Posted on 06/03/2019 8:57:48 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Raymond Mikesell wanted to make Sunday supper, the kind he had growing up on the North Side of Pittsburgh that began with waking up early to the rich aroma of his mother’s sauce and ended with his siblings and cousins playing pick-up baseball or football in the backyard while the grown-ups sat on the porch with their Coleman coolers popping the tops off of Schmidt’s beers and solving the neighborhood’s problems.
Large decorative bowls of steaming hot rigatoni, platters of greens and beans, meatballs, gravy, chunks of Parmesan cheese and crispy bread that melted in your mouth when you bit off a chunk would fill two tables: one for the adults and one for the kids.
It was loud, boisterous, and often chaotic. No faces were buried in an iPhone or GameBoy. Everyone talked and argued, and eventually had to loosen their belts.
“I was aware even then that this was something special. Something I wanted to hold on to,” Mikesell said.
But as the elders died off and the family scattered when Western Pennsylvania’s economy collapsed in the '80s, Mikesell found that "something special" gone.
And it wasn’t just his family. It was families across his old neighborhood, as well as the city and the state and beyond. And it wasn’t just Italian families either. It was all of the ethnic families that flooded the mid-Atlantic and the black families who migrated from the South in the late 19th century all for better lives. They all had had similar family traditions: church in the morning, supper midafternoon, recovery for the rest of the day.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
After we raised the kids and split up and sold the only house I will ever own the only item I wanted was the dinning table, so many great times there.
Interestingly where I grew up, supper wasn’t the big meal of the day. We had breakfast, lunch, and supper. Lunch was the big meal of the day.
It was hot in southern Oklahoma. We didn’t have air conditioning. People didn’t want to spend afternoons in the kitchen. People cooked a big meal in the mornings for lunch. We had what was left over for the evening meal and called that supper. Of course, our family did hard manual labor and a big lunch was necessary to get them through the afternoon.
It’s a nice tradition to have. But, depends on the people involved. I know some people who are not thrilled to see extended family for Thanksgiving. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to do it once a week.
and the bowls of food - mashed potatoes, pork chops, ham, butter beans, squash, etc. The admonishment from Mom, “take what you want but eat what you take.” So many traditions and customs of those years are lost.
“..not thrilled to see extended family for Thanksgiving...”
I feel sorry for them! I look forward to seeing any of the family.
Brought back great memories....In the 1950’s the aunts, uncles and cousins all gathered together on Sunday afternoons...My mom always made the sauce and everyone else would bring the pastries for later. The beverages were beer, highballs and coke for the kids. Memorial Day was a priority visiting the dead relatives in the cemetery. I miss those days.
By God’s Grace, all of my children live near me and this Sunday, as we have for several Sunday’s, they were all over for hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill.
No grandchildren yet, but I am waiting for those days of watching them playing as we sit around solving the world’s problems.
As a kid ours was the Sunday lunch Mom did a roast, potatoes, onions and carrots we would wake up Sunday morning to that wonderful smell, she would turn it down and when we got home from church, meat and potatoes. My wife was french and loves to cook and the kids and we were at the table every evening, it was the best of times.
Yes, IMO it is at the family dinner table that values, customs and traditions are passed on from one generation to the next.
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