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.

Benny Jay: Parent-Teacher Conference

I'd been on the phone for a half hour non-stop -- lost track of time -- when I looked up and noticed it was three. Had to hurry -- didn't want to be late for the parent-teacher conference.

Funny thing about parent-teacher conferences -- when my kids were young, they were mighty big deals. My Wife and I listened to every word the teachers said, as if they were special views into the souls of our children.

You learn as time passes -- they're just snap shots. Nothing more, nothing less. Glimpses of where a kid is at particular moments in life.

Still I gotta go. My wife's working so it's up to me. I zip up to the school and promise myself I'll be in and out -- just grab my Younger Daughter's report card, let `em see my face, and skedaddle.

But, you know how it goes. I walk in to the school and first thing I see is my daughter's friend Allory. She tells me she got an academic four-year full ride to Wash U in St. Louis.

"You mean full ride as in -- for free?" I ask.

"Yes...."

"Dang, girl -- when did you get so smart?"

She smiles and shrugs, as if to say: What can I tell you, Mr. Jay....

I turn the corner and bump into Jackie. Give her a big hug. Haven't seen her in ages. Her daughter, LaQuita, and my daughter played on the same basketball team. LaQuita had a deceptively quick first step. Freeze the defender with a short head fake and be half way to the basket before the defender knew what's up. Her father, Leonard, and I used to sit together at the games. Damn, he was good company. Cheered the team, teased the referees and laughed at my jokes. I loved watching basketball games with Leonard and Jackie.

"`Quita's captain of the team," Jackie tells me.

"You're kidding me," I say. "That's sensational. You tell `Quita congratulations...."

By now its over a half an hour and I still haven't met with one teacher. Got to pick up the pace. But Ms. Garcia, the physics teacher, has a little time on her hands and she's a good story teller. Starts telling me about the time she was teaching at Gage Park, this tough-as-hell high school on the city's Southwest Side, and some kid hit her in the face. Didn't mean to. Took a swing at someone else and caught her by accident. "It didn't hurt as much as it surprised me," she says. "I couldn't believe it."

I head over to see Mr. Loucks, the English teacher. It's hard to call him Mr. Loucks. I've known him since he was a 15-year-old high-school sophomore who refereed the itty-bitty basketball league my daughters played in at Welles Park. I take a seat at his desk and we start talking baseball. The man loves baseball. He plays it, coaches it, watches it -- even sells beer at Wrigley Field. We could talk baseball all day, except there's a line of parents waiting at the door.

Off I go to Ms. Reist-Jones, who teaches African-American History. The woman's a trip. Reminds me of me. Starts talking about A and winds up talking about B. Not really sure how she gets there, just sort of stringing stuff together.

She's telling me they're studying African rhythm and she mentions Bernard Purdie. I cut her off: "You mean, the Bernard Purdie?"

"Is there another one?"

"As in the Purdie-shuffle drum beat?"

"You've heard of him?"

"Have I heard of him?" I go into this whole thing about how I read this article in the New York Times about how Purdie played with everyone -- from James Brown to Frank Sinatra. How he used the Purdie shuffle on "Home At Last" by Steely Dan. One of my favorite songs. I start singing it: "Well, the danger on the rocks is surely past...."

She shows me a video of Purdie on the New York Times website. I tell her there's a better video on youtube. But we can't get to YouTube cause the Board of Education's got it blocked from the school computers. I tell her we should be able to figure out someway to get beyond the block. We bend over the computer. Then I notice parents waiting at the door. Maybe another time.

By the time I get out, it's been more than an hour. I go to my car and turn on the radio. I'll be damn -- they're playing "Deacon Blues." My favorite Steely Dan song of all time. From Aja, the same album with "Home at Last." Probably got Bernard Purdie playing drums. I turn it loud and sing along: "I cried when I wrote this song, sue me if I play too long...."

For some reason, it makes me think about a parent-teacher conference for my Older Daughter back in 2004, when she was a sophomore in high school. She was screwing up big time back then, making life miserable for her chemistry teacher. He let me have it when I came to talk to him. Told me she talks too much, is rude and a distraction. I just about dropped to my knees seeking forgiveness. I said she was going through a particularly difficult stretch of adolescence and I predicted that one day she would grow out of it. It was just a shame that he -- of all people -- had to bear the brunt of it. I profusely apologized for that.

I don't think I got through to him. He didn't smile. I understood. She was making his life miserable -- why should he care about what might happen down the road?

The thing is my older daughter did turn it around the very next year. She got her act together and never looked back. Found her way to politics of all things. Went to work for the Democrats and got hundreds and hundreds of white Iowans to vote for Barack Obama. Helped elect the country's first black president. How `bout that?

But that's the thing about parent-teacher conferences. They're just snapshots. They don't tell you what kids got in them.

I turn down the radio and put the car into drive. Man, I wish that chemistry teacher could see my older daughter now....

Letter From Milo: A Misspent Youth

It was either Mark Twain or Herbert Spencer who claimed, A proficiency at billiards is a sign of a misspent youth. If that's the case, then my formative years were a colossal waste of time. Between the ages of 15 and 18, if I wasn't in school or at home, I could be found in a poolroom called The Club on 5th Avenue near Broadway in Gary.

At the time I didn't consider playing pool a frivolous activity. In my neck of the woods, learning to shoot pool, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and acquit yourself honorably in a street fight were hallmarks of a well rounded education. I never did become a good street fighter (something about a yellow streak) but I did excel at smoking and drinking, a skill set that has served me well to this very day.

I also became a pretty good pool player, not great, but good enough to hustle a few bucks now and then. I played all the games, 9-ball, 8-ball, straight pool, rotation, one-pocket, and pea pool but my money game was snooker. At the tender age of 17 I won $52 in a marathon snooker contest against an old man we called The Admiral, because he always wore one of those cheesy yachting caps favored by Elvis and Count Basie.

I lost interest in playing pool around my 18th birthday. There were three reasons I gave up the game:

• I got seriously interested in girls. It's tough enough to get laid under any circumstances, but it's almost impossible when you hang around a poolroom all day.
  
• I had gotten as good as I was ever going to get. I had hit the proverbial wall and rather than trying to break through it or go around it, I decided to avoid it altogether.
  
• I came to the realization that being a "pretty good" pool player would have absolutely no effect on my future. Why waste any more time with such a silly game.

Boy, was I wrong about reason number three.

About 12 years later I was living in Chicago, scuffling to make a living as an editor, proofreader, and freelance writer and failing miserably at all three. Desperate for work, I answered a blind ad in the Chicago Tribune looking for an editor for a sporting magazine. To my astonishment, I got called in for an interview.

Let's call the person who interviewed me Bob. He was the owner and publisher of a group of poorly written, cheaply printed magazines that dealt with fringe sports like archery, table tennis, pinball, and, lo and behold, billiards. The position I was interviewing for was managing editor of Billiards Gazette.

Bob was an odd little man - twitchy, shifty eyed, and affected. The walls of his office were covered with autographed photos of celebrities, like Sinatra, John Wayne, and Raquel Welch but I noticed that all the autographs seemed to be signed by the same hand. He considered himself a titan of the publishing industry, a first cousin to Bennett Cerf. In reality he was a low-rent hustler. His publications were mainly vehicles for attracting advertising revenue. I doubt if circulation of any of the rags was more than 2,500 and those went mainly to the specific industry. I don't recall ever seeing any of them on a newsstand or gracing someone's coffee table.

Still, I desperately needed a job, and running a shlock magazine seemed to be as good a gig as any.

After a few moments of idle chatter, Bob asked, "Do you know anything about playing pool?"

"As a matter of fact I do."

"Are you sure?"

"Why would I lie?"

"To get this job," Bob smirked.

"You'll just have to take my word for it."

"No I don't," Bob said. "I'd rather see for myself. You have to know the game to run my magazine. Let's play a game of 8-ball."

It turned out that Bob had a pool table in his warehouse, a Brunswick that was in pretty good shape. He also had all of the accessories: chalk, hand powder, a bridge, and a rack of cues hanging on a wall. Now by that time, I played pool only four or five times a year, usually on tavern tables and usually when I was drunk. I was still a decent player but nowhere near the cocky young pool shark that I was at 17. I assumed Bob had to be good.

Nervous, I was relieved that Bob won the lag and went first. He broke, ran a few solids but missed a bank shot on the 4-ball and it was my turn. I suspected that he missed on purpose. It wasn't that hard of a bank shot and he seemed to be a better player than that. But the purpose of the game was to see if I could play, not to show off Bob's skills.

"Let's see what you've got, "he said, stepping away from the table.

I took a deep breath, stepped up to the table and played the game of my life. Like Toni Kucoc used to say, I vas in da zone. I didn't miss a shot and some of them were tough. I made long cuts, bank shots, and a combination. I felt like a kid again, on my way to beating some chump out of a few bucks. When I leaned over the table to line up my final shot, Bob reached over and picked up the 8-ball. He looked at me, nodded his head in approval and said, "When can you start?"

I ran the magazine for nearly a year. It was one of the more interesting periods of my life. I met a lot of pool hustlers, earned a decent buck and heard some great stories. My favorite story concerned Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman.

Gleason was a genuine pool shark. He learned to play as a kid on the mean streets of Brooklyn. As he used to tell it, his skill at pool helped him survive some very tough times. Paul Newman learned to play pool during the filming of "The Hustler," one of my all-time favorite movies. The director had hired Willie Mosconi, arguably the greatest player ever, to coach Newman. Newman actually became a pretty good player under Mosconi's tutelage. Unfortunately, he wasn't as good as he thought he was.

Shortly after Gleason's death, Newman was interviewed by a reporter who wanted to discuss the film and Newman's memories of Gleason. The interviewer asked if he and Gleason had ever played pool for money.

"Yes we did," Newman replied. "And I beat him two out of three games. I won the first two games for fifty bucks each and Jackie won the third game for five hundred."

A classic hustle, if you ask me.