Daniel Rubin: In Downingtown, generations fry up the frogs

Do the math: Ten women work four days to prepare a meal that 1,000 men eat in three hours. What does that equal?

Tradition.

Tonight is the 75th annual Amphibious Order of Frogs dinner at St. Anthony's Lodge in Downingtown's old Italian neighborhood. Tickets, which are long sold-out, cost $35 for unlimited Miller Lite and reminiscing, a feast of veal spezzato, roasted chicken, hot peppers, and salad, then the traditional fried legs of ranocchio.

"Are frog legs Italian?" I asked Laurie Mascherino Reutter, who is 90 and has been preparing or serving this giant family-style meal once a year for a half-century.

"No," she said, accenting her point with a jab of her paring knife, "frog legs are poor. We were poor."

The dinner's roots reach back to the Great Depression. In the early 1930s a group of local teenagers with such nicknames as "Barrel House" Sciaretta, "Skid" Di Berardinis, and "Kite" Di Sante used to catch frogs in the nearby Brandywine Creek. They'd shoot their prey with a .22, then cook them over a fire. "We'd even eat blackbirds if we could catch them," said Reutter, a 4-foot-6 hot shot with snow-white hair.

According to the Order's official history, the first feast took place in 1934 in the backyard of Joe and Mary Courtlessa on Church Street. It is believed that homemade jug wine flowed freely.

One year later, the crowd gathered again. And again the next year, their numbers slowly growing. Some things remained constant: The women cooked. The men ate.

By the late '30s, the dinner was a big deal and had moved to St. Anthony's, where it's been held the first Thursday in August ever since, with a pause only for World War II.

Now the event's so involved that 22 men serve on the organizing committee, most of them descendents of the founders, such as Michael Mento, director of computer operations for Crozer-Chester Medical Center, whose grandfather was Anthony "Muskie" Mento. Membership is an honor.

"Unfortunately, some of the younger generation don't want to be involved in any of it," Mento said. "Some of them want to, but they are not of good character. Just because your name ends with a vowel and your grandfather was on the committee doesn't mean you're automatically in."

Tuesday, the morning of my visit, the ladies were busy cubing 960 pounds of veal. Reutter sat between her sister, Frances Alesiani, and her granddaughter, Debbie Pierce. Everyone at the table was related in one way or another, which led to lots of conversational shorthand and knowing laughter.

A noose with her name on it hung above Reutter's head. "She yells," explained her friend Josie Girafalco, 83. When Reutter becomes too bossy, someone lowers the noose. Sometimes Reutter gets the message.

Girafalco must have her moments, too. A second noose hung over her head.

They'd been at it since Monday morning at 7. Their work wasn't to stop until midnight tonight. The last task is cooking the star attractions.

This year's frogs came from China. The Brandywine has long stopped producing sufficient numbers for the dinner. The ladies will prepare more than 6,400 of the delicacies - salting them, dusting them in flour flecked with white pepper, then dipping them in egg batter and finishing them with bread crumbs. Their last dive is into the deep fryer.

It does no good to ask why the women do all this work for the men. They've probably been spoiling them all their lives, suggested a friend of mine, who knows.

"They're good to us," Reutter explained. There are other benefits. The ladies love the camaraderie of the four-day run-up, the hearty lunches, the impromptu sing-alongs to "Sweet Caroline" and "Blue Suede Shoes" on the portable stereo.

And they get paid, though determining the amount was beyond my skill set.

"We would do this for nothing," says Rose Ciarlone, sitting down to a little feast of sausage and broccoli rabe.

Josie Girafalco looked at the younger woman and shook her head. "Who would do this for nothing?"