Nan Loved San Gennaro Zeppoli & Tripe

My grandmother, Ann Pryor Rode, worked for Surrogate & Supreme Court judges from the 1940s through the 1970s. Being right there on Centre Street, being of Sicilian blood, Nan made a big deal out of the San Gennaro festival. The actual Feast Day of San Gennaro is September 19th. The festival started in 1926 for the patron saint of Naples.

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Nan loved food, and loved her zeppoli's. At lunch all that week, she would walk over to the festival, pin an offering to the statute's apron, and eat her way through the streets. One of the judges always drove her back and forth from work to Yorkville. I couldn't wait for the paper sack of oiled soaked treats, and she always had her own powered sugar shaker ready to blanket each zeppoli like it was in the middle of a terrible snow storm.

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Moderation was an unknown word in Nan's household. She didn't smoke or drink and moved the weight of those vices over to eating. She also brought home tripe from a Mulberry Street butcher, I was thrilled to find out tripe was cow stomach. When she prepared cow stomach I left the apartment and wouldn't come back till it was done, eaten and put away.

The other night, I walked down Fifth Avenue, through Washington Square Park, down Bleecker Street and over to Houston and Mulberry. When I got there, Puck was looking down, smiling, from a ledge on the south east corner of his self named building at the Festival's entrance sign, saying San Gennaro in neon script. I slid through the gauntlet of vendors aiming for Old St. Patrick's Cathedral soaked in the festival lights. I then imagined the location 83 years ago. It was easy. The City's great in this tween period between summer and fall.