At a kitchen for a St. Bernard's bingo hall in Kaisertown, Shirley Paluszynski puts a freshly fried piece of breaded haddock into a take-out container. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)
Joe Battaglia handled the key job of "dropping the fish" at St. Bernard's. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)
Betty Rost had to make a decision. In January, she put a notice about a meeting in the St. Bernard’s church bulletin, then had it announced for the distanced congregation just before Mass in Kaisertown.
She wanted to figure out if there was enough volunteer passion to hold a couple of fish fries during Lent, despite the obstacles imposed by Covid-19. Eight people showed up to offer help. For Rost, seeing who they were, that was enough.
As long as these friends were on board, she knew the church could pull it off.
Joseph Surdyk, left, joins fish fry coordinator Betty Rost in keeping track of the orders and collecting proceeds at the St. Bernard's fish fry. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)
Friday, Rost sat behind a folding table in the old St. Bernard's school, checking off customers with fellow parishioner Joe Surdyk, near the linoleum floor of an empty hall where there has been no shout of “Bingo!” for almost a year.
My wife and I met almost 40 years ago. She was from greater Rochester. I was living in Dunkirk, in a house my parents rented. We both attended SUNY Fredonia State, at a time when it was not so typical for students who lived on campus to date students who lived nearby, a nice way of describing a classic
Rost has a few tattoos on her arms, including a “Betty Boop” inspired by her name, a rose for her mother and a yellow ribbon of solidarity with families facing childhood cancer. She had that one done after Tim Rost, a grandson, went into treatment as a 3-year-old at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, while the family rallied and offered every prayer you could pray.
Friday, the-now-16-year-old Tim – joined by sisters Kali and Meaghan, cousin Bret and Brand Battaglia, 15 – served as a "runner" at the fish fry, toting fragrant meals to the parking lot, where maintenance supervisor Jerry Skiercyznski joined Dave Hyla in shepherding a line of drive-up customers.
“We’re here,” Meaghan explained, “to help our grandma.”
This is what the team of volunteers at St. Bernard's turned out Friday, 150 times and more. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)
Really, for that matter, so was the entire crew, including Rost's daughter Amy. Skierczynski pitched in even though he will soon need aortic valve surgery on his heart, while Hyla, a fellow volunteer, recalled a Kaisertown childhood in which so many restaurants and taverns offered haddock that Clinton Street smelled like one giant fish fry during Lent.
That seasonal mainstay was revived only two years ago at the parish. For decades, until the routine faded away, the old Holy Name Society held monthly fish fries. Rost – who is church secretary, runs bingo and serves as kind of informal parish quarterback for the pastor, Rev. Marcin Porada – helped bring them back in 2019. There will be one more at St. Bernard’s on March 26.
Last year, the fledgling tradition was shut down by the pandemic. The ongoing loss of bingo was another giant financial hit, and church volunteers – essentially the hard core that came to the meeting – thought about ways to raise a little money for St. Bernard's.
In Buffalo, fish on Fridays is never an unwise bet. Rost and her friends ordered about 150 pieces of haddock and sold $14 tickets in advance. Things got underway at 4 p.m., and Rost’s lingering worry was whether a last-minute surge would be enough to make it all worthwhile.
Janet Sheret, left, an 80-year-old volunteer, led Patrice Hyla and other friends Friday in putting together the fish fries for 150 customers. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)
Her companions not only did what they had to do, but – masked and gloved – reveled in long-awaited human company. The joke-cracking team of Shirley Paluszynski, Patrice Hyla, Debbie Skierczynski, Jeannie Melock and Nancy Crull arrived early and got busy, funneling the fish to Joe Battaglia, Brand's father and a parish maintenance guy who stepped in for Chris Ruda, a loyal volunteer who was ill.
Battaglia did the central honors, deep frying each piece just long enough to bring about that oh-my-God-box-that-up-right-now golden hue.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece recalling my own fish fry memories of Western New York, and just how embedded the scent and taste and aura of that entire experience became within my sense of being part of this region. I asked readers if they felt the same way, and if they had their own powerful memories
The kitchen was under the stewardship of sneaker-wearing Janet Sheret, 80. She spoke casually of going through various procedures for knee, shoulder and hip replacements, which led the wisecracking Paluszynski to shout out, "The bionic woman!"
Certainly, Sheret managed to play a graceful pivot on the line, spinning to hand assembled fish fries to Melock and Crull, who quickly bagged them up. Packed in each container: A slab of fish, so big it had to be folded to make it fit. Macaroni salad. Cole slaw. Topping it off were roasted potatoes, the St. Bernard’s fish fry signature, made with a lot of this and some of that, which everyone knows but no one writes down.
Sheret said she and her late husband Raymond left Buffalo 40 years ago for Phoenix, where Raymond accepted a job in manufacturing. Told by the doctors they could not have children, they became foster parents to three kids. Before long they had adopted their two sons and their daughter, leaving them missing just one key thing in life.
“In Arizona,” Sheret said, “they don’t know what a fish fry is.”
OK, they did not move back just to find a decent fish fry. They moved back because they ached for Buffalo. Sheret is now a widow, but two of her kids live with her and her other son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren are right next door, in Kaisertown. Sheret wakes up at 4 a.m. – try as she might, she cannot sleep any later – and she spent three days at St. Bernard’s helping prepare everything for Friday night.
Dozens of readers responded to a column asking for reflections about Friday fish fries in Western New York. Among the favorites: Mazur’s Grill in Lackawanna, a favorite with Bethlehem Steel
She made a point of noting that another 80-year-old regular, Stephanie Gerasimowicz, broke her femur not long ago and could not be at the fish fry, but showed up in her cast on one of the set-up days.
As for Rost, the organizer, she spoke of how her husband died nine years ago. "I didn't know what I was going to do with myself," she said, until the job at the church offered warm community. She uses a walker, the aftermath of sepsis, while her grandson Tim – the same guy she once comforted at Roswell – now stands by her side, ready to help when needed.
Cars line up to pick up their preordered fish fries, while a customer banters with Jerry Skierczynski, in charge of St. Bernard's maintenance. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)
Outside, waiting customers traded one-liners or stories with Sierczynski and Hyla. Lala Markut offered ultimate witness to a great Buffalo tradition: She was there on specific request of her 100-year-old father, Stanley, who still likes his fish on Fridays.
While the event had the feel of a quiet celebration, many regulars expressed sadness and alarm about some news announced this week: The longtime KeyBank branch on nearby Clinton Street is one of eight being closed in Western New York as part of a larger consolidation. In a statement, bank officials said they made the move because the pandemic accelerated many trends toward online banking, and alternative branches are available a short distance away.
In Kaisertown, any sudden gap in a fragile but resilient commercial district comes as a blow. Several retirees in line for fish at St. Bernard's noted they routinely reach the bank “by just walking across the street,” where they recognize clerks and often bump into old friends. It becomes an everyday way of living out fundamental community planning principles for residents on foot, of varied circumstance, who would struggle without that easy proximity to a bank.
At St. Bernard's, Joe Battaglia handles the key job of deep frying slabs of haddock. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)
“It’s part of living here, part of this neighborhood, just like this,” said Gene Siejack, wrapping the bank and fish fry into the same fabric while offering a dream about next year:
In the same way as such neighbors as Janice McLaughlin and her brother-in-law, Ronald Kipler, he spoke wistfully of a day when the event might again be a place for families to settle comfortably at folding tables in the hall while shouting hello to old friends they might know from seeing them at church or at Wiechec's Lounge or, well...
Inside the bank.
"The thing about the fish fry," Rost said of St. Bernard's, "is that it says we're here, we're part of the neighborhood and we're not going away."
In the pandemic, a Lenten drive-up seemed the best available option. The plan was to hand out fish until 8 p.m. Friday if necessary, and then to decide what to do with what was left. Yet before long, when one of the “runners” hurried in with a handful of tickets, Rost and Surdyk both dropped their pens and looked up.
It was 6:21 p.m., and they were sold out.
Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Buffalo News. Email him at skirst@buffnews.com.
February 28, 2021 at 03:32AM
https://ift.tt/2MvzqB8
Sean Kirst: At St. Bernard's, despite pandemic, they still have some fish to fry - Buffalo News
https://ift.tt/35JkYuc
Fish
No comments:
Post a Comment