New Folklore Society Voices

"They used to have that pole, the greasy pole, with the provolone up there at the top and salami and everything. I think it was one of the Mangona boys. He climbed that pole..."

The stories are from interviews conducted through the West Side Neighborhood Oral Narrative Project. See related story in the Fall/Winter 1999 Newsletter. The Principessa Elena Society was an important neighborhood social club and community service organization. It sponsored the Feast of St. Michael Festival, a popular annual event. One of the highlights of the festival was the tall greased pole put up each year. Men competed to climb the pole and win the prizes at the top.

NOTE: The New York Folklore Society Newsletter and New York Folklore Journal were replaced by Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore which debuted December, 2000.

New York Folklore Society
P.O. Box 764
Schenectady, NY 12301
518/346-7008
Fax 518/346-6617
nyfs@nyfolklore.org

Fall/Winter 1999

FALL/WINTER 1999 VOICES MAIN PAGE

Tales from the ’Hood

Parading Saint Michael photo
Parading St. Michael through the neighborhood c. 1950? Photograph by Bob Mayette, courtesy of Louis Agosta.

Principessa Elena Society
Louis S. Agosta
Interviewed by Leona Signor

LS: I’m told that the Principessa Elena Society was founded in 1900 and was instrumental in organizing and starting the Feast of St. Michael. Is that correct?

LA: Yes it is. A group of Italian men started the Principessa Elena Society in order to help other families who were in need. At first, they met in different homes, meeting and discussing plans. They met in the Miglucci home on Oak Street for a good number of years. And then they purchased the Simone Funeral Home where the club is now. We’ve had that for years. We meet there on the first Sunday of the month. The Princepessa Elena Society has come a long way since the early days.

In those days, we had to have the insurance for the club and its members. We had to have, more or less, a doctor. And our doctor at the time was Doctor Robert E. Harrington. He took care of all the members and their families. If you were sick you would go to Dr. Harrington, and it wouldn’t cost you a dime. Doctor Harrington was kind enough to do this for our organization, and he only charged us 80 dollars a year. And believe me, a lot of our members went to him for any medication they needed if they were sick.

Blood Pudding Grace Scuderi Luciano
Interviewed by Mary Ann Fitzgerald

Blood pudding—that’s delicious. They put chocolate in it. Whenever you butchered a pig. They’d save the blood, and they had to keep stirring it, because it would clot. So you had to stay there and stir it and stir it, and then bring it home and cook it right away. You put a lot of chocolate in it, and pinola, orange skins—it was good. Yeah! And then my father used to slice it when it got thick, and he would fry it and then eat it, you know.

St. Michael Festival
Grace Scuderi Luciano
Interviewed by Mary Ann Fitzgerald

St. Michael’s Festival was once held in September. Now it is in August. My sister used to put a stand out at the festival and make fried dough with the sauce and sausage and everything. Oh God, she had lines of people there. She did well. In front of our store I let the club [the Principessa Elena Society] put a stand, and they sold the pastries and eggplant sandwiches out there. DeGregory’s used to have a stand on the side. She made apples like my sister did—candied apples. Then we’d go around the corner, and they all had stands.

They used to have the pole, the greasy pole, with the provolone up there at the top and salami and everything. I think it was one of the Mangona boys. He climbed that pole, and he got right to the top, and he got the stuff that was on the top of that pole.

They had the bandstand on the corner of Beekman and Oak. I used to work helping cut the pizza and everything in the kitchen. That was in the fifties.

You’d pay twenty-five dollars, and they’d shoot the bombs off in front of your house. They paraded with the Saint all around the West Side and stopped by every house. The people would come out and pin money on the Saint. If they wanted the bomb shot of’ they would pay them.

We’d get to Grasso’s on Perry Street, and he would give wine to all the men. We’d get to Lanzara’s, and he would give soda to all the kids. We’d get over here, and my mother would have cookies. It was really nice.

It lasted for three days. They had live music, and they had entertainment. Teenage Barn from WRGB came, and they had a street dance. John Agosta, the head of the festival, sang.

Annual Elks Ball at the Canfield Casino
Anita Skinner Turner
Interviewed by Courtney Reid

It was held the day after the Whitney Ball. So a lot of the things were still there from the Whitney Ball. I can remember being at the grand bar at the Canfield Casino. There was still champagne and everything from the night before.

But for this annual Elks Ball people would come from everywhere. They would come from New York, Virginia, everywhere for this grand ball. And it used to be just that—a grand ball. They would have the grand Elks march, and they would have Elks from all over the world, and they would be dressed up in mink stoles even though it was August—dressed up in their finery. It was really something to see them come in there.

The place would be packed. They would have old time bands. They had the Cab Calloway Band, the Duke Ellington Band—this was before these bands got as big as they did, so it really wasn’t a lot of money to get them to play. At that time they were just getting started, so they’d be glad to go anywhere to play to get their music heard. It would be until one or two o’clock. Then when you left the Elks Ball, you went to Hattie’s for breakfast, and that was a ritual for sure.

Hattie’s Chicken Shack is a long-standing, popular Saratoga restaurant that started on the West Side. It is still in business today on Phila Street, just off Broadway.

I was in the children’s Elks and then the adult Elks. Everybody had to help out, so I and Ernest Bonner’s sister Diane, we used to work behind the bar. And we watched those people come in and walk by those mirrors see when you go into the Casino. We would just stand there in awe, "My God, look at this!"

And then, as time got on, like everything else, the older people died out, the younger people did not want to pick up that torch and carry it on. It got to the point that the men who spearheaded the association, they just did not have the time or maybe the ambition to carry it on. So it just died down. At that time you did not have to pay to have an affair at the Casino. But it just got to be too much, and we had to give it up.

But it was really something. Everybody looked forward to that dance. Ruth Dagg’s sister, Margaret Daggs Caron used to sell so many tickets to people in New York, that we didn’t know if we were going to have seats enough for all the people that would come up just for that Elks Dance. They didn’t know where they were gonna stay, but they knew they were going to be at that Casino. They could walk; the train station was right there over on Railroad, where the old Price Chopper is. They would be packed in.

I tell you the old dances, the Charleston, the Lindy Hop, and all of that you’d see them doing all those old dances. As I tell my own daughter different things and different stories, it could never ever be captured. We were having a grand time. It was clean honest fun. I enjoyed it.

Black Elks Club photo
Black Elks Club dinner at the Congress Street location.
Photograph courtesy of Renee Moore.

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