I think
this is a Canary Island Date Palm, but I’m not sure.
I thought it was a type of
palmetto, which got me thinking about palmetto bugs, aka flying cockroaches,
which reminded me of growing up in Miami and why to this day I put glasses and
mugs upside down in the cabinets.
Then,
upon pondering my childhood in southern Florida, I remembered the time in 1964,
when my mother was in the hospital delivering my youngest sister Lois, that my
sisters Patti and Beth (and maybe I was involved, I don’t recall…) pitched tons
of apricots from one neighbor’s yard over a very tall hedge into another
neighbor’s yard. Our grandmother made us go over and pick up all those
apricots.
The
neighbors who we assaulted happened to be an older middle-aged couple, probably
in their 60s, named Bonafiglio. I think her name was Isabella and his was Frank
or Vincent, but the family anecdote is that he was retired Mafia (or maybe he
wasn’t so retired…who knows?).
Isabella
had waist-long graying hair that she normally kept pinned up in a chignon and
when she washed it once a week she would sit in the back yard in a kitchen
chair to let it dry in the sun. She also had a capuchin monkey; we were invited
inside the house once. Mr. B wore a wife-beater undershirt with slacks and a
belt and dress shoes. At least, that’s what my memory says.
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