Uncle Al Capone Read Online Free Page A

intimidating glare when he felt challenged.
    And then there was the Al I knew—the man who would get on the floor and play with me like a big teddy bear; the man who would put on an apron and make spaghetti sauce, roaring with laughter the whole while; The man who would sing operettas in Italian at the top of his lungs and taught me to play the mandolin. This was the private Al Capone that no one ever saw. And this is the Al Capone who does not appear in the dozens of books you’ll find about him. Professional biographers can tell you about the legend, the businessman, and the leader—which they do by researching old newspapers and police blotters—but only a member of his family can tell you about the man within.
    And that’s what I will do. I’ll start at the beginning—in Italy in the late nineteenth century, when Al’s parents were starting a family and deciding to come to America. And I’ll tell you the family history from before I was born, the stories of Al and Ralph’s bootlegging operation, and Al’s imprisonment. Then I’ll move forward in Al’s life to tell you about the uncle I knew personally for seven years. And finally, I’ll tell you about the legacy that Al left behind, what happened to me and the rest of the family after his death, and how we lived with both his memory and his legend. It is my hope that you will come to know Al as something more than an icon of an era. It is my hope that you will get a sense of him as a man.
    Perhaps my most important reason for writing this book, however, is that I hope it will give my father’s short life some meaning. It will finish the project of telling the Capone story that he began so many decades ago and was never able to complete. And it will, I hope, absolve him of the guilt he suffered from being the inheritor of the sins of his father. It will show that he came from a good family and produced a good family—mine.
    If you read the biographies, you’ll find no difference between the Capone boys and men like John Gotti. But I know that there was a difference—and I will share it with you in this book. I am a patriot because of the Capones. My love of this country—and my eagerness to contribute back to it—was instilled in me by the Capones. And I learned from the Capones what it means to have a warm, generous heart.
    Have you ever wondered how two people can carefully follow the directions for a recipe, using the exact same ingredients and measurements, and achieve entirely different results? What happened? How could it be? It’s a mystery. But I propose to solve that mystery. The solution can be reduced to one word: Love.
    When the Capones taught me to cook, they taught me that cooking is a labor of love. My grandma Theresa used to say to me, with a little translation from Aunt Maffie, “When you cook for someone, you must do it with love in your heart. That makes everything taste better.” How we think influences the outcome of what we do. Cook with love in your heart, and those you cook for will love the results.
    On the evening after I was fired, Aunt Maffie brought me into her kitchen and taught me her famous meatball recipe. First, we ground the different meats—beef, veal, and pork—kneading them together with breadcrumbs, pine nuts, and Italian parsley. After molding them into balls, we fried them in lard, and once they were brown on all sides, we baked them in the oven, giving us plenty of time to talk.
    That night, I asked her the questions I had always been afraid to ask—about Uncle Al’s business, about his relationship with my father, and about the things he did and did not do. That evening was the beginning of this book.
    (I think putting this recipe here is appropriate but all the other family recipes will be in the back of the book along with more family pictures.)
     
    Meat Balls ala Capone
    1 pound chuck ground once
    ½ pound pork ground once
    ½ pound veal ground once
    1 tsp salt
    ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
    ½