An act of thanksgiving, a labor of love--and a link with tradition.

Kathy Shambra and Maggie Petralia grew up together in East Los Angeles in the 1940s and ‘50s, before gangs and graffiti and drive-bys made a person think twice about venturing out on a warm spring evening.

One evening in particular each spring, their neighborhood in El Sereno would come alive. Doors would be thrown open, friends and neighbors and relatives would go from house to house, eating, drinking, talking.

Sometimes it seemed every other house had a huge table set up, piled with food and blazing with candles. Spaghetti, artichokes, eggplant, the wild fennel you pick in the hills called finocchio . Lobster, crab, sardines, anchovies. Wine, beer, soda.

And the sweets, oh the sweets. Cakes, pastries, candies. Fig cookies, ribbon cookies, the cookies called “bones of the dead,” biscotti.

This celebration happened each March 19, the feast of St. Joseph, patron saint of the Italians. As the tradition goes, you pray to St. Joseph for a particular request--for peace, for health, for the poor. The grand, bountiful St. Joseph’s altars, open to everyone with leftovers going to the poor, are offered in thanksgiving.

It is a Catholic, Italian, and more particularly Sicilian tradition. But it really is a women’s tradition, because it is they who spend months of nights and weekends cooking and baking and weaving bread and vegetables and cakes into precise, elaborate shapes.

It is a tradition that Shambra and Petralia grew up with. The women are first cousins, as close as sisters. They still live close by; Shambra in San Gabriel, Petralia in Temple City. They celebrate holidays together and go to the same parties and weddings.

So in 1988, when Petralia was diagnosed as having breast cancer, Shambra prayed to St. Joseph, promising an altar if her cousin recovered.

Early this year, Shambra and a changing crew of 30 started cooking and freezing. A month ago, the baking started. Last week, the furniture was moved out of her living room and a huge, 20-by-8 table pieced together and stacked with dishes and candles and statues.

Tables and chairs were set up in the back yard, covered with red, white and green cloths. Shambra took two days’ vacation from her job as secretarial supervisor at a downtown law firm. On Monday, she repaid St. Joseph.

By noontime, cars lined the quiet street for blocks around the Shambra home. Inside, Shambra’s husband, Dominic, the San Gabriel school board member, wore an apron and greeted guests.

In the living room, Petralia and others representing different saints prayed and then ate at the St. Joseph’s table; others would be served at the tables outside. More than 150 people, most elderly, had gathered for lunch; the Shambras expected a steady crowd through nightfall.

It was the second altar for Dominic and Kathy Shambra; more than two decades ago, they’d offered another when her mother and both of his parents were hospitalized. “I was a lot younger when I did the first one,” Kathy Shambra said.

“It’s going to die out,” she said of the St. Joseph’s tradition. “Most of the people who did this are in their 70s and 80s. My generation is interested and we want to keep it going but. . . . “ Will her children do it? “It’s a big job.”

Petralia, who has gone through a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation and now is cancer-free, agreed. She doesn’t know, in fact, if she’d have the energy to do what her cousin did for her. “How do you put it into words?” she said of her feelings about the altar. “I was overwhelmed, deeply touched. It’s a tremendous undertaking, an act of love you just cannot duplicate. A labor of love.” For many there, the labor is a link with a past that can never be recreated.

“We used to go from one place to another,” said Dominic’s mother, Anna Shambra, 83. “but now very few people do it in the private homes. Most of the churches have taken over, but that’s like a money-making proposition and to my mind, that’s wrong. That’s not what St. Joseph represents, to sell everything. We give it away.”

Anna Shambra had done an altar when the 17-year-old Dominic was struck with peritonitis in 1957, “and there he is, big as life.”

Now, she is the link with tradition, the one who tells what ingredients have to be included (fennel became a tradition because it was plentiful in Sicily) and which can’t be (no meat or even cheese, because it’s Lent), what shapes to form the bread in (a saw represents St. Joseph the carpenter) and why things are what they are.

The “bones of the dead,” for example--crispy white cookies made of flour and egg whites dried for three days before being baked. Why the name? On this one, even Anna Shambra is stumped.

“We’ll feed everybody we can,” she says, “then take the leftovers to hospitals, Skid Row.” She turns to greet old friends. “Mary, my goodness, I haven’t seen you in years. . . . Hi, Rose, where you been? It’s like we live in Cucamonga or something.”

Anthony Ferraro, 80, grew up in Lincoln Heights and now lives in Upland. “My mother used to have it years ago,” he says. “At that time, I had two brothers in the service, and she was praying for their return.” Both brothers came back from World War II.

“There were hundreds of them in those days,” said Andrew Canzoneri, 84. “Every other house. The altar means going back 50 or 100 years. It’s a pleasure.”

Even they agreed, however, that the tradition is slipping into history. “I know my husband since he was a boy,” said Canzoneri’s wife, Lucille. “We’ve been married 63 years in December. Our son will be 62. We used to help years ago when we were younger. We lived in Lincoln Heights and most all the families had altars.”

But their children? “My daughter-in-law is not Italian, and my son is just like she is. We are a completely different culture, the last of the Sicilians.”