The woman with the frying pan

Impressive as my garage sale score was yesterday it was not as impressive as my friend Joey Giambra's. Remember Joey Giambra? He is the retired police detective who interviewed me for his movie about Italian immigrants in Buffalo.

Joey called me yesterday and what happened was he was at a garage sale looking for a reel-to-reel tape player. Reel-to-reel tape players are a hot commodity in the cool crowd I run with.

"I have a lot of old tapes of Buffalo musicians, and I would like to be able to play them." That is what Joey Giambra told me.

Joey was talking to the garage sale proprietor about his tape player needs when he overheard two women talking. One of them was holding a frying pan and the one with the frying pan mentioned the name Pennario.

Immediately he was on the alert. He is a retired police detective!

He went over to the two ladies and announced that he had heard the name Pennario. And the woman with the frying pan said she was Pennario's first cousin! She and her husband were the ones running the garage sale. Her mother was Leonard Pennario's father's sister.

She said that Pennario baptized her at St. Margaret's Church...


... on Hertel Avenue. That is what Joey told me. I will have to get this straight because normally it is the priest who does the baptizing and Pennario was no priest, I will tell you that right now. Perhaps Pennario was the godfather.

What about the timeless romantic classic, the love theme from "The Godfather?" I heard Vic Damone sing that theme at the Hearthstone Manor and that is how he introduced it. "That timeless romantic classic."

From John Gilbert to Vic Damone.

What is this Web log coming to?

It is coming back to Joey Giambra, is what it is doing. Being a retired police detective he got this woman's name and phone number and I am going to call her. I will report how it goes!

Note to out-of-towners: This is where Buffalo business is transacted. At garage sales.

They are our public square!