You wanna comm with your neighbor?
Tell him to mow his goddamned lawn, or her you love her but can’t tolerate her hubby?
Don’t go out. Give ‘em a jingle on the Fhoan.

Time was, when I grew up in Baltimore, folks’d sit on their porches and chitter-chatter up and down the street after dinner in summer.
Next door Mrs. Parson would say “Lamb is on sale at Hector’s for a dollar a pound,” but time that news jumped to the end of our street, it was fresh pasta at Cucina Mama for 50 cents a pound.
That was then.

Hector died in a woeful cardiac event in 1984.
He was de-boning a leg of lamb for Mrs. Nebel when it looked to her as if Hector’s insides revolted.
He fell on his fillet knife.
Mrs. Nebel never had that leg of lamb.
It went with Hector to the morgue.

Maria Carroccio took to the singular man who always wore French cuffs when he’d come in to her shop, Cucina Mama, to buy a pound of her fettuccine at the end of his day.
It took three years his adoration for Maria’s flour, water, salt, and egg, but he finally took to her, too.
He said, “I’m retiring to my family’s farm in Sicily since our caretaker has died and there’s no one left in the village to look after the place.”
Maria said, “I don’t know whether to say I’m happy or sad for you.”
He said, “Be happy, Maria. Join me. Come with me to Sicily. I will marry you, you will marry me, and we’ll farm and grow old together.”
Maria replied,”It’s been three years you’ve been a customer, but I still don’t know your name.
“How could I think to marry a man, name unknown?”
He chirrupped and said, “Gilland Price,” and he offered her across the counter his French-cuffed hand and she took it and shook it and said, “Alright.”

So what does any of the above have to do with Fhoanz?
Notta lot.
My old street is a war zone of narcotics and guns.
Maria’s in Sicily with Gilland and the goats and wheat and happy.
I speak with her once and a while.
I loved her, too, but Gilland prevailed.
God bless him, and her.

We speak on the Fhoan.