SUDBURY—Stompin' Tom Connors should come back and write a song about a Sudbury Saturday afternoon.

This time it won't be about booze and bingo, it'll be about the Beef 'n Bird tavern where they play cards for pork.

Hockey hero Jerry Toppazzini has five televisions tuned to the NHL game, but everyone's watching a roasted pork shoulder ooze its juices over a wooden cutting board on a table on the dance floor.

Four identical bronzed beauties, busting out from butcher's twine nooses, stay warm in the kitchen. The only way to get a mouthful of crackling-encased porketta — roasted eight hours this morning at Tarini Brothers Meat Market and delivered hot — is to win one.

Porketta bingo isn't really bingo. It's a card game played for pork and a uniquely Sudburian ritual with a checkered past. Everybody knows bits of this story, but nobody knows everything. Misinformation creates mystery and becomes legend.

Just play. Buy a laminated “card” of three playing cards and hand over $12 for the afternoon. The money goes to minor hockey. The games run four hours. Six rounds. Seven games per round. Forty-two chances to win.

The Philadelphia Flyers/New York Rangers game is on mute. Ron Pagan, his face weathered from decades at the nickel mine, sits near the porketta with a mic and full deck of cards.

“The ace of spades,” booms the unflappable retiree, flipping over the top card.

“The ace of spades?” the questioning crowd roars back.

“The joker,” drawls Pagan, emphasizing each syllable.

That's the cue for wisecrackers to point to a friend in mock derision and jeer “The joker.”

Pagan, the perfect straight man, has spent decades playing and calling porketta bingo. He calls the three of clubs, 10 of hearts, eight of hearts, five of diamonds and queen of clubs without incident. His pace is deliberately lackadaisical.

“Porketta!” shrieks a young brunette once all three of her cards are called. Her high-pitched declaration evaporates in the beer-fuelled din.

Gord Rinneard knows she needs to step it up. The retired firefighter with the shock of white hair holds court at a table of regulars and has missed only two games in four years.

“They're so polite,” Rinneard says with an exaggerated sigh, motioning to all the university and college students.

“Yell it out!” encourages his friend Elwin Geddes, a furnace operator with the mine who's clad in a trendy Aéropostale shirt and jeans.

The brunette, Lauryn Bryan, tries again.

“Porketta!” she shouts assertively, striding to the dance floor to verify her win and collect her prize ticket.

A hormone-induced chant erupts from a table of guys.

“She's a-ttrac-tive . . . she's a-ttrac-tive . . . she's a-ttrac-tive.”

Bryan ate Kraft Dinner for dinner last night at Laurentian University, so she's too busy drooling over the protein to react. A pound of pork will be delivered to her table momentarily in a paper-lined wicker basket with pagnuttini bread from Regency Bakery.

Sharing is mandatory, forks optional, greedy fingers acceptable.

“I hope you choke on it,” mutters Geddes.

He's not being hostile, just providing off-colour soundtrack.

“The story isn't winning — not in here anyway,” explains the Beef's owner Jerry “Topper” Toppazzini. “The story here is about coming in and enjoying an afternoon.”

Topper is a Sudbury boy who played in the NHL (notably the Boston Bruins) before opening this tavern in 1977. He's 80, spry enough to mingle on game day but wise enough to let sons Anthony and Mark run the joint.

Porketta bingo fills the bar on Saturdays from October to April. Stompin' Tom immortalized carousing Inco miners in the 1967 song “Sudbury Saturday Night,” but this party runs from 2 o'clock until 6.

It draws three students for every regular, and only a few miners.

Not many people know that porketta bingo was once played only by Italians who came to work in the mine and were shunned by the mainstream.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Men gathered weekly at a bootlegger's house in the Copper Cliff neighbourhood in the 1940s and '50s to drink and play tombola for “porchetta” roasted at the baker's bread oven. (The bootlegger was Pagan's next-door neighbour. The baker was Topper's uncle.)

Tombola used 54 cards, including the 52 regular ones, plus the joker and a blank. Three cards were sewn together and the dealer pulled one card at a time from a full deck. Players shouted “tombola” when all their cards were called.

The why and when is lost, but Italian “porchetta” morphed into Sudburian “porketta,” and tombola was renamed porketta bingo. This city of 160,000 now worships porketta.

Butchers like Tarini Brothers and D&A Fine Meats sell cooked and uncooked porketta roasts. Vespa Street Kitchen and La Boulangerie du Village work porketta into sandwiches, soups, wraps and poutine. Ristorante Enrico in the Caruso Club offers D&A's porketta by the pound or by the sandwich on Saturdays.

Porketta bingo is still played in a few bars and social clubs, but it's legendary at the Beef 'n Bird.

The Beef has hosted games off and on for 25 years, but was at the centre of “the controversy” of 2003 and 2004 when the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario suddenly declared Sudbury's unique pastime illegal.

The Toppazzinis sought help from financial whiz Ron Didone, treasurer of the Copper Cliff Minor Hockey Association. Didone worked with the government for six months to turn a small-time event for regulars into a legal fundraiser that collects $25,000 a year for minor hockey.

Hockey volunteers run the game wearing black or pink T-shirts that say “Beef & Bird Tavern: Home of Porketta Bingo” and show a winking pig in chef's gear.

Just don't call the game bingo.

“Put it this way,” warns Anthony Toppazzini, who carves and weighs the porketta. “Yell bingo and see what happens.”

It's X-rated. The crowd chants “You f---ed up” until the offending winner shouts “porketta” or, better yet, “por-f---king-ketta.”

Porketta bingo is a swearfest and Rinneard's saucy crew is especially creative. There's Brenda Geddes, an administrative assistant and wife of Elwin, Joanne and Ron Lamontagne, who own a clothing store and plastering company, respectively, and Richard Bazinet, an RV dealer.

They come early knowing the Beef will lock its doors when the crowd nears 168. They have reserved seats beneath two autographed and framed Bobby Orr jerseys, one from the Boston Bruins, the other from the Oshawa Generals.

Rinneard, “The Bank of Porketta,” stockpiles his gang's winning tickets until they're ravenous or can score end pieces from a new roast.

Today they win three times before the final cry of “porketta.” Rinneard and his friends order another round. Today wasn't as wild as they like it.

Still, says Geddes, “it's the only way to spend a Saturday afternoon.”

“Can't think of any other way,” agrees Rinneard.

The bar clears out in the gulp of a beer. It's only 6 p.m.

jbain@thestar.ca