COLUMN | By Steve Sprinkel

Resident Tourist to Start Support Group in Randazzo

Steve Sprinkel doesn’t want to go home. He said he’s always falling in love with nearly every new and exotic place he’s visited but this is different. He’s in real trouble.

“I’ve allowed myself to daydream about Cartagena and the undisclosable wild beaches within reach of that city. Colima, Patzcuaro, La Corunna, and Hanalei have all beguiled me superficially. You have to become somewhat enamored of a place in order to experience it at a more rewarding level. And I suppose the obverse is certain once we come to doubt someplace for the right reasons, like San Francisco or Dallas.”

Sicily seems not to be an obvious candidate for his affections. The Italian archipelago holds much of the same natural beauty with a much larger measure of history, culture, antiquities.

“I suppose that is the point. The Straits of Messina seem to have held back the accelerating madness of techno-modernity. You can fly in here direct from Copenhagen but it’s not a place you can discover by accident.”

Why did you come here specifically then?

“The capers. I hesitate to tell you the truth because my motive may indicate that anything else I do or say could be considered a little “off kilter,” if not crazy. But, in any case,  another farmer in my town in California was investigating growing capers and her enthusiasm was infectious so I started reading about them, in some depth, and discovered that the best capers in the world are grown in the Aeolian Islands off the north coast of Sicily. There, and in Pantelleria, another island to the south. I like capers as much as the next person, but I am not so devoted that the shelves of my kitchen are lined with little jars of them. However they do magical things to rice and swordfish.”

“I became somewhat obsessed with the island of Salina in particular, home to capers of international fame. Everything and anything about the Aeolian Islands I devoured. Learned of all six main islands, history and myth. I watched Rosellini’s 1952 film “Stromboli” starring his pregnant wife Ingrid Bergman. Her husband directed her to dodge dangerous, smoking boulders simulating the volcano blowing up. It was too realistic and she should have divorced him then.”

Stromboli looms over the rest of the archipelago, an angry little brother of Vesuvius to the north and black Etna on Sicily.

When you went to Salina, were you surprised at all about what you found?

“I haven’t had time to go there yet. That’s “the crazy.” I keep discovering some new place by accident that keeps me on Sicily. I have had the capers of course. They sell great salty mounds of them in the markets, which dulls a bit of their esoteric Romanticism. Like saffron, the taste of capers is one of the subtle flavors of Mediterranean food culture. Garlic, tomatoes, olive oil, form a solid center here. But they’re not addictive, nor are capers, as I’ve found out. The failure of my obsession with capers was like meeting a film star and being amazed at how small he was.”

But are you going to go to Salina?

“I am going to run out of time. Unless I decide to not go back. Everywhere on Sicily is a new addiction. Each day seems to present a new miracle. I spent most of yesterday walking around in the orchards in Scillato quite by accident. We met some young guys who are rescuing their town’s agricultural heritage and they showed us their various projects and plantings. They’re focused on a special cultivar of apricots that are only found in their region. Most of the apricot production in Sicily, and all over the planet for that matter, has been transformed by new apricot introductions that bear much more fruit but have very little flavor.”

So you’ve gone from capers to apricots.

Yeah, but they’re really nothing compared to the peaches. There is this mountain district called Moio, near Randazzo on the north side of Etna, that still has fantastic peaches in October. I’ve been eating eight or ten a day. I’ve lost track. Every time I see a peach truck I pull over and see what they’ve got. I know my peaches. I own a grocery store, and I told my buyer to stop buying stone fruit at the end of August. The stuff was mealy dreck. These Sicilian peaches may have rivals but there are none that are better. Both white and yellow, and nectarines as well. Huge fruit. Thirty to thirty-six count fruit.”

I see. And what does that mean exactly?

“You mean the count? The lower the count the bigger the fruit.”

And bigger is better?

“Not always, but there is much less risk in a big peach.”

I can see now why you’re talking about starting a support group … for people who need to go back but can’t get on the plane. Why do you think a formal remedy is required? Have you met other travelers who have the same “experiences”?

“Just a few so far, entirely Americans. But I know there must be more. There are by far more French and Germans here than Americans. But the French could never bring themselves to admit something is good anywhere else, so they are immune to Sicily.”

And the Germans?

“They can get down here easily at a moment’s notice. It’s a Euro thing. Two hours or so by plane and you’re in Catania. It’s like someone from LA going out to Las Vegas. But that’s where all similarity ends. Vegas has to be the loudest place in the world. The blare is part of the distraction and the insanity. The money clang isn’t just in the slot galleries. Here, even in the towns, the only audible interruption may be a jackhammer or a car horn. There’s Italian TV but it’s just not as omnipresent as Cali. I think people here tend to ignore TV. Sundays on Sicily are one long contemplation, not a go-go-go from one multi-screen NFL game to another. That’s like hell. I can see it so clearly. Silence is scarce. In Sicily the peace is so addictive it makes you afraid to go back. You recognize America’s noise and general bedlam is the foundation of what’s obscene.”

These are all strong points, but they may be ephemeral. Is it just the quiet and the gustatory revelations?

“I’ve also noticed there’s almost no outdoor advertising howling at you mile after mile.”