Big Mike: Useless Justice

I've been poring over a couple of books about the Chicago crime syndicate: "The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America," by Gus Russo; and "Captive City," by Ovid Demaris.

Reading them has left me horrified by the cozy relationship between the underworld and the upperworld. Crooks and sadists like Al Capone, Frank Nitti, Tony Accardo, Paul Ricca, Murray Humphreys, Sam Giancana and a slew of succeeding crime bosses were essentially business partners with assorted mayors, police commanders, judges, state senators and members of some of the city's most prestigious boards of directors. It was all an open secret that most Chicagoans chose to ignore.

I see no reason to believe the dynamic has changed now that organized crime is run by younger, more ethnically and racially diverse goons. Any accomplished office-holder has to be aware of the long reach of drug dealing, pimping and burgling gangs into City Hall, the circuit courts and the state house.

It seems crazy, but many of us celebrate these slobs. Take the whole Godfather-Sopranos-Rat Pack mania that's been going on for years. Countless lunkheads titter at "Goodfellas" lines and listen to Louie Prima disks because that's what Wise Guys listened to. Oh, what a guy the Don was, making people offers they couldn't refuse! And Giancana and Sinatra were as thick as, well, thieves - isn't that a riot?

I once did a story about Mike North, at the time, the king of Chicago sports talk radio. He brought me into his northwest suburban home and proudly showed off his basement den on which he'd spent a mint recreating precisely the office of Vito Corleone, right down to the cherry wood blinds.

After reading Russo and Demaris, I'd equate North's interior decorating choices with those of someone who elects to reproduce John Gacy's bedroom or Osama bin Laden's cave in his home.

Organized crime depends in large part on the labors of little men who jimmy car trunks, break into homes or knock over jewelers. Some of these penny-ante crooks even become local heroes of a sort. The Panczko boys - Pops, Butch and Peanuts - for instance, were compulsive burglars who were lovingly profiled in numerous Sunday newspaper magazine sections.

We laugh at and secretly cherish these chestnuts of Chicago's colorful history: Hey, our petty criminals and smart and entertaining! And our Mob is ten times better than New York's Five Families, the Cleveland and Detroit guys or those flamboyant LA kingpins. Hell, they almost bumped off Castro! They got Kennedy elected and then they killed him for two-timing them! Our monsters are better than your monsters!

I've had a couple of run ins with home burglars. In 1980, I was awakened by strange noises in the middle of a hot July night. I got up to investigate and discovered a treasure trove of my belongings piled on the back porch, waiting to be lugged down the stairs. I dashed to my roommate's bedroom to alert her. As I knocked on her door, I glanced toward the back door and saw the burglar coming back in for more swag.

I shouted and ran at him. When he saw me, his eyes became wide as saucers. He turned and flew down the stairs. I chased him only as far as the back porch because, well, I was naked. No wonder his eyes had grown so wide!

A dozen years later, in another apartment, I came home one afternoon to find my TV, VCR and stereo piled neatly near the front door. I found a note from my next door neighbor who said she'd happened to glance into my living room window and seen a stranger prowling around so she called the cops. The burglar was nabbed while hiding in the basement stairway under my back porch.

I also found several clean socks, taken from my sock drawer, scattered around the areas where the valuables had been. Later, I found a couple of socks in the basement stairway. I figured the burglar had used them to wipe stray fingerprints off the surrounding surfaces. Pretty smart.

Anyway, I showed up at the punk's trial a couple of months later. Before the proceeding, I sat in an ante-room with a couple of harried, distracted Assistant State's Attorneys. They told me they were certain this punk had been responsible for a rash of similar burglaries in my neighborhood. They thanked me, profusely and hurriedly, for showing up.

I went back out into the courtroom and sat next to the punk, whose picture I'd seen when the prosecutors had opened their file in front of me. As we rose for the judge to enter the court, I took advantage of the rustling and whispered to him, "I better never see you around my house again." The punk, maybe 19 or 20 years old, looked at me with panic on his face.

The case was called and the two of us marched up to the bench as if we'd come to court together. This elicited a surprised look from the judge. Then he fell back into his previous bored visage, thumbed through the case file and addressed me.

"Mr. Glab, did you find anything missing from your house?"

Now I panicked. None of my valuables were missing, of course. But if I answered no, he might decide there was no case here. I thought quickly. Aha! There was something missing!

"Yes, your honor. I found two socks - one white and one gray - in the basement stairway under my back porch."

I was ready to launch into an explanation of my fingerprint-wiping theory. But the judge cut me off, loudly.

"What?" he hollered. He threw the file toward his clerk. "Get this out of here! Case dismissed."

"Oh, but I...," I began, but he talked over me, directing his ire at the Assistant State's Attorneys. "Don't waste my time with stuff like this. What's the matter with you?"

The prosecutors looked sheepish. Then they looked at me. I shrugged. They shook their heads.

"Next," the judge announced.

The un-convicted burglar walked free. I like to think he kept my warning in mind. Maybe I even scared him straight. Maybe. Then again, he may have aspired to become so good at his occupation that one day some lunkhead might decorate his house the way he had. Or a Sunday newspaper magazine writer would pen a loving profile of him.

Big Mike: What Are You Rebelling Against?

I was born and raised in a little neighborhood called Galewood, part of the larger, officially recognized Austin neighborhood on Chicago's Northwest Side. The residents of Galewood were Italian, Polish, Irish and Greek, with a Jew or two for good measure.  The men of Galewood were more white-collar than not - plant managers, insurance men, elementary school principals and so on. The women stayed home to vacuum.

We had a politician or two who lived nearby as well, including Benjamin Adamowski, former Cook County State's Attorney who challenged Mayor Richard J. Daley in the 1963 election, and Edward V. Hanrahan, another State's Attorney, who led the terror squad that whacked Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

There were no blacks in Galewood. But the place was lousy with Outfit characters, from upper-echelon bosses to low-level juice loan collectors.

My old man, a shipping/receiving dock foreman, and my mother, a vacuumer, lucked their way into Galewood. Looking to buy their first home in the 1950s, they happened upon a comfortable bungalow on Natchez Avenue owned by an ancient dowager named Mrs. Alstead. Not sophisticated enough to squeeze every last penny out of her home, she offered it for a good deal less than $20,000. Ma and Dad snapped it up.

Even at that bargain-basement price, the house was too rich for my father's meager salary so Ma had to go to work, first at a sandpaper company, gluing abrasives onto heavy-gauge cards while I floated blissfully in her womb, later for Frank's Dime Store, and then for Sears. To this day, she brags about her magical way with money. She relies on a tried-and-true series of old financial saws guaranteed to make the eyes of her children roll like pinballs:

• I robbed Peter to pay Paul
  
• I made a penny do the work of a dime.
  
• I struggled to make ends meet.
  

When I was very young, I heard that last adage as "make ennsmeat," which I assumed was some old country dish that she didn't feel like preparing anymore.

Sadly, in part because Ma was a pecuniary tyrant, I rebelled and became a profligate spender. Oh, I won't blame all my debtor woes on her; I possess, after all, a wide streak of compulsive narcissism. But one of my primary goals in life has been to show Ma that actually buying stuff isn't fatal.

My Galewood neighbors attempted to impart many other lessons to me. Here's a compendium of Galewood's philosophies on black people:

• They wreck everything we give them.
  
• They're comin' after our daughters.
  
• Martin Luther King speaks with a forked tongue.
  
• JFK (or LBJ or any national Democrat) is a nigger-lover.
  
• The White Sox lose because they have too many niggers.
  
• They don't want to work.
  
• Better watch out or they'll take over.
  

Even as a dopey kid, I couldn't figure out how a group that didn't like to work would have the ambition or capability to "take over."

Galewood's actions were as alarming as its words. When, for instance, Ma refused to participate in an anti-busing school boycott, our house was showered with raw eggs. And after King's assassination, I took a schoolyard ass-beating after objecting to the prevailing opinion that he'd gotten what he'd deserved.

As mentioned here in previous posts, I had a hard time washing myself clean of Galewood's racial muck. Even though I mourned King's death and was outraged by those of Hampton and Clark, I still found myself uttering slurs now and again. It took me years to free myself of even unintentional racial loathing.

I compare my own growth in this matter to that of the nation's. Sure, we've elected a partially black man as president. Yet, as the inane "tea parties" of the past week demonstrated, we're not totally free of racial fear.

Too many people bandied placards and words decrying our new "tyranny" and comparing Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler. They aren't just suggesting that taxation or government spending programs are the moral equivalent of the Holocaust or Saddam's gassing of the Kurds.

It's more cryptic than that. I suspect the "tea party" right-wingers are not as devoted to Ma's brand of thrift as they are enslaved to Galewood's old fears that "They'll take over."

The tea party-ites still have a lot of racial muck to wash off.

Letter From Milo: A Well Earned Rest

I went to a memorial service this past Tuesday for a dear friend who passed away at the biblical age of 101. His name was Morris "Morrie" Rosengard and he was the oldest man I ever knew.

How in the hell does someone live to be 101? I've read articles and seen news stories about people who have lived for more than a century and when asked about the secrets to their longevity they always say something like, Never had a drink in my life. Don't smoke. Went to bed early. Didn't eat red meat. Went to church twice a day.

That wasn't Morrie, not even close. Morrie liked to drink, smoke cigars, and eat red meat. For all I know he had impure thoughts, too. His favorite vice, however, was gambling - cards, horses, sports, casino games - he loved them all. That's how I met him, at a poker game, more than 30 years ago. His nephew, Bruce Diksas, was hosting the game. Bruce had been telling me stories about Morrie for years. I had expected to meet a colorful character and I was not disappointed.

Morrie was a pharmacist by trade. For years he had a drugstore in Bridgeport. Rumor had it that as well as filling prescriptions, Morrie ran a 24-hour, high stakes poker game out of the back room of his store. That may or may not be true, but it was true to his character.

Morrie was a wonderful man, but he was no angel. Some of the people he associated with were not candidates for sainthood either. He was friendly with people whose names you'd regularly see in the newspapers, and I'm not talking about the society pages. He knew "connected" people, bona fide members of the Chicago Outfit, guys who made their livings the hard way and often took long vacations at government expense.

Once, at a wedding, a short, stocky man came up to Morrie and chatted with him respectfully for a few minutes. When the man left, Morrie leaned over to Bruce and whispered, "That's the meanest man I ever met in my life." Coming from Morrie, who had rubbed shoulders with some of the toughest, most brutal men in Chicago, that was high praise indeed.

As a matter of fact, in the 1960s, Morrie had some legal problems of his own. But they were just bumps in the road. He took them in stride, just like everything else in his life. Not much fazed Morrie.

I was in my 20s when I met Morrie and he was already close to 80. He was born in 1908, the last year the Cubs won the World Series. He lived through World War I. He saw Ty Cobb play baseball. He roared through the Roaring 20s and survived the Great Depression. He served his country honorably in World War II. The US Army was in dire need of pharmacists, men trained and experienced in the phamacological arts. When I asked Morrie what he did during the war, he replied, "I passed out rubbers at Pizmo Beach, California."

Morrie lived through VE Day and VJ Day. He lived through the Korean War, the War in Vietnam and the wars of George Bush. He was born when Teddy Roosevelt was president and lived long enough to see Barack Obama inaugurated. He was around when horses were the main means of transportation and when Neil Armstrong took a stroll on the moon. He had, literally, seen it all.

I made it a point to call Morrie on his birthdays. I had a nice chat with him on his 100th birthday. When I called him on his 101st, his wife sadly informed me that Morrie was in the hospital. He had fallen down the day before and broken both of his legs. When I asked how he was doing, she said, "He knows what he's up against."

Morrie was a gambler, someone who knew the odds and understood probabilities. He knew what was coming. But even the most cold-blooded, experienced gambler sometimes relies on luck. Maybe, just maybe, he might spike an ace on the river. Unfortunately, Morrie's long run of good luck had finally run out. There was no miracle ace.

I was honored when Morrie's family asked me to make some comments at his memorial. Here is a transcript of my remarks.

I guess everybody here knows that Morrie enjoyed a friendly game of cards on occasion. I also understand he was very fond of horses, although I don't know for a fact that he ever sat on a horse. I met Morrie more than 30 years ago at a poker game. He was introduced to me by his nephew, Bruce Diksas, who was hosting the game.

Bruce told me a lot about Morrie over the years. I felt like I knew him before I ever met him. When I did finally meet Morrie, I was impressed. He was smart, friendly, a good conversationalist, and a real gentleman. I've considered him a friend ever since.

I didn't see Morrie as often as I liked. Usually it was just a few times a year, at card games, the race track or small gatherings. But every time I ran into him, he brought a smile to my face. Some people are like that, they just have a natural magnetism that draws people to them.

Anyway, I want to get back to our friendly games of cards. Despite being more than twice as old as most of the players, Morrie was usually the first to arrive and the last to leave. And when he left, he usually left with more money than he came with. I should know, a lot of that money was mine.

Now, some people will say that Morrie lived a good life, a long life, an interesting life. I agree. He had a good run. But as far as I'm concerned he left us too early, because now I'll never be able to win my money back.

I'd give almost anything to sit down at a card table with Morrie again, and watch him sip his scotch, smoke his cigars, laugh at a good story, or tell one himself. He was wonderful company and I'll miss him dearly. It was an honor and a pleasure to know him. Rest in peace, old friend, you deserve it.