Back before Big Oil came to St. John's and gentrified the place, there were very few eateries whose main offerings were not deep-fried. One of these places was an eccentric little dive down on Water Street called Napoli Pizzeria and Restaurant. The proprietors were a colorful old couple from Naples who came to Newfoundland for some undisclosed and wholly incomprehensible reason and opened the place years and years ago. He scowled at the world through a style of spectacles not in use since the fifties and possessed a kind of furtive hunch suggesting illicit knowledge, an apron which was never either notably clean or particularly dirty, and a tone of voice that seldom varied from a querulous trumpet. She, on the other hand was a jolly, rotund little thing, wreathed in smiles and black taffeta, usually wearing 3-inch heels which brought her brain pan maybe 4 ½ feet off the floor. She spoke virtually no English but could turn out a remarkably tasty meal with the best salad available in St. John's and a lovely chewy Italian bread she made in the pizza oven.
As near as we could make out her name was Mamma and he didn't have one. We referred to the place as Luigi's just because we knew what we meant, and went there from time to time because it was handy and cheap. Most of their patrons went there to get take-out pizza but there was an actual menu with spaghetti and ravioli and such on it and they were always excited when somebody ordered from it because it was more expensive than the pizzas and it looked more respectable having people sitting at the tables with plates and forks rather than just lounging at the counter waiting for the heavy-on-the-pepperoni.
After we had gone there a few times it got so they recognized us and Luigi would escort us solemnly to a table and trumpet something to Mamma in the kitchen. Then he would carefully unfold a couple of paper napkins and deploy them over the spots on the table, first in front of Jim and then me, then deposit a second pair of virgin paper napkins in front of each of us, as if he was preparing for surgery, and dump a heap of sticky cutlery on them. Then Mamma would waddle out beaming beatifically and chattering in some hybrid tongue incomprehensible to Anglophones and Italianophones alike. And we would beam back at her and pretend we knew what she was trying to say, which we almost never did. Then we would order something and wait for our salads to appear.
There was no shortage of visual distractions to while away the time and spur conversation. There was usually either wrestling or greed shows on the tiny black-and-white television which was thoughtfully placed so all the customers could share the entertainment. Or idiosyncratic floral arrangements which ran to a jelly jar full of plastic flowers with an occasional daisy tucked in for authenticity. And on the walls, which had not been washed since 1953 when Luigi got his glasses, there were great numbers of original paintings lovingly rendered by somebody's relative who was either very young at the time or almost entirely lacking in talent. Or we could squirm around in the chrome set chairs and pick at the clothes pins that held the construction plastic in place over the tablecloth.
For most of the nine endless years I spent in that dreary land Luigi had been engaged in a no doubt fragmented and certainly frustrating dialogue with City Hall concerning the acquisition of a liquor license. As you can imagine, it was a red letter day in the annals of Napoli Pizzeria and Restaurant when some minor functionary inadvertently allowed this application to slip through. Luigi responded gamely by immediately acquiring an artistically calligraphed sign, conspicuous by its absence of fly spots, announcing FULLY LICENSED, and propping it in the front window next to the menu. While it didn't draw tumultuous crowds as anticipated, it did cause a tiny flutter in the breasts of certain of us regulars, and on our next trip we plumbed the depths of this veiled promise and discovered that what “Fully Licensed” meant to Luigi was a bit of cheap scotch, a bottle of gin, three or four varieties of local beer and two kinds of Italian red wine. Having sampled both of the latter we settled on Chianti Classico and as soon as we walked in the door Luigi growled a greeting, very nearly smiled, and rushed off into the kitchen to fetch us a bottle.
Meanwhile Mamma effused and we looked at the menu and then for the sport of it, asked her what she thought we should have since we once discovered that there was a whole world of stuff which was not on the menu which was frequently better than what was, and furthermore what was on the menu was often not available. The menu was just a coded notice which said “We've got stuff that isn't pizza.” Encouraged by our interest, she launched into a very long and perfervid discussion involving clams and spaghetti and “shrimpa like dis” (indicating a point halfway up her forearm) and since she clearly wanted us to do this we ordered it with no clear idea what to expect. When it came, it proved to be one of the happiest surprises I've had at a restaurant. They charged us twice the price of anything else on the menu bringing it up to the price of an average meal anywhere else in town and it was worth every dime.
I think it was this meal that earned us Most Favored Diner status down at Luigi's. Be that as it may, the next time we went in there we got cotton napkins.
Then one momentous Valentine's Day we thought we should have a night out, and naturally thought of Luigi's. So we set out through the rain, drizzle, and fog thinking about all those nice surprises in Mamma's scrupulously tidy kitchen only to discover first, a big, red Closed sign, and second, and altogether unnerving, an accompanying For Sale sign right there next to FULLY LICENSED. We were dumbstruck. This was like selling Mount Rushmore.
A few days later I happened to be strolling down that way in the middle of the day and looked in. I was pleased to note that Luigi was there in his usual spot propping up the counter and watching the TV, so, consumed with curiosity and concern, I badgered Jim into going down there for dinner shortly thereafter to explore the mystery of the For Sale sign. All seemed as it should be: Luigi fetched out our Classico and Mamma came and told us what we should have, and then ensued a fractured conversation slotted between the arrival of the wine glasses, napkins (cotton), salad, and the unreasonable demands of Other Diners, the upshot of which was that they (i.e. Mamma) suddenly decided she had had enough and wanted to go home. So they put the place up for sale and were returning to Naples the following Tuesday. The catastrophe confirmed.
Then after we had finished our meal (a lovely bit of squid, unremarkable sausage, and world class salad), Mamma waddled up and planked herself down at our table, which she had never done before, and poured out their whole sad story. I think this is what she said.
She and Alfonso (not Luigi after all) had arrived in Canada donkeys years ago and had gone to Hamilton, Ontario, where there were lots and lots of Italians. Then 19 years ago they had decided to strike out on their own and open a restaurant in St. John, New Brunswick. Unfortunately there was some misunderstanding when they bought their tickets and they found themselves in St. John's, Newfoundland instead. One can only guess what ran through their minds when they discovered their mistake. But I guess they didn't have the price of return fare and one barbaric outpost was no worse than another so they stayed on. But now Mamma was 63 and Alfonso was 68 and they were unable to entice any relatives to come over from the old country to take on the restaurant, so they were throwing in the towel, which is the most sensible thing they could do, I suppose, but it left us bereft and uncertain about where we would find another source of shrimpa-like-dis.
With heavy hearts, Jim and I went down for dinner on their last day for one last culinary adventure. We took along a little going away trinket accompanied by a Farewell and Have a Lovely Retirement card (the range of greeting cards available these days takes my breath away). Mamma ordered us lobster tails (three apiece), which were delicious, the usual wonderful salad and chewy bread, and of course the Classico. When we were finished Mamma brought us a couple of glasses of Sambuca with a couple of coffee beans floating in it which you are supposed to suck on while you drink the stuff - not bad. Meanwhile Mama brought us a doggy bag with breadsticks and apples and butter packages and we finally broke away (the bill came to $60 Canadian, including 12% sales tax), shaking hands all around and turned our backs regretfully and forever on the legend that was Luigi's.

There are many still alive and taking solid food who remember those carefree distant times when children would dash out of the house with shoe laces half tied, hop on their bikes and pedal off to the playground or swimming hole or somebody's back yard. Once there they would play on whatever the playground offered, which were a variety of metal structures often covered in rust or sporting protruding sharp edges.  Or they would jump off rock ledges into the pond on top of their little playmates since there were no adults handy to tell them not to.  Or they would play at whatever occurred to them in or around the rusty old dead truck out in some field.  In the course of all this high risk behavior, of course no child would reach majority without a goodly number of scrapes and scratches, cuts and bruises.  
There are two very significant benefits to this.  One is that when you got one of these injuries, it hurt, and when you went home and your mother found out it would hurt again when she scrubbed it clean and applied iodine or merthiolate, either of which might as well have been napalm, and yet a third time when one parent or an other would give you that look and say “Well, that was stupid.  What were you thinking?” All of this led you to avoid doing that again.
The second benefit is that having experienced actual pain at some time or other, you would develop a sympathy for others in the same boat. In addition, you would be less likely to inflict pain upon others either because you knew what it felt like and weren't mad enough to want to do this to your classmate, or because you figured they might find a way to get back at you in kind.
It is not clear what happened to this sensible approach to child rearing. Maybe the increase in communication.  Maybe some undermedicated Mom in Providence read a human interest story about a child in Montana who, while riding his bike somewhere east of Billings, skidded on something and impaled his head on a fence post, leading to his immediate and tragic death.  A story which found its way all the way east to Providence because it is the first time such a thing had ever happened.  Of the 60 million children who had ridden somewhere on a bicycle that day, one had suffered this bizarre trauma. Of the billion children who had ridden bicycles prior to that day, suffering no ill effect, this is the story that reached Providence. Suddenly an image of her own child's precious head skewered on a fence post is all she can think of and she tries to make her little treasure wear a helmet to which he responds by tossing it in the bushes as soon as he's out of sight of the house so his friends won't think he's a sissy. So the mom mounts a noisy assault on her state representative to mandate that all children must wear helmets. The cry is taken up by people in other states who are bad at math and before you know it everybody is wearing helmets, and a new industry is born. 
This is closely followed by related industries producing elbow pads, knee pads, special protective gloves, shatter-proof goggles, Spandex clothing, specially designed shoes and innumerable sports drinks without which the child would perish horribly by the roadside on the two-mile ride to school. As usual it takes the government a while to sign on to this cash cow, but soon enough the fines appear for failing to adhere to whatever norms the Providence mom or her copy-cats has managed to badger through congress.
The result of all this is that the suppliers of all this clap-trap have tasteful houses in Vail, Cancun, and the south of France, the Chinese factories making all this stuff are expanding like a dead possum in the hot sun, the local governments have a robust new revenue stream, and the children on bikes are so encumbered with armor that it is a wonder that they are able to ride a bike at all.  But they are safe, right? And that was the whole point, to which I would argue that one of the key ingredients of growing up is testing your limits.  If you find one avenue to this end blocked you will seek another, which may have more lasting and damaging effects than a skinned knee.
But that is just bicycles.  Anybody who has bought a ladder recently will have noticed that there is no flat surface on it that is not covered with bold-face warnings, cautions, exclamation marks, limitations of liability and so forth. Everything is covered including, but not limited to, the perils of electric wires, unstable footings, the use of the various latches and fittings, unsafe practices, angle of use. You might think it preferable just to let your gutters fill with leaves and then when they rip off the house under the weight of all that sodden detritus, just hire somebody to put up new ones.  Using a cherry picker truck or a helicopter or something.
On the other hand you can go to any hardware store and buy knives and hatchets and no end of implements that have breathtaking potential for mayhem and amputation, and you will find nothing on them apart from, perhaps, the manufacturer's name or “Stainless.”  It is all very confusing.  Should we protect our children from ladders and bicycles, but allow them easy access to knives and chisels?  If the Great White Regulator feels that We The People are so dim that we need to be told not to poke our fingers into a churning blender or reach under a lawnmower when the blades are spinning then surely we should not be allowed anywhere near gasoline or firearms. 
So why all the fuss?  In this, the land of the free and the home of the brave, why shouldn't we just be allowed to cut off our fingers if we wish to, or cover 2/3 of ourselves with 3rd degree burns, or drown our infants in the bath?
Here are some explanations:
1. Litigation – Any company afraid that their customers will sue them into bankruptcy in the event they incur some injury as a result of doing something stupid beyond all reason with their product will cover said product with warnings and cautions and devote the first 20 pages of the 24-page manual to Important Safety Information.”
2. Revenue Stream – Governments are always on the lookout for new sources of income, and fees and fines are the gold standard, as they do not present the dangers of, say, a drug bust and its associated seizure of assets, nor do they incur the widespread antagonism of increased taxation.  If your neighbor gets a $300 fine for speeding while not wearing a seat belt, well, you are either not going to care at all or you will be reveling in a self-indulgent gush of schadenfreude.   The Government, in any case, comes out smelling sweet as a soft spring morning while gouging The Public just a surely as a tax hike would.
3. Entrepreneurial Opportunity – A startling number of safety remedies involve special apparatus purpose-built for some specific hazard.  Somebody's going to make a killing off it, and it's a first-come-first-serve opportunity.  Of course, there is a certain amount of wiggle room.  Consider helmets: There are bicycle helmets, climbing helmets, football helmets, skiing helmets, hockey helmets, motorcycle helmets, skateboard helmets, and more, not to mention the military stuff. Each of these created one Really Rich Guy, at least 5 jobs here in the US and another 200 in China.
4. A Deep and Real Concern for the Safety and Prosperity of The People – Not a chance.

I think I know what the earth feels like, floating around weightless far away from anything else except of course its attendant moon always hovering around, never close enough to be interesting but always annoyingly there. I found this out one day when I was SCUBA diving along a cliff near Halifax, Nova Scotia.
We were on a noisy little trawler, 3 or 4 of us. There was much fuss and lungeing around as we struggled into our wetsuits on the tiny deck and sorted out our gear, checked our tanks and regulators, looked for lost straps and weights and sample bags, tripping over each other and interrupting, shouting questions and orders, and finally got our last minute instructions. 
Then one by one we flopped off the back of the boat into the water. Then there was the shock of the cold water invading the suit, the final adjustment of the face mask, and the splutter of clearing the mouthpiece of water. A few quick hissing gulps of bottled air to make sure everything was working and then with a flip and swirl we made the transition to the parallel universe under the meniscus.
Everything changes when you step through the looking glass. It is not that sound is gone, but rather that the emphasis is different. The clamor of the trawler’s engine is a distant thrum here, while the flick-flick-flick of the propellers cutting the water is distinct. The sloshing of waves against the hull is reduced to a rustle, while the sound of the rising bubbles is nearly deafening. And the barely-noticed background sounds of gulls and distant voices is replaced by clicks and squeaks of the creatures of this new realm.
I swam after our leader dragging my sample bag after me like a reluctant puppy. The sunlight rippled and dappled on the sand and stones and seaweed, occasionally igniting a cunner that had come to see what was happening. It was a good day. We were quickly done with what we needed to do, and still had a half hour of air left. We quickly dumped all the samples and pencils and other scientific clap-trap into the boat and then as quickly dispersed to follow our various fancies and interests.
I headed straight seaward toward the 50-foot dropoff just beyond our work site. I paddled along about an arm’s length above the flat seabed, with a small entourage of cunners, ever hopeful that I would break open a sea urchin for them, which I did once. Then suddenly the bottom vanished and I was suspended over the abyss, alone except for my attending cunners. I executed a slow roll and marveled that there was nothing visible anywhere except the rippling sun. I rolled over on my back and watched my bubbles fall into it for a while.
That is when I realized that this must be what the earth feels like, floating weightless somewhere between the sun and the darkness, watching the universe slowly expand, and listening to the click and snap of distant cosmic events, with its single cunner circling circling, hoping that its companion will relent one day and offer it some little celestial snack.

We start life wet, noisy, and completely free of any claim or expectation of privacy. No part of our bodies or lives is excluded from invasion by friends and strangers alike, and at first we don't much mind. It's not long, however, before we object to being groped by strangers and are more selective about who gets to see us with our pants down. Before long, perhaps about the time we first learn the potential of speech, we start having secrets. It is not a big step between secrets and privacy, the only difference being one of degree. A secret is just a single thing you don't want to reveal. Privacy is a great tangled complex of secrets that are of great importance to their owner. In fact it could be argued that those things we choose to keep private more accurately reflect our character than those we choose to reveal.
We each of us develop our own private kingdoms in a series of concentric barriers around parts of us that we do not want scrutinized. The outermost barriers are easily crossed by friends and spouses and even trusted acquaintances, allowing access to non-critical areas that we might not want published in the daily paper, but no great harm done if the postman discovers, say, that we vacuum less than we should. The closer to the core we get, the more closely guarded we become, and in many cases the protected areas depend on who we are talking to.
We would have little hesitation discussing our stock portfolios and the appraised value of Grandma’s diamond brooch with the family lawyer, but we might not want to enlarge upon such topics with our daughter’s boyfriend with the nose ring.
We freely describe our rashes and boils and disgusting discharges with the family physician, but might hold back in this area with the telephone repairman.
We may luridly detail the latest developments of our torrid dalliances to our best friend, but wish to maintain a discreet silence with the vicar.
In addition to these specific revelations that we control on a person to person basis we are constantly manning our perimeters to protect ourselves from unauthorized invasion by strangers. Common courtesy is our main fence. In a uniform society in which all members understand the signals, saying “Butt out!” with a look, a tone of voice, a bland comment inoffensive to all is a common practice. We back off, change course, no one is offended or invaded. Apart from a few people who want to offend us or don't care if they do, the system works quite well.
Where the problem arises is when we are confronted by somebody who is using another set of rules. Either they do not understand our signals, or they actively seek to breach our defenses for some purpose. We often react strongly to these attempted invasions. First we try formality. Next comes frigid silence. And finally, when all else fails, we fall back on rudeness. In some cases, such as persistent telephone solicitors, rudeness is the only defense possible. In others, such as foreigners using different signals, we would like to be kind, but we feel under attack, and may overreact to perceived aggression.
One of the worst mistakes we make in our relationships with others is believing that people we are close to should have no secrets from us, that we should be open books to our parents and spouses and friends. Or in other words we should not mind a bit upon finding Mom going through our drawers and throwing stuff out or demanding an explanation for THIS! The fact that we have been out on our own for several decades and have the white hair to prove it, have been leading independent lives and are doing fine doesn't neutralize the trespass, or detoxify the resentment. We need some space that is ours alone or we risk losing ourselves.
In addition, our own notion of what areas must be maintained inviolable may differ greatly from that of others. Is religious belief an acceptable area to open to the public? Or money? Or our psychotic relatives? In some cases yes, in others no.
So much of our behavior is governed by our need to maintain our privacy, it is small wonder that so much heat is generated over political movements whose aim is to invade areas cherished by some as intensely private; by others as matters to be dragged into public view in front of a studio audience.
If media reports are to be believed, upcoming generations will entertain no expectations of privacy. They will accept as normal the impertinent questions put by online merchants and special interest websites and will obediently supply their preferences in reading, viewing and listening, clothing, medications, sports teams, and holiday destinations. They will cheerfully welcome, rather than resentfully tolerate, the inescapable intrusion of advertising in all aspects of their lives. They will not mind that Apple Inc., the FBI, or Big Brother listens to their phone calls or traces their movements. Perhaps it is the vanguard of this new demographic that appears on Dr. Phil.
In any case it seems ironic that a people that has always prided itself on its rock-ribbed individualism would so easily abandon this myth in favor of bobble-head compliance with the demands of private industry and shadowy government interests.

In an average year I figure I probably get about a hundred boxes that originally contained something I bought.
One spring I got a bathtub. It was a very large bathtub and came in an even larger box. It was a fine, sturdy box that I couldn’t bring myself to recycle, so I spent an afternoon reorganizing the garage, installed it upright against the wall, and filled it with rakes. The following spring I mulched the garden with it.
After that I got a new tele, whose box was in the livingroom for months because the cats liked it for a while. They also briefly like the boxes that sweaters come in, and garden gadgets, and cooking doodads. But beyond cat entertainment, they are no earthly use at all because they open on the short end and are the wrong size for anything except what came in them. Some dreary day I will round them all up and get rid of them.
I also have a vast accumulation of tiny boxes that once contained small articles of jewelry. I don’t know where they came from. I think I have more jewelry boxes than I do jewelry. It’s a mystery. Sometimes other things come in really nice, stout or attractive boxes that I keep because I figure one day I will need just such a box. Stanley Tools has a whole series of such boxes. They slowly fill with felt pens and lost buttons, pennies and paper clips.
I have a great fondness for fountain pens. I get them from mail order catalogs and various websites based in distant places and they arrive in packaging designed to resist nuclear attack. The innermost container is typically a stout, hinged box of wood, plastic, or really nice cardboard with a fountain-pen-shaped indent in which rests the actual goods, couched in voluptuous satin as if it were the finger bone of God himself. The sad truth about these attractive, well-made boxes, apart from the fact that they are too nice to throw out and therefore accumulate beyond all reason, is that they are absolutely useless beyond their original purpose of containing a fountain pen.
The most extreme example of this was a fountain pen that arrived in a cardboard box the size of an overnight bag. Inside this was a snug flannel bag in which was nestled a leatherette box that looked like an attaché case. This contained a flocked plastic liner with a form-fitting insert in which was embedded an attractive wooden box with a hinged lid. Inside this tasteful reliquary lay, in a green velvet nest, accompanied by a brass medallion, a fountain pen. I bought this more than ten years ago. The reason I can discuss it in such minute detail is that I still have every bit of it except the outermost cardboard box which long since went to mulch the garden.
In stark contrast to this flamboyant excess are all the cheesy little boxes made in China with the packing material leaking out past the staples since they can be disposed of without a moment’s pang along with the cereal boxes, milk boxes, envelope boxes, tea boxes, and plant food boxes. I almost prefer these because of their blessedly short half-life.
And then there are liquor boxes. It's true I seldom actually acquire these with their original contents, but I do seek them out when I am in the process of relocating. They are fine sturdy affairs, essential for the moving and storage of books and other small things. A good liquor box is a perfect vessel for, say, a set of dishes, artfully packed with intervening dishtowels. Some are also sufficiently seamless so that a bathroom drawer or junk drawer can be tipped right in without fear of leaving behind a trail of bobby pins or machine screws like Hansel and Gretel after a trip to Walmart. Their fatal flaw, though, is that there are no two liquor boxes that are exactly the same height or width, so that stacking is problematical. This fault eases their trip to the recycle, but some still remain, freighted with small goods that never did get unpacked from two moves ago. They are sometimes interesting as time capsules but for the most part represent a cubic foot of space that would be better applied to some current purpose.
I sometimes long for a boxless world. But then I buy a pair of shoes and suddenly realize that were it not for shoe boxes, all would be lost, both literally and figuratively. I cherish shoe boxes. I repair shoe boxes. Without shoe boxes, how would I ever find my Christmas tree ornaments, rubber stamps, camera parts, leftover seed packets, ribbons and snaps, 5-year-old tax returns, pressed leaves, computer cables and printer cartridges, glue and touch-up paint, photographs and souvenirs, sandpaper and paint brushes. They are the perfect size for almost all objects in common use. They stack well and fit nicely on standard shelves. It is clear that some thought has gone into their design. Some come with a finger hole in the end so they can be easily winkled out of a tight formation. Many have a convenient hinged lid.
And soon I will have to find a suitable pair of sensible shoes for respectable summer wear in case I get a life in the next month or two. My plan is to make the salesman show me every model they have in the place and then pick the ones in the best box.