I fell in love with Louie and his younger brother Rico in the early 1980s when I began cooking in earnest. I’d shopped at Traverso’s before then, but with a sudden career change, I had become a voracious explorer. Louie and Rico fed my curiosity as well as my appetite and their kindness coaxed me out of a shyness I had felt since childhood. Their old-world graciousness and warmth added another dimension not just to my new pursuit, but to my life.
In small but crucial ways, I was transformed by their attentions.
…we acknowledged a certain pleasure in each other’s existence, a human connection beyond the procurement of supplies and the exchange of money
It was often the anticipation of a visit to Traverso’s that kept me going during those years of long hours and hard work. They both flirted in a casual, understated way, remarkable only because it is so rare here today. And by flirting I don’t mean the sort of verbal foreplay judged so harshly in late 20th century America. Rather, I mean we acknowledged a certain pleasure in each other’s existence, a human connection beyond the procurement of supplies and the exchange of money. I may have arrived at Traverso’s market for olive oil, polenta, and cheese, but I left with something much more rare and precious, something that cannot be used up, nor replenished by a trip to another store if it is lost.
Young Louie Traverso left Genova in Northern Italy with his father, Charlie, in 1922 and headed for America, staying briefly in San Francisco before settling in Santa Rosa. Louie attended high school here, graduated from Sweet’s Business College in 1925 and became bookkeeper at the downtown market where his father worked. Five years later, Louie’s mother, Francesca, and his younger brother, Enrico, made the long journey from Genova to Santa Rosa. Soon, Rico joined his father and brother at the store.
After a brief partnership with the Arrigonis, the family established Traverso’s Market in 1932. It moved once, to 2nd and B Street, into the two-story house that lives on in the hearts of old-time Santa Rosans. Francesca lived upstairs from the market, cooked for the store, and provided a place for her grandchildren to play after school. Then in 1973, the city took possession of the land where the market stood and moved ahead with plans to build Santa Rosa Plaza. Louie and Rico, by then in their sixties, thought of retiring, but there was such a public outcry to save Traverso’s that the city found a place for them near the southern end of the plaza. Louie’s son Bill and Rico’s son George left their careers as teachers and joined their fathers at the new space on 3rd and B Streets, where Traverso’s thrives today.
Although management of the store is now in the hands of the third generation of Traverso’s, Louie continued to keep the books and come to the market daily. Until very recently, monthly statements—yes, this is a market where customers have charge accounts—were written in Louie’s familiar hand.
At a time when shopping has become increasingly impersonal—generic foods housed in cavernous warehouses, clerks who don’t even look at you let alone know your name or remember your favorite cheese—markets like Traverso’s and men like Louie and Rico are more crucial to us than ever, for they not only stock our pantries; they feed our souls.
Traverso’s is Italian through and through, yet the selection of products is international. Dried spices sit next to English teas and beignet mix from New Orlean’s famous Café du Monde. An aisle is dedicated to oils and vinegars, there’s a freezer full of raviolis, gnocchi, and more. There’s imported chocolates, crackers, olives, mustards, sardines, and buckets of hard-to-find beans like cannellini. There are tiny candied violets.
There is pasta in every shape and size imaginable, fresh focaccia from North Beach, prosciutto from Parma. Americans may have discovered Italian food in the 1980s, but Santa Rosans learned of it much earlier because of Traverso’s.
“Who knew what to do with olive oil?,” Louie was fond of asking, “who taught Santa Rosa about mozzarella, ricotta, polenta? It was Traverso’s.” And then he would laugh, but you knew he was serious.
Louie almost always had time to be playful, even in recent months when he complained of being tired.
When I think Louie now, one particular day stands out. I was by then a regular customer and had recently begun writing for a local newspaper.
John, an employee, was ringing up my purchases when Louie walked up. “It’s our girlfriend,” he said to John, nodding in my direction.
John turned and said, “Louie, did you know this is the writer who . . .”
Louie cut him off, glancing at him with mock scorn as he winked at me.
“She’s our girlfriend . . . ,” he said again.
John pressed ahead, describing a now forgotten article, praising my new success, my alleged importance. Louie, with feigned contempt, dismissed him utterly and completely.
“Anyone can be a writer,” he said firmly. “She’s our girlfriend.”
Louie could not have known the deep thirst his comment quenched in me, the huge dry void his playful words filled, like cool water in an arid land. Or maybe he did know. Louie was both kind and wise, as alert, I suspect, to the hungers of the human heart as he was to our other more tangible appetites for good food, good wine, and the pleasures of the table. I will miss him, everyone who knew Louie Traverso will miss, more than it is possible to say.
