The Three Year Festival

As this writer concludes his residence in Boston’s North End, he looks back on the meals, love and lessons learned.

Lou
Lou
Aug 28, 2017 · 5 min read

The final Saturday of every month is usually when I would get my hair cut. Before I stepped into the barber shop just a few paces from my apartment, I’d find a nearby ATM to withdraw cash. I always doubted that the barber took credit cards. Honestly, I never asked or checked. I didn’t want to. Things are the way they are around here. I like that.

I usually wouldn’t be in the barber’s chair for more than ten minutes. They worked quickly. They were a bit more interested in the conversation being had with some of the elderly Italian gentlemen sitting at the periphery of the shop. They’d lament the old days, when it was “easier” to discipline a child, and the news wasn’t full of people demanding so much attention. Their conversations shift seamlessly between English and Italian, as if someone were flipping a switch on and off behind them.

The first few steps out of the barber shop always felt like purgatory to me. Behind me, back in the shop, was the real North End. Lifers. Paesani. The second and third and fourth generation Italians who continue to be the lifeblood of the neighborhood. They enjoy espresso and soccer games together, always have their pants neatly pressed and hair slicked and guided into place.

In front of me was the North End you find on Yelp, or the glossy side of a postcard. Turn to your right, and the Old North Church is just a few steps away. Walk by them and you’ll hear French, Japanese, German, Texan and New York accents talking about Paul Revere, as they flip maps upside down in search of a nearby cafe. There’s one right behind them, Caffe Lil Italy, that makes decent breakfast pastries.

The neighborhood plays many roles. It is the cradle of liberty — home to one of the seminal moments of the American Revolution. A must-see for history buffs and patriots. As I’m staring at the church, thinking about its history, a tourist brushes past me and remarks to her partner, “this place just reminds me of our trip to Europe.” It maintains its old-world charm and proud immigrant heritage. At just one square mile, the North End is uniquely American, distinctly Italian, transient but unchanging, welcoming but steeped in tradition. There are dozens of Italian restaurants with similar menus. Locals and passers-through blend together to sample the fare. Everyone wants to hear Sinatra sing the standards. It’s not a neighborhood. It’s just a big, family table, and every day is Thanksgiving.

In 2014, I made the move from Wilmington, MA to Sheafe Street, a picture-perfect residential lane off of the North End’s busy Salem Street. Wilmington is about 15 miles north of Boston’s Little Italy, a roughly 25 minute drive down I-93. Growing up, my friends and I would hop onto a train or carpool into the city to check out Saint Anthony’s Festival, which happens to be the final weekend in August. I remember walking by the carts and restaurants, as shrunken nonnis and burly, balding Italian men lined the streets, extending a spinach arancini or fresh ricotta cannoli. It sort of felt like home. But bigger. And smaller.


Just about three years later, I have to pack up and leave this place. Sitting on the last piece of furniture in my apartment, surrounded by cardboard boxes and empty closets, it becomes abundantly clear that the North End isn’t simply a zip code, or even a neighborhood. It’s been a living, breathing character in the story I’ve written for myself, like the way New York City is in all of those 90’s sitcoms.

Across the street from me are a pair of former coworkers, beautiful girls who have become family. They’re Irish. We make it work. I’ve become competent at whipping up chicken parmigiana for a Sunday dinner — they bring the wine and a laughter that’s as contagious as it is rejuvenating.

During my stay, there has been another tenant in my two-room apartment. We grew up in the same hometown and made the leap into the city together. We were high school classmates. One day, he’ll be speaking at my wedding.

Together, we have all witnessed shot outside our front door, spent one-too-many drunken nights on a roof deck we didn’t deserve, shared and discussed the music we played a bit too loud. If the neighborhood didn’t like Bruce Springsteen before, they have, at the very least, heard the entirety of his catalog by now. We ordered Pay-Per-View boxing matches that weren’t worth the money. We bared witness to two of the greatest Super Bowls of all time. We have carved pumpkins for Halloween, eaten Thanksgiving meals on paper plates in rooms too small, and tried our hand at ringing up Christmas lights on a tree too big. What we lacked in square footage, we made up for with good intentions. We grew up and stayed young together. We ate well along the way.

When I moved in, I didn’t feel that far removed from 20 years old. As I move out, I don’t feel like 30 is very far off. With that aging comes a fear of loss, of change, the usual trappings of a big move. But those fears dissipate quickly, because of this neighborhood’s vibrant, pulsing heart. This neighborhood isn’t something I am leaving behind. It is something I contributed to — a collection of familiar faces and cafes and waterfronts and aromas that I was fortunate enough to experience during the prime of my life.

One day, if I’m lucky, I’ll sit around a big dinner table, peering over a mound of pasta, in a home with a wife and children, and I will look back, smiling, at the time I spent in the North End, and the man it helped me to become.

But for now, we have memories, full stomachs, lessons learned and a hopeful new chapter ahead of us all.

That’s amoré.

Side Streets

Thoughts from off the main drag. Politics. Music. Sports. TV. Debates. Life. Run by writers-turned-9-to-5ers.

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Lou

Written by

Lou

Offering unsolicited advice to Red Sox ownership since 1990.

Side Streets

Thoughts from off the main drag. Politics. Music. Sports. TV. Debates. Life. Run by writers-turned-9-to-5ers.

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