On June 26, late at night under cover of darkness and without warning, Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller ordered city workers to paint the road lines on Adams Street yellow.

Wouldn’t be a big deal except that the lines were already red, white, and green because Adams Street is the cultural center of Nonantum, a Newton neighborhood with such deep ties to the Italian community, it has been named a sister city to San Donato val Comino, a town in Italy from which many Nonantum people have immigrated. Fuller says she’s a proud supporter of immigrants. Maybe she means only certain immigrants.

The Mayor tried to get a police detail for the late-night painting project, but no Newton cop wanted the job. When the sun came up and people saw what happened, they were furious.

Arianna Proia, a lifelong resident of Adams Street, said “it feels like a deliberate effort to erase our cultural history.” Indeed, what else could explain the removal of lines that have been painted red, white, and green to match the Italian flag every year since 1935, with permission from city officials, until this year.

Reasonable people, Italian and otherwise, demanded answers from city hall, and were told that federal and state laws mandate that road lines be painted yellow. I checked the law. The Federal Highway Administration’s manual on traffic DOES mention yellow but only as a recommendation. It leaves the decision to state and local officials. State law doesn’t mandate yellow, either. The Department of Transportation accepts the federal guidelines, but again, they’re just guidelines.

Fuller’s office also said federal law requires that lines be painted yellow to protect public safety. To back up this claim she cited the federal manual’s language requiring “clear line markings” on “all paved undivided two-way” roads that have an average daily traffic of 6,000 vehicles or more. Unlike the color yellow, which is not mandatory, she said this was a non-optional requirement because a study from 2023 found that Adams Street has an average daily traffic of 6,002 vehicles. Because the number was conveniently just over the line, neighborhood advocates checked the underlying data and guess what? Fuller lied, again. The actual average daily traffic was 4,688 vehicles. The number never came close to 6,000 on any of the days that were studied.

Even more telling, Fuller did not order the repainting of lines on a separate section of Adams Street that runs beyond the quarter-mile stretch where the red, white, and green lines were painted. That far end of the street has yellow lines, but they’re barely visible because they haven’t been repainted in a very long time. So much for public safety.

In response to community outrage and cries of Italian bigotry, even from non-Italians, Fuller offered a consolation prize. She said that red, white, and green lines could be painted on the sides of the double yellow lines. But that’s not the tradition. And how can five parallel lines with four colors be good for public safety, but three lines of just red, white, and green are not? Fuller won’t say.

Newton is known for its great schools, a world class university (Boston College), and very expensive houses. But it is equally well-known for its thirteen villages, each with its own unique personality, centered around the history and culture of the neighborhood. The most colorful village by far is Nonantum, known as “the Lake” because there used to be a lake there.

I lived down the Lake as a toddler and my parents were born and raised there. They still talk about the neighborhood as a “little U.N.” but with a decisive Italian flair.

My parents’ neighbors were Black, Irish, Jewish, Asian, Italian, Polish, etc. Their commonality was economic, not ethnic, but they all knew that it was the Italians who maintained peace and community cohesion. If an elderly woman needed a wheelchair, she got one. If a family lost a loved one, they got flowers and trays of lasagna. If someone got in trouble, they had to own up to it. And during the holidays, the Nonantum Children’s Christmas Fund threw a big party and handed out huge bags of toys to every child that showed up. Not just the Catholic or the Italian kids – all the kids.

Nobody protected the Lake better than “Fat” Pellegrini, but he’s gone now. Lucky for the people of Nonantum, “Little Fatty” and the Save Nonantum PAC are around to make sure the Mayor gets the malocchio if she disrespects their community. “We’ve been very reasonable,” they said. “We’ve tried to persuade Mayor Fuller to do the right thing, but she isn’t listening. She’ll have to learn the hard way that our Italian colors don’t run.”

A view of the yellow lines covering the traditional Italian flag colored lines on Adams Street in the Nonantum neighborhood in Newton. (Mark Stockwell/Boston Herald)