Water in the Mouth

One of the things this monstrous thief, the COVID-19 pandemic, has robbed us of this year is Buffalo’s popular Italian Heritage Festival, usually held the third weekend in July when Buffalo is fully enjoying La Dolce Vita.

Dante Alighieri, one of Italy’s most famous sons, once said, “There is no greater pain than to recall happiness in times of misery.” I know what he means. I am feeling the pain in this miserable time of quarantines and lockdowns, recalling my many happy years attending the Italian Festival, and being transported back to a time and place that felt so much like the neighborhood where I grew up.

There is an Italian expression, avere l’acquolina in bocca, literally meaning to have water in the mouth. All I have to do is think about the authentic street food usually on offer at the Italian Festival—sfinge, cannoli, gardoons, zeppole, pizza bianca—and I begin to drool. Many of the vendors have been there for years, some for generations, making food the way my Sicilian grandmother did. But lest you get the impression that the festival is all about food, let me quickly add a little bit of history.

Most people from the Buffalo metropolitan area are familiar with the version of the festival that for many years was held on Hertel Avenue in North Buffalo, where it moved in the late 1980s along with many of the city’s Italians. After a couple of decades on Hertel, the festival expanded exponentially and outgrew the city streets. In 2018, the festival moved to Buffalo’s Outer Harbor, and again in 2019 to downtown Buffalo.

“The Buffalo Lawn Fete,” however, was actually born nearly 100 years ago at St. Anthony of Padua Church on the lower West Side. The Italian community founded the Saint Anthony of Padua Church Society back in 1891 when thousands of Italian immigrants were pouring in, and it quickly became the social and religious center of the city’s Italian population. The parish established the first Italian language school and priests said the mass in Italian. In 1921, the church’ held the first 12-day lawn fete centered on the “Festa di San Antonio,” which honored St. Anthony, beloved patron saint of the oppressed and poor.

Back in 1921, my ancestors were among the thousands of immigrants from the mountain villages of Sicily who had settled on the lower West Side. My grandmother and her family lived on Efner Street, within walking distance of St. Anthony’s, and I like to imagine her and her siblings waiting excitedly for the festival each year, walking to the church, enjoying the food, and meeting and greeting friends and relatives in Italian.

My first encounter with the Italian Festival was in 1976 when it was revived after a hiatus and held again on the West Side. A friend who was working at one of the booths (shucking clams if I remember correctly), encouraged me to walk the four blocks from my house to Connecticut Street to see what was on offer. The whole festival only took up a few blocks back then, and had a much homier feel. I fell in love with the food, the dancing, the music, and the language, and I’ve been going back for as many years as I can remember whenever I’m in Buffalo.

This year the plan was to transform Niagara Square into an Italian piazza, say the festival organizers. It was to be focused more on cultural traditions to introduce—or remind—people of the old ways. There was to be grape stomping, puppet shows, tarantella dancers and a procession carrying the statue of St. Anthony through downtown Buffalo. There was even going to be a genealogy booth, and I had looked forward to being fully immersed in the old West Side again.

No, I won’t be able to go the festival this summer and that makes me sad. But I have decided to search high and low until I find an Italian bakery that sells fresh, just filled cannoli in my new hometown. I will venture inside, wearing my mask, and buy half a dozen cannoli, just to console myself.

There is water in my mouth just thinking about it.

Moxie Gardiner is a writer and gardener who grew up on the West Side of Buffalo, NY. In a previous life she was a journalist, magazine editor, speech writer, and policy wonk. Back in the day she made three solo parachute jumps, flew in an F-15 fighter jet, and crawled through mud pits at the Jungle Operations Training Course in Panama. She now meditates and practices yoga. She is almost ready to publish her first novel, set in Buffalo.