Fess Parker, Assisi, Easter, "or I'll eat my hat!"

I rarely attend Catholic Mass but when I do, I always wear a hat.  For me, it’s part of the ceremony that IS the Catholic Church.   Obviously, being in Rome has the benefit of attending Easter Mass at the Vatican.  IF you are Catholic, and IF you can get tickets...I am neither Catholic nor could I get tickets, so no hat for Emilia. 

Iris, my first ever non-family traveling companion (circa 1995), and I took a few days in Assisi, which included Good Friday.  Again, since I’m not Catholic, Good Friday would probably have little significance to me outside of the fact that it was the day that James and I got engaged.  Iris and I have both been to Assisi on previous visits so I was unsure how much we would really do and of what our trip might consist.   We had been on extensive tours of the many important and famous frescoes of Cimabue and Giotto, seen the sacred crucifix in Basilica di Santa Chiara, and the tomb of Saint Francis.  San Francesco is THE patron saint of Italy and Assisi is his hometown.  He is also the patron saint of Jessie, because apart from being the patron saint of animals and nature, he is also the patron saint of lost causes.

We stopped into a small cartoleria, because I’m obsessed with stationery, and had cappuccini in the piazza.  The late afternoon drizzle seemed to bother no one as teens and adults, tourists and locals, all scattered themselves around the square.  I was especially fascinated by the group of teens having a small party and observing the piazza from their balcony. 

After checking into the small family-run hotel, we dined in a little cave of an osteria and then lined up after sunset along the main street to see the parade from the Cathedral of San Rufino down to Basilica di San Francesco.  I swear...I’ve never seen anything like it. 

Assisi is a hill town, a fortified medieval town with narrow streets, few cars, and buildings made of the soft pink blocks from Mt. Subiaso, just a few kilometers away.  

The pink is not only soft in color, but though it appears chalky, it is almost silky to the touch.  I can still feel its smoothness on my fingers.  There are no streetlights but iron posts for candles and torches.  These posts were in use on the evening of Good Friday during the parade.  All the lights in the town were turned out.  If you were having dinner in a restaurant, the lights were turned out.

It was as if power to the entire town had been disconnected.  Everyone along the street was silent; we could only hear the steady heartbeat of a single drum and the whimpering of a toddler.  It was dark except for the flashbulbs from the crowd.  [Marcus told me to use the word flashbulbs so if you think that is incorrect, please blame him].   

Soon, a chant was heard and the procession reached our view.  By American standards, it would be considered bizarre.  Anytime you see a man dressed completely in a white cotton robe with a pointed white cotton hood with eye holes, carrying a wooden cross, you immediately think that he is going to set that cross on someone’s lawn and light it on fire, and probably hang a noose in a nearby tree.  Seeing a procession of men dressed as such was almost blood chilling.  But they were also wearing crowns of thorns so the symbolism was easy enough to decipher but the first impression was somewhat upsetting.  

A life-sized wooden statue of the Madonna suddenly appeared above the heads of the procession, with at least half a dozen arrows piercing her heart.  The procession then filed into the lower portion of the Basilica di San Francesco. 

I thought they would have a full mass but they reappeared in about 20 minutes, carrying a canopy with a statue of Jesus, prostrate upon the bed, followed by the afore-mentioned Madonna, and the chanting priest.  We followed the procession back up through town to San Rufino.  Our path was lit by candles along the ground and by torches along the walls.  The crowd was still silent, the lights in all the houses and shops, still dark.  It was incredibly solemn.  

The next morning, Iris and I had plans to hike up to the hermitage of San Francesco.  She had done it before and we had a vague idea that it was about 4 kilometers outside of Assisi but since Iris seems to have a ten-year gap in her memory, we knew it would be something of an adventure.  You can read a brief of San Francesco here, but my quick synopsis would only tell you that he started an important confraternity called the Franciscan Friars who rejected the excesses of the church and committed themselves to a life of poverty and contemplation.  San Francesco would sleep in a little cave on a stone in the wilderness, and that wilderness is now a religious sanctuary and our destination. 

It was an uphill climb but on a paved road that switched back and forth, providing stunning views of the hill town of Assisi, the castle, and the valley below.  It was as beautiful a day and a scene as I have ever known. 

The hermitage itself should be discovered in person, the tiny doorways whose lintels are rubbed smooth by those bending low to enter, made of that same pink Subiaso stone, should be felt in one’s hand, the dark green of the rambling paths, quiet and soulful, should be wandered and not read.  I will say no more. 

The afternoon before, Iris and I had stopped into a pastecceria.  I bough several brutti ma buoni, cookies called ‘ugly but good’ and Iris decided to buy a meringue as big as my head.  Literally, it was a meringue as big as my head.  We ate the cookies right away, but I’ve noticed that people always seem reluctant to eat novelty desserts and we were no exception.  We carried the thing (meringue) all the way back into Rome on the evening train. 

I had been avoiding processing the fact that Fess Parker had recently passed away, but when we returned to my apartment, and the internet, it was all over FaceBook and my news updates.  As a child, I had watched Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone Disney movies and shows, and I vividly remember a scene that Ben and I would reenact in the finale of one of the films, I can’t remember whether it was Crockett or Boone, in which Fess Parker’s friend/foil, was forced to eat his hat because he lost a bet.  “...Or I’ll eat my hat!” was a common phrase when we were young, often pantomiming the act with a suitably leathery fruit roll-up. I'm not kidding, we totally did that.   

Because we had no luck with the Easter Mass plan, because it was raining, and because we are spoiled, Iris and I decided to spend Easter Sunday at the spa.  I won’t say how much it cost, but if the martinis in the hotel bar cost 19 euro, you have an idea of how over-priced the spa actually was.  But I would do it again in a heartbeat.  They had an amazing salt-water pool, kept just a body temperature, a steam room that smelled of lemons and I lay/read/dozed on a chaise all afternoon.  It was perfect. 

When we returned to my apartment that night, Easter was nearly over.  Maria, my hostess and neighbor, had left me a little chocolate bell with a bunny on it as my Easter present.  Iris was leaving early in the morning so she just packed up her stuff and I entertained her with my many idiosyncrasies.  We realized that we never ate the meringue and so I decided to make it into my Easter hat.  After all, it was as big as my head.  I pulled out some vintage millinery supplies, which I just happened to have, and with some grey netting and chartreuse velvet ribbon, fashioned quite a look.  If it hadn’t been raining, and if I hadn’t been shunned by Catholicism, I would have worn it to mass. 

The day after Easter is called Pasquetta (little Easter) and it is a holiday in Italy.  Everyone takes a train and goes to the countryside outside Rome with a picnic basket.  It was raining again and I was just sort of sitting around the house collecting my thoughts.  Iris had left and I was thinking about Fess.  Ten years ago, I was having lunch with him and he said, “Miss Emily, I’m 75 years old and I like life so much I think I’ll live another 75.”  He was one of the first true Republicans with whom I would never have a single political commonality but whose company I would eminently enjoy.   Sometimes I would play the piano and he would sing.  One time, I remember driving him in my BMW and he was so tall that he his head rubbed against the ceiling.  Conversely, he drove me in his Hummer to the upper vineyard at the winery and my feet didn’t touch the floor.  He was a fun guy and while I was horrified by his ideas about developments and real estate, I really enjoyed his company. 

He told me once that he might as well adopt me because I didn’t take up much space.  I told him that it would be quite ironic because when I was five, I wanted to marry him.  Well, it was a tie between him and Eric Dickerson (who was still with the LA Rams at that point).  I thought all of these things as I sat in my apartment, staring out the French doors into the spring rain, idly eating my hat.