Give Me that Old-Time Profession! (4)
This is the fourth in a series. Here is the first one—including the general introduction to the series.
The wine vendor. Modern European laws that regulate the consumption of alcohol guarantee that this is one job that is gone forever. (Not that I haven't looked!) |
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Chestnut vendor. This guy still exists and is as popular as ever. The winter months are his season, and there is nothing like finding someone selling hot, roasted chestnuts on a chilly day. He still looks pretty much the same, and the equipment hasn't changed much, either. The brazier is the same, and you can still get warm standing next to it. Interestingly, there is another item sold from the brazier—corn on the cob (see this drawing.) I haven't seen one of those vendors recently, but I imagine they're around. |
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Pottery repairman.
There is a running joke —at least one running around in my head— that Naples is a land of specialists.
We joke that if the door handle on your car
breaks, you have to go to the "car door handle
repairman." That's all he does! That's a slight
exaggeration, but not much. The pottery man in
this drawing would have been just such a
specialist. Plastic and super-glue have sort of
put this business out of business, I would
imagine. To the extent that such professions still
exist, the gentleman would today shout out his
availability from one of those very loud
motor-tricycles with a flat-bed compartment on the
back as he speeds around the streets. 
The snail vendor.
There is a group called "Slow
Food"in Naples. They don't mean slimy critters
that run so slowly they can't escape, but rather
service that is so slow they can call it "leisurely"
and "elegant" and pretend that this is the way
people used to dine before the rush-rush present day
of American fast-food. Of course, the ancient
Romans—as research has
shown—ate on the run a lot.
This drawing presents something else, however—snails. I have never seen anyone eat a snail in Naples, much less sell them on the street. There might be a specialized restaurant, the way they have for places that sell horse meat, but I have not seen one. The logo on the sign outside would be a snail, I suppose, but the above-mentioned Slow Food peopleportal for customs & traditions rest of this series --> top of this page
have preempted that one. As far as I know, they don't serve snails
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