A lunch, a lift of the glass, for Angelo
There’s nothing quite like lunch at the Racalmuto Club on a Friday, especially a sunny one in the summertime, with the afternoon hot on the stone and brick, tomato-growing weather. The way you’d imagine it on the Mediterranean.
Racalmuto, of course, is the Sicilian town that not only lends its name to an area of Hamilton, Corso Racalmuto, where so many Racalmutese settled, but also represents an idea of Hamilton as a place where newcomers could put down stakes and grow bigger than where they started.
Decades ago, Racalmuto poured a big part of its future into Hamilton. We must’ve been forbidding with our roaring steel furnaces and northern climate. But we were their tomorrow and delivered on the promise.
But not even in Racalmuto is there anything quite like the Racalmuto Club on a Friday afternoon. For one thing, in Sicily they don’t have Angelo Mosca, the big man who even now at 80, even now in his wheelchair, looms like ... well, like part of our geography. The lower city, the escarpment, and ... middle of the earth, Angelo, as though cut out of the limestone.
The Racalmuto Club building squats squarely on Murray Street, tan brick, as it always has, modestly, parallel to Barton, between Bay and James, heart of town. An old building with an old sign, Fratellanza Racalmutese, proclaiming it was founded 1933.
And beside it, now towering over it, the Witton Lofts, with its soaring glass and postmodernism built onto old-school brick like a bionic man of a building. Old and new Hamilton side by side.
Inside on this beautiful Friday afternoon sits Angelo, grinning broadly, telling people fondly where to go in his playfully gruff style.
And who should come in on this special Friday? Who comes in but Peter Della Riva, old friend, old rival, timeless companion, here from Montreal where he lives (he played for the Alouettes, 1968 to 1981). For Angelo. And beyond that, for the club. For old times.
“This is what it’s all for,” says Peter. “I come back home a lot. It’s a lot of fun. See the old faces. Yes, we get old, but nothing has changed. You remember where home is, friends through the years.”
“Fratellanza, it stands for brotherhood,” says Mike Speziale, club president. (When Mike got up to say a few words about him, Ange said, “Shut up and sit down.” Mike didn’t. He gave a brief but eloquent account of what No. 68 has given to the community.)
I’ve been now several times, at the invitation of some regulars like Bert Allen, Fern Viola, Al Veri. The Friday lunches are the best; they’re special, and this more special yet. For Angelo, organized by his good friend, Joe Karolyi.
There’s the wine, the food. Ah, the food, course after course — bread, pasta, meat, salad. Charlie Brucculeri is the cook, has been for decades. He came to Canada in 1954.
“The key is patience,” he tells me, out in the back where several gather for cigars after the meal, and the handsome bocce courts stretch into the distance, built with the generosity of the members and their fundraising.
“Patience. And make sure everyone is out of the kitchen.”
Then there’s the unstoppable Cheryl Hasler, a force unto herself, who gets everyone fed and served, every plate full, in a blur of movement, banter and multi-tasking bravado that reminds me of something out of a Damon Runyan story.
But on this Friday it’s about Angelo. There’s a new cadre of leadership now at the club, which has had its ups and downs. Under Mike Speziale, Joe Ricottone and others, it’s thriving again. More youth. It’s a slow build but that’s the future, and it’s coming.
In his brief talk, Mike gratefully gave Angelo his due, but Angelo wasn’t having this all being about him. This is about the community, the larger whole, Angelo said, throwing it back on the people.
By the end of it, the sun flexing for the weekend, Angelo was getting tired, as he does these days, but a good tired, a weary smile on his face. He was among friends.