The butcher sang out loud today.

In his voice I could hear my dad singing along to Jerry Vale.
A familiar tune …… a dramatic song about a beautiful love.

Here in Castellemmare I enjoy my stops at the butcher shop more than at any other market. They are sweet, smiling, happy men in their clean white aprons...maybe father, Sebastiano, and son. Their market is scrubbed and fresh. Slabs of meat are cut to order. In addition to the cuts to order they offer sausage, thin cutlets, specialty meats and cheeses. On Saturday mornings women arrive with lists for the week's meals. They are individually catered to...smiles and songs abound.

Today I asked for chopped beef. He carefully chose just the right cuts with a perfect proportion of fat. Into the grinder. He then took the meat over to a counter where he seasoned it… "Sale? si!" pepper? ... mixing it thoroughly and making it into six perfect patties, stacked with discs of plastic between.

They enjoy sharing their few words of English as I share my few words of Sicilian.

Living in Queens in my high school years, my first boyfriend was a butcher boy, Tony. He did deliveries on his bike; riding for miles under streets darkened by the elevated "J" train. My sister used to tease me and sing “Butcher Boy” to the tune of that girl group tune, “Soldier Boy.”

I’ve always made it a point to get to know the butcher...now I like knowing the farmer. Years ago when my mother first visited me at my upstate New York home she was impressed by the butcher I had found. Vito admonished me once when I asked for a special cut to make bracciole. Shaking his head and waving his knife in the air he said, “You women... who grew up with butchers!” Yes we were a lot unto our own. A seemingly dying breed of consumer.

My childhood home in Brooklyn was across the street from a meat processing plant. It may have been one of the first of Boar’s Head’s plants. Carcasses of meat would arrive. Great truckloads of waste bones would get hauled away. The view from our second floor apartment didn't encourage lingering. Here they made bologna, liverwurst, and frankfurters. In their bloody aprons, the butchers would stand outside the wide doors for gulps of fresh air.

It was also the place where young neighborhood men could get their first jobs. Our block was often parked with the fasts cars of the fifties that belonged to these young men. I never really took much notice of them. My interest in boys came after we had already moved from this place. My older cousins would reportedly come to sit on our stoop to check out those boys with their slicked back hair and Lucky Strikes dangling from the corners of their mouths.

A slice of bologna never made it passed my lips. The smells that emanated from the neighboring plant were enough to put anyone off cold cuts. I often accompanied my mother on her weekly visits to the butcher shop, though. It was around the corner, replete with saw dust and wood seated iron stools. The friendly butcher would give me slice of bologna, much like the baker might press a cookie into the hand of a favored customer. Too shy to say “no thanks” I would just stand there hiding my face in my mom's dress... holding the dreaded round of mystery meat.

Here I am... half a world away from Brooklyn and Queens... in an ancient town on the north coast of Sicily ... and hearing the song of a butcher I'm transported back in time.

It occurs to me that one place is not so different than the other.