The Hill and Harbor District is fourteen miles away from Federal Hill by car, and a world away by any other measure. But the two came together for me early one morning this week.
As I was leaving for work, a man walking up Peirce Street waved and asked about my neighbor, Dick Parenteau. I told him Dick had died in February. "That's too bad," he said. "I always saw him walking. He was like the mayor around here." I smiled. Dick's legend lives on.
"I've been here since 1959," the man said. "There were only 3,000 people in town. Then they all came for the schools." He laughed. "Been here since '59, but I'm still considered an outsider."
Find out what's happening in East Greenwichwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
A yellow bus churned by. "How long you been here?" the man asked. I thought of my daughter, Juliana, who was born five months after we moved to East Greenwich. "Sixteen years," I told him. "I'm an outsider, too." We laughed and I said I was from Providence. The man's face brightened.
"You Italian?"
Find out what's happening in East Greenwichwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
"Pantalone," I said. "On my mother's side." I told him my grandfather had a baby clothes store on Federal Hill for more than 70 years. We were no longer strangers.
"Still have go to Cranston for pastry," he said with a knowing nod. "Zaccagnini's."
Bread, too, I added. It was like talking to an uncle at a family wedding.
"Your wife a good cook?" he asked.
"Outstanding. But I make the gravy on Sundays."
"With the pork?"
"Yes."
"What's your name?"
"John."
"That was my father's name."
We spoke for a few minutes. About his heart transplant and doctor. About my copywriting career. About Atwells Avenue legends. When I asked his name, I didn't catch his reply. I wish I had. We had a lot in common: the Hill and the Hill, Dick and pastry and Zaccagnini's, bread and Sunday gravy. And now, this morning on Peirce Street.
I'll find out his name the next time we meet. I bet the conversation continues.
