Rico Ventura
4748 Blaisdell Ave. South
Minneapolis, Minnesota

March 3, 1997

Dear friends,

When I was eighteen I decided to go to the "U" following high school. It made sense at the time, as my dad was the manager of a bookstore at the university called the Minnesota Coop. They sold textbooks, school supplies, records, TV's - all at a big discount to me, the bosses son. The store was huge, using all the space of the first and basement floors of what is now the dome city building just across the street from campus. This was going to be my place of employment, helping my fellow students find the books they needed for class. Especially the students who were women, I hoped. I had already worked there during inventory and had found my fellow student-workers to be cool. I remember them counting stacks of books at midnight while rocking out to the Doors' "Light my Fire", the long version. And there, in the back alley, was my parking space - a free parking space at the U, all mine, within a few feet of classes. I was really looking forward to what was ahead of me; it could be nothing but great.

Yea, except that during the summer before my freshman year the university decided to socialize the book business by opening a school-owned bookstore and by channeled professors' textbook requests directly to it. All large campus bookstores closed, my dad's job vaporized along with my dream. The birth of their scam meant the death of mine.

As the one year anniversary of Rick's death nears I can't help but to feel that same way that I felt tromping around the campus on my first day at the U; basically screwed. This was going to be a great era for the Rickman and for me. Rick was closing-in on his big move to the city, Linden Hills neighborhood, just across the lake from my place. Being that close, and with his flexible schedule, we could blade the lake in the afternoons at will. Or sail on a windy day on my Hobie Cat on a buoy at Calhoon. I'm constantly renovating and constructing at my place, and Rick and I thought we could do work on his new place and on mine more efficiently as a team. Not more soberly, but more efficiently. Maybe efficiency, like beauty, is in eye of the beholder. We were also looking forward to new hangouts, maybe spend more time in Uptown. This was definitely the start of something great.

Except that the whole plan crashed when Rick did. Instead of spending more time hanging out with Rick I don't even get the two phone calls a week and one weekend night of bar music I had for years, no heated political debates and no ski trips. I realize now that I've been skiing only once this winter because Rick and I always went together. It's just not easy to replace a fifteen-year friend. You can try, but you're basically screwed.

Well, I believed that would be very therapeutic for me, but I don't feel much better. So I'll just go on - what else can you do - and write you a story about the vacation Sturtz took to visit his friend Rico in Italy.

Rick was obviously pretty jazzed about his big adventure outside the fifty states when I picked him up at the train station in Rimini. It's an old Roman naval base, now a beach town that becomes the United Nations during the month of August, filling with Italians, Germans, Swedes and the rest. All European workers receive August off as annual vacation and many pack up the family and head to the beach for the full month. Rick traveled light, one mid-size bag, and we took the bus back to the Italian school in the center of town where I had a dorm room. I studied Italian in the mornings and went with all the other students each afternoon to area "39" on the beach. The school had a beach house there to hold our clothes and toys, and the waiters of the area got to know us and gave us better service.

He could barely contain himself as he told me of his overnight on the train. "Everyone always tells you to watch your passport, don't lose your passport, don't give it to anyone. Then some little guy in a tatty uniform on the train asks for your passport and wants to keep it all night. You just give it to him!" Yes, I guess that's true. He told me of the two Italian girls that were traveling on the train in Rick's compartment. "They were jabbering away until about 10. Then they took off their clothes to their underwear, hopped into the sheets of their births, and dimmed the lights." Not knowing what else to do, Rick did the same. Rick was liking this adventure bigtime, and I had yet to tell him that about half of the women on the beach would be topless.

During the next couple of weeks Rick settled into the Italian beach lifestyle. He'd get up each day and join our class for our mid-morning espresso break. He picked up some Italian phrases, read my copy of Luigi Barzini's book on the Italian psyche. We rode my motorcycle to some discos. We were the only Americans at the school - in fact I saw no Americans in the city during the month I was there - and kept a low profile. I warned Rick in advance that the dollar was at a twenty year high against the Lira and, as all students had dinner together, it would not be cool to comment that the bottle of wine we were drinking cost us less than half a dollar. So towards the end of one meal, he held the bottle before him for all to see, like Hamlet gazing at the skull, and recited loudly, "Five hundred lira for a bottle of wine, screwing us just because we're students." This ingratiated him to the group, who all joined in commiseration. He flashed a sideways glance to me as if to say, "They bought it."

We made friends on the beach with a couple from Austria, Karin would sit in the sun knitting and sipping from her tea cup as though she were back home in a dark cafe of Vienna. We met Sunei, a Japanese student learning Italian because she sung opera, and some Swedes, painfully sunburned but sunning daily just the same. Lela, a local Italian girl we got to know, is seen in one of Rick's beach photos in his collection. Everyday involved walks through the ancient streets and roman ruins of the city and time with our friends windsurfing, paddle-boating and swimming at the beach. And then there were the beach games.

I should say the Beach Olympics. Next to the children's swings and close to our beach's bar facility were the bocce courts, several large sections of beach separated from each other by long, brightly painted wooden beams. Each could easily hold ten players. Bocce ball was THE game at the beach, everyone played it. Our beach house was stocked with enough balls for an army. Someone just throws the small red-colored wooden ball, the pallina, out twenty feet, and teams try to throw their heavy clay softball-size balls near it. They also try to knock any of the other team's balls away. We played for beers, we played for bragging rights, we played for fun, we played because we had become macho Italian men.

One afternoon after working on our tans for some time, Rick and I finally got around to picking up the bocce balls. No one of importance could be interested in playing against the Americans - a well known non-bocce nation - leaving us only students from the non-aligned nations as competitors. So we played against a couple of Swedish classmates of mine. I had played this game enough to know that I'm no pro, and I was throwing accurately only about half of the time. If even that. But Rick was dropping those balls right where he wanted, and from the start. No effort. We won that match handily, moved through the Asian countries, and then beat up on my young Turk friend and his visiting father. Players in surrounding courts were beginning to notice. I would do the best I could, knocking our opponents' balls out of scoring distance, getting mine closer to the marker. But as Rick scored on almost every throw, in time I didn't sweat it wherever my ball landed. It didn't matter. Rick would toss last and score.

We were playing on a new level for world domination now, moving "up" to another court. Here I found the also-ran countries. You know who you are if, for example, your country doesn't even get the respect of having your own name and you are lumped in with another; Benelux for example. We beat this Belgian, Luxembourg, Netherlands amalgam, slew the Austrians and proceeded to destroy the Spaniards. The sun beat down on the carnage, witnessed by a host of multinational spectators of all ages. The Italians provided us with a spirited game trying to search out a fatal flaw in our battle plan. They threw the pallina far at first, then very short. They threw near the edge of the court, then in a corner. They were running us around the court, but to no avail. They fell to our dogged pursuit. By this time we were playing in the top-ranked court and were soon rolling over France like Rommel in the dessert. We were in a take-no-prisoners mood. A good thing, too, because we would soon be under fire from the Germans.

When the sand finally settled after the first barrage from the German battery, we knew that we were facing a skilled, disciplined opponent. Not just on the battlefield, but on a mental level. Cleverly trying to distract us by wearing nothing but micro speedo suits on their robust 55-gallon drum shaped bodies. If the topless Swedish girls failed to deter us, nothing would; we contained our nausea. In the first round the Germans left the field pocked with the geometric pattern of their highly thrown missiles, their balls left in a tight pattern that surrounded the pallina on all sides. Sorry Helmet, Rick's ball dropped directly in the middle in a surgical strike that popped the pack like a pimple, the pallina landing on the far side of the court leaving their plans in ashes, their spent balls forming a Maginot Line irrelevant to the game. All I had to do was to plop down my balls within a foot or two of the pallina and we had the first points on the board.

After we had scored six unanswered points, their tactics turned increasingly desperate. The sun was low in the sky but still brightly scorching the beach and anything on it. Their toss of the pallina goes directly into the sun, a tactic from venerated ace Von Ricthoven. I look at Rick, polish off another Heineken (war booty), and squint my eyes behind my sunglasses in my best Clint Eastwood imitation to get off my first shot. I don't know why I bothered. A German ball fires and lands directly between mine and the goal. Rick fires his last ball high and hard. The pallina disappears leaving the crowd silently puzzled at the outcome. Self-appointed line judges gingerly pick and poke the sand finally locating the pallina as the crowd applauds. It's under Rick's ball. Unless you have a talented gopher on the payroll you'll get no closer than that; the games done. We get our next Heinekens from our vanquished opponents, good-natured in their defeat, and congratulations from the gallery. The war is over, peace is at hand. Yanks victorious.

On our return to our rooms and dinner I remember Rick was a little giddy as he looked back at the bocce ball field, brightly painted in a rainbow of colors, and said, "You know, I always wanted to be a natural at something." Don't we all. It's a special experience looking back and being able to say that this was my day, I was a natural. There's never a promise that there will be more of those days, although one hopes and works towards that end. Mostly in vain, I suppose. All that remains is the memory. With Rick gone I was left with sole custody of that day, all I can remember of it. I keep it with me to smile at every now and then. Now it's yours, too.

Sincerely,

Rico