Moving along to some quick random impressions of Sicily – I think the most startling sight I came across was in Palermo. I was walking along one of the main streets, on my way to the big plant conservatory there, when I saw two men changing a light hanging high over the middle of the thoroughfare. The men were doing things the old-fashioned way. They didn’t have a cherry-picker crane, as our road maintenance crews would have here. Instead they just had a rickety tall, tall, tall, two-sided wooden ladder. I have never seen such a tall ladder anywhere else. It might even have been homemade, and it was 25-feet high if it was an inch. One man stayed below, supporting it – while his partner clambered up. What made the scene a really white-knuckle spectacle though was the traffic. Cars and motorbikes were whizzing by, within a hair’s breath of the ladder on either side. If just one of those notoriously harum-scarum drivers had deviated by the smallest fraction – the topside man would surely have been plummeted to his death.
You’ve no doubt heard about Italian traffic. I’d heard about it too, but I still wasn’t prepared for the free-for-all in Palermo’s streets. The Italians apparently have even more of a love affair with cars than Americans do. Our guide said there were about three cars to every adult Sicilian. And that isn’t the half of it. There seem to be more motorbikes around than cars. The cars dart here and there and the Vespas dart in and out between the cars. Most of the streets are choked with vehicles. Our Palermo Hotel was on the fringes of the downtown area and the intersection outside of it was often jammed. I saw one typically Italian exchange of gestures. A man double-parked near the intersection, causing traffic to come to a complete standstill for almost a block in all directions. The stymied motorists first started honking and shouting. Then some of the men among them got out of their cars.
I thought the gathering mob might start to pummel the offending driver into the ground. He didn’t flinch though, maintaining his right to park wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Finally, after several minutes of this operatic exchange, the fellow got back in his van and moved it – about fifteen feet. And so the shouting and gesticulation started all over again.
But that’s traffic in Sicily. Other members of my tour group who had traveled more extensively said that traffic was actually a hundred times worse in Rome. A hundred times worse! How could that be?
But it was the sheer numbers of vehicles, jockeying and jostling, that made street life such a spectacle. From 9-to-9 every day, the streets were like one big, clotted PacMan game. There were very few traffic lights to regulate traffic flow. And there was a general every-man-for-himself nature to navigating in the cities. Cars drove up on sidewalks and parked there with impunity. (Where else was there left to park?) My toes were constantly in danger of being flattened by some vehicle riding up the curb.
Then traffic was further stymied by the almost daily demonstrations that took place throughout Sicily. I saw the main street of Palermo being cordoned off almost every time I walked along it – to accommodate one group or another demonstrating against some government policy. One time it was a group demonstrating against housing restrictions; another time it was a demonstration against immigration policy. Each time a group announced its intentions to bring their protests to the streets, the local carbonieri would have to come out in force, complete with gas masks and truncheons. But I gather that generally these demonstrations don’t escalate above the grand operatic gesture. Rarely do the carbonieri have to use force.
Actually, there was a sort of friendliness, a comfort in all this unregulated activity. Our guide said that in Sicily, most laws are regarded as being merely “suggestions.” That was obviously true of traffic laws, if they existed at all. But other facets of life in Sicily also seemed to be appealingly unfettered. I know hardly anyone will agree with me on this point, but I appreciated coming across the occasional pile of dog dung on the sidewalks. A lot of people could be seen walking their dogs, and some dogs roamed free. And laundry waved merrily from balconies everywhere. And I saw only one garden in all of Sicily that had what could be called a “lawn.” All the other yards and gardens were free-range, with all the varieties of palm trees and cacti that had been imported to Sicily ages ago and all the native vegetation growing according to their own inclinations. My “Wild Ones” group here in Chicago (the group that advocates using only native plants in gardens) would have approved. Everywhere there was the sort of do-as-you-please atmosphere that would have been immediately quashed by any condo association or homeowners association in the U.S.
And as I say, I rather liked the free-for-all spirit – dog dung and all. It’s when the trains start to run strictly on time that I get worried.
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