The Italian "Feste" Part 2
THE ITALIAN FESTE: A CENTURY OF TRADITION
PART II: From Ethnic Observance to Community Celebration
Dr. Paul Loatman, Jr.- Mechanicville City Historian
Shortly before American entry into World War II, an accomplished amateur local photographer who had emigrated from Italy took a picture of the latest innovation in rail travel as it passed through Mechanicville. The prototype of the Electro-Motive Diesel made its appearance here while on a test run through thirty-five states across the country. A few days later, acting on an anonymous tip, the Federal Bureau of Investigation questioned the immigrant’s motive for taking the photograph. Following their interview, the F.B.I. agents concluded that his interests were purely photographic and his motives raised no red flag concerning his loyalty to his adopted country. However, to assuage any suspicions local zealots may have held about him, the photographer surrendered his camera to the Bureau and never took another picture for the rest of his life. Having recently viewed many of his earlier photographs, I believe his untimely “retirement” proved to be a great loss to the documentation of our history.
Attitudes of the larger community toward members of the local Italian enclave were reshaped ultimately by events in the larger world. Significant numbers of Italians and Italian-Americans served with distinction in the Armed Forces during World War II, some giving their lives on behalf of their country. The resultant postwar sense of acceptance and toleration allowed the feste to become much more than a simple ethnic observance. This fact is demonstrated by the number of ways the local community had come to accommodate the annual August celebrations. Most importantly, local businesses began to grant their Italian employees a holiday in recognition of the Feast’s importance to the immigrant community. But, as the late Mary DiSiena and her children related the story to me some time ago, that tradition developed only after a couple of hurdles had been overcome.
When Italian papermakers failed to show up for work at the Westvaco paper mill one Feast Day in the early 1920s, they were summarily fired for insubordination. Quickly, their cause was taken up by local Italian banker and former President of the Fratellenza, Joseph dellaVigna. Not content merely to lodge a protest of the dismissals with the paper mill management, he traveled to Albany, camped outside of the office of then-Governor, Al Smith, and insisted that he be granted an audience with the state’s Chief Executive. Once it became clear to all concerned that he was not going home anytime soon, dellaVigna got a chance to air his grievances with Smith. Although their conversation has been lost to history, we might suppose that the Governor was reminded that the Mechanicville workers had something in common with his own Irish-Catholic family: they were poor, humble immigrants who took their feast days seriously. The strategy apparently worked, because the men were promptly restored to their positions at the mill. Thereafter, employer recognition of August 15 as a special “Italian holiday” became widely accepted, not only in Mechanicville, but in mills in Troy, Cohoes and other towns that employed local Italians as well.
Controversy of another sort arose in 1924 when some non-Italians reportedly were “scandalized” by the specter of immigrants carrying a statue of the Virgin through the streets of Mechanicville. The issue came to a head when the privilege of carrying the statue was “auctioned off” to the highest bidder from the steps of the Church of the Assumption by James Parente, an officer of the parish’s Holy Name Society. The fund-raising helped defray the costs of repairing the old St. Paul’s Church building that housed the Italian national parish established here in 1919.
Responding to an issue that had arisen in other ethnic communities in the Albany Catholic Diocese, Bishop Edmund Gibbons banned the removal of church statuary during the conduct of street festivals. In a letter to the pastor of St. Paul’s (apparently one of those “scandalized” by such behavior), he explained that “the reasons why I prohibit these processions are well-known, especially to Italian priests. They were an occasion of scandal and shock, especially to the non-Catholics who witnessed the extravagant performances of the people who took part in them.”
The Bishop’s sensitivity to non-Catholic criticism may be explained in part by the fact that anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant prejudices were rampant in the U. S. at the time. Xenophobes had recently succeeded in pushing immigrant restriction bills through Congress, supported by increasingly popular fringe groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK, which targeted Italians in particular, had organized a chapter of cross-burners in neighboring Clifton Park. Despite all of this, the local Italian community was not easily discouraged from observing its unique folk-religious customs. It overcame the prohibition against removing the statue, imported from Italy, from the church by substituting a Marian banner during the street procession. This practice has been followed since 1925, with the banner faithfully preserved since then by the Clements family.
While Fr. Serafino Aurigemma, the pastor of the Assumption parish, did comply with the Bishop’s 1924 edict, he countered that for the sake of consistency, the Prelate should likewise ban the May Day ceremonies conducted by St. Paul’s Parish that also incorporated a public procession with a statue of Mary. Reluctantly, Bishop Gibbons agreed, explaining to the pastor of St. Paul’s that he had to enforce his ruling even-handedly to avoid charges of favoring one ethnic group over another.
Such disputes, however, could hardly dampen the sense of excitement and anticipation that August 15th observances generated among young children every year. Joe Ruggiero, whose father came to Mechanicville in 1892, recalls his early childhood when the Feast of the Assumption was as much of a holiday as Christmas and Thanksgiving – maybe even more so. Work ceased, out-of-town family members returned home for three days, and everyone marched up Viall Ave. to witness the spectacular fireworks that concluded the three-day celebration.
Joe is the senior member of the Fratellenza, but it will take some doing on his part to match the record established by “Tressie” Mastrianni, the former Hulin St. resident who lived to be 103 years old before passing away some years ago. As she and her daughter, Mickie, liked to point out, the Mastrianni family and their neighbors merely had to cross the street to have front-row seats at the conclusion of the festivities taking place on Marshall Heights each year.
A member of a younger generation, Gerri Giambone, whose father Valentino opened one of the first macaroni factories in the Capital District in the 1920s, also vividly recalls the sense of excitement that surrounded feast days during her childhood. Because she and her visiting cousins were allowed to stay up much later than usual on the 15th, their parents required them to take an afternoon nap. But no amount of parental wishing could calm them down long enough to fall asleep even briefly on such an important day. Sleep could wait for another day, Gerri remembers.
A more recently established but now time-honored tradition takes place at the foot of Viall Avenue every year where marchers and the Italian street band accompanying the procession pause to rest and refresh themselves with food and drink offered gratis at Costanzo’s Restaurant. The only “payment” demanded for the refreshment requires the band to strike up a few favorite Italian folk tunes. Of course, they must do so while standing inside the restaurant surrounded cheek by jowl with an enthusiastic audience keeping time with hand-clapping. You cannot really appreciate the power of the tarantella until you have heard it played in such intimate surroundings. Only then may the procession continue on its way up Saratoga Avenue.
Many of those now too old to march await the procession as it makes its way to Costanzos. Anyone scanning the faces of this crowd standing atop the steps of the restaurant will soon come to recognize that they represent families who have lived on “the Avenue” for generations. Barbara Michele Devito in years past often recalled the names of neighbors with whom she shared her first feste ninety-four years ago. Her recollection might easily serve as route-list for her grandson, Mark, who makes the daily rounds delivering mail in the North End: Zappone, Farina, DeCrescente, VanDetta, Rinaldi, Fusco, Zurlo, Sgambati, Volpe, Izzo, D’Alberto, D’Aloia, Verdile, DiNallo, Devito, DiSieno, Taglione, DiSiena, Fiacco, Marzano, Peluso, Perretta and other family names lost to memory. Thus, despite all of the changes that have taken place over the past century, the celebration of the feste is an annual reminder of the persistence of collective memory and continuity in our community.
Today, celebrating the Feast must take into account the fact that no one works in the local rail yards, textile mills, or paper mill anymore. Post-industrial Mechanicville has become a bedroom community whose work force commutes to work each day. Consequently, these activities may not generate the same levels of attention and enthusiasm they once did. Another reason for a more muted response may rest on the fact that the today’s generation views itself as more sophisticated than the “salt of the earth” peasant folk who established the Feast in the first place. Now, many people regard street processions, the pinning of “la votte” on the streamers, and employing fireworks to celebrate religious feasts as vestiges of an outdated folk religion no longer relevant in our more “enlightened” era. But, before we become too dismissive about such quaint practices, it is worth recalling the words of the pre-eminent American Scripture scholar, Fr. Raymond Brown. In commenting upon the vitality of folk-religion dating as far back as early Christianity, Fr. Brown has noted: “Through most centuries, including our own, the ordinary Christian view of [religion] has differed considerably from what was proclaimed from pulpits as based on Scripture. Elements of popular piety and imagination have tended to fill the portrait with a coloring that one could not justify intellectually from the written Gospels, but which in its own way was an extraordinary enrichment.”
August 15, 2009, marked the final Mass observance in the Church of the Assumption where Catholics had worshipped for over 150 years. Since 1903, the celebration of the Feast of the Assumption had been a vital part of the life of the church’s community. This year’s observance takes place under a different set of circumstances and what the future holds for such celebrations remains to be seen. Today, we are continuing to observe the tradition of the feste partly because its longevity commands respect in and of itself. But, we also are paying homage to that first group of immigrants who, while sometimes being overwhelmed by the simple need to keep body and soul together, had the tenacity to proclaim and celebrate that which they believed to be true, sacred, and profound. Their traditions have enriched all our lives.