Guests dig in to a picnic lunch of rigatoni, chicken, baked beans and kolbassi during a graduation party at West Mifflin Park

Photograph by Jennifer McCalla

What makes a person a true citizen of the Mon-Yough area?

There are many things that define the folks who live here. As the descendants of pioneers, miners, “mill hunks” and other blue-collar types, they are hard workers - the kind of folks that generally don’t put on airs and who will let you merge into traffic and smile at you in the grocery store.

They take care of their elders and are proud of their children, and they know their neighbor’s names. They talk about how good things were back in the old days but wouldn’t think of moving away. They give directions based on landmarks that have been gone for decades: “Turn where the Zayres used to be!” They are people who honor their ethnic heritage but are proud of being 100 percent American.

With so much to choose from in isolating what makes a genuine Mon-Yough kind of person, I decided to fall back on the old adage, “you are what you eat!” The kaleidoscope of dishes and cuisines that we enjoy in our multicultural valley has a lot to do with who we are and how we live and think.

How disconcerting it must have been for our immigrant ancestors to come here, I have often thought. Imagine leaving a rural village in Italy or Slovakia or even southern Alabama to come to a gritty, smoky mill town with its furnaces like fire-breathing dragons – a place where the people didn’t speak your language or look or dress like anyone you’ve ever known. In the 19th and early 20thcenturies, this was akin to colonizing Mars. In most cases, these people knew they would never see their old homes or families again.

The new Americans had only a few things to help ease the homesickness of traveling to a new land. Some managed to bring a musical instrument and most remembered the songs they heard as a child. One of the first things they did was to start the many ethnic churches that decorated our hills with onion domes and steeples.

         Yet, the strongest link to the old ways was the food the immigrant mothers fed their families. The most valuable things these travelers brought with them to the new world was not packed in their suitcases but came in the hearts and memories of the immigrant women - a treasure trove of old world recipes and food ways.

The food traditions of the Mon-Yough region stick with us like a plate of pierogi sticks to one’s ribs. Families that no longer know a word of the language their grandparents spoke, still observe their family’s food traditions. In my family, I still make my Irish grandmother’s soda bread on St Patrick’s Day and enjoy my German father’s pork and sauerkraut at the New Year. Traditions evolve and change over the years; I no longer make my own kraut in the basement like my father did, but I still honor his traditions. The great granddaughters of the Polish women who worked all day in the kitchen, now grab a box of Mrs. Ts Pierogis from the freezer when they get home from the office but, they still fry them with onions and gobs of butter.

The newcomers at first gathered in ethnic neighborhoods. Every town had Italian neighborhoods, Polish neighborhoods, Jewish neighborhoods and other ethnic enclaves. Before long ethnic shops and restaurants grew up to serve the needs of these communities.

 A good friend told me about growing up in an Italian section of Rankin overlooking the Carrie Blast Furnaces. His neighbors not only were first or second generation Italians but most of them came from the same small town north of Rome. The postage stamp sized yards in his neighborhood were planted with heirloom San Marzano tomato plants, basil and oregano.

My wife’s Hungarian grandmother lived in McKeesport for almost 30 years without speaking a word of English. She went to the Hungarian church, shopped at the Hungarian bakery, the Hungarian grocers and the Hungarian butcher shop. My wife’s father had fond memories of those days. On Sundays, after church, the men would gather around a fire in the apartment block’s courtyard cooking Sult Szalonna.

Sult Szalonna is made with slab bacon, which is prepared by making cuts through the rind and cooking it on a stick over the fire, occasionally removing it to mop up the grease with thick homemade bread. As the meat cooked it would shrink and the cuts in the rind would open like the ridges on a rooster’s head, giving it its Hungarian name Cocks Comb. The men dressed in traditional Magyar clothing and would play traditional instruments, sing Hungarian folk songs and swap memories of the old country.

Of course, as men worked shoulder to shoulder in the mills and, as young people began to fall in love with those outside of their communities, food traditions began to merge. My dad worked at the Westinghouse Large Rotating Apparatus (LRA) plant in East Pittsburgh with men of many ethnicities. Every week or so, someone would bring in a pot of food to share with his work buddies and would cook on the LRA’s large Babbitt Pot, which held more than a ton of molten bronze used for generator bearings.

         My dad would take in bratwurst and sauerkraut which would go into a communal pot. The pot was then floated on the molten metal in the Babbitt until it was fully cooked. Other guys would bring in kielbasa or ravioli. During a tour of the Carrie Blast furnace, a retired steelworker told me a similar story of shared meals cooked in the chamber holding the blast furnace’s sight glass.

Cupid also helped stir the area’s culinary melting pot. My mother-in-law grew up cooking the meat and potatoes cuisine of her mother’s English ancestors and the Pennsylvania Dutch food of her father’s people. (His sweet and sour fried green tomatoes are to die for). She had never heard of such a thing as a stuffed cabbage when she fell in love with a Hungarian sailor during World War II. Afraid her brother might starve; his sister made a hand lettered “Hunky” cookbook with special notations on the cuisine.

For example, the paprikash recipe begins “first steal a young chicken” and the hot pepper in tomato sauce recipe reads, “don’t be afraid of making this dish too spicy, nothing burns a Hungarian man’s mouth but the truth!” and concluding with the warning about Hungarian food: “The only problem with Hungarian food is that you eat it and three or four days later you’re hungry again.” To her credit, Eleanor, my mother-in-law, mastered the art of Hungarian cooking with John, her husband, declaring, “Norie’s haluski (cabbage and noodles) is better than my mother’s!”

As the ethnic neighborhoods broke up and people moved to the suburbs, we kids were exposed to all sorts of food traditions. Growing up, a visit to a friend’s house usually involved a sampling of their family’s food culture: a Greek friend’s grandmother’s hand rolled stuffed grape leaves, and an Italian mom’s freshly made raviolis. I loved when a friend’s Jewish mother asked me to stay for supper, which left me with a lifelong appreciation of potato pancakes and rugelach.

Because of Mon-Yougher’s love of traditional foods some of the oldest businesses in the area are restaurants and bakeries. One of the busiest retail shops in McKeesport is the Minerva Bakery. This shop has been filling the “sweet tooths” of locals for a century. Visit the website of Dorothy’s Candy and you’ll find their main selling point is “our kitchen is run exactly the same way as our founder Dorothy Gastel did 75 years ago.”

Angelo Teti, the current owner of Tillies Restaurant, knows the importance of tradition to local diners. Since 1962, when his mother opened the restaurant, they have used the sauce recipe that his grandmother brought with her from Italy. Teti makes his employees sign a pledge that they will not divulge the secret recipe.

“Not long ago, a customer came in and said he hadn’t been here in 40 years,” he told me. “He said, it was exactly as he remembered it. I was happy to hear that!”

Weddings are one of the strongest bastions of tradition in any society. In this area, people are as likely to have a wedding without rings, or a bride, than to have one without a cookie table. Cookie tables are a tradition going back to our working class roots. Not everyone could afford a fancy wedding cake, but if all the neighbors brought a plate of cookies, every guest could have something sweet to remember the day.

 Many modern brides who suggest skipping this tradition have learned just how much pressure their mothers, grandmothers, aunts and every older woman in a 5-mile radius can put on her. Not long ago I interviewed Laura Magore, the founder of the Cookie Table Community, a Facebook group dedicated to preserving this Western Pennsylvania tradition. She began the community group by posting photos of a cookie table she had done and before long 12,500 members were sharing their traditional recipes. The group secured a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world’s longest cookie table with 8,850 cookies.

If you want to know what makes a person a true resident for the Mon-Yough area, there’s no better place to learn than at McKeesport’s International Village. There you will find pierogi’s and barbecue lamb, collard greens and ravioli, lady locks and fried rice. You’ll see Gallagher’s laughing with Martinellis, Kowalskis talking with Palmquists, and Johnsons shaking the hands of Schmidts.

 In short, you’ll see the people of the Mon-Yough area enjoying their food and enjoying one another. Sharing their ethnic pride and honoring the heritage of their neighbors, that’s what makes a true Mon-Yough resident.

- Jim Busch