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PITTSTON — When Sarah Donahue was growing up here during the 1990s, high school kids used to drive their cars around a loop that included South Main Street and Kennedy Boulevard.
“We called it the Pittston 500,” Donahue said with a laugh. “There was nothing else to do.”
The days of nothing to do in the city are long gone, said Donahue, 35, who serves as Pittston’s special events coordinator. She said she has been thrilled to see visitors flock to downtown for the Pittston Tomato Festival in August, “Paint Pittston Pink” in October, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in March, and a host of other community celebrations throughout the year.
Next up is “Christmas in Pittston,” set for 5 to 8 p.m. Dec. 2 with horse-and-wagon rides and a chance to talk to Santa, plus hot chocolate and balloons, all free.
“It will be dark, and we’re encouraging people to decorate their vehicles with lights (for a truck parade),” Donahue said. “It should be awesome.”
“This is the best time to be living and working in Pittston,” said Donahue, who teaches seventh and eighth grades at the Pittston Area Middle School and lives downtown, “right in the middle of everything. It is a beautiful blend of the old and new, and a lot of the newer generation are trying to carry on our family’s legacies.”
If you’re looking for family legacies in Pittston, a small city of 7,602, you might start at Sabatelle’s Market on South Main Street, an Old World-style grocery store with hundreds of pounds of cheese hanging in the cellar, slowly aging so they can become what second-generation owner Jason Sabatelle calls “the sharpest provolone on the planet.”
Customers know the cheese is good. So are the stuffed olives and store-made hoagies, the spicy porketta and chicketta, the strip steaks and slab bacon that Sabatelle cuts fresh, and the imported Italian products such as Perugino Panettone cakes.
“I’ve been coming here for 30 years,” said Dee Dee Infantino, who stopped by Sabatelle’s on a recent Thursday morning to pick up a ham. “Their ground beef and ground pork are the best. I make my meatballs from it. They make a beautiful antipasto, too.”
“We’re Italian,” she added with a chuckle. “All we do is cook and eat.”
While she describes herself as “more of a dancer” who liked to cut a rug at the now-demolished Rocco’s Tavern on Main Street, Infantino, 83, comes from a family of musicians.
Her son Charles plays bass with the local band Sweet Pepper and the Long Hots and backs up Pittston native Shawn Klush when that Elvis tribute artist is in town, and her late husband, Joseph C. Infantino, played trombone with Bobby Baird’s Dixieland Jazz Band.
Infantino’s husband, who also served as chair of the Pittston Housing Authority, and Klush are two of at least 30 people whose pictures appear on Pittston’s “Inspiration Mural,” a five-story compilation of images painted by State College artist Michael Pilato on the side of the Newrose Building.
“My beautician is right across the street, so I see it all the time,” Infantino said. “It’s right by the lot where they have the farmers market in the summer, too.”
Local celebrities who appear on the wall range from chef Biagio Dente to former Penn State and Miami Dolphins wide receiver Jimmy Cefalo to Esther Tinsley, an administrator at the former Pittston Hospital who adopted a baby that had been left at the hospital in 1924.
Pictured here, too, are Dr. James Callahan and Gloria Adonizio Blandina, two longtime volunteers at the Care and Concern Free Health Clinic, which is observing its 10th anniversary this month.
Blandina recently told the Pittston Sunday Dispatch that before the clinic started, she and other organizers “walked up and down the streets of Pittston” looking for an appropriate space. Monsignor John Bendik, former pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church, suggested the former Seton Catholic High School near the church on William Street.
“We love the work they do there,” said Donahue, the special events coordinator. “They have the food pantry, the health clinic, and a kids’ clothing room. Every year we donate a majority of the proceeds (from a race that coincides with the St. Patrick’s Day parade) to them. We feel really strongly about it.”
While the former high school has been transformed into a free health clinic, the former Pittston Stove Co. on William Street also has been re-purposed. The stove company, established in the 1800s, once employed about 200 people and used to hoist heavy metal stoves via an “elevator” that involved mules pulling ropes, co-owner Julio Caprari said.
In 1956, his grandfather, Sam Caprari, bought the building and set about opening the Duchess Coat & Suit Manufacturing plant there.
Today the space serves as the Duchess Outlet, a place to find items ranging from London Fog raincoats to high-end Hansa plush toys that include such unusual stuffed animals as an aardvark, a ferret and chickens.
The chickens appear so realistic, Caprari said, that when a fair in the Midwest was unable to display live birds because of an avian flu outbreak, fair officials ordered the plush variety from the Pittston business.
The Duchess Outlet building also is home to a display of antiques — many from the old stove company — plus a doll hospital and a museum filled with more than 1,000 dolls manufactured by the Madame Alexander Co.
Along with Madame Alexander dolls that represent such familiar storybook characters as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara of “Gone With the Wind” fame, Peter Pan, and what appears to be the entire cast of “The Wizard of Oz,” visitors will see dolls designed to look like the historical characters such as Madame de Pompadour and Lucrezia Borgia, and even actress Janet Leigh in the shower scene from “Psycho.”
Admission to the doll museum is free, which makes it as much of an entertainment bargain as looking for bald eagles along the Luzerne County Rail Trail that begins in Pittston’s Riverfront Park, or strolling the downtown streets to admire mural paintings and sculptures that depict Christopher Columbus, John F. Kennedy and the popular “Pittston Tomato,” namesake of the annual festival.
“Breaded and fried,” said 86-year-old Harry Henrich, recommending his favorite way to consume Pittston tomatoes, which many believe to have a uniquely delicious taste.
“In a salad,” said 90-year-old Rose Angelella, offering her tomato opinion.
Henrich and Angelella are among several area seniors who visit the Pittston Center for Active Adults just about every day.
“We exercise and play cards here,” said 89-year-old Angie Balzano. “We really do everything.”
On a recent Thursday, group members rotated their shoulders and kicked to the right and left along with a video that started slowly, simply directing them to turn their heads and stretch their arms. Then they built their momentum until they were dancing the Charleston and the Beer Barrel Polka.
But just dancing wasn’t enough for Balzano and 84-year-old Charlie Free, who sang along with the music, proving they have lots of energy.
“Roll out the barrel; we’ll have a barrel of fun,” they sang as they danced. “We’ve got the blues on the run.”
