We Remember When.....

As we enjoyed dessert (gelato) after a wonderful dinner with dear friends, Matt and Christine, we began to reminisce about memories of gelato, bars, and other random things in Sicily.

• Years ago we were with friends in a similar gelateria. One friend asked for two different flavors in one cone. The server was taken aback, and informed us that one could order this and that flavor, or that and this flavor, continuing excitedly with a litany of permissible combos, but one would never mix the two flavors that had been requested!!!

         As we relayed this story to family members who visited a year or so after, the same scenario took place in another gelateria, another town.

• In 1995 and the years that followed, the only women we ever saw working in the bars were an occasional older female family member at the cash register. We were taken aback the first time a female took our order at a table in a bar. We also remember whispering and elbowing each other when we first saw a female working behind the bar.

• The fish trattorias and restaurants did not even keep vino rosso in stock. Once when friends requested red wine, a waiter walked down the street to buy a bottle.

• This happened to two ladies we knew who wanted cappuccino after dinner, a desire that would not cross the lips of local. The owner of the trattoria wrote a note to the owner of a nearby bar telling him to serve the ladies and he would pay him tomorrow.