in the 1800s. I remember
that's about the time Palermo became a part of the new Kingdom of Italy. And I know that
the Mafia had a big part in the modernization of Palermo. Or was it that the Mafia was modernized
by Palermo? I'm probably getting some of this wrong. But I do remember that the city's
patron saint is Santa Rosalia, who is said to have freed the city of the
Black Death (Black Plague) sometime in the early 1600s and that she is celebrated with a
festival every year on July 14th. That kind of historical information sticks with me: throw in something about a plague or some dirty criminal activity, and I'm unlikely to forget that part.
But Franco? Franco knows where he
is, always, in relation to his hometown. He is as tied to that city and its history as he is tied to making good food. He is the center of his own known world, always, but he
hasn't forgotten who his people are and from where he has come. I think it might be important to him –
and maybe to his customers – to know how many miles he has traveled to get
here. And how many miles it would take to travel back to Palermo, should the
need arise. I like that he has journeyed over 4,800 miles from Palermo, Italy,
to arrive here, and that he has brought with him the seasonings and the
sensibilities of his hometown. There is a reason his good food is so
"essential to the human spirit." My spirit is surely feeling it today.
I hope I always carry with me a sense of who I am and where I have come from - also from whom I have come - so no matter how far I am from my own birthplace, no matter what histories are attached to me, they all contribute to who I am and who I am becoming. After all, being from the deep south means I have a complicated relationship to almost everything from fried chicken to old hymns to sea-songs to quilts. I recognize, first-hand, the face of poverty when I see it, and the face of a new mother's exhaustion, and I know what it is to labor under a hot sun, trying to eke something out of hard-scrabble land. I know what it is to be from the South with its histories of slave-trading and racism and rum-running and carpet-bagging. I also know what it is to be from honest people who work at being just and merciful, people who fear God and pray daily and are thankful for even the smallest blessings. I'm from people who lived their lives and disappeared again into eternity and whose names are now only listed in old census or employment records. Ashes to ashes; dust to dust.
As the wanderer and prodigal that I have been most of my adult life, I haven't stayed in any single place long enough to erect a signpost to anywhere that has been important to me. But on days like this, I feel it there, that signpost erecting itself deep in my heart of hearts, a rough-planked, hand-painted signpost at some crossroads that points the way back, to home, wherever home has been.
