I am not a native Rhode Islander. I moved here in 1978, so I will always be a newcomer, although I have been here only a little less time than Roger Williams himself.
I arrived just a few months after the Blizzard of '78, which had taken place in February of that year. Everyone was still talking about it; the state came to a standstill for days. Today, thirty-two years later, if the word “snow” appears in the weather forecast, there's a huge mob at every supermarket in the state, buying milk and bread. “Milk and bread.” I don't even drink milk.
And I arrived toward the end of the Great Rhode Island Mob Era.
(I hope I don't get whacked for this.)
...
In 1981, I took a job on Federal Hill, which is the old Italian neighborhood of Providence. Its Italianness has faded steadily over the years; other groups – Hispanics, Asians – have moved in. And the Italian stuff has taken on a kind of Epcot quality. DePasquale Square has been rebuilt with a big fountain and a mock-Italian plaza; the lampposts are turn-of-the-century mock-European.
But it was still pretty Italian in the late 70s and early 80s. You could still get decent Italian pastry at Piccola Italia, and there was Tony's Colonial Market, and Scialo's Bakery, and the Heritage Loan and Investment Company (which went belly-up in 1990, but that's another story).
Every week or so, the front window of Micheletti's Restaurant got boarded up. Word was that Friday nights was always a “getting out” party: if someone got out of jail, they gave them a big Friday night dinner party, which usually ended with gunshots and violence.
The Patriarca family was still in charge of local crime in those days. There was a vending-machine company with a small storefront on Atwells Avenue; you could usually see someone sitting inside, doing nothing. That was the Patriarca headquarters. For those of you who watched “The Sopranos,” it was sort of like Satriale's. The Corleone family in the “Godfather” movies is based partly on the Patriarca family.
Even nice people were connected somehow. My boss, who was Sicilian, had five or six sisters, all of whom I got to know, and all of whom were terrific. There was one, though, whom I'd never met. Oh, hey, my boss said. They're in Florida. There was some mix-up with real estate, and they're – um – on the lam.
On the lam!
(I finally met her, by the way, and she was amazing. She swept into the room wearing a fur coat, and she and I spent the whole evening telling dirty jokes to one another, and her sisters were scandalized.)
I worked for a small electrical-supply company. Construction, you see? You can imagine. I knew two grown men named “Bambi.” It's short for “bambino,” kids.
A coworker of mine on the Hill was tired of her car. Oh, well, she said. I'll tell my dad. He knows some guys.
Some guys who do what? I said.
She looked embarrassed. You know. They'll – um – make the car go away. And I'll collect the insurance, and I'll get a new car.
Neat, eh?
The final story isn't mine.
I was in Tunisia, in 1985. I was staying for a few weeks with a couple from Maine, who were amused to hear I was from Rhode Island. They'd lived there when they were graduate students, on one side of a duplex house. There was a young married couple, very nice, on the other side of the duplex. Except that, once a month, a big car would pull up in front of the house, and some guys in suits would get out, and there's be a big argument on the other side of the house. Something about the husband not joining the family business.
I stopped them at that point. I know the punchline of your story, I said. The name on the mailbox in front of the house was “Patriarca.”
And they grinned and nodded.
…
Kids, those were horrible days. But everything seems quaint in retrospect.
Even the horrible things.
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