A Mafia Trifecta

A story of rampant human imagination... & unusual friendship.

The year was 1994. Our family lived in Tucson and ran a jewelry store in the Foothills Mall, on La Cholla Blvd. At the time, The Foothills Mall was a beautiful and classy boutique affair, although bereft of the heavy traffic that makes a mall profitable. It has since been turned into a more traditional commercial area, and I've heard the lovely copper fountain and handpainted ceiling are gone, replaced by primary colors and chain stores. Sigh.

Our store was in the old Fox Jewelers location, a beautiful center court walk-through that had gone by the wayside when the huge corporation began to buckle under its own weight. They had left the cases and safes intact, giving our always-on-a-budget family an easy opportunity to just put our inventory in the showroom and open up. My dad did, however, splurge on a beautiful sign. Individual gold and white letters a foot and a half high spelled out the family name: R-O-N-C-A-R-I. We had it installed and opened for business in 1992.

By '94 we had established ourselves somewhat, and we three girls had found a church home across the street. At the time, Casas Adobes Baptist Church occupied that corner of La Cholla and Ina. They have since moved somewhere further northwest in Tucson, having outgrown their property boundaries back in the mid-nineties. I have no idea what the church is like today, but when I went, there were three or four packed services every weekend, and the high school youth group alone counted around 200 kids per Sunday.

Of these 200 kids, I suppose we could estimate that about a quarter of them were freshmen. I am not sure why- possibly because as a homeschooler I didn't have a graduating year- I got stuck with a group of them for some study sessions.

Bored, and daydreaming of the guitarist in our youth band, I had pretty much zoned out on the conversation in our little group. We were preparing for a Spring Break mission trip to Mexicali, and the freshmen seemed to need more instruction than I did in some of the basics. Voices went on softly around my head, until I heard one mention my place of employment,

"The entire Foothills Mall must be a Mafia front." came the young voice from across me. I snapped my head up to stare at the source, and it continued, "I mean, just look at center court- you have Sbarro Pizza, Gelato Classico, and that Roncari Jewelry place..."

I may have cocked an eyebrow at him at this point, I have never been sure. The child speaking was very fair-haired, with big, innocent-looking blue eyes and perfect preppy clothes: penny loafers, belted khaki shorts, tucked in oxford shirt. Who did he think he was, assuming a random placing of ethnic names constituted mob rule?

"There's that European Bakery across from them, too," he went on "I'm not sure yet if they're in on it. But all you have to do is look at that guy who runs the jewelry store to know he's Mafia- I bet he breaks people's kneecaps and everything!"

I felt that now would be a good time to speak up,
"Yeah, that guy... that's my dad."

Preppy kid's mouth dropped open and he blushed so furiously that I could see his scalp through his tow-colored hair.

"Uh," he said.
Some of his friends began to giggle, and I sat there relishing his discomfort, while acutely amused at the thought of my dad busting someones' knees with a baseball bat. Not that he wasn't a violent person- the baseball bat just seemed too planned, too organized for dad's tastes.

Despite this odd beginning, the preppy kid and I became rather good friends. His name was Wesley, (I can't remember the last name,) and I think he was rather in love with my younger sister Emily. We kept a running joke about wooden vs aluminum baseball bats. I taught him that not only were Sbarro and Gelato corporate fronts for American companies, but that persons originating from Northern Italy are rarely involved in what is primarily a Sicilian operation. For some reason, my father never found that amusing, although I always have.

That store closed down in 1995, we moved back to Michigan, and I never saw that church or its members again. The beautiful Roncari letters sat abandoned in boxes until this winter, when we had to let them go to a better home, with memories of Tucson flooding back.

Someday I shall visit, although I am sure most of my old friends have moved on by now.

Wherever you are, Wesley, I hope that you are still a conspiracy theorist, and I hope that you still wear penny loafers without socks. Not everything is what it seems, but sometimes stupid assumptions will surprise you with happy results.