Carbon Athletic Club

lray in the mid-1930s. Even back then, Delray seems to have been a tough part of town — tough enough to field a team of of the area’s Hungarians, Italians and Poles in those rough-and-tumble days of leather helmets. Under the leadership of trainer Vince Kaycza, the Carbon Football Team had a hot streak in the late 1930s, winning 1938’s state title, and even routing the bone-crushing prison inmate trusties of Jackson Prison in 1937, 1938, and 1939. All those victories aside, it was a club without a clubhouse until 1947, when amateur sports boosters Anton and Anna Dusik all but donated 111 Gates Street to the gang, selling the building to the team for $1. The Dusiks had even thoughtfully added showers and rubdown tables in the basement. Those are gone, but the place still sports the same bar from the Old Blue Danube the club paid $2,500 for in 1950 — minus 10 inches. Unfortunately, amateur neighborhood football became a casualty of the postwar years. In the 1950s, with the rise of television, pro football, and a steady trickle of residents leaving the neighborhood for the suburbs, interest in the team waned. With changing times, the Carbon Athletics Club decided to forgo competing altogether and focused on raising money to help fund youth sports leagues instead. Over the years, the organization also made space for diverse public purposes, with members interpreting for non-English speakers so they could gain their drivers licenses, or hosting gatherings of members’ wives and the women of the neighborhood. Of course, in those days, membership was restricted to men, and stayed that way until at least the 1980s." is just one of the things that make the C.A.C. such a special place. Surrounded by more empty lots and abandonment than one can count - the C.A.C. survives as a true one of a kind old school neighborhood drinking and fellowship club - where friendly people are welcomed and embraced. The Carbon Athletic Club is a fabulous place that takes you back to a simpler time when you ordered a drink and you talked to the person sitting next to you at the bar - you made a friend and you enjoyed the companionship of sincere and kind people.