Scenes From an Italian Barbecue
The author’s quest for patio furniture triggers memories of a boyhood visit with neighbors—and a reminder of what that backyard meal is really about

By B.A. Nilsson

My wife and I stopped in the store’s outdoor living section and again eyed a lawn furniture set. I wanted something to gussy up the tone of my backyard cookery as our old picnic table grows ever more limp. You want to impress your guests, of course, and comfortable seating is a boon; and I had in mind a Memorial Day picnic of some magnitude.

And lawn furniture is becoming more of a commodity item. I’m not even talking about that good-for-a-season resin nonsense; I mean sturdy-looking stuff in which flashes of real metal appear. That table-with-umbrella-and-four-chairs ensemble has trickled down even into supermarkets now, and each time I saw one I imagined myself, assuming my butt fits into the chair, relaxing in my backyard, a tall glass of iced tea in hand. I fingered the price tag and decided it really was practically affordable. . . .

Then I saw myself in another backyard, decades ago, a glass of oversweetened iced tea in hand, at a picnic table so ratty it makes my current one look like a Martha Stewart catalogue item. And I remembered myself feeling serene and accepted in the midst of the chaos of Joey’s family’s get-together.

If you had asked this family to pose for an outdoor dining photograph, they would have laughed off the suggestion that their event could be so categorized. It was Sunday dinner, that’s all, and in the warm months it tended to spill out into the backyard.

I grew up one street away from this family, whose name was Rogers—a scaled-down version of an Italian moniker I never learned. But family patriarch Phil Rogers had parents who’d been born in Italy, and they—along with a cluster of uncles and cousins and aunts—thronged the house after church on many a pleasant Sunday.

Phil’s son, Joey, was about my age, and other than that we had nothing in common. Still, we pursued a friendship that led more often to his house than to mine, because mine was permanently frosted with a chill of dysfunction, something that hides wonderfully in the picturesque streets of suburban Connecticut.

The town was a developer’s dream, zoning-free and convenient for commuters who saw nothing wrong with tacking four hours of travel time onto the workday. Joey’s dad was different. He ran a floor-cleaning service. It was a big operation that included a retail arm, and afforded him a large, new house back in a time when some of the town’s oldsters were getting over the shock of seeing a well-liked but nevertheless Italian-descended man elected first selectman.

Fifty years earlier, this town was the weekend home of wealthy New Yorkers, who installed immigrant Italian housekeepers and gardeners at their estates. When John Scala, renowned for his cooking, bought the Elms Inn on Main Street in 1951, it was an open scandal, but also a significant mark of the extent to which those immigrants and their families had infiltrated and strengthened the town.

By the time I entered school there, vowel-tipped surnames were unremarkable, and it never occurred to me to ask Joey why his surname wasn’t so characterized. He was mad about cars; I was getting interested in classical music. We found other things to talk about. We swam in a nearby pond. I tried to keep up with him as he maneuvered a basketball around his driveway. And then one day I showed up and the place was crowded with relatives, and I had my first look at an extended family that actually enjoyed the company of one another.

Relatives rarely arrived at my house. Those who did were hated by the unrelated parent. At Joey’s house, not only were there relatives galore, all talking at once, but the fact that I was Joey’s friend seemed to put me on some kind of a footing with them, a phenomenon I found hard to fathom.

“He’s one of the family,” said Phil, slapping me on the back. “Now get outta here. Go get something to eat.”

Something to eat. Phil’s built-in barbecue bore a load of burgers and dogs. Sausage links sizzled on a nearby portable grill. The old picnic table was dressed with a cloth and bore platters of salads, heaping bowls of pasta. There was soda. There was pie. Al Martino crooned from an eight-track machine. “That sonofabitch can sing,” said someone in passing.

Two old men, each with a sandwich in hand, began to yell at one another, the free arm of each spinning like a windmill. They pushed their faces till they were nose to nose, sputtering and screaming about I don’t recall what. I expected the patio to hush in anticipation of the first punch thrown, but nobody else paid any attention. And then the two men laughed and clapped each other on the back.

It was the first time I’d seen emotion expended for the sheer joy of expending emotion. It was liberating. It meant that you actually could let loose of some of the passion that tends to build without being thought a maniac.

“They’re always like that,” said Joey, shaking his head, laughing. “You want to go for a swim?”

The lawn furniture set looked all the more lonely and sterile on the showroom floor, surrounded by other, costlier lawn furniture sets, the umbrellas all tilted in different directions like radar beacons searching for fun.

“Do you still want to get that set?” my wife asked.

I shook my head. “We need to get some sausage,” I said. “And some burgers. And dogs. And we’re going to call some friends. We might have to call some family members. We might even have to call your family.”

She placed a hand to my forehead and hustled me outside.

Full Service

	Send A Letter to Our Editor
	Back Home