Monday, November 9, 2009

The Hideaway

My great-grandparents, Francesco and Josephine Rosaio, were the original proprietors of “The Hideaway Lounge,” a local pub in Brandywine Hundred that was, remarkably, an offshoot of my great-grandfather’s mushroom business. The history of the Hideaway begins in the early 1930s, when a fire destroyed the majority of my great-grandfather’s mushroom houses. By this time, he was already in his 50s and ready for something a little less labor intensive. So, during the waning years of Prohibition, my great-grandparents converted their one remaining mushroom house (which was attached to their home) and opened the “Pointe Breeze Bocce Club,” so-named to disguise its true identity as a local watering hole.

After Prohibition ended, there was no reason to maintain the façade, so the name was changed to “The Hideaway Lounge,” known to locals simply as “the Hideaway.” It became a popular gathering place for the neighborhood folk, as popular in fact for my great-grandmother Lalla Pina’s sandwiches and snacks as it was for its libations. Cousin Dave Baccino helped tend bar and as my great-grandfather Rosaio grew older, he became a fixture at the same small table near the bar.

After my great-grandfather’s death in 1954, my great-grandmother continued to run the Hideaway for almost 30 years. In 1981, when she was nearly 90 years old, she finally sold the Hideaway, which continues to operate as a neighborhood bar to this very day.

The old-time locals still talk about “Lalla Pina” and the Hideaway. I spent many happy childhood days in the parking lot of the Hideaway, riding bikes on the vast stretch of asphalt with my sister and friends, stopping into Grandmom’s house for “cakies” and a chat with Aunt Anne or Aunt Elsie, a run around Grandmom’s yard with her collie Teddy, or searching for wild kittens that seemed in abundant supply every spring underneath the wooden steps that led into the kitchen around the back of the Hideaway.

If you sit on the back porch of my father’s home, and look through the thicket of the row of pine trees that now separate the neighbor’s property, you can still barely see Lalla Pina’s house and the Hideaway, looking just as they did for as long as I can remember. Maybe you’ll take the walk “across the field” and stop in for a drink. If you do, have one in memory of Lalla Pina.

In the picture: View of Lalla Pina's house and the adjoining Hideaway (June 2008)

1 comment:

  1. Great story. Brings back a lot of memmories. I found your blog via I grew up in Dartmouth Woods during the late 60's and early 70's. I wasn't old enough to go into the Hideaway but sure remember it. We used to cut thru there on our way to Concord football games. We'd play pick-up football in that field by Ebright and Forge Dr.

    Mike Sweeney