By Dorothy Pirovano

Floridians are pretty blasé about hurricanes. The season, now just underway, starts. Threatening warnings. Storms grow in intensity and velocity. Evacuations are suggested, then recommended, then insisted upon and… poof… Charlie or Irma or Michael or Matthew changes course and annoyed residents turn their cars around to return home.

How could I take the hurricane warning seriously in 1992 since it seemed no one else was? I was finishing up at the Chicago White Sox spring training camp in Sarasota, had my little compact white rental car and needed to get out of town to see my Dad an hour-and-a half north in Seminole. I was going to spend a couple days there – just him and me since Mom passed away. He said he’d planned a “fun day” for the two of us – mimicking the fun days I always planned when they came north for six weeks each summer. Mom was always ready for any adventure. Dad would seemingly grumble at being dragged to a museum, the zoo or a tour of the Joliet or Chicago neighborhoods where he grew up, but I knew he enjoyed the outings, especially if they brought back lost memories. Him planning and calling it a fun day confirmed it.

Getting across the parking lot to my car was an unexpected hurdle. It took all my strength to drag my little suitcase through the parking lot against the wind. I was soaked in seconds. But in the car I felt insulated from danger and the radio seemed to confirm that while this hurricane had potential, its course was undecided and evacuation not necessary – at least for the moment.

I knew the route, having taken it for the past several years when my assignment at the training camp concluded and I could go see my folks. A simple straight shot down I-275 almost all the way. Easy except for the Sunshine bridge – two bridges actually. The small one gave me butterflies, having had an irrational lifelong fear of bridges. I had to hold my breath and not look anywhere but forward crossing the big one – more than four miles long and soaring 430 feet into the air before it descended steeply back to earth. It was spectacularly terrifying butalternative routes would take two to three times as long making this the best way to get from here to there. Let’s go girl. Just do it.

The radio was warning about this and that being closed but since I had no idea where this or that were, I decided to plow on, reasoning they wouldn’t allow me to cross the hated bridge if it were dangerous. The lady at the toll booth took my money and suggested I do two things – hug the right shoulder of the bridge and keep the accelerator to the floor the entire time. Obedient and reinforced by the fact that she waved me on, I ventured out, noticing that I seemed to be the only car on the road – at least the only one I could see through the deluge. Thirty minutes later I’d managed the first two miles and was at the peak of the swaying suspension bridge, my car rattling, my teeth clenched in disbelief, too afraid to hesitate, to stop, to cry, so close to the right side I was afraid a gust would blow me up and over. The sharks were likely circling. The descent was no better. What normally took a few minutes was another half hour, accelerator to the floor, hands frozen on the wheel, my recitation of the 23^rd Psalm drowning out radio warnings.

The man in the toll booth at the end of the bridge came out of his little house, stared at me and yelled something unintelligible into the wind as I crept by, shaking, breathing deeply, trying to regain control after what was seemingly a near-death experience. The ride to Dad’s was comparatively uneventful – some downed trees, blocked and flooded streets, lightning flashing through the pitch dark mid-day sky.

Dad was anxiously looking out the window when I pulled into the driveway,  braving the storm to retrieve me, both of us dripping from the 20-foot race into the house. A vision of calm and serenity, I smiled brightly, hugged tightly and agreed with him that it would have been absurd – suicidal even – to take that fool bridge here. Who on earth would even think about it?

It is the last of the family owned restaurants on Taylor, the street that runs through the center of the neighborhood where immigrants congregated in such numbers in the early decades of the 20^th Century that it earned its designation as Little Italy. Salvatore would go to the Fulton Street markets most every morning to select his meat and produce for the day. Roseanne would stay behind in the kitchen, making fresh pasta and starting sauces from the recipes that her mother and grandmother perfected. The laughter and toasts of the diners feasting at the nine tables on the first floor bounce off the marred wood floor, pounded tin ceiling, and white-washed walls cluttered with dozens of family photos. Its name is their names: Roseanne and Salvatore… RoSal’s.

Our first time there was a test. I had a client coming in from the East Coast and when I asked about dinner, she was delighted. “How ‘bout Italian – authentic Italian,” she emphasized, with a New Jersey delivery that elongates vowels and drops “r’s.” She grew up in a household where Mom made pasta and Dad made sauce so she was picky, she said. No pressure.

My husband Larry and I had our favorites but I spent a couple days asking others about theirs. Rosebud, Tuscany, Carmine’s, Gene and Georgetti’s – all came up, but they have “touristy” stamped all over them, not authentic. An acquaintance described RoSal’s using adjectives that reeked of authentic: nothing fancy or forced, old-country friendly, grandma’s recipes, last of its kind, treat you like family. It sounded worthy of a test.

Linda, the short, round, smiling hostess/manager/server for the night, greeted us warmly and I explained about my client coming in without saying my husband and I were there to rate the food and experience. Eight of the nine tables in the main floor dining room were full and we took the last one, right next to the open kitchen, noting the two by the window overlooking Taylor Street would be a better spot. We ordered house specialties and were struck by Linda’s invitation to change ingredients at will. “If you want spinach in that rather than broccoli, no problem. Change the pasta if you’d like, or the sauce. You can throw shrimp in that vegetarian dish. Whatever you’d like, the kitchen is glad to substitute.”

Dinner was superb, delicious, reminiscent of dinners we had in small towns in central Italy. Not only were we treated like family but we seemed to be their absolutely favorite relatives.

Three days later I returned with my client in tow. She looked around approvingly at the family-owned-restaurant décor and at Linda, who smiled her way to the front of the room. “You must be Melissa,” Linda beamed at my client after giving me a long-lost-friend hug. “Welcome to RoSal’s. Dorothy’s told me so much about you! I’m so glad to meet you.” and she turned to put us at her best table, in the corner by the window.

We could have been served hot dogs and I’m convinced Melissa would have loved the place. But instead the $6 a glass house chianti, fried ravioli, antipasto salad, chicken RoSal’s and Italian ice served in a frozen lemon exceeded her expectations. Pleasantly full. Feeling warm and cozy. The evening ended with a hug from a client who is apt to be business as usual.

RoSal’s never disappoints, even when Linda isn’t there for Joe, who now runs the place since Roseanne and Sal unofficially retired, takes over and gets to know his regulars in the same, embracing way. He’ll pull a chair up to your table and talk about anything – his kids, yours, vacations, what’s new, how’s business, how the White Sox are doing for they play not far from RoSals and fans congregate there before or after games. He forgives Larry for being a Cubs fan and they both envision the day when their teams are on opposite sides of the World Series and cream the other side of town. A born-and-bred Sox fan with the glory of having a World Series win a few years back, and a husband who I love desperate to see his guys “win one before I croak,” as he’s fond of saying, I dread the specter of a north side vs. south side series and find myself silently relieved when my Sox go into a slump.

I used to order shells with broccoli every time we were there, adding shrimp usually, or chicken when I was up for a change. But chicken Florentine beckoned when it was served at the table next to us and it threatened to become my regular except that the specials on the last page of the menu continually tempt explorations and never disappoint. Larry always orders meat lasagna even when he vows he is going to try something new. He doesn’t even ask for a bite of mine, and Linda reassures him that ordering the one thing you love  most is smart, because it’s not like you come every night or even once a week or month.

Larry had a yen for that lasagna while recovering from surgery at nearby Rush Medical Center so I called and asked if they did carry-outs. Nuts, I said when the person on the other end of the line said sorry, no. He so loves your lasagna.

“Dorothy, is that you?” It was Linda who put Larry and lasagna together.

“Yeah. Larry’s over here at Rush and I thought I’d get him a big treat.”

“Be here in a half hour and we’ll have it ready for you,” she said without missing a beat.

The package I took back to the hospital had lasagna to last four meals, a loaf of their crisp-crust bread, the antipasto salad and half a pan of tiramisu – all for the price of a lasagna entrée. What can I say?

RoSal’s is our hands-down favorite restaurant here or anywhere. We long for a return trip when we haven’t been there for a while. And Linda, who gives us both long-lost-friend hugs when we walk through the door, still asks about Melissa as though she saw her last week. I smile at her Linda-ness. It was eight years ago.

A blessedly short article in today’s Chicago Tribune reported on the crosstown hatred Sox fans have for Cub fans and their disdain for the playoff series. All I could do was groan.

I’m a diehard Sox fan and I come from original diehards. My father’s first game was with his father at the 1917 Sox-Giants World Series and the seven-year old thrilled to see the South Siders beat the hated New York team four games to two. I was raised in a household where I thought the other New York team was named the G.D. Yankees (Dad didn’t swear in front of his little girls) and when I later dated and married this Cubs fan, he was grudgingly happy for me.

For more than 20 years, the firm I worked with represented various professional Chicago sports teams, which gave me a view of fans from the inside. The true over-the-top diehards were scary. The stereotype would be a 20-something male who doesn’t have much of a life and thus identifies so closely with his team that he hates anything that might take away some of its prestige or limelight. Truth is, all but the “20-something male” is pretty on target. These diehards come in all genders, ages and backgrounds and were well known to team staff, often nicknamed (e.g. The Addams Family) and concern about what they might say or do was everpresent.

Now I can’t say that those quoted in the Tribune story fall into this category but I can tell you with certainty that all of the Sox fans I know – and there are many, many, many – are rooting for the Cubs. Maybe not as enthusiastically as they would if the Sox were in the post-season but we got our series in 2005, and if we can’t be in play this year having another Chicago team win a World Series will be something to cheer.

Check in again if there is ever a Sox-Cubs World Series. But then we survive cross-town games every year and there are more camera shots of cross-town couples holding hands than anything else.

For today’s game, my Cubs fan husband and our Cubs fan son won the lottery and scored tickets from the Cubs eight rows behind the Cardinal’s dugout – and at a price comparable to a regular season game. And this Sox fan will be looking for them on TV and root, root, rooting for the Cubbie.