NEW KENSINGTON -- They laughed, they talked and they remembered.
That is what the Twelfth Street Reunion has always been about, and it what was about again on Saturday at Phillips Lounge in Arnold.
Men - this has always been a guys-only affair - gathered around, looking at old photos, renewing friendships that stretched back to the Great Depression, and recalling the old neighborhood where they all grew up.
What makes the reunion so unique is that it has been going on for so long, and the special bond that these men share.
"It used to be a lot bigger," said Sam Salvatore, 90 of New Kensington, as he looked at pictures of past reunions. "But we have a lot of people scattered, and, of course, we have lost a lot over the years as well."
Salvatore founded the first reunion in 1956, and had organized most of them until a handful of years ago.
"We have all sorts who came from Twelfth Street," Salvatore said. "We had doctors and judges and just about everything you can imagine came out of Twelfth Street."
The neighborhood referred to as Twelfth Street actually encompassed the Twelfth Street area of New Kensington from Third through Fifth Avenues. It was a hard scrabble neighborhood of close knit families who did not have much in the way of material goods.
But material things did not matter.
"We had a lot of different nationalities there, and there were never any problems, " said Ralph Phillips, 70 of Allegheny Township. "Our doors were open all the time."
"Yea, they were open all the time because we didn't have anything worth stealing," laughed Richard Perez, 77 of Kingman, Arizona.
There were Italians, Polish, Jews, Syrians Germans and others. There were names like Costa, Pate, Reynolds and DeSimone.
And what they did have was each other a neighborhood that still lives on through their memories.
"We had everything in that area, " said Skeets Palletta, 73. "We had the Post Office, several churches, three barbers, three beer distributors, a meat market, several grocery stores, a lumber yard, a junk yard, a blacksmith and a pattern maker,"Palletta said.
"There were nine different clubs including that were German, Slovak, Syrian, Polish and two Italian clubs," Paletta said. "We also had two funeral homes, a gas station, two coffee shops, and a potato chip maker. Heck, we even had a Republican Club when there were no Republicans to be found."
There were even three 'houses of ill repute' - Nipps, LuLus and Bees -- where several attendees said, three dollars would get you the world.
Whether it was the neighborhood itself, or the conditions they all came from, the bonds were forged that bring these men back together.
Some laughed as they remembered selling apples and candy for five cents to workers from the mill, trying to make extra money for the family. Other recalled walking along the train tracks picking up coal that had fallen from rail cars, coal they would carry home for heat.
Palletta said most, like himself, were first generation Americans.
"It was a good place to grow up," said Tony Farina, 70 of Lower Burrell. "It was a real ethnic melting pot."
Sitting near Farina was a homemade street map of the Twelfth Street area. As men came in, they would look over the map and write-in where they had lived.
From the neighborhood, a good number of them went off to war.
"On Twelfth Street alone we had over 200 boys go off to World War II," Palletta said.
While many came back there were those who did not.
From their humble beginnings, they all grew up and most eventually left the neighborhood. Palletta became executive director of the Westmoreland County Housing Authority. Perez was the male vocalist for the Barry Blue Orchestra for 27 years, while Buddy Guy, sitting at a nearby table, still has his own orchestra. Others worked for the phone company, Alcoa, Allegheny Ludlum or PPG.
Geno Veltri, the organizer of this reunion, said it may change in the future.
"The women always used to have their own get together, but you won't believe how many calls I got from women from the neighborhood and wives who wanted to attend," Veltri said.
Veltri said he expected around 90 attendees at this year's reunion.
That is far below the 300 who attended in 1974, but still quite a turnout given the years and the miles traveled.
