Adventure, Discovery and even a new game

Adventure and Discovery and a new game.

Back in old Italy, way before That’s Amore, way back in the 15th century, there was a young man by the name of Luigi Boccetetrazini. He came from a well to do family in old Napoli. Luigi’s father, Marvin, was a merchant and owned a chain of party stores. Although back then they were called casas del vino e spuntinis. Marv worked hard everyday going from each of his casas to oversee the daily take. Luigi was only interested in the dough re mi and not the work involved. His father would tell him, ..”Luigi, whatta we gonna do widd you, ? (loosely translated from the Italian) You either gonna be a priest or a soldier, no more runnin’ around doing nothin’. You hang around all day and night with your hooligan buddies and whatta we got? Just spendin’ the money.” Luigi knew that he had to come up with something. So he told his father that he wanted to go to sea and become an adventurer and explorer. He wanted to see new things. Marvin decided that this was better that what was happening now, so he agreed. But he told Luigi, that he would have to travel to Portugal to make his way in the adventuring world. At that, Luigi panicked, as Portugal seemed like it was at the end of the world, or at least another country. Luigi had not spent a lot of time in school, so his geography skills were lacking. He wanted to see if he could just try things out first in Naples. His father knew better, he told Luigi to pack some extra underwear and socks and be ready to leave in a week. He had some merchant connections in Lisbon. They would take Luigi in and help get him started learning about sailing, navigating and even basic geography.

Before he knew it, Luigi was on the way to Portugal. It was a long and winding road, to the door of the great merchant Pasca de Basta Esq. of Lisbon. It was a fine house in the city and overlooked the Tagus River. During the day Luigi spent time studying and occasionally was taken out to see the many ships in the harbor. He still had a lot of free time on his hands and eventually picked up enough Portuguese lingo that he found a group of vino louts to hang out with during the warm nights. They tried their hands at cards, where Luigi excelled, and also at darts and other games. One night during a night of enhanced wine guzzling, Luigi came up with an idea to have some fun. He set up a number of wine bottles at the end of an alley and proceeded to roll a small melon at the bottles. When the melon crashed into the bottles, the crowd would yell, … way to go Luigi!, or cool! you the man Lou! (but only in Portuguese). As time went on, Luigi and his pals refined their new sport. The melon never lasted too long, so they had to come up with a better ball, and also they had a problem with the wine bottles. When they found a stronger substance for the ball they threw, the wine bottles were not up to the crashing of the ball. The bottles were breaking and they couldn’t drink enough wine to keep up with the requirements of the game. A high score might only be in the 20s since they couldn’t find enough unbroken bottles. Eventually Luigi and the boys grew tired of the sport and moved on to other endeavors. It was at this time that he received a letter from his father inquiring about how the preparations were going for the upcoming voyage. Luigi decided to turn his attention to the boat to pacify his father.

So down to the harbor he went. He had a fine boat, a ship actually, that would easily be able to take Luigi on his voyage of discovery across the seas. So Luigi enlisted some of his jolly companheiros to sail as his crew on the maiden voyage. As the captain of this ship, Luigi soon discovered that his lack of talent for sailing a ship was only overshadowed by the ignorance of his crew. After a quick jaunt of careening around the harbor and swamping a few fishing smacks, they returned to port. Standing on the shore watching the would be sailors dock the ship with a thud, was a small group of kibitzers or as they called them ‘caras espertos’ in Portuguese. As they descended the plank , the razzing increased and Luigi had to defend his honor. The best that he could come up with, was,: ..so you guys could do better? The leader of the group responded quickly, .. amigo, I could do better blindfolded with one hand holding a parrot.   After a few more minutes of insults and bad words thrown around, yelling and a couple of yo-mamacitas, Luigi laid down the challenge. “Ok, smarty pants, lets see what you can do. Let’s take her out right now.” So, the leader of the group took his pals along with Luigi, and jumped back on the ship. With a couple of, Avasts, and Shiver me Timbers (in Portuguese) they moved out into the harbor. The sails were unfurled and the wind came up and before you could say, well blow me down, they were scudding across the waves just like downtown. Luigi was very impressed and asked if the man could teach him how to sail. The leader thought about it, and started to say no, but then said he would do it if Luigi would let him be the captain. Luigi figured he would humor the man and would learn how to sail the ship and then send the guy packing.

Over the next few months, Luigi with his new friend Vasco, spent as much time as possible putting together a crew and getting out in the harbor in all types of weather and showing Luigi how to sail. And so it happened, Vasco was able to make a real sailor out of Luigi.  He even learned to sing some soulful sea chanteys as they worked.  If karaoke had been invented, he would have been a champ.   Unfortunately, Lou got cocky as usual, and started spending a little more time in the dockside saloons. He got back together with his rowdy crowd and introduced them to his new game that he had been devising in his mind while he was out sailing. His new game would involve throwing balls, but without the wine bottles. One night he was in his cups and showing his gang how his new game would work. At that moment, his tutor, Vasco,  came into the bar and confronted Luigi. He told him that they had to take the ship out tomorrow for a little longer voyage and Luigi needed to sober up and be ready in the morning. Luigi was not interested in sailing, as his father would not be visiting for another couple weeks. So Vasco asked him if it was ok if he borrowed the ship for this little trip, as he had a couple other guys who had ships and they were all going out together. Luigi gave him the okay, but just told to remember to bring it back when he was done.

And so on the morrow, history was made. Luigi’s mentor took out his ship along with a few others and disappeared over the horizon. Vasco, was of course, Vasco da Gama. He and his four ships would sail on a great voyage of discovery and adventure and would not return for two years. After a few days, Luigi realized that “borrow’ meant something different in Portuguese than it did in Italian. Undaunted, Luigi went back to work on his new game that he was inventing. Eventually he perfected the game by using one small ball and four larger balls that would be thrown towards the small ball, to see who could get closer to it. The game took off like wildfire in all the bars and saloons and parks of Lisbon. Luigi had discovered a new form of entertainment for young and old, sober and drunk. According to most historians, it was the greatest game to come along until the invention of video games. So Luigi Boccetetrazini did not get to sail around the globe with da Gama, and he also missed out on inventing bowling, but he did have the claim to fame of inventing Bocce…ball. Which he eventually took back to Naples where the game is still played the same way to this day.  Luigi became something of local legend, and never thought of sailing again.

the end

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