My informant is from Missouri, and he tells me that everyone in his town knows about the “Albino Farm” in Springlawn. There are all sorts of stories about the old abandoned farm. The one my informant heard the most was that there was once a family of angry albinos who had been shut off from the community because they were different. They had set traps and if anyone was ever found on their property, they were never heard from again. Another rumor is that it was an underground hospital where experiments were conducted on albinos, and is haunted by albino ghosts. Although my informant never tried to sneak in, many of his friends growing up did–or at least, they claimed too. No one ever brought back any proof.
Monthly Archives: April 2012
Pittsburgh Cookie Tables
James Santelli
Los Angeles, California
April 22, 2012
Folklore Type: Tradition
Informant Bio: James Santelli is my boyfriend. He is a twenty year old Broadcast Journalism major with a minor in Sports Media at the University of Southern California. He is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; he has lived there his whole life and is very proud of it. James is Catholic and has three siblings. He likes cookies.
Context: James’ sister Katherine got married right before this Spring Semester of 2012 started. I attended the wedding with him, and before I went we talked about what would happen during the wedding as I had never been to a Catholic wedding before. During this he mentioned how excited he was for the cookie tables. I had never heard of cookie tables before especially not at a wedding as I am an avid cake fan, and that is all people eat for dessert at an average Texas wedding. We got into a heated debate about cookies versus cake, in which he tried to explain to me the merits and tradition of the cookie tables. Much later, I asked him to re-explain the cookie tables to me.
Item:
J: So if you’re a Pittsburgher that’s having a wedding or you’re having your wedding in Pittsburgh you still usually have a wedding cake, but it’s a small cake. It’s not a huge cake, and instead of everybody having cake. They would have tables of cookies all different kinds of cookies. Your basic chocolate chip or sugar cookies, and then you have other ones, you know, peanut butter blossoms or snickerdoodles or pizzelles. All sorts of different kinds of cookies. So much so that at Katherine’s wedding (sister) What did it end up being? Like…ten cookies per person? And there were so many left at the end.
A: Oh my god. Boxes and boxes. Um all right, who makes the cookies?
J: The cookies are made by the family of the bride usually, a lot of it is done by the mother of the bride which is why my mom was working like almost (laughs) tirelessly making cookies in the few weeks before the wedding. (Still laughing) And like baking them and freezing them like all day, and then doing it another day. But she also got help from, you know, family friends that baked cookies as well. And, you know, cousins, sisters of my mom, or sisters in-law that baked some cookies themselves and froze them. And then it all has to get transported to the, to the site of the wedding reception.
A: Who does the transporting?
J: Uh, it depends on who can take them, like I know in this case my mom stored a lot of the cookies as much as the freezer can hold. And then Mrs. Bacala, our family friend, she like people would bring her the cookies, and she’d freeze as much as possible. And then some of them they would just order, and they would be catered. But I gotta think a majority of them were homemade.
A: Um, ok, um so it’s mostly like mother of the bride or like family of the bride I guess who pays for all of that?
J: Well their paying for the whole wedding anyway so they probably save money baking their own cookies rather than buying them.
(Portion of interview cut out and placed into Informant’s Analysis)
A: So when, when do you get to eat the cookies?
J: Get to eat the cookies after dinner unless you sneak some cookies before. It depends on if the like, if they bring out the cookies like right after dinner and place ‘em out on the tables, or the cookies are already sitting there. And you kinda know you shouldn’t eat them until after, but there are so many cookies so you gotta at least have one or two before dinner just to make a dent in them.
A: Is there not a cookie baron that gets mad at you (James laughs) for eating cookies too soon?
J: Nobody’s really guarding the cookie table (Alex laughs) so seriously. Everybody knows that those cookies have gotta get eaten, so it’s kind of with a wink and a nod that you (begins winking on every word) shouldn’t eat them before dinner.
Informant Analysis:
A: So how does the cookie table make you feel?
J: I like cookies! (laugh) So the cookie tables are definitely a plus in my book, and I also think it’s good because if you have just one wedding cake, and it’s the kinda cake that uh some guests may not really like they don’t really have a choice. They’re not eating the cake, but in the case of the cookie table then there are dozens of different kinds of cookies, myriad cookies. Even if you don’t like peanut butter cookies or whatever you’re bound to find a cookie that you like, and you can eat those for your dessert instead. Plus it’s just a Pittsburgh tradition to have cookie tables at your wedding. It’s something cool to have. The best guess (to how it started) is that it came from European immigrants, you know, either German, Polish, um Slovak, Irish, somebody that people are guessing that’s what they did in weddings back in the homeland. If they like didn’t have real big cakes. It was just people who were coming to the wedding but bringing cookies instead.
A: Ok, so it just stayed through tradition supposedly?
J: Probably. That’s what they guess.
A: And why do you think it’s still a thing today? Just because it’s…easy and tradition and..?
J: Well it kinda makes sense for me. It’s like I said to have the cookies that you have the variety of things, and I dunno it’s just Pittsburgh can be a very regionalistic place that obviously we’re all more nationalized and we have like wedding magazines that everybody reads all across the country. And like things that are the same amongst all weddings, but then you have things that are unique to the area that you live in. And just ‘cause they kinda develop that way, and if I’m a person that grows up and sees at all the weddings I go to that there are cookie tables that’ll probably continue when I get married or Kara (sister) gets married or Andrew (brother) gets married. And just passes down along that way.
Analysis: I agree with James about why the cookie tables are important to him and how they probably came into being a tradition. What is interesting is the fact that the mother of the bride is the one that makes all or the majority of the cookies. It is the mother’s matronly duty to prepare an important and beloved food item for the last time that her child will be seen as a child and in her care. A wedding is usually where a girl transitions from her family to creating a family of her own. The importance of the cookie tables seems to be a last attempt for a mother and other adult female figures to do something while the daughter of the bride is still acting as a child. The other aspect that connects to this mother and child mindset about the cookies is that people steal them before dinner. The common occurrence that almost acts as a joke refers back to the practice of children stealing cookies before dinner when they are not supposed to. Whether or not there was the same association between matrons and cookies among older European generations is unknown, but that association is alive today in early childhood and again in a Pittsburgh wedding.
Alex Williams
Los Angeles, California
University of Southern California
ANTH 333m Spring 2012
A Cow in Old Main
My informant is a student at Macalester College, and on campus, there is a story that everyone knows. Around 1900, the president of Macalester had a son who attended the school. His son didn’t like to go to class, but instead liked to play pranks on everyone: his classmates, his professors, and especially his father, driving him crazy. There used to be a conference room on the fourth floor of the building known as Old Main, where the president would hold his important meetings.One day he was in a meeting when a cow wandered into the boardroom. The President immediately knew it was his son’s doing. So when his son’s GPA fell below a 2.8, his father kicked him out of Macalester, as a way of getting revenge. That rule (you’ll be expelled if your GPA falls below a 2.8) has been in place at Macalester ever since.
My informant is a tour guide at Macalester, and always tells this story to prospective freshman. “I first heard it during orientation right before freshman year,” he tells me. “It’s a funny story and I think it gives people on my tours a break from all the info for something cheesy. I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s just a device I’m using to poke fun at the school, but I also think it helps people realize that not all admissions offices see themselves as the gatekeepers in every single sense. I think it’s good to recognize we don’t take ourselves that seriously, and it helps build a relationship with prospective students.”
Poison (Folk Song)
Charlie was a fiddle player, the best there was around
He and his fiancee were at the picnic ground
Charlie and his band would play the dance that summer night
But deep inside his heart he felt that something wasn’t right
His sister said, “You better keep an eye upon your girl
Rumor has it she’s been giving someone else a whirl.”
So Charlie had decided to spy on his bride-to-be
But never was he prepared to see what he would see
CHORUS:
Her love was poison
Her love was poison
She ran around with other boys and
Her love was poison
He spotted her behind the bar in another’s hands
The man he saw was Earl who played guitar in Charlie’s band
Blood red sunset fell upon the couple’s dark embrace
And cast a long and desperate shadow over Charlie’s face
When that night he took the stage
Sadness mixed with jealous rage
Charlie gazed upon the crowd
Raised his voice, clear and loud
What I fear has come to pass
In his hand a poison glass
He swallowed it underneath the moon
And said, “I’m playing my farewell tune.”
CHORUS
As the last note died away, the fiddler did the same
They put him in an old pine box
With nails they sealed his fame
The summer sun in poison soon made his body swell
The casket nearly burst apart
And put forth quite a smell
A green fly swarmed around and followed Charlie all the way
To the little meadow where forever he would lay
And dream of fiddles, fiancees, and that fateful night
When Charlie played his farewell tune
Beneath the pale moonlight
My informant is from the Republic, Missouri, where he comes from an enormous family of “Ozark Hillbillies” (as they refer to themselves) for generations. His entire extended family lives in the area, and together make up three separate family folk bands (and one huge family folk band, when they get together.) The family’s musical inclinations have gone back for generations. The bands are currently made up of my informant and his cousins, all generally between 20 and 50, and each of their parents had been in the bands before that. As they have children, they join the bands too (My informant has a six-year-old daughter who performs with the family from time to time.)
This song is from my informant’s family, and it has been passed down for at least three generations. It is supposedly based on a true story of a family member from years past. In the YouTube clip included, it is being played by my informant’s cousin’s band, but everyone in the entire extended family knows it, and they sing it whenever they’re together in any group.
Hell’s Gate and the Seven Arches, Indiana
This is an rumor that has circulated around my informant’s county of rural Indiana, for a long time. Everyone in his high school always knew it, and my informant isn’t certain how far back it goes. There’s rumored to be a tunnel somewhere in the southern part of the Diamond, Indiana called The Seven Arches. My informant and his friends used to go out on the weekends looking for it. They never found it, but someone always knew at least one person that had been there (allegedly).
According to legend, there was a train derailment in the tunnel, and now it’s haunted with spirits. The story was that if you go there at midnight (sometimes it had to be Friday the 13th, as well depending on who told the story) and heard a train coming, that the gates of hell would be open for a short period of time. If you stop your car at night, you will hear laughing, screaming, and then the crash of the train, as if it is derailing over and over again. The graffiti will glow and the walls will drip blood, and if you see your name on the walls of the Arches, you’re certain to die.