'Pleasure and Imagination': Whitehall Boro Natives Return for Greenridge Carnival

The year was 1962. Kennedy was President. And The Beatles hadn't yet come to visit Ed Sullivan. The fathers worked, and the mothers were home—mostly. But if you grew up on Greenridge Drive, you had dozens and dozens of mothers.

While some may disagree over whether or not it takes a village to raise a child, this village of mostly large Catholic families on a residential street in Whitehall Borough raised lots of them in the 1960s.

To say that the community was close would be an understatement. Somewhere between 70 and 110 children lived simultaneously on the street that also housed the elementary school and church that most of them went to. And when they left St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin School after eighth grade, most of them moved on to another school in Whitehall—Baldwin High.

In 1962, some of the Greenridge kids wanted to celebrate the bonds of the neighborhood. And just like that, the Greenridge Carnival was born.

Starting as a talent show and morphing into a parade with an original song the next year—"Come one, come all/To the Greenridge Car-ni-val"—the event served as a fundraiser for several trips that the neighborhood kids wanted to take. A train ride to the Horseshoe Curve one year. The Ice Capades and the circus years later.

It was a world of "pleasure and imagination," says Bob Nowalk, a Greenridge boy who was 8 years old when he teamed with neighbors Marlene Petrone (now Boas), Betsy Young (now Kubacki) and others in creating the first Greenridge Carnival.

Now, this Saturday, July 27, Nowalk, Boas and Kubacki hope to rekindle that magic by celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Greenridge Carnival song, written in 1963 to the tune of Robert Schumann's "Happy Farmer."

Nearly 80 people—some from as far away as Illinios and Indiana, including Nowalk—are expected to come back on Saturday to the street that they were raised on for yet another Greenridge Carnival. The festivities start at 2 p.m., and it'll be the first one held since 1966.

St. Gabriel's, which used to lend tables and chairs for the event in the '60s, will once again oblige in 2013. And Whitehall Mayor James Nowalk—Bob's brother and himself a Greenridge boy—has declared Saturday as "Greenridge Carnival Day" in the borough.

Saturday's event, which is open only to Greenridge natives and their families, will be more of a gathering than a fair. That's nothing like the original productions, which featured performances and skits by neighborhood children and contests like putting, darts and ring toss.

The prizes were humble, but of course, that wasn't the point. Even the tickets for admission were simply typed out by the kids' mothers on a typewriter.

It was a simpler time, indeed, something embodied in the video that you'll see above, which features interviews with the three creators—Nowalk, Boas and Kubacki—and culminates with scenes from the 1962 Greenridge Carnival captured on 16-millimeter film by Kubacki's mother, Dorothy Young. A song written in 1976 by Bob Nowalk about his experiences growing up in Whitehall accompanies the silent film.

Nowalk, Boas and Kubacki's interviews are played over still images taken at some of the carnivals. The black-and-white ones are from a local newspaper that Patch is unable to identify. The images were provided by the event organizers.

You'll also see Boas' mother, Theresa Petrone, in the video. Theresa hosted the first-ever Greenridge Carnival at her home on Greenridge in 1962. Now 84 years young, Petrone stands in some of the same places 51 years later and takes you down Memory Lane.

Petrone will be at this year's carnival, too. Yes, she's making cookies again, but mostly, she'll be making new memories.

Enjoy the Greenridge Carnival. The organizers thank their parents, like Petrone, for helping to "(make their) childhood beautiful."