my father tells me that one time his uncle Nicola was driving his horse-drawn gig and they were trotting along right behind the trolley going to the neighboring town along the county road that begins at the end of Corso Umberto and just then the trolley was rumbling along the road and my grandfather was driving his gig and riding along next to him was a friend and this friend at a certain point notices in this crowded trolley a rival of his a member of a rival family that had committed a transgression toward his clan and so this friend asks my grandfather to lend him his pistol because the friend had left his own pistol at home my grandfather routinely carried a pistol with him when he went out just like everybody else and didn’t even bother to ask why his friend wanted a gun he just pulled out his pistol and handed it to him and his friend waited for the trolley to come to a halt at the next stop and then very calmly got out of the gig and boarded the trolley and in the middle of the crowd of screaming passengers he shot and killed the guy he needed to kill and then he stepped off the trolley and handed the pistol to my uncle Nicola who was waiting in the gig and then the friend walked off over the fields and disappeared

there are lots of bullet holes in all the signs at the entrance to all the villages along the county road as if to warn visitors that around here you need to look out because this whole area is under close watch that someone is keeping an eye on everything you do so you had better be careful about every move you make whereas often in other parts of the country that are shall we say a little more normal on the signs marking the entrance to a town or village you’ll see the words Dio c’è or God exists written on the sign and this according to an urban legend means that in the town in question you can find drugs or anyway a place to make a buy usually it refers to hashish but it can also mean other types of drugs but in towns like my home town the sign with the classic phrase welcome to is always full of bullet holes from handguns and rifles because the message that you are meant to understand is that the surrounding area is being watched and controlled in other words anyone who comes into town should be aware of the risks they are running so that venturing into our town always involves a certain degree of danger that’s the way it’s been for a long time now and you might say that it’s changing a little but it hasn’t changed much