I guess I'm a "cake eater"

I played football at the local Catholic high school. A large percent of the school's population was Italian, many of them coming from the large Italian neighborhood in Niagara Falls. One day, during a practice scrimmage (I played defensive line), I was lined up against a fairly large Italian lineman. I came in low, got under him, grabbed him by the shoulder pads, threw him face first into the dirt and proceeded to sack the quarterback (also Italian). The coach yelled at the lineman "You let that cake eater from LaSalle (a non-Italian section of town) beat you!" Somehow, I knew that being called a "cake eater" was meant to be some sort of insult, but it confused me. What's wrong with cake? I like cake. Fast forward about 30 years and I'm working as a supervisor on the midnight shift in a chemical plant. I was taking a break in the office with the supervisor of the other department. He is Italian, from the aforementioned neighborhood, and had married a nice Italian girl. At his desk, he opened his lunch to reveal a sandwich made with supermarket white bread. He picked up the sandwich, looked at it with disgust and slammed it back on the waxed paper saying "God damn it! I told her not to make my sandwiches with cake!" DING! It finally occurred, after 30 years, that only bread from a good Italian bakery is bread - all else is cake.

[Jenise]

Great story, Howie. Funny how eventually knowledge does find us, though we may have to wait on it a bit.

Great story. As I read it I was thinking it had something to do with Italians' minimalist approach to dessert. But this is even better.

Great story, Howie. I wonder if that insult was particular to Italian-Americans in NY or whether it came over from the old country (and changed languages)?

Mark Lipton

Mark - I posted this in a FB Group about growing up in Niagara Falls. One of the responders (Italian) wrote the following:

Actually Howie, it comes from the Italian term 'Mangia Cake' which means cake eater. It refers to anyone that's not Italian. As the story goes, when the Italian immigrants first came to this country it was dffcult to find work so many of them were dirt poor. The people they worked for, non-Italians, treated them like slaves. The immigrants called their employers Mangia Cakes because they got to eat cake while the Italians were lucky to have a piece of bread.

I responded with the following, as apparently, American white bread seems unusual for many people:

I read a book by a woman, a Jew, who survived the Nazi death camps. When the Americans freed her, they fed her white bread, something she had never seen in her life. She wondered if all Americans ate cake.

Great stories, Howie.