The Empty Chair

On my way through Campo Sant'Angelo in the Spring of 2009,
I walked past the ever-so-beautiful temporary structures used for displaying campaign posters for an upcoming election.

Ugly? Yes.
But understandably present - after all, who wants to see those posters pasted all over walls and bridges?


Two years earlier I'd stayed in an apartment a few steps from this medium-sized campo which is often overlooked by it's larger cousin - Campo Santo Stefano.


In the middle of the campo I saw a familiar empty chair.
I'd seen it two years earlier and recognized it as the chair of a sandolista.

This was the chair of "The Terminator", a guy who seems to always be on the boat or working to get people on his boat.

I wrote about him not long ago in my post on June 15th of this year.
I also spotted two sandoli in this same spot in September of '06.

Walking by the empty chair wasn't new to me - I'd seen it sit empty before, but each time the sandolo was gone.

This time I got lucky: The Terminator was back from a cruise and helping his passengers out. I've often said to my friends that one day, instead of retiring, I'd like to scale down to become a one-man one-boat operation. Maybe I'll look up The Terminator and see about buying him out...boat AND chair.