Tuillio Lucarelli, his wife Mary and baby, Irma, came from Sarnano, Italy, in 1930 with only one spoon. The family’s first home was a one-room tin shack in the lumber camp in Kinzua, PA, where Tuillio worked. When it rained Tuillio kept moving the bed because the roof leaked. Later Tuillio worked in a tannery then carved deer horn knife handles for Case Cutlery, Bradford, PA.
Our friendship began in 1960 when Mary and Tuillio bought the three- level house next door to my family home. From scraps of wrought iron, discarded lumber and bricks Tuillio built a porch off the third floor of his house so he could dine “al fresco.” Tuillio also transformed an alley filled with rocks and weeds into a beautiful garden and added a two-car garage on the street level.
In the Bible according to Tuillio, the First Commandment was DON’T THROW ANYTHING OUT. The Second Commandment was DO TAKE WHAT THE NEIGHBORS THROW OUT. Oh, he went to church with his wife but sat in the back row nipping wine from a flask.
Tuillio scrounged up everything--bits of metal, plastic, lumber, bricks, rolls of wire and a variety of bolts, pipes, nuts and brackets. My best memories were in Tuillio’s cellar which looked like Schwab’s Five and Dime in Memphis. The huge space was sectioned off into four makeshift rooms: a workshop, storage room, smokehouse and a cool, dark wine cellar.
In the workshop, this master craftsman with a fifth grade education designed tools, knives, welded together pipes and fittings and sharpened knives on a large sharpening wheel.
In the storage room, The ceiling to floor shelves were lined with mason jars of tomatoes, zucchini, marinated eggplant, pickled cauliflower, peppers, and carrots. The canned peaches, pears, apples, blackberries and blueberries would fill Mary’s winter pies. Lined neatly on one side of the room were bushel baskets of potatoes, winter pears, apples and squash. Crates of Catawba white grapes from the Lake Erie vineyards waited to be escorted into the wine cellar. In addition there were barrels of olives soaking in brine, containers of salt, gallons of virgin olive oil and bottles of 100% proof alcohol.
The ceiling was a gourmet chef’s dream. Twisted ropes suspended dried hot peppers, garlic and bunches of dried oregano, basil, and rosemary; rounds of homemade provolone and wheels of parmesan cheese, salt-cured proscuitto and dried deer sausage from the sky.
Tuillo hosted a cocktail hour at the bar in wine cellar. Guests were encouraged to “taste” the contents of colorful bottles behind the bar. His stock included green mint, red cherry and white licorice liquors. His masterpiece was a life-size black and white poster of Raquel Welch hanging over the bar. Tuillio said after a few drinks he pretended to have a drink with Raquel.
When I was 16, Tuillio lured my boyfriend and me to visit his bar. He invited us to taste shots of his homemade crème de menthe and a chaser of sweet, dark cherries soaked in alcohol. When my tongue got numb I staggered up the steps. Outside in the fresh air I hung on to a railing. The street felt like a merry go round. To this day cherries that touch alcohol never touch my lips!
When supermarkets replaced the corner grocery stores the manager of a major regional dairy asked Tullio for his ricotta cheese recipe. Of course Tuillio eagerly shared his secret recipe gratits.
When I started to teach school, Tuillio emphatically said to me, “No one can prove to me the earth moves. See, this level. I putaa it down and the bubble never changes. I standaa here and the bubble no move.” For years I researched the origin of derogatory ethnic slurs. I knew kike came from the word shiekel the smallest denomination of money. “Mick” of course came from the Irish Mc. Wop meant without papers and guiena from black-skined peoples of New Guiena.
Also Tuillio told me Italians were called dagos because Christopher Columbus had a son named Diego. So dago was a derogatory word from the Spanish and Portuguese name “Diego” which translates into James. Supposedly dago was used to describe a pimp (John) because in Italian John and James are the same word-- Giovanni.
God rewarded Tuillio’s hard work. His son Leo built his parents a sprawling brick ranch-style home. Life in the cellar was still the same for his 90 year- old father. But like fine wine Tuillio’s ingenuity, lust for life and love for his wife got better with age.
This genius with a fifth grade education died last year. Salute!