07/23/2026
THE LITTLE POPS STORY - "Travel Back in Time to DeLeno Brothers Restaurant": Mike grew up around DeLeno Brothers (see photo), his Uncle Tony’s and Uncle Joe’s restaurant in Wappingers Falls, NY, which opened in 1959. Here's a glimpse into what it was like in his own words:
"I always got to hang out with my cousins at DeLenos when I was about eight or nine years old. I'd sleep over at my cousin's house and we'd go down to the restaurant on a Friday night or Saturday night. We'd eat pizza, play pinball, and play the jukebox.
The grandmothers would all cook, sell their recipes and entrees. Uncle Tony used to sell buckets of spaghetti out the back door for five dollars, whatever it was back in the day. Everybody came through the back door to say hello. All night long, people would stop by. If it was a Friday night, they'd always come through, jump in the back, and say hello or they'd come through the bar area, through the kitchen, and say hello.
On Tuesdays, my aunt would go down and make meatballs. That was meatball day. So she'd roll meatballs with my cousin's grandmother, Grandma Rosie. Everybody called her Gram. She'd be there at 7 o'clock in the morning till 4:00, 4:30 at night when my other cousin would come in and then she'd go home. But seven days a week from 1959, I think it was, to the day she passed.
They shut the restaurant down in 2000."
