The nicest gangster I've ever known

[Monkeyleg]

Ok, I'm trying to keep Grampster from getting too depressed by my posts. But I have a lot of stuff to say.

Back in 1970, my two buddies--Homer and Guy-- and I moved into an apartment on the very lower side of the East Side of Milwaukee.

It was, to put it politely, a slum. Having grown up in one the nicer suburbs of Milwaukee, I thought--in some Hemingway state of mind--that this was somehow romantic.

When we moved in, the bar below our apartment was a gay bar. I forget the name now, but it was something related to "aquatic" or "water" or whatever.

Whatever. Apparently, somebody decided that certain people wanted to get wet.

Our landlord, Tommy "The Fish" Piscetello, didn't fare well with that venture.

Maybe because he was a small-time member of the Balistrieri family, and gays just didn't figure into that mix. Too bad, because "Fish" missed out on one of the biggest money-making nightclubs in the city: The Factory. Everybody who had a few fazone's knew how to get a piece of that action.

Tommy was old-school. He didn't deal in drugs, and he kept a low profile.

So low, in fact, that I was sometimes embarrassed for him.

For example, one Saturday afternoon he asked me to keep watch for a friend of his, who was going to be stopping by.

So, I watched. And Fish and his friend unloaded a case of stolen Stacey-Adams shoes from the trunk.

That's it? A dozen or so cheap shoes?

Fish tried everything with that bar: he tried to turn it into a nighclub; he tried to make it a hangout for whores (hey, when you're 21, that's interesting); he tried to make it a music club.

Mostly, though, it was a place for other small-time hoods to stop in and flash some cash.

He even tried to teach me how to be a bartender. I know I've told this story before, so I'll be brief: two wiseguys came into the bar on a Sunday afternoon, bought a drink each, and left $5 on the bar. I went running after them, thinking they'd forgotten.

"Hey, Rich!" Fish bellowed. "That was a tip. Don't ever insult my friends again!"

OK, Fish.

Anybody who's seen the movie "Donnie Brasco" knows the kind of guy I'm talking about. Bottom of the rung, no future...but I really loved the guy.

When my buddies and I moved into the "apartment" (I use the term loosely), Fish had to be going on 60. He was definitely old-school, out of the picture, but also something of a La Cosa Nostra historian.

Fish knew many of the big name gangsters from the 30's and 40's. He and I would sit and watch "The Untouchables" on Sunday afternoons. And he knew pretty much any gangster who was mentioned.

Fish also knew that I didn't have any money. So, from time to time, he'd give me an errand to run: deliver this package to this person, and I got $5. Deliver this package to that person, $10.

I'm quite certain that none of those packages contained body parts. I don't think Fish was far up enough on the ladder for that activity.

Fish was also a real a*****e, although he couldn't even bluff me, skinny kid that I was. When Fish told me he was going to double the rent on the slum apartment, I dared him to do so. In fact, I used some pretty salty language.

My two buddies were scared that I'd talk to him that way. But I'd gotten to know Fish better than they ever did.

Fish caved in. I won.

In the mid-1970's, there were two bars where the Mafia types hung out. There was Frankie's Joint, a little bar on the lower East Side. And then there was Snugs, a classy club on Prospect Avenue.

Debbie and I would go out for dinner, then hit Frankie's, and then finish off the night at Snugs.

By the mid-1970's, the FBI had infiltrated the Balistrieri family thoroughly.

I remember one night in particuar, when the owner of a popular East Side restaurant came into Frankie's Joint, with a whore on each arm.

"G*****n FBI won't leave me alone," he shouted, to the applause of all in the bar.

When I asked about Fish, everybody went silent. Can't blame them, as an English/Irish/German/Finnish descendant, I didn't fit. I only knew Fish. I wasn't one of them.

Fish wasn't going to get "whacked." But he wasn't going anywhere, either.

In everyones' lives, there are people who are memorable, people who make a difference, and people who have done both.

Tommy "The Fish" didn't make a signifcant difference in my life. But he sure made it entertaining.

Fish, wherever you are, tell the waiter that the peppers and sausage are on me.

[lupinus]

Great story and I've known several of those guys, mostly they were at the family picnics of my younger years.

The vast majority of mobsters are no where near as bad as what hollywood and the gubment want you to think they are.  Criminals?  Sure ranging from petty crap to make a buck all the way up to murder, but they were far from animals.  And unlike most gangs today they actually had some dang honor.  You didn't kill for no good reason, to kill another members friend or another member you needed permission from pretty high up, and if you screwed up and killed a kid or something you might find yourself floating in a river.  They didn't mess with you if you didn't mess with them and knew how to keep your trap shut if anyone asked any questions, and paid the occasional tax if you had a buisness in the right neighborhoods.  Give me a mob run neighborhood anyday over one run by any other gang ANY day.

[BozemanMT]

great story
thanks for sharing.

[Art Eatman]

They may have gotten the Mafia out of Vegas, but the table odds aren't any better for the, er, the "customer".  That's it, "customer".  Not supposed to say, "Sucker".

But your odds out on the street for getting mugged are a lot greater.

Art

[280plus]

Mafia? I don't know what you're talking about...

[AJ Dual]

Nice story. It's that quasi-historial personal anecdotes that are always so interesting.

My only known link to the Balestreris is that the infamous ex Pewaukee alderman Tony Balestreri who was recently convicted of molesting his nephew used to be a very close relative's co-worker. He worked as the IT and telecom guy for the ousted Pewaukee mayor's advertising business.

Tony got fired for eavesdropping on everyone's phone calls, using the phones speakers to listen in on offices, and reading everyone's e-mail. He then became so paranoid his eavesdropping would get discovered that he eavesdropped more and more to see if they were "on to him" until he had a breakdown, the eavesdropping was discovered, and he got fired.

Oh yeah, and the now Ex Mayor supported his run for town alderman AFTER the firing. (Things that make you go "hmmmmmm"...)

The funny thing is, he did a legal name change to Balestreri to take either his mother or estranged father's last name, I forget, for the "prominence" of it in the Milwaukee area. LOL...

I'm sure the other Balestreris are pleased...

[grampster]

Great story.  I was in LE in the 60's and there still was a remnant of the old guard criminal types still around.  Card shops, (playing not greeting), blind pigs, whorehouses, numbers and the like with all the attendent characters.  Some of those old guys would come in and play cribbage with the turnkey at HQ as we had a victorian type jail under the old station house, which had been built in the middle 1800's.  

The old vice guys and dicks would grab us rookies and set us up to bust a "big gambling" operation run by the "notorious mobsters'.  It was a rookie hazing scam and the old cops and the old gangsters would hide nearby or in another room and laugh their asses off at us trying to be cool and bust up some terrible vice crime like a card game.  heh heh.

Once I turned the tables on 'em when they set me up to bust the last of the old time whorehouses in town.  They were all hiding in the bushes ready to laugh at me when I actually was able to talk my way into the house along with a semi drunk customer that I bumped into that felt sorry I couldn't get in on my own.  He was an old customer and I got in because of his urging.  The madam was very careful and no one had ever been able to get in there to bust her.  Well, I got in and got one of the girls to tell me what I needed to hear to put them all under arrest.  I rounded the whole house up and had 'em sit in the dining room while I got on the phone and called for the vice squad and transport.  Of course they were all hiding in the bushes, never expecting me to actually do this.  I told the drunk that he had a 5 minute headstart and to beat feet.

A few minutes later, the troops showed up.  I think I made my bones that night as I never got hazed as a rookie again.  I also started to get some pretty sweet assignments that brought me in on the real criminal action of the day.   For 7 years I worked some great assignments in a tactical squad that handled some particularly dicey stuff in those days, SCUBA team,  and plain clothes undercover work.

[280plus]

Wow, the people you meet around here...

Gramps, I'm duly impressed.

[Monkeyleg]

Grampster, that's a fantastic story.

As you say, and as did Henry Hill in "Goodfellas," the wiseguys were everywhere.

While Milwaukee Police Chief Brier was denying that there was organized crime in Milwaukee, Frank Balistrieri controlled most of the city. He also controlled Kansas City, and a large part of the mob operations in Las Vegas.

For those of you who've seen the movie "Casino," the old mob boss who kept asking DeNiro's character for the best bets on the basketball games was actually Balistrieri.

"Uncle Frank," as some of the soldiers called him, was one of the most feared mob bosses in the country because he was quick to kill. Even the Chicago bosses like Giancana were afraid of him.

Maybe that's why "Fish" kept a low profile. I'm sure he sent money Frank's way, but it was a dangerous time in Milwaukee in the 1970's. When the Jennaro brothers crossed Balistrieri, he blew them up in their car in the parking garage at Juneau Village.

Snugs may have been owned on paper by somebody else, but it was definitely owned for real by Frank Balistrieri. When we'd go there on a Saturday night, there were a lot of faces I'd seen in the newspaper. (Debbie really had a crush on Frank's son, Joe ).

Come closing time, they'd usher everybody out, except the wiseguys. They all hung around until God knows what hour.

Once the FBI got their bugs planted at Snugs and a few other places, they managed to take Balistrieri down.

In a way, it was a loss for the city. As brutal as Balistrieri was, he also kept Milwaukee's East Side a relatively safe place. Nobody could even snatch a purse without his permission.

Once he was gone, crime in the area really took off.

[Guest]

Scariest guy I ever knew by FAR was an old Satanist.  I mean the real deal.  Former High Priest, Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, later a founder of the spinoff "Temple of Set".  And then got into Eastern mysticism.  Came across real nice...but there were fangs present...

Second scariest...an old outlaw biker gangster who'd gone clean but "back in the day" had been a meth cook and killed a slew of fellow baddies.  Odd thing: if he got his hands on the slightest amount of caffiene (cola, coffee, whatever) he'd go completely batty...babble at a million miles an hour while twitching.  Damndest thing.  He was basically hypersensitive to stimulants after a lifetime of abuse.  Other than that he was OK.

I also knew a lady who was one of the PR/writer types for the Symbionese Liberation Army.  Didn't do anything violent herself but there was a concerted effort to find out who was attached to her "handle".  She got away clean.

Heh.  I'm probably the weirdest guy some people know .

[grampster]

I still maintain that some of us grew up in the grandest of times, the 40's, 50's and early 60's.  There were two decades of the best of the last century playing itself out and we were present when the paradigm began to shift.  I didn't get any better than that and we had not only a ringside seat, but got to participate.  Shining Times!!

[Guest]

Yup.  Shining times in America.

Unless you were black, or Latino, or Asian, or...

[Perd Hapley]

I agree, Jim.

Besides that, those "grand and shining times" were the coming-of-age of our current troubles.  The socialism, feminism, moral equivalency and other cancers that are hollowing out Western culture were just coming into their current power.  Why have we thrown out the baby with the bath water?  We needed to throw out racism, allow women greater opportunity, and cure other social ills, but while doing so, we degraded the family, masculinity, self-reliance and a hundred other things I'm probably forgetting.

If they were the "Greatest Generation," why did they let us destroy ourselves after the war?

[91Bravo]

I would say they probably tried to GIVE their children all the things they had to bust their butt for, with the result of a lot of overly coddled, navel-gazing moonbats whose primary concerns were their next pot score and psychedlic concert,  rather than was there enough money for the next meal or could the rent be met.

[grampster]

You know, with all due respect, sometimes you guys are like ticks under the skin.
It's really a shame that some folks seemed to be compelled to dwell upon, or base their observations on the baser side of human nature while casually brushing off, or cynicaly denigrataing a period of time in our history that had much in the way of positive and upright things.  I lived them and can say that there was much that was good and upright about those times.  It was also the young adults that came out of those times who stood up for the many positive changes that occured moving forward.    

What is equally saddening is reading the failure of this present generation to take responsibility for the ills of society today, by putting the blame on an older generation.  So the "Greatest Generation" let us destroy ourselves? Hah!  I think we did a fine job ourselves.   The push toward avoidance of personal responsibility and the glamorization of selfish indulgance was the baggage that came out of those times pushed by a rather small group of young radicals of those times.  And the rest of us went along for the ride.  The fault lies a bit closer to home imho.  If you don't like that baggage then do something about it yourself.  How easy to blame others as one sits at a keyboard and criticizes.

Sure, there was a dark underbelly the way society was 50 years ago.  Are you saying that it doesn't have one now?   In some ways the way we live today is a digression imho, from the way it was when I was a lad growing up.  There are more darker things closer to the surface.  I'll take the unity we had as a nation over the polarization and balkanizing of our nation that is occuring today.  As for the minority issues, my generation tried to unite us.  This generation tolerates political correctness, and a return to divisiveness while sloganizing about "celebrating diversity" which drives us further apart.   Today our colleges and universities shut down free speech not only at the faculty level but at the urging of the students themselves, for heaven sake.  Not so in my day.  

How many of you would today allow your 10 year old to pack a lunch and hop on his bike at 7 AM and not come back till suppertime.  Or hitchhike to the lake to swim.  Or any other of a myriad of activities that I could do as a young lad with little or no fear or adult supervision.  Take a .410 ga to school today to hunt squirrels or rabbits on the way home?  Ha, zero tolerance puts your 10 year old arse in juvenile home, expelled from school and total ostracism from the community as a criminal.

Bah!  I'll take my days, even with it's attendant problems.  And I'd work just as hard again to right the wrongs while thoroughly re-enjoying those shining times once again.

[Perd Hapley]

Grampster, I think Jim's point was that it is perhaps too easy for white folk like us (now that I think about, I don't know your race, just presuming) to see the good side of the post-war years, while ignoring the lynchings and such.  

My quarrel with the "Greatest Generation" label is that they labored mightily to fight fascism, but afterwards raised children like Bill Clinton, John Lennon, Jesse Jackson and the rest of the baby-boomer lefties that have done so much to make the world safe for socialism and social decay.  Are these generalizations?  Yes, but generalizations are often warranted.  Are individuals responsible for their own choices and beliefs?  Yes, but we can also blame those that raised them.

I wonder if this will not be a better nation when the older generation passes away, removing a large block of Democratic votes and giving place to a new political alignment, rather than the old "Democrats are for the little guy" way of thinking.