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Italian festival will be first for Salem
The Vindicator
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ORIGINATOR: Maria Longo stands at the door to the Green Rose Bistro, which she and her husband own. The Salem Italian Festival was her idea.
The school’s red-and-black mascot has been redone in red, green and white.
SALEM — It’s early Thursday afternoon and people are eating and smiling at the Green Rose Bistro.
Jan Chambers of Salem pointed at owner Maria Longo and said, “She’s crazy — fun crazy.”
This is what you like to hear about the person that proposed the latest festival in the city: The Salem Italian Festival.
Salem has had many variations of festivals, but not an Italian fest.
Audrey Null, executive director of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, said Longo approached the chamber with a draft proposal for the festival that will now take place Friday and Saturday.
Like all fun parties, the final schedule is getting some last-minute changes.
“This has been a great group of volunteers that have come together under the Salem Retail and Business Association, a division of the Salem Chamber,” Null said.
Chambers, who works for KLG Ambulance, said she wouldn’t have met Longo without the festival.
Maria and her husband, Alfredo, moved to Salem 12 years ago and bought the Bistro about two years ago.
They ran a pizza shop in Austintown for years and now run Alfredo’s Pizza in the Broadway Plaza.
She said she is mostly self-taught when it comes to cooking.
People eating at the restaurant mentioned the bread sticks and oil and homemade soup, giving it a “to-die-for” review.
During the Steel Valley Super Nationals this year at the Quaker City Raceway north of the city, when many spectators and racers come to Salem to eat, Maria Longo came up with the idea for the Italian fest.
There will be a spaghetti-eating contest and a polka contest.
“I don’t know how Italian the polka is, but everyone pretty much knows how to polka,” Maria Longo said.
Instead of having events on State Street like most of the city’s celebrations, they’ll be located along Penn Avenue, where the Green Rose and the Italian-American Club are located, and Pershing Avenue, where Timberlanes restaurant and hotel is located.
The various vendors will be offering various types of Italian food, Chambers said.
Vincent Domincetti of Salem will be named the Salem Italian Citizen of the year. He’s 98. There will be a royalty court for kids age 5 to 8, with the winners getting a savings bond.
There also will be a number of games and activities, most of which are free, Null said.
Maria Longo said she got permission to tweak the likeness of Quaker Sam, the mascot of the Salem schools normally shown in red and black. He’s now portrayed with red, green and white, the colors of Italy’s flag.
Alfredo Longo said he has spread the word about the event in Mahoning County regions that have large Italian communities.
The Salem Historical Society has collected several items from the Italian community. The society’s museum will be open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday.
The Italian-American Club in Salem dates to 1918. It will have a boccie ball contest during the festival.
David Stratton of the Salem Historical Society said there were other nationalistic groups in town, including Saxons and Romanians.
He said he was not sure whether any group was larger than another.
But the immigrants found work. Stratton said that years ago, many believed people of one nationality were good at a particular type of job.
They came to Salem, got jobs and eventually became part of America’s melting pot, he said.
Maria Longo said that having started the festival, she had two fears.
“The first is that nobody is going to show up. The second is too many people will show up,” she said.
wilkinson@vindy.com