The scene outside our cabin on the Mancuso compound the first morning on Sicily. You never forget you are on an island. The skies will not let you. And the air is always heavy with salt and the sweet-sour-acrid aroma of rot and smoke. Maybe these pictures will entertain you. I hope so. Both of us do, the two of us who were there and lived to tell the tale and share the view.
Off there in the distance, on the brow of that long heave of a hill is a cluster of white farm buildings where, we were told by folks we rented our cabin from, we could score good goat cheese. Between here and there, fallow fields (wheat, maybe, or soybeans) and the green patches are artichokes which were everywhere, and vines. At night gangsters and carabinieri chased each other up and down the gravel roads, their car lights, roaring motors, and blaring horns making for a frantic light and sound show while we watched Sicilian news shows and Walker Texas Rangers dubbed in Italian, or was it Sicilian. We didn’t know the Sicilian Raymond Chandler yet, but we would soon.
This is Sicily
