John Zanotti works behind the counter at Dan’s Candyland. Zanotti, who was married to Dan Pellegrini’s sister Ida, made the ice cream served at Dan’s. Zanotti’s daughter, Alice, worked as a waitress at Dan’s during the late 1940s and early ‘50s. John died in 1974.
Courtesy of Allen County Historical Society
Dan’s Candyland was leveled a long time ago to make room for Lima’s Central Fire Station, but the confectionary and its owner, Dan Pellegrini, who served up ice cream and life lessons from behind its marble counter for nearly half a century, are alive in the memories of many.
The fondest memories no doubt belong to generations of the Pellegrini family, who happily spent childhood summers helping in his store and being compensated with ice cream, or in later years working there for regular wages. They remember Dan’s old-fashioned, not-for-dieters ice cream with marshmallow topping or sprinkled with freshly crushed peanuts; root beer floats and malts that “were to die for,” the peanut clusters delivered by Lima’s Banta candy company that were “out of this world.” They recall the heady aroma from a homemade humidor packed with cigars, which the store also sold, and the store itself with its marble counter and mirrors, on which the menu and prices were written.
They also remember Pellegrini’s generous spirit.
In August 1940, during a “friendly wrestling match” at a picnic for employees of Lima Locomotive Works, Pellegrini’s brother, John, suffered a broken neck and died, just over a year after his wife, Mildred, passed away following a long illness. Pellegrini and his sister, Pia, took custody of the couple’s young children rather than see them separated. The children, Frank, John Jr., Nancy and Mary, lived with Dan and Pia at 535 Marian Ave.
“Their job was to take care of those kids,” said Robert Wrasman, the son of one of those children, Mary Pellegrini Wrasman, who died in December 2012. Neither Dan nor Pia ever married.
In May 1943, Frank, the youngest child, died, and Pia, who had doted on him, broke down with grief. Dan, Pia and the surviving children, Mary, Nancy and John Jr., then moved in with John Zanotti, his wife and daughter, Alice, at 1050 S. Union St. Zanotti was married to Pellegrini’s sister, Ida, and worked for the Erie Railroad while also partnering at Dan’s Candyland, primarily making the ice cream sold in the store.
“It was a fun time,” Alice Zanotti Winter said of the years the families shared the house on South Union Street. She recalled rooms that were “half living room, half bedroom,” with the double beds placed so close to each other the occupants could touch hands, and a tiny television, cobbled together by her father, on the dining room table.
Alice and her cousins, Nancy and John Jr., would eventually work at Dan’s Candyland, while Mary also helped out.
No one, however, worked harder than Pellegrini.
“Dan spent a lot of time down at that store,” Alice recalled. “He’d open in the morning, be there until about 5 when my dad would come.” Pellegrini would then return around 8 p.m. and stay until closing at around 11 p.m. “My land, he spent his lifetime there at that store,” she said.
Dante “Dan” Pellegrini, who came to the United States from Barga, Italy, at the age of 16 in 1914, had much of his lifetime invested in the business, which he purchased around 1926. According to family members, Pellegrini, like many Italian immigrants, likely gravitated to Lima because there were jobs and other family members here.
He likely gravitated to the ice cream business because he was from Barga.
Immigrants from Barga, a small city nestled in the hills of Tuscany, are known for making ice cream and its relative, gelato, said Robert, who, like many members of Lima’s Pellegrini and DaPrato families, has visited Barga. The DaPratos, who once operated confectionaries in Lima, and Pellegrinis share many family ties and, Robert noted, “were marrying each other all the way back to Barga.” Pellegrini’s parents were Luigi and Caroline DaPrato Pellegrini.
“Dan was kind of like, if you think about it, a default grandfather to me and Susie,” said Wrasman, referring to his cousin Susan Pieraccini Rabe. Susan is the daughter of Nancy Pellegrini Pieraccini and, like her mother and her Aunt Alice, worked as a waitress in Dan’s. Nancy Pieraccini died in July 2009.
Robert grew up in the Allen East school district and recalled that when any team he was playing on won a game, they would be rewarded with a trip to Dan’s Candyland.
“We got ice cream, we won the tournament, that was a really good day,” he said, adding his teammates were impressed he was related to a man who sold such tasty ice cream.
John Zanotti, Alice’s father, was responsible for that. When Pellegrini opened his business, it was located in an older business block. In those days, Alice remembered, her father would travel to Decker’s Dairy in Cridersville to mix up five-gallon batches of ice cream, which would be retrieved as needed.
Around 1946, Pellegrini built a new store just south of the old location, and Zanotti made the ice cream in a stainless steel machine in the back of the store. The ice cream machine, Susan said, reminded her of an iron lung.
Susan said she started working in Dan’s Candyland in the 1960s when she still had to stand on a milk crate to work the cash register. The bills she rang up on that cash register had to be entered from memory because, she said, Pellegrini believed that if you had to write it down “you weren’t old enough to take the orders” and couldn’t be a waitress. “It did help with your math skills,” she said.
Susan also recalled that if a waitress’ apron was “just a little bit of dirty,” Pellegrini would make them change it. “He would just point, and we would know,” she said. The store, she said, was kept spotless, which belies its affectionate nickname, “Dirty Dan’s.”
Robert noted that a little detective work has led him to believe the nickname grew out of Pellegrini’s resemblance to a cartoon villain named Dirty Dan.
A typical evening ended with all tables and stools wiped down, followed by “all the ice cream you wanted” and a trip to the Kewpee for hamburgers, she said.
Alice began waitressing at Dan’s in 1947 and continued until she graduated from nearby St. John’s High School in the early 1950s. During those years she worked with Susan’s mother, who also attended St. John’s.
“When we first started, we got a dollar a week,” Alice recalled.
Dan’s wasn’t that busy during the day, though workers from nearby businesses like Star Carpet or the next-door city public works garage would stop in for a snack or a sandwich. That all changed at night, particularly during the fall when there was a football game at Lima Stadium. If she was at the game, Alice noted, she would have to leave before it ended to get to work.
“After the game, the store was packed,” Alice said.
Alice also recalled that, at Christmas and Easter, they would take ice cream and candy to the nuns and priests at St. John’s.
John Zanotti died in September 1974, about the time Dan’s Candyland closed its doors for good. Dan Pellegrini died in April 1982. His sister Pia died in July 1991.
SOURCE
This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.
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See past Reminisce stories at limaohio.com/tag/reminisce
Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].
