Anthony P. Giunta Jr., 78, Italian Market merchant

Right up to the time he closed his store near the Italian Market in 2002, Anthony P. Giunta Jr. was still ringing up sales on a 107-year-old hand-cranked brass cash register.

He was still selling chittara, wires stretched between two pieces of wood used to cut fresh pasta dough. And at Christmastime, customers still came for handheld pizelle mold, which is used to fashion those Italian cookies the way grandmothers used to.

Giunta Bros. at 11th and Christian Streets was a kitchen-equipment store that harked back to its 1915 founding by his father, Anthony Sr.

Mr. Giunta, 78, whose ill health forced him to retire and close the store in 2002, died Sunday of congestive heart failure at his home in South Philadelphia.

The family name is well-known in the food business.

His daughter, Maria, said that her father's cousins run Giunta's Prime Shop inside Reading Terminal Market, and Abbruzzi & Giunta's Italian Market in Mount Laurel.

"People here still say 'the mayor of Christian Street' " when referring to her father, she said.

He worked six days a week, sometimes a bit of the seventh.

"If somebody called and said, 'I can only come in on Sunday,' he'd open the store," she said. "He was very accommodating. We only lived five doors down [from the store] at the time."

Folks went to find what they couldn't find elsewhere.

"Ravioli plates, to make ravioli by hand," she said. "The meat grinder, sausage grinder, bolted to the kitchen table."

And the Regina, "the style of macaroni machine that my grandpop [patented]."

Mr. Giunta was a 1947 graduate of St. Joseph's Prep and a 1951 graduate of what is now St. Joseph's University.

"Years back," his daughter said, "I know he belonged to the Holy Name Society. And he was active in our church, as an usher, as a lector."

Besides his daughter, he is survived by his wife of 51 years, Rita; a son, Anthony J.; another daughter, Angela Cusumano; and two grandchildren.

A viewing is set for 9 to 10:30 a.m. tomorrow at St. Paul Roman Catholic Church, 10th and Christian Streets, followed by a 10:30 a.m. Funeral Mass there. Burial is to be in Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon.