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 19
th. The festival started in 1926 for the patron saint of Naples.
.
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.
.
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.
Near sunset last night, I strolled up 79th Street then walked north on Fifth Avenue. The near equinox light was other worldly. I found a puddle in front of the Met Museum doing pointillist tricks with the reflection of the buildings on the east side of the avenue.
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.
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. 
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.
