until the issue was settled the men made a makeshift sign stating simply Sons of Italy“ Bocce” Court. They encased the printed paper in plastic and although moisture got inside and made the ink run purple they left the sign up anyway.
The old men would show up around lunchtime with their wives who served pasta and homemade gravy in plastic containers. The men weren ' t supposed to drink in the park so they drank homemade Chianti from coffee mugs while the wives sat some distance away, talking among themselves.
The bocce balls were heavy wooden things passed down from family to family or recently purchased brushed metal spheres with their own carrying cases. All had etched stripes or squares or herringbone patterns. Each set with eight balls, four per team, plus one additional smaller-sized ball, the target or the mark, the pallino, which in their dialect the men called the baleen.
They played their matches matter-of-factly— disinterestedly, it might even seem to any outsiders watching. It was really not about bocce at all but the talking. So immersed were they in their favorite conversational themes— baseball; kidsthesedays; the never ending construction on Genesee Street; the regularity, or lack thereof, of their bowel movements— they occasionally lost track of the score and had to start their games over. By late afternoon the men would tire and lumber across the street to Mulroney ' s for a draft while the women stayed behind. And set about designing the heavens. First they ' d gather the bocce balls their husbands had left lying on the ground. Then they took the court rakes and smoothed away all traces of their husbands ' footprints and any scuffs and dimples left from the thudding balls. After this the women stood, their backs to the courts, and tossed the little pallinos— suns, now— over their shoulders. Once this was done— one tiny sun dropped at random into each court— the women would slowly circle the perimeters, studying the sand. Every so often one would suddenly grab one of the large bocce balls( planets) in both hands and, leaning out over the bed of sand, drop it with precision. After all the balls were positioned just so in each of the four heavens, the women retrieved a handful of toy children ' s rakes from the trunk of a car and, as if it were a Japanese garden, meticulously drew ever widening concentric rings in the sand around each planet.
In this manner four brand new solar systems were assembled, each with eight planets orbiting their pallino sun. Their final touch: picking acorns and pebbles off the ground and flicking them sidearm across the courts: tiny asteroids and satellites leaving dotted trajectories in their wake. The women would study
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