All Italian-American family histories start with an emigration tale. This is but one of millions, all uniquely different, but all sharing this one point of commonality. We all had to get here from there, and usually with great risk in hopes for a better life.
Alfredo Rossi constructed mobile “field bakeries” for the Italian Armed Forces during WWI to provide bread and pasta to the front lines. As they say, an army travels on its stomach. Sometimes its ability to wage war effectively is compromised on a full one .
Italians never let a war get in the way of a good meal.
Upon his discharge from service in 1917, Alfredo emigrated to the United States, the promised land of dreams and opportunity. Not being able to speak a lick of English, he arrived on Ellis Island with sixteen cents in his pocket.
Utilizing his unique skill set of being both a machinist and a baker, he partnered with Nicholas Procino in a small entrepreneurial venture making fresh pasta in a barn on East Division Street in Syracuse, NY, servicing the ever-growing Italian neighborhood on the north side of town.
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| Pasta delivery boys |
The P & R partnership was a marriage, and not only in a business sense. Shotguns have been rumored to be involved.
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| Nicola Alfredo ("Little Sonny") |
After the backyard barn burned to the ground, the combined Procino / Rossi family business relocated to Auburn, NY. Over the years, P & R Pasta grew into a major mass manufacturing pasta and sauce factory, employing several hundred people, and servicing a large regional area of the Eastern United States, delivering their wares with a fleet of 18 wheeled Mack tractor trailer trucks and selling over 100 cuts of specialty pastas, bottled sauces and grated cheeses made in the “old world way” in major chain grocery stores and little mom and pop corner stores in NY, VT, OH, PA, NJ, and even KY.
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| Nicholas and "Lovely Linda" on their wedding day |
Nicholas the future Pasta Scion (“Little Sonny”) grew up as a “second generation” Italian- American in Auburn, eventually to manhood. He married “Lovely Linda” in 1955, and took over major operations of the Washington Street factory in 1958. In 1960, their third child Giorgio Guiseppe made his way into the world.
P & R was wiped out by the floods caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. Nick rebuilt the factory, and then sold it to Hershey Foods in 1978. Nicholas went on to start a successful food brokerage; one that he still operates to this day at age 85!
P & R products were still sold until Hershey Foods retired the label in 2011.
