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Monday, April 10, 2000
They come. They sit. They chat. They laugh. They put dollops of potatoes and cheese into little envelopes of dough.
It's nothing, really. And it's everything.
The women of Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church in McKees Rocks have been doing this every Friday morning -- summers excluded -- for better than 50 years. By now, the church has third-generation pierogi pinchers.
"My bubba made me come down because I didn't have school on Fridays," said Lisa Plutto, 35, who first threw herself into the mix while in college.
Her bubba -- that's "grandmother" for those new to The Rocks -- was Anastasia Bednar, who kept at this until she was 94.
Plutto's mother, Ann Lubas, also is a regular, but Plutto is a rarity in her generation. Nearly all the dozens of women and half-dozen men methodically shaping the pierogis are grandparents. And they are emblematic of a generation of volunteers doing the sort of civic work that makes communities something more than a cluster of homes punctuated by chain stores.
Sometimes I wonder what will happen when this generation's gone. Will mine be there to carry the torch or, in this case, the sauerkraut?
I put that question to the women of Holy Ghost as they were deep into another 6,000-pierogi Friday morning. Some thought the Holy Ghost Pirohi Project would carry on forever, but others weren't sure, the world having changed so much since the first pierogis went out the door in the late 1940s.
Daughters of miners and steel workers, these women have seen their children move to suburbs hither and yon. And in our era of two-income families, there is little time for the old ways.
Most Holy Ghost parishioners are Carpatho-Rusyn, tracing their ancestry to an area that covers parts of modern Slovakia, Poland, Romania and Ukraine. The recipe for stuffed cabbage you learned as a child largely depended on which valley of the Carpathian Mountains your parents were from, Lillian Buchko said.
Buchko said her daughter would love to help make pierogis for the church, but she works Fridays so she can't share the camaraderie, the talk of the customs of her parents' parents.
I asked the Rev. Ron Larko, who flipped circles of dough down the tables faster than a Vegas blackjack dealer, if he knew pierogis were part of the job when he came to this church a year and a half ago.
"Oh, yes," Larko said. "I knew. Everyone knows about McKees Rocks."
He came to Holy Ghost from a church in Irving, Texas, that made pierogis once a year.
"With jalapeno peppers," Peg Krulac interjected.
"With taco sauce on top," said the next woman down.
"This is the hunky soul food," said a third.
Whether you call them pierogis, pirohi or some other derivation, they go for $4 a dozen and go quickly. One woman's daughter wanted 38 dozen for herself and her co-workers. Bob Lipkowski of Ross wanted nine dozen for his family, his Aunt Lottie and his buddies, Rich and Dave.
I took a dozen with potato and cheese, and Lipkowski also gave me some halushki that he bought across the street at St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church.
Fridays can be more competitive than Sundays for churches on Olivia Street. We'd better enjoy it while it lasts.
Brian O'Neill's e-mail address is boneill@post-gazette.com.