WORCESTER, Mass. – The tent is up here on Massasoit Road. Organizers and volunteers said they’re looking forward to a great weekend of celebrating Italian heritage at Worcester’s Italian Festival.
“This is the original Italian festival. A few thousand people coming in from Thursday until Sunday,” Domenic Mercurio Jr. said. “And you’ve got every possible Italian food you could think of with a lot of great things for kids to do to like bouncy houses and adults too. If you know, if you’d like to have a beer and bounce around a little bit. Could get messy later.”
Mercurio and many others spent Thursday putting the finishing touches together for the Italian Festival.
From the people who attend, down to the fried dough, the festival is all about tradition.
“Over 30 years ago our aunts started doing the fried dough way back when the Loreto festival started,” Nancy Swett said. “And we helped out. And now we took over.”
“We’ve been coming to the Italian festival; we were teenagers,” Carolyn Moore said. “It started as the family dinner, chicken dinner. And they had a grease pole contest. They had to climb the grease pole. It was just like a lot of fun, a lot of family stuff that started it.”
“These ladies and all of their friends and colleagues have been making Italian cookies and everything,” Mercurio said. “How many do we make? 10,800 Italian cookies. So we need people to come down and eat all the Italian cookies, please. It’s 33 Massasoit Road. It’s our wonderful church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Loreto. Free parking in Worcester. We love free. Free parking and a $2 entrance.”
Between tables and advertising to cookies and Italian sausage, Mercurio said about 300 people work all year to make the festival a success.
“Everybody pulls together in a community feeling, and that’s what makes Our Lady Mount Carmel Loreto great. And that’s what makes this the original Italian festival, because that’s the one thing that’s always the same,” Mercurio said. “Everybody’s working together and you develop great friendships and great family relationships with each other, and it lasts all year long, year after year after year.”
Keeping up with tradition, the Italian festival runs four days, Thursday through Sunday. Once it’s all packed up on Sunday, they said they don’t wait at all, and planning starts for next year’s Italian festival.
Dining and Cooking