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By the way, all material on this site is copyrighted James Ciano over the years |
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I came across the pictures below a short time ago and they brought back some great memories. |
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Chapter Twelve
It sure didn’t take long for living in the club to get to me. One of our good customers, Peter de Vintner, wanted me to look at a place he just finished renovating. He had a first floor, one bedroom apartment that was perfect for me. It had two fireplaces and very high ceilings. All the molding was oak and the kitchen was tiny but everything was new. Peter made sure every detail was taken care of. As my contribution to this bachelor pad, I designed and made a system of switches that allowed me to connect all the lights and the stereo system to my bed. I put great speakers in the head board, and in the middle section I had a slide in panel made up of a series of simple electrical switches that controlled all the equipment. I had several floor lamps in the living room and two table top lamps in the bed room. All were connected to the switches and while lying in bed I could turn on the stereo in the bedroom and choose either the: record player, a tape deck or the FM stereo radio. I had a second control panel in the living room, the companion to the one in the bedroom. There was over two miles of wire moving between the bedroom and the living room. It looked very impressive and worked like a charm.
Another great feature of the apartment was its proximity to Janet’s apartment. It’s less than one hundred yards from door to door. In the beginning we saw each other all the time.
One of the many times I invited Janet over for dinner I prepared a specialty of mine Penne all’Arriabbiata or Angry Ziti. This a delicious meal and a favorite of us both. Janet finally convinced me to provide her with my recipe. Not being Italian, Janet does not know how to make a basic tomato sauce, so, it’s my pleasure to teach her. One of the better aspects of our relationship is our willingness to teach each other new and exciting things whenever possible.
There are certain essentials for this process: a box of ziti or penne pasta, at least one head of fresh garlic, a supermarket bunch of fresh parsley, seasoning including, salt, pepper and crushed hot pepper. In addition the list of ingredients is either a white or a read wine to the cooks taste.
The recipe for basic tomato sauce for most pasta dishes follows: To prepare the garlic: For two people chop about 6 cloves of garlic into 3 pieces each.
Parsley: Chop an eighth of a supermarket sized bunch of parsley into a fine mesh eliminating as many stems as possible. Once done set aside. You will use 3 distinct portions of this at 3 different times during the cooking.
Time for a sip of the wine, maybe even a little more than a sip; after all it’s the first? Also, share this step with any guests.
Of course during this preparation it might be necessary to turn off all the heating equipment and run for the bedroom for another lesson, this time from Janet, we’ll see. Emergency lessons are so important and must be done at exactly the right time.
Reluctantly back to the preparation. Tomatoes: I use pear shaped tomatoes, preferably firm, but not green. For a small amount of sauce for a single meal use 1.5 lbs of the small tomatoes. In this case use 3 lbs of tomatoes for the two of us. Chop these small tomatoes into six or eight pieces. Put into a sauce pan and liberally sprinkle Extra Virgin Olive Oil over the cut up tomatoes and also sprinkle a liberal amount of chopped parsley, cook over a low to medium heat until the tomatoes turn into a pasty sauce. Once done set a side. Or use two cans of a favorite prepared tomato sauce and heat to bubbling slowly.
Penne, be aware I use the names; Penne and Ziti interchangeably. Use about 15 or 16 oz for two people. Cook the penne in salted water until it is still stiff but beginning to get slightly limp.
Now the final meal preparation begins with about 4 table spoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil. If you can stay with this part of the cooking; you can set the heat on high. If you have to leave and come back during this part of the meal set the heat on medium. As the oil begins to barely smoke add the chopped up garlic and stir constantly, as the garlic becomes golden lower the heat. Now add a small portion of crushed red peppers, stir then add the tomatoes. Here add a liberal sprinkling of parsley, to taste. This should be done fast enough to avoid burning the garlic. Note: be sure to add the parsley after adding the tomatoes. If you add fresh parsley to hot oil it will fry and become bitter.
Concentration is important however, don’t get so engrossed in what you are doing; you forget the primary reason for the exercise, fun with your partner. Janet and I are certainly having fun, between the sipping, cooking and nuzzling we are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Here, another sip of wine is called for. If you leave the room be sure and shut off all burners. Note: If you leave the room and shut down the burners, when you return be sure and get the temperature up again before resuming the cooking.
Let this mixture cook for 15 minutes at least, until bubbling energetically, and put on another sauce pan with about a quart of water and 1 tablespoon of salt to boil. We will use this for the penne. It is customary to taste the sauce as it is cooking. Once the sauce is boiling in its pan and tastes nearly done, put the penne in the new sauce pan, as long as this pan’s water is boiling vigorously also.
When ready for the next step the penne will be still slightly hard. Here, remove a half cup of the boiling water used to cook the ziti, and add it to the cooking tomato sauce, bring the sauce to a boil again. Drain the penne in a colander, be sure and shake the colander to remove all the water, and then add the penne to the cooking tomato sauce. Stirring constantly until the penne holds the flavor of the sauce.
It is now time to serve this delicious dish. I always garnish with a liberal sprinkling of fresh chopped parsley. Of course it is also time to open another bottle of your favorite wine.
This is the classic version of “Penne all’Arriabbiata” or in the literal English translation “Angry Ziti.” Or to an Italian it means “Very Spicy Ziti.”
This meal was also added to the club menu for luncheon specials at least twice a week and became an instant favorite.
The Penne all’Arriabbiata is a very popular dish in Italy. It tastes spicy hot depending on the amount of crushed hot pepper used. (Be aware, in Italy the dish is prepared extremely spicy) Janet loved it, and the bottle of Zinfandel we finished during the ziti’s dishes preparation. This wonderful combination didn’t hurt our taste buds at all.
Mellow from the wonderful meal we shared, and filled with anticipation, it was time to retire to the bedroom for a celebration our love. So full of love are we that in minutes we are sound asleep. Entwined in a way we have never been able to replicate awake, we snored gently until the morning sun opened our eyes. This wonderful relationship didn’t last long enough, and then we had a fight about something stupid. I don’t remember what and that was it. For some reason she wouldn’t let me apologize. She quit working at the club and I never saw her again.
I later learned Marie moved in with Janet and never stopped bad mouthing me. A few times when I was at the apartment Marie would show up and bother Janet. She, however, made sure I never saw her there, or even was aware she knew Janet outside of the club. Marie kept telling Janet I was taking advantage of her. Every chance she got she stood beside me. Now, Marie is attractive and a good waitress, so I was flattered for the most part. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy myself, but had I known it would cost me my relationship with Janet, I would have run for the hills. Janet would never have been jealous of our one night stand, so Marie took another tack. She convinced Janet that I was very bad for her. I led Janet astray. Now, once or twice would have had no effect but, continuously it became a litany. Poor Janet didn’t have a chance.
Right after Janet left the club, Marie told me that Janet had gained weight and was now about two hundred and ninety pounds and gaining by the minute. Marie knew I had a problem with heavy girls. This comment by Marie of Janet gaining weight diverted me from looking for Janet. After a while I began to understand Marie was not believable, she said so many things, and she contradicted herself constantly. But by this time Janet had been gone over six months and I heard a report she had married.
Oddly enough once Marie had Janet out of the way I was not so much of a prize anymore. Marie and I did not last as long as Janet and I. This was a blessing in the end. Marie couldn’t tell the truth to save her life. Once I got away from her I began to see all the things she had done to undermine me, even with myself. Marie always was a good waitress, her service was impeccable, but once out of her sight you no longer existed.
After setting up the apartment, I had a house warming party and invited a lot of people from the club. The night of the party a group of gamblers from the club came over uninvited and the next thing I knew my friend Freddy Pierce had a group in the front window throwing dice against the wall. Money changed hands and I complained to Freddie and got him to slow the action down. He still managed to lose twelve hundred dollars during the night. Freddie was in the Navy and considers himself something of a genius; the problem is his intellect doesn’t coincide with his opinion. He did not have much time for anything else that night. I know he met Jean Marie among others, but his gambling took all his attention. He gambled all the time, but had no luck at all. Now, in those days, Freddie was considered handsome, but he is the type that women discover cheating right away. He’s not smart enough to cover his ass when doing something he shouldn’t be doing.
Alex Saroyan showed up late to my house warming party, coming in like the thunderstorm that he is. He and his girl friend showed up after 11:00 PM, telling us that six men had jumped them right outside our window. In a panic Alex told us they wanted to kill him and his girlfriend. He said whoever the group was they figured they had an easy mark when they attacked them. However, Alex had them down for the count within seconds. Alex, as a local Karate and Tae Kwon Do champion made short work of the attackers. And, Francesca, his girl friend, couldn’t stop laughing. She kept saying “They suddenly came out of nowhere and in one second they were screaming like children and running away in every direction.” Several of us went out to see if we could find anything and of course, it was quiet and peaceful. We even searched along the alleyway behind the apartments and of course we saw hundreds of rats as big as dogs, but no two legged rats in evidence. That was the second time I had seen evidence of Alex’s prowess as a fighter and he was very impressive. For someone with a God given talent as fine as his singing he also could defend himself from anyone.
We had lit the living room fireplace and the room was nice and warm. I kept adding wood until I ran out. The next morning, I cleaned out the fireplace and put the ashes in a barrel of trash someone had put in the hallway outside my apartment. Later that night when I got home the hallway was all black and sooty and the neighbor told me the fire department had been there all day. Apparently someone had put two empty cans of hair spray in the trash and then someone else had put still burning ashes in the same barrel. After a while the two cans of hair spray had exploded from the heat and sprayed soot and ash everywhere. Who knew?
Several months later Peter, my landlord, came into the club and wanted me to go check out a restaurant he just bought. He liked the way I ran the Gas Light Club and wanted me to manage his restaurant which was named the “Battling Frenchman” on Beacon Street. The night I visited the restaurant, they were very slow. I ordered shrimp scampi and my date ordered steak. We were seated diagonally across the room from the kitchen door. We could not have been seated further away from the kitchen. After taking thirty minutes to prepare, our server exited the kitchen door and headed to our table. I couldn’t believe it. I was at least fifty feet away from the kitchen door and could smell the bad shrimp on my plate from that distance. I have been in the restaurant business all my life and have only smelled shrimp that bad by opening the garbage container cover after a long weekend. When the server reached our table I asked if he had a cold and he said “no” I then asked if he could smell anything and he said “Of Course I can!” I then said “You’re either a liar or incredibly stupid, which is it?” With a completely shocked look on his face he asked “What’s the problem?” “The problem is I could smell the bad shrimp the moment you opened the kitchen door. I am now asking my date to go into the lobby and telephone the board of health and ask them to come down here. This is a major violation and this restaurant should be closed” I spoke loud enough so they could hear me in the lobby. I was insulted that any asshole could serve garbage like that. “Well if you don’t like the shrimp I can take it back and replace it with something else.” “No, I don’t think so. After the shrimp, I would not eat anything cooked here. If you cannot smell how bad those shrimp are you need to get into another business.” We then left the restaurant. The next day I called Peter and told him what had happened. I explained that if I were to get involved with the restaurant I would need to let everyone working in the restaurant go and start over with an entirely new staff.
“We can’t do that, but we don’t need to these people are intelligent and can be taught the basics of the business.” “Peter, you don’t understand. If they didn’t smell how bad the shrimp were they would have killed people who ate that food. Every meal that leaves a kitchen is every workers responsibility. In any kitchen of mine, a worker that lets a meal like that leave the kitchen is not only a liability, but also a danger. You asked me because you like what you saw at the Gas Light Club. I’m sorry I cannot have anything to do with an operation like that.” “Well I’m sorry too I thought we could work together.” This restaurant later got national attention on TV as the restaurant, over a very funny and famous bar on weekly television. At the time I told everyone I declined the restaurant because I didn’t have time to run it and the club at the same time. What I told Peter is the truth. The food industry is very particular about one major thing the edibility of the food. Poor quality is one thing and has gotten by in many fast food restaurants, however, not for long, but inedible food is quite another thing and one bad serving can finish a restaurant.
The fact that the kitchen in that restaurant actually cooked shrimp that started out smelling that bad, was a crime. Serving it to customers was an insult on top of the crime. Even now I get angry thinking about that night. This was an example of what a drunken cook can accomplish. But, to be so drunk he didn’t smell that abomination, he must have been comatose!
That incident with Peter changed my opinion of him. He obviously was great at his construction business but he was blind to anything else. The very reason he chose me to run it for him should have clued him in to a fellow expert’s expertise. Even if he couldn’t bring himself to consider me an expert in the field, he could not deny my success in the club, which brings us back to the reason he picked me to ask in the first place.
However, with this incident I learned that some intelligent people could be incredibly dumb. Peter could not see that there was a problem. He was so cheap he thought he could fix the failure of that restaurant without breaking any eggs.
When that restaurant gained national attention it was not owned by Peter any longer, and the new owners changed the entire staff and decor. The new operation is well run and the food is good. Since all the attention they got as the famous restaurant on top of the bar, they now have sightseers visiting constantly and the food sales are through the roof.
Chapter Thirteen
Our club’s general atmosphere is fun and frolic. People come in to relax and enjoy themselves. Having a few drinks, listening to good music, enjoying young attractive women moving around the room serving drinks was appreciated by our male patrons. Probably the most important thing we do for them is to leave them alone for a bit to catch their breath and recharge their batteries. When you walk through our door that’s our unspoken credo. Unfortunately that very attitude attracts an element of trouble as well. Outside the door of the club, in every direction for hundreds of yards, are offices. There were mostly insurance companies, but there were also all types of businesses around us. Insurance men deal with probabilities all day long. They gamble that you will be sick, or not sick or live or die or or or or. Other office types, investigative offices and Law offices among them, all need to relax at the end of the day. So, when these men relax, many invariably head for some sort of gambling, it certainly is personally exciting and unlike their daily grind that usually has no immediate resolution, this is a quick win or loss. Maybe not consciously but, however they arrive at their favorite activity, it’s all the same. For most of them gambling has become a sickness. As they walk in the door, morning, noon or night, they are fidgeting with their pants pockets and before they arrive at the bar, they’ve pulled out a monetary bill, be it a dollar or five or whatever. Now that the bill is out they start looking around. Let’s see, who’s here, oh yes, Bob over there. Hey Bob and they wave the bill. Next thing you know, they’re at it. Five sixes, Nah, eight sixes, no fifteen sixes, Whoa, I gotta See that! And they’re off and running. Liars’ poker was played not with cards but with paper money. Each player held a bill (denomination didn’t matter) and looking at the serial number of his bill he would make a bet. “I have five aces” or I have ten 6s would ring out. What they meant was that the bet was between all the bills in the game. They had respectively five ones or ten 6s. They bet progressively at each new declaration, meaning that the next bet had to be more than the last bet. So that the man saying five aces might bet 10.00, then the man declaring ten 6s had to bet more than 10.00, so that a third person getting into the game had to anti up $30.00 plus any new bet of his own. I have seen a single pot go as high as $7,600.00. At this point, betting over seven thousand dollars on one hand, the gambling is out of hand. You would say, Hey, $7, 600.00 is way out of hand, but don’t forget that was one unusual hand. The time it took me to walk across the room to where they were, they could play three of four hands. The reality of the game is bad enough, the amounts that could be lost in a minute are staggering, but now add to this mix the professional gambler. Card sharks. What the sharks do, among other things, is have a confederate in the group that the others don’t know is working with him, and this team works against all the other players. One of the easiest ways to cheat in liars’ poker is simply deny you have a number. Now, the calling player has to call you a cheat and even then you might not show your bill, so, some more naïve players trust you to be honest. If you’re a card shark, honesty is not in your lexicon. Cheating is the name of the game. And other players are now broke. In the game where the player lost $7,600.00, it was a friend of mine that lost the money. He complained to me and I felt very bad for him, until it was explained to me that my friend had to up the ante five or six times before it got to that amount and then he miscalculated and lost. Of course, I couldn’t get his money back, once he paid off. Adults are suppose to understand that risky behavior has it’s rewards and punishments. If you are willing to take the risk for the success, be prepared for the failure. Most people don’t seem to understand that. They cheated me, is easy to say, but hard to prove, especially if there is more than one shark in the game. I finally couldn’t take it any more, once they started gambling, they were gone. It took time and effort to clear out this group and we never completely cleaned them all out. It took me getting taken by these crooks to really see what was happening. One night I started playing three card poker with three of our steady customers. The game was fine until two others joined us. The original players never had a pot over thirty dollars, once the new pair joined us the pot frequently was above a hundred dollars. I have seen these new players win consistently before and didn’t realize just how consistently it really was. After several hours the two new players had won most of the money on the table and started targeting any of us who still had some cash. As I sat there I began to notice several little things. First, the two new gentlemen sat across from each other, telling looks shooting back and forth. Second, they made sure everyone’s drinks were always fresh. Third, they managed to drop their cards on the floor at least once every half hour. I also noticed that when they dealt their hands moved faster than I could make out what they were actually doing. A card shark’s favorite cheat is second dealing or bottom dealing. This way they can direct who gets what and the other players cannot tell what they are actually doing. This game lasted until the first customers arrived for lunch, the day after we started. I owed these two thieves over five hundred dollars, and it was that small an amount only because of a lucky pot of two thousand dollars just before we quit. I paid these gentlemen off in front of the others and told them they were no longer welcome in the club. I was more than willing to make that legal if they insisted, which they did not. I never saw them again. By the way, formally announcing to the police that someone is barred from the license premises is what is known as making it legal. But in doing so, it also jeopardizes the liquor license because if they do something illegal the licensee is responsible. My reputation was such that, they believed I would do it and I would have.
Sometimes talk is not enough. When money is involved, there are some people who will stop at nothing. One afternoon, before Janet left our employ, I came in from a supply run and found her in the bar, sitting with a group of gamblers I knew were bad. I immediately went over and as I arrived at the table Janet was waving a fistful of bills saying; “Angy I’m winning, look at all the money I won.” Of course, here there’s not much I can say. I know these guys are letting her win to make a larger score later. Or for some other nefarious reason. So, I started with Janet, “Janet, it’s time you left the game.” She looked like she agreed with me so, one of the other players piped up; “She can’t leave, she has to give us a chance to win it back.” “She’s leaving the game right now, if you gentlemen are not adult enough to let that go, then we have a problem.” The guy that spoke earlier said; “Then we have a problem, we have the right to get even.” At this point I turned to the bartender and said; “Call the police.” “That’s a stupid thing to do you’ll lose your license.” “Bartender, also get Alex down here please.” Turning to the two gamblers speaking I said, “You’re gambling in a liquor establishment, as soon as I saw what was going on I came over and stopped the game. Now, leave and don’t come back!” “Go to hell, I don’t have to leave.” “What’s your name? What’s his name?” I asked the group, who were now standing. No one answered. Turning back to the angry gambler, I said; “I am going to follow you out the door, get your license number and file a complaint with the police who are on their way at this minute.” “Do whatever the hell you want.” He walked out. I did follow him and a police car was pulling up in the street as we left the building. I followed this creep to the street and before we arrived the officer heading our way met up with us and asked ;
“Is there a problem?’ “Yes this gentleman was gambling in my establishment and when I told him to leave, he refused and I had to threaten him with prosecution, before he would leave.” “Is that right?” The officer asked the departing guest. The guest began stuttering and attempted to defend himself. “I butted in and said I asked his name and he refused to tell me.” At this point the officer pulled out his note book and instructed the guest to show him his driver’s license which the guest did not want to do, until the officer threatened to arrest him if he didn’t. “This isn’t right, I didn’t do anything wrong.” Looking at the guest’s drivers license the officer was writing in his note book and said; “Well Mr. Stephen Crivitz, in Boston, it is illegal to gamble in a liquor establishment. There are no extenuating circumstances. If you’re playing a game and money is out, you’re committing a crime. If Mr. Cataldo is willing to file a complaint your on your way to jail.” “His place let us gamble for hours, the girl won over a hundred dollars. He wouldn’t let us win it back.” “They were setting her up. Janet never gambled before and they were taking advantage.” “Mr. Cataldo, I would like you to file a complaint, so I can take this joker to jail right now.” “I’ll be happy to and I would like to make an additional complaint, I want to bar this guy from ever setting foot inside the club again.” “Mr. Crivitz, a complaint has been lodged, you will come with me to the police station please.” “No, wait a minute, let me get a lawyer.” “Mr. Crivitz, turn around please. You have also refused a lawful order from a police officer, which is another crime” “What the hell, your putting cuffs on me?” “Yes, sir, you’re under arrest for resisting arrest. Please turn around and put your hands behind your back or I will do it for you on the ground. Angy, you don’t need to come down to the station now, resisting arrest will put him away for a little while and barring him will keep him out of the club or put him in jail for longer.” “I’m going to sue both of you. You cop, I’m suing right out of a job.” Complaining like hell, Mr. Crivitz turned around to face us and complied with everything the officer told him to do. “Angy, you will testify, right?” “Of course Jake, let me know when.” With that Officer Jake O’Fallon walked our criminal away. I returned to the club and found Janet embarrassed and feeling a little guilty. “Angy, I’m sorry I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong.” “Janet, it is certainly not your fault, don’t worry, everything is taken care of.” Alex asked me. “Angy, you called me down what’s up?” “We had a little problem with a Mr. Stephen Crivitz and he now is off to jail for resisting arrest. I’m sure he will be back and be a problem. He and a few of his cronies had Janet in a game of three card and when I walked in she was up a hundred.” “Sure, and the bastards intended to really clean her out.” Alex said; “I want to be prepared for his release from jail. I’m certain , he’ll be back to get even. I had Jake file a complaint to bar him from the club, but he’ll ignore it. Between you and me, we can give him a black eye and get him sometime in jail in the bargain.” “Ok, let me know what you want done.” My thinking at this point is, if he comes back, he will be breaking a restraining order from the barring and if he attempts to get physical we have him for assault, combined these infractions will get him at least six months in Walpole. Walpole is definitely not a pleasant vacation for anyone.
Sure enough, three days later, Mr. Crivitz made his entrance with a group of half a dozen of his friends. When he was released Jake called me and let me know. So, I had Alex ready for Mr. Crivitz and he didn’t disappoint. Alex and I were standing right inside the door of the club, waiting. The minute he opened the door I pushed into him and drove him back outside, with all his friends. The fight was on. In Boston, once he pushed his way into the front door he had committed a felony. With him and his buddies outside and Alex coming out behind me, the punches started. Alex pushed me aside and waded into the group. I swear it was like one of the Ninja movies, Bruce Lee or something. Alex knocked them over like bowling pins. I never got back into the ruckus and Alex didn’t work up a sweat. Within minutes two police vans arrived and four cops swarmed around us. The sergeant spoke first; “Angy, you alright?” “Sure Frank, Alex took care of them in a second.” “These stupid guys, now they’ll do six months or more for assault and battery. The one that just got out of jail will do more time for the restraining order.” “The next time they come back I’ll put them in the hospital and be sure they’ll get a long stretch in Walpole.” “You sure they’ll come back, Angy?” “Crivitz did, his type doesn’t learn.” “Well, on the way back to the station now, we’ll let them know what’s what. They won’t be able to come back for a long time.” “Thanks Sergeant, come back when you get off, tell all the guys.” “Sure Angy, thanks.” When the boys in blue came back later, the drinks were on the house.
These guys are a dark cloud put off for another day. This incident had me call a bartenders meeting, and among other things I reminded my bartenders that gambling was illegal and any gambling is stopped immediately or the police are called. Licensees are in a conundrum. It is our duty to inform the police if these laws are broken, however, we then have a black mark against our license because these infractions happened in our establishments. We, at Gas Light had an advantage, our local precinct is all friends and they don’t record every call we make. Most of the time they found the problems next door, or down the street giving them another address to record, leaving us to open another day.
Chapter Fourteen
It was my job to study how Player’s Club ran their operation. In the interest of research, it became necessary to date some of the girls from there. Dirty job though it is, I volunteered selflessly. (The things I have to do for my career) One of the girls, Playmate Jacky, took me to her apartment and literally attacked me, again and again, until we finally passed out from exhaustion. (Again, O’ the sacrifice, I’m becoming a martyr to my cause!)
Jacky’s a very pretty and petite brunette. All of a hundred pounds of dynamite soaking wet, with brown curly hair and a winning smile. She is also a bundle of nitro glycerin on the dance floor. I hope you’re getting the explosive connection here, that’s Jacky. On our first date, she took me to a dancehall in Revere. One I had never been to before, even though I grew up in that town. We danced until the wee hours and she was still moving to the beat when we got back to her place, I must be getting old, I fell asleep before her and she had danced twice as much as me. Jacky’s my source of Player’s information. I found out Player’s had a manual full of rules and regulations the girls had to follow. So, of course I had to write a manual and Jacky got me one to copy. She usually wanted to dance my feet off, among other body parts, but soon found out I was better dancing horizontally than vertically, which, for her was a turn off. We went out several more times before she decided I couldn’t dance well enough on the dance floor. That was sayonara time for me. Jacky couldn’t be slowed down.
Everything was happening so fast for me, in my personal and business life; I didn’t have time to feel bad about Jacky dumping me. Two nights later at the Player’s Club, Kari, my favorite Player’s Playmate, gave me the eye as I was showing my friends Roy and Marcia the Player’s Club’s entertainment. This made me brave enough to ask her out. She said yes which, of course, got my hormones raging. As soon as we could, we checked into the Old Sherman Boston Hotel. Kari and I have been working up a head of sexual tension between us for months. The smiles and comments along with her touching my arm or patting my back, every chance she got, came to a head tonight. This was our first time to actually let off some steam. This hotel is right across from the Boston Public Library, and about a mile from Player’s back door. The Sherman is well known in Boston. Well, it was 3:30 in the morning when we checked in, and 4:00 by the time we got to the room. We couldn’t wait to get into bed. The standard missionary position wasn’t doing us much good, so experimentation was called for here. Before we could find the right position to cure our problem, there was a commanding knock on the door. (When we checked in I used a credit card but neither of us had any luggage, so I guess we looked suspicious.) Some times hotel personnel will see a suspicious check in and, as in this case attempt to double sell the room with them taking the second room rent in cash for themselves. They figure we would be so guilty about cheating, or whatever we were doing wrong, that we would not complain. I opened the door and it was a bell boy with a couple behind him that he was trying to check into the room. I explained we had checked in and I had a receipt, but he didn’t care and attempted to push his way into the room. I got on the phone to call the police and he quickly changed his mind and left us alone. When I turned back to Kari, she was up and getting dressed. By now Kari was completely turned off by all the commotion so it was time to drive her home. I later learned she was married and her husband, being in the military, has been away in Europe for the last year. In my defense, I didn’t know that at the time, not that I’m sure I would have done anything differently. Something about Kari captured my heart from the first moment I saw her. I always felt bad about our encounter. From the time I started going to Player’s Club, Kari was my ideal girl, the shining example my little blond girl at the counter everyone else was measured by. Going out with her, even for one date, was a fantasy come true for me. What I don’t understand is how Kari disappeared after this date. I guess she may have felt guilty for having given in to her urge to date me and made sure I never had the chance to tempt her again.
Dating the girls from the club started talk among the girls, nothing especially good or bad, but the word got around that I was not dangerous and I did keep my word. Over the next few months I was able to recruit several more young ladies to the Gas Light Club. Two of which later became great employees. Maria, worked hard and Pauline, would work anytime and their Player’s training came in handy. In the end I did the job I set out to do, regardless of the cost to my ego. I truly hope you see the irony here.
I jokingly referred to my philandering as finding employees; the truth is finding an employee was always the bottom line. Beautiful, professional people are at a premium no matter what city you’re in. For that matter, beautiful, professional people are difficult to find for any profession. To round out the staff we also ran help-wanted ads in the local papers. This brought us Flossy and Amber, two great waitresses; Jacky and Paul arrived around the same time and became well liked bartenders. For the most part these starting people stayed with the club for years. We were becoming a family. The food service industry is very close knit to begin with and you add the fact that most of the people work long hard hours together, sometimes dealing with difficult people. Our group at the Gas Light began doing things together. We had regular Sunday softball games. Although some of the girls would tell you it was actually a form of football. Because the men would sometimes tackle the girls and wrestle them to the ground, instead of tag them. I’m surprised the girls never complained, the guys tackled them so they could wrestle with them. Maybe the girls enjoyed the wrestling as much as the guys did, I hope so.
We also had the occasional, white painted grapefruit as a substitute softball. These were an automatic ground rule double. And, always at the end, home made food and drinks for all. In a diverse group like this, there were enough people that someone would know someone that could help out one of the others who needed something. Who knew a good doctor, lawyer or Indian chief? We have thirty or more people working who are good honest people for the most part. If any one thing can be said of any food service business which is consistently true. It is: there is always a help wanted sign in the window and in the papers. It might be too slow to hire new employees about three months a year, but if you don’t, when you actually need them, they’ll have been hired away, by another club.
During the first winter after getting into softball, the employees talked about the games all winter long. Our little group really enjoyed the softball games and it was inevitable we would join a league. This softball phase saw us accepting all sorts of conditions we never would have accepted. The Boston, league we got into had divisions and at first we thought we could handle the second division, but we got slaughtered. I quickly got us reclassified to the starting league and we, at least had a chance. The worst unacceptable condition hit us right away. The Boston League is for men only. The girls were not allowed in the league. Our girls made the best cheerleaders in the world though. Our routine was simple, we played a game, showered at the field and all met back at the club for drinks and food. I quickly realized I wanted photos of the games to post at the club. This way, players could see themselves posted on the wall. After a while I had several hundred pictures posted on the inside walls of the hat check room. Since it was summer in Boston, the hat check got very little business, so the walls became the walls of Fame. Now the guys could see how they looked on the field.
I was the catcher on our team and thought I was doing ok until the day I got my first base hit. I hit a line drive down the right side between the first and second baseman. I started running and the next thing I knew I was on the ground about twenty feet from the first base bag crawling as fast as I could. Boy was I embarrassed. The left fielder could have come in and tagged me out. I just fell down, that was the end of my softball career. I started sponsoring the team as a way to promote business and help out a young team of players, also, it got us an automatic entry into the Boston League. Once we joined the league we had to recruit some younger kids to compete with the better players on the other teams. But, this didn’t last long. Our original group, all employees of the club, became cheer leaders.
Once the last employee was kicked off the team to let in a more experienced player, I let them know next year we would not be sponsoring any teams. I got us back to the Sunday coed games we all enjoyed. From the first inning, I knew it was the right thing to do. In our group there was no, sex, age or ability discrimination. If you could stand up, you could play, laugh, and enjoy.
Chapter Fifteen
For a business that has so many different people and constant comings and goings we are incredibly lucky. Except for a single problem we had no accidents at all. However, any problem can be major. When you have a large group of employees, there will always be risk.
One cold January day I decided I had had enough freezing air on my back as I worked at my desk. It was time to bring in the small window air conditioner positioned behind my office desk. There are always spaces around the face of an air conditioner that let air in and out when you don’t want it to. We managed to remove the air conditioner from the window and put it temporarily in the girls changing room. Three days later one of the girls Dory, cut her leg on the flexible edging along the side of the air conditioner. This edging contours to the window opening to stop air leaks. At the time she complained to me about the air conditioner sitting there in their way. I moved it and suggested she should wash the scratch because it didn’t look healthy. I was always taught that if the skin turns red around the cut it was infected, and this cut was less than an hour old and already bright red. Dory worked that night and the next day she called in sick. She said she had the flue. A week later one of the girls came in and told me Dory had lost her leg from that scratch she got. I couldn’t believe it. I immediately found out where she was, and went to the hospital to see her. She was in a regular room and I had to sneak in because I was not a relative. She told me they didn’t cut her leg off, but little by little they had to remove almost her entire calf. They removed flesh all around the infected area and the first night let her go home. She was right back in the next day when it started to burn and the red was back even worse than before. The doctors then removed more flesh and muscle hoping they got it all, meanwhile keeping her in the hospital until they were sure and this last time is the fifth time they removed flesh and muscle. This time they felt confident that they got it all. The doctors speculated that birds were pooping on the plastic frame of the air conditioner while it was in the window. Then it would rain and appear to wash it. When we brought the air conditioner in, it was loaded with bird crap but you couldn’t see it. This is what got into her leg wound. Bird crap is probably the worst thing that could get into an open wound and in this case it almost cost Dory her leg. She will forever have this major indentation where all the flesh and muscle have already been removed. Poor Dory we were all hoping she would be back, she was good at the job and everyone liked her. However, the health department was underwriting the medical treatment and insisted she stay at home for at least a month after the operations and if she was able to work she did not need assistance. In the end, Dory, who had two children, got more money on assistance than she could earn working four days a week, so the only way we saw Dory after that was when she brought the children in for lunch. Other areas that could be total accidental disasters, turned out to be fine. I think we worried so much that we were constantly vigilant. One of the worst areas for accidents was the table and bar dancing. Because of the practice and experiments Janet did earlier, the worst of the danger to “table dancing” was either diminished or eliminated entirely. In our club, the table dancing was not suggestive or overly sexual as the later pole dancing in other places. The girls, when they danced on the tables, wore a flapper dress which was a plain dress almost down to the knees. What made it interesting was the fringe that was sown on in circles around the dress. When the girl danced, the fringe would stand out and shimmer which gave them more of an active, in-motion look. It was simple to do, the girl would swing her hips to the right while her upper body went left. Then reverse the motion, hips to the left and upper body to the right. Then start all over again. The Charleston was similar to the dance known as The Twist. The faster they went the better it looked. This look was the flapper look and it was part of the Dixieland Music and the roaring twenties atmosphere we were striving for. There was also a song that had to be played when the girls did the table or bar dances and it was The Charleston. No one was better at The Charleston than our girls. The Charleston was very popular in the twenties! Sitting in the middle of all this wonderful music, beautiful women dancing, and obviously having a fantastic time, the customers couldn’t help but be excited and swing along with the girls. When the Dixieland band was in full swing, there was electricity in the room that would not be denied. No one was immune from tapping their toes or bouncing their legs in tune to the music. Vince Bitnich, one of my favorite customers, always came in with his chauffeur. Vince was affected by the music and standing in the corner near the band, he would get his right leg bouncing to the music. Unfortunately the rest of his body was so large; his right leg was all he could effectively bounce.
Some people, not in the room, might say it was tribal or mystical. But when you were in the room at those moments you knew exactly what it was. You could not help but feel the pounding of the music in your soul. Literally, your blood would jump with the music. Your heart rate would change in tune with the banjo. Your head would nod along with the piano and God, the high notes from the alto sax could make you soar right off the floor. This is music that even when you don’t like it, you still can’t help reacting to it. The first floor bar at the Gas Light Club in Boston was the swingingest place in town.
Once we started the Speak Easy Players, as we named them, our business picked up to packed, rather than just busy. The six actors did not get paid. They earned tips and did well enough to be willing to do the act a couple of times a week. They did the act at the beginning of the week, Monday and Wednesday, this way they could work the Towne Play House on the weekends. After a while they started changing the act at the club. At first they did the quick dance and shooting act, but then they started doing another version. The group would come in over a little time. They came in one at a time, even the assassins. They would be around the room, now with the assassins down front and the two couples near the door. The assassins would again shout “Mr. Big sends his regards” and start shooting. The four players would crumple where they were and then the lights would go out. The six players would disappear and then stroll in as guests. Our customers loved it and tipped the group generously. Sometimes they would have a couple with an assassin at one end and the others at the other end of the room and shoot it out, all falling down, now even the assassins. These changes made them more popular and people came back to see what they would think up next. In order for the shows to work, they had to be fast. When the players were on, there couldn’t be any drink service because it could be dangerous and at the very least, in the way. Even the band had to coordinate, so that the shooting would not be in the middle of a set. The waitresses had to position themselves around the room to give the players a clear path to exit at the end. This worked great.
Some nights we would have the Dixieland band doing their thing, regular waitresses dancing on the tables, then the Players came in and did their act, the piano player would take requests, and of course Alex would come down and do a couple of songs. Some nights there was so much going on that the waitresses complained they didn’t have time to make any money, there was something going on all the time. We didn’t stop any of the entertainment. After all, the entertainment was the reason the customers were there in the first place.
Word of the success of the Gas Light Players, as they became known, started a stampede of people wanting to do an act or skit or some form of entertainment for the club. Since they did not get paid, but got tips only, I didn’t mind. After a while I had to stop anything other than stand up comedians or impressionists. These acts could be done quickly and they could also be done while the waitresses did there job of serving drinks. For a time there we had the worst comedians in the world, and that actually became a thing in itself. I started having them come in several at a time. They would stand in the foyer and after each one finished the next would enter. By encouraging them, I got the audience to shout the bad ones off the stage. If someone was up there dying , the audience would boo, hiss or otherwise let him know he was not wanted. We started the “Boo Hiss” rule. If the audience booed and hissed for longer than five seconds, the act was over. People loved it and the register was constantly ringing.
Occasionally we had an impressionist, who would do Nixon, or others and they were liked, but the one that got the most applause was when one of them imitated me. Everyone knew me. I was always there and always in a tailored suit. My speech patterns are strictly Boston and people tell me I walk distinctly, if not outright strange. So, one night, this fellow came in, with a dark suit like I was wearing, a cigarette in his hand and walked around the room until people noticed the walk, as my swagger. Then he started to shout, you get out, I won’t put up with your defiance. And quickly turning toward a pretty woman sitting with her male friend, shout, “you” in my room right now! For five minutes he exaggerated anything I ever did and the people loved it. They laughed and applauded for ten minutes. In fact he was so good that after he finished on the first floor and did his “Tip Walk” I sent him upstairs, where he did well again.
I made sure we kept a record of the entertainers that did well. In fact I brought in a tape recorder but the technical problems got in the way. Eventually, I got a contest going to see which was the best liked. That went on for weeks. By the time we got Rocky Regan back we were full every night. I had to open the third floor for the contest, because there were too many contestants to have in one of the lower rooms. The winner will win a hundred dollar a night job for three nights at the club. This contest took on a life of its own. We had to staff the third floor with a bartender and waitresses to service the customers and everyone got into the act. The gamblers had a pool going first to bet on the winner over the five weeks of the contest, then weekly winners of the most popular along the way. It was amazing. While the different entertainers plied their trade, I worked behind the scenes to get local agents and talent scouts to come and watch the shows. We eventually had over seventy five, entertainers try out and twenty two made the first round to do a ten minute act for the judges. We recruited loyal customers as our judges. The talent was amazing, and the guy who did me was really a natural. He did a sketch of Robert that was dead on and it almost caused a riot. He came in with four of the most beautiful women in Boston. The girls surrounded him and all of them fawned over him. The entire time he did Robert, he had Robert’s cigar holding, down exactly. The first time he did it one of Robert’s girl friends, Leslie Carmen was in the audience and she wanted to know why there were four girls around this guy. She didn’t believe it was any good because Robert never had more than one girl on his arm at one time. She really thought she was Robert’s only girl.
We got the group sorted down to fifteen and in the end every one of them got some kind of job out of the contest. The impressionist, Frankie Lake was his name, got a gig at The Players Club, Playroom and went on very successfully from there. I saw him in New York the following year. He was on his way.
The night the mimic did Robert, Robert had a lot of explaining to do. Leslie was angry about the four girls and she asked everybody what the comedian meant by portraying Robert this way. Most of the answers she got were “this way the portrayal was funnier.” He got more laughs by portraying Robert with a lot of girls.
Although Leslie is one of God’s gifts to man because she’s so beautiful, she isn’t street wise or worldly. Robert is a new, unfamiliar kind of man to her. So, the first time she got a chance, she cross examined him about this portrayal by the comedian at the club.
“Robert, I need you to be serious with me for a minute please.’ “Sure, sweetie anything you want. Do you want me to tickle you here or there?” “Robert, I’m serious!” She stamped her foot. “Ok honey, what would you like?” “What did that comedian mean by portraying you with all those beautiful girls? Everyone laughed and said it was right on.” “My love, he just wanted it to be funny, after all he is a comedian.” “But why with all those girls? Robert I would hate it if everyone was laughing behind my back, do you have that many girl friends?” “Of course not sweetie, wait a minute of course I do. Think about it. I own the club and the club has twenty five or thirty beautiful girls working there. So, of course he would portray me that way. I could have twenty girls around me any time I wanted, but not any like you. I’m crazy about you. If anyone laughs behind your back it’s because their stupid, I mean really just look in the mirror. None of those girls tonight could hold a candle to you. You know people come up to you all the time and ask you for you’re autograph because they think your Grace Kelly the movie star. I think you’re even more beautiful than the movie star. Just look in the mirror and be honest. Is there anyone more beautiful than you?” “Robert stop it! Now you’re just pulling my leg.” “Not yet honey, but I certainly intend to.”
At this comment he starts reaching for her leg and generally horsing around. “Stop it Robert. Robert!”
Now they’re both getting more intimate, the horse play turns serious. Conversation is over for a while. Robert has put out another fire, he’s getting better and better at it. Now Leslie’s days are numbered though. She is expecting more than fun and that’s not Roberts specialty.
Chapter Sixteen
While we were struggling to assemble a good crew and get the business built up a little we hired a local guy, Shamus Callahan, the brother of Sean our photographer, to handle all our promotions. Shamus put advertisements in the local papers, magazines and other periodicals. He put together a party of local night club people for us to meet at his apartment. His intention was for us to get familiar with the movers and shakers in our industry. While I was there two girls worked their butts off to get close to me and I was only too glad to oblige. Jennifer Dandridge and Marcella Hepplewaite, both just arrived in town from London. They both wanted very much to work at our jumping club. They found a fan in me, I couldn’t get enough of their English accents; it was amazing how they could say incredibly filthy things and no American listening caught on to what they were really saying. By speaking very fast and mixing common phrases with words like vagina and penis, they think it’s a hoot for them if no one recognizes what they’re saying. People would look at them with this quizzical look and you could almost read their minds. They were thinking; “I didn’t really hear what I thought I did, did I?” Occasionally, they would switch accents to heavy cockney and no one could understand a word. I didn’t realize it at the time, but getting me to give them a job was a contest between the two friends Jennifer and Marcella. Jennifer had the nicest derriere I have ever seen. Jennifer couldn’t have been nicer to me. That first night she kept jumping up and down getting me things. She made herself available at all hours and let me stay at her apartment. Jennifer got the job, as a waitress on the first floor, with the proviso that, no one find out we are dating. I guess I’m still very naïve, all this attention and the warning sirens should have been blaring full tilt, but they didn’t go off at all for me. I guess I was blinded by my libido. Although Jennifer was fantastic to me, she was a horror to the employees at the club.
She told everyone she was the bosses’ girlfriend and they better listen or else. One of the girls asked me if Jennifer had any authority and I said no. I had told Jennifer to be very careful because it would be a problem if everyone at the club knew we were dating. What a joke, Jennifer told everyone within one minute of arriving at the club. The second week we were dating, she called me to complain about someone giving her a hard time. I reminded her of our original conversation about this and that it was becoming a problem. I said if it continues I would have to fire her from the club. At first she acted as if she thought I was kidding her. When she realized I was serious she flipped out. I told her to wait at the Club for me because I wanted to talk to her face to face. A half hour later I was in the club and Jennifer was waiting for me in my office. I told her I was crazy about her but, I couldn’t have her bossing the help around and getting them all riled up. She took offense and said she was smart enough to be a boss. I said, “You’re my girlfriend, the job is secondary” I didn’t hire you to be a boss. I told her that since everyone in the place knew we were dating I’m forced to fire her. She begged a little bit, and then, wanting to kill me, she stormed out. She hadn’t been at the club three weeks and caused more trouble than any five girls before her. Frankly at this point I never expected to see her again and I realized I had made a serious mistake letting her work at the club. No one does all she did that early in a relationship unless they want more than I was willing to pay. Later, Marcella told me that her taking over, was Jennifer’s plan all along. She actually thought she could become assistant manager immediately and eventually manager. What a shame. I liked Jennifer a lot, but some things are not to be. I was lucky I reacted quickly here, If I waited any longer to quell this rebellion, I would have lost any good employees we had.
It’s not often that I am grateful for having a hard head, but this week it saved my life. After all the “hub bub” died down about Jennifer, I was still thinking about it and finding ways to keep it from happening again. Thursday night I closed up alone, as I do most nights. While walking around shutting down appliances and lights all over the club, after a blinding flash I woke up with a pounding headache and blood on my face. It took me a minute to realize I had been hit on the head as I entered the dining room, and now am reclining, flat out, on the floor, not very restfully. It took me more than a minute to be able to stand. I know I had been hit, but not by what, or whom and for the moment I don’t really care, I just want the pounding to stop. I tried to stand, all the while listening intently for any tell tale signs of a return visit from my head masseur. I didn’t see anything out of place or broken, all the doors were as they should be. I finally got up and found that someone had taken my keys and left me on the floor. The first thing I did was move to the back door and take the wooden "two by four" brace off the door. There was already a bad guy in the club, I wasn’t worried any more would come in and I sure could use a sturdy weapon of my own about now. My gun was in the safe and the kitchen knives were in the kitchen, two floors above me. I was moving kind of slow trying to get my brain to catch up to what was happening around me. Looking through the wall of windows from inside the dining room, I didn’t see any movement in the corridor so I opened the stairwell door a few inches. Before going out I listened for several minutes there was no sound other than the normal, ice machine and kitchen refrigerators clunking.
Did you ever notice that when you’re straining to hear, you hear normal creaky and clunky noises as suddenly sinister, and incredibly loud? Where the hell did they come from all these sounds?
Suddenly the scrapping of a shoe on the kitchen tile floor upstairs or a piece of equipment moved, coming from above and there was definite air movement. I quickly opened the door and held it to keep it open. The door opened out into the hall way and leaving it as I did made a blind spot behind it with a peep window in the door that would be difficult to see from the dimly lit hallway. But, behind the door in the blind spot the door creates, I would be able to see through this window quite clearly. Here I am crouching behind a partially opened door with my trusty two by four clutched in one of my slippery sweating hands and the other hand holding the door. All the while looking through a dark plastic panel along the dimly lit corridor waiting nervously for the unknown and hoping I will survive it. Trying to hear the approaching sounds of fast moving sneakers, or tennis shoes, I couldn’t tell exactly which. He came down the stairs as I do, two at a time. I could hear the hiss of his hand dragging along the velvet covered handrail as he steadied himself rushing head long down the stairs. He came around the bottom step and into the corridor directly in front of me, all I could make out was a fast moving blur carrying something. Suddenly he stopped; I guess he just saw the open door. He quickly pulled out a gun from his back and held it out in front as he stealthily approached the door. He was concentrating on looking inside the room, his concentration complete. I, on the other hand had a problem, I had this great weapon and no way to use it. It actually was in my way. It was too big to swing and there was a real danger of my tripping over it. So, when he reached the door and crouching down, peeked around the corner to look into the room I pushed into the door with all my might. The crunk of his head being hit by the door traveling a hundred miles an hour before it crashed into his head and mashed it between itself and the door jam was a satisfying sound. He went down without any other noise. I was smiling like hell until another sound chilled me to the bone. “Hey, Jackie, where the hell are you, I got a bunch of lobsters here I need your help?” These words drifted down to me from one of the upper floors. It never occurred to me that the first guy was not alone. For a second I panicked and didn’t know what to do. Then I grabbed the downed guy by his long hair and dragged him into the dining room all the while trying to find the gun he had in his hand. There it was under him and once I had it in my hand I felt a little more secure. I quickly checked that it was loaded and stuck it in my pocket while I began rearranging things. I stuck the box he was carrying on a table just inside the door. I pushed a chair under the recessed overhead light outside in the very corner of the hallway landing across from the door. I then jumped on the chair and reached up to twist the bulb. Shit, it was hot as hell, but, the light is now out and done quietly, except for the sizzling noise as my fingers cooked while I turned the friggen bulb. Now, I moved the chair back into the dining room all the while listening to this idiot upstairs holding a conversation with Jacky who was not answering him. I quickly moved into the corner where I had the chair a minute ago. This spot was the darkest along the entire landing now, and would be completely out of sight until the intruder was only a few yards away from me. I took a shooters stance, but on my knees, making me less visible. Staring with rapt attention across the stairwell and banisters, I had the gun, in both hands, sticking out in front of me, ready for anything. Now, here he comes down the stairs, another one taking two steps at a time, I guess the lobsters aren’t that heavy, the way he’s taking the stairs like his buddy before him. I couldn’t see him until he cleared the third floor stairwell that was blocking my view. The minute I could see him I started yelling at the top of my voice; “Stop where you are, don’t even think about it, I’ll put one in your eye before you can change the air around you; Down, Down or you’re dead!” He was smarter than I thought; he dropped down like a stone, but without a sound. I moved toward the dining room door still holding the gun in front of me. Then, I quickly moved up the hallway and beyond him, avoiding his reach. Quickly pivoting and crouching down, I put my knee in the middle of his back with the gun held away from him but still aimed at his head. All the while I was telling him how if I had to shoot him now his brains would splatter all around the stairwell, sticking to everything and that’s not easy to clean up. At the same time my free hand was feeling for a gun which I finally found in his right front pocket. I took the gun and put it in my pocket, and then I said; “Sorry about this!” And with the butt of the gun I hit him as hard as I could, on the side of the head. I needed him unconscious long enough to get something to tie him up with. Also I needed to check on the other guy, who by now is probably coming around. I got off the one in the hallway and looking back and forth between them, I made my way to the dining room doorway. After propping open the door I moved inside for a second to dial the police from the hanging phone next to the door. Now it was a race against time before either of them regained consciousness. I ran to the window wall in the dining room and pulled the curtain sash off the curtain. Now, using the sash, which was a soft but sturdy rope, I tied the guy’s hands on the floor in the dining room. Then back to the window wall to get the second sash from the other side of the curtain, I pulled that one off and used it to tie the hands of the guy outside, in the hallway. Now, running down the stairs as fast as I could I propped open the outside door and put a chair against it to keep it open. Finally, back up the stairs stopping at a point about eight or nine steps up where, I could see both the front doorway and the two guys lying on the floor upstairs. It only took five minutes, but seemed like two hours, and I finally saw a beam of light bouncing around by the front door and windows. I hollered down to them, at the same time stealing glances upstairs to my two sleeping guests “Up here, on the stairs. I have a gun; I’m putting it down on the stairs at my feet, when you come in. I have two prisoners, upstairs; both were robbing the club and knocked me out while they packed up what they planned to take. One is on the floor of the stairwell on the second level and the other is in the dining room just to the right inside the room. Do you have any questions?” “Yeah, is that you Angy” Jake O’Fallon here.” “Hi Jake, yeah it’s me Angy.” Jake came around the corner and found me with my hands in the air, the gun at my feet and talking my head off. “Jake, I have another gun in my right front pocket.” “I took both guns off my two uninvited guests.” I guess it was shock and panic that had me talking a hundred miles an hour; Jake was calm and patient with me. “Angy, where’s your gun?” “I left it in the safe, good place for it now that I needed it.” During this time Jake retrieved the gun on the stairs and was pulling the gun from my pocket, still talking soothingly to me. “Well I guess since the first guy got the drop on you, it’s a good thing your gun was in the safe, or he would have had your gun too.”
As we talked, more police kept coming in the front door until we had a policeman’s convention going on. Next, the sergeant arrived, and he determined that the crooks were handcuffed and the building was clear of any other intruders. While we waited some of the other officers had already searched the entire building. The sergeant had two officers remove the two miscreants, taking them to lockup. While they were being marched by me, I recognized one of them and stopped them. I let the sergeant know that the second one is the same guy who had hidden himself in the club, after hours, about a month before. I said; “Next time I’m going to shoot the bastard, and then I won’t need to worry about him coming back later.” The sergeant laughed as the two patrolman removed the prisoners and that left the sergeant and I with two patrolman waiting for the detectives, another several officers milling around outside. I made the sergeant a drink and had the others get their own, while we sat shooting the breeze. When the detectives arrived it didn’t take but a few minutes to explain what had happened and we searched through the boxes the miscreants were carrying. A list was made of the six Lobsters, dozen steaks and several other odds and ends they were stealing. Once listed and logged I gave the food to the police. It was evidence anyway, and doing this was good will between the police and the club. This type of evidence is logged and everyone signs as a witness, then it is not physically needed again. It would have gone bad in an evidence locker anyway.
As we talked, Robert showed up. He always drove by the club on his way to work, and this morning he saw all the police activity and stopped. “The first thing he wanted to know is; “Who did you shoot this time, Angy?” “Come on Robert, it’s not quite the weekend yet, remember, I only shoot people on the week-ends. But, since this is 7:00 AM Friday morning, technically the very beginning of the week-end I could start now if you want me to?” “No, no that’s alright; I’ll wait for the reruns.” “This is going to take some time to explain, let me start by saying the fun began when I woke up on the floor of the dining room. It seems that in the middle of closing for the night someone decided to give me a nap.”
It really didn’t take all that long to explain and the bottom line was everything is ok now. After an hour Robert left for work and I locked the front door and headed upstairs to start work. I guess I’ve had enough sleep for one night.
Chapter Seventeen
After last weeks attempted robbery I closed up the club now with my gun in my hand and both eyes moving in different directions at once. You can’t be too careful. I could sure use a drink about now, and I’m sorry I quit drinking. During my drinking days I found so many great places, there must be twenty within two miles of the club. Then, my memory kicks in and reminds me why I quit in the first place. Every time I’d go into one of the other bars, or clubs in town, there would be someone who recognized me and sent me a drink. It was nice of them and most times they were reciprocating drinks I had sent them in my place or somewhere else I had seen them around town. This policy of sending drinks to friends you only know from bars around town is a tradition and not a very good one. When I go out to other bars, I just want a different atmosphere for the night. From the moment I step in the door, club owners and friends feel they must send a drink right away. Now, if I don’t sit with them for a minute and act friendly, they get insulted. The problem is when I go out bar hopping; I hit ten places or more. If you start counting, at least three drinks in each place, times ten places. I’m one very drunk guy and no matter how much luck I have, pretty soon, I’m a statistic; “Dead on the Road” will be the headline, which is not the type of fame I’m looking for. I tried training bartenders all over town to give me a ginger ale only, but there are so many bartenders, I forget who I trained or even if I trained this one. Eventually I had to stop going out at night clubbing because I was drinking too much. I guess two incidents that occurred, made up my mind for me. One night after being invited to a birthday party for one of our employee’s who lived in the north end of Boston, I drank way too much and on the way home instead of driving by the entrance to the Sumner Tunnel I made the turn into the entry. The problem here is simple; I live across town on Hereford Street, and the entrance to the tunnel which I just committed myself to, is in the opposite direction. So, I should have driven by the entrance to the Sumner Tunnel and gone under the expressway to get home. Instead I missed the turn then I went up on the sidewalk over the very sharp curbing and hit a chain link fence. Somehow the front end of the car snagged the fence and when I backed off the curbing I pulled the fence out about twenty feet. It tore loose and I drove away leaving the chain link fence in the middle of the street. Once in the tunnel with no where else to go I brilliantly decided to drive all the way through and make a U turn at the end and return to Boston. About half way through the Tunnel the car stalled and stopped completely. Pretty soon a tow truck came up behind me and pushed me through the tunnel. Apparently the guards manning the cameras in the ceiling of the tunnel saw my predicament and sent the tow truck to push me through. At the East Boston end I managed to get the car parked by the side of the road just off the tunnel roadway. Finding an all night drug store I called my friend Pat’s Repair in Revere and told him I had a problem and was afraid that the police would be after me. So, within the hour Pat himself came to tow the car away while I took a cab home. The next morning in the Boston Globe, was a story about a crazy T Bird driver whose car caught fire in the tunnel, as this cab followed it. The cabby said the red T Bird had flames billowing out from underneath about a hundred feet behind the car, the driver drove a steady seventy five miles an hour until it ran out of gas and the fire went out. There was no registration number and the car was never identified. My friend Pat found a damaged gas line under the car where it scraped over the curbing. So, gas was leaking out and getting through to the motor at the same time, until the gas ran out, the car was drivable. I had just filled up the gas tank and when Pat picked up the car the tank was completely empty.
Good Mileage, seventeen gallons for three quarters of a mile. The second incident and the last one for me was, the night I met the cop in Park Square, I couldn’t stand up. I had been drinking at the Press Club and headed for my car to drive home. The cop was walking and when he saw me staggering toward my car he came up to me. This time my car was parked in the street, legally for a change. He actually had to put his hand on my chest because I kept sliding down the side of the car as he spoke to me. He wanted my license and insurance and I kept telling him I knew every cop and politician in the city. I mentioned so many names, after awhile he said “Fuck you go kill yourself” and walked away, letting me slump to the ground. Now I had to get myself off the ground and struggle into the car to drive away. I remember thinking how lucky I was that I didn’t have to stand to drive I would have fallen down again. Looking back now I have to believe in someone watching over me all those years. Or, is the saying “God watches over drunks and little children” really true?
The night club business is all about people, having fun, being entertained and just relaxing. Well, our employees are people too and they are one of the most important assets we have. Employee popularity was very important to us, but sometimes it could take on a life of its own. Jean Marie is one of our best waitresses and also the best all around entertainer. She is always the first to dance and put on an act or just bust out in song (she has a good voice) and nobody dances on the bar or tables more than Jean Marie. During the cold winter days business was slow and the girls would have time to talk to the customers. However, the customers would sometimes misinterpret a girl’s intentions. A lot of off-duty plain clothes cops would come in to wind down their day. One day Spencer, one of our local detectives, came in at the beginning of his shift and got Jean Marie to talk with him. After an hour of drinking, Spencer was flying and dreaming. The drunker Spencer got the more he was convinced Jean Marie was in love with him. Finally, when she wouldn’t leave with him he pulled his gun and insisted that she leave with him or he would shoot himself. By this time I was already in the area, having heard him loudly proclaim his love for her. I was staying out of sight but, mostly behind him. The moment I saw his gun come out, I was able to reach my right arm around him, while catching the gun in my right hand and sweet talk him into walking out with me. With his unloaded gun in my jacket pocket, and the bullets in the other pocket, I also grabbed his ID as he left so that I would know his full name to return his weapon later. About an hour later a sheepish looking detective sergeant came in, not Spencer, and asked if: “Spencer had left anything behind earlier in the day?” I handed the detective Spencer’s gun, bullets and ID. The detective and his partner left without a word and the incident was never mentioned again. Jean Marie was also our unofficial spokesperson and all around promoter. We had the occasional radio broadcast from the bar at the club and Jean Marie usually sat with the announcer giving details and running comments on the club, its customers and life in general. Also, Jean Marie was a good friend. She could be counted on to help out or just be there whenever we had special occasions or circumstances. One night her luck saved her from serious injury. My friend Freddy Pierce met Jean Marie at the party at my apartment a while ago, so when he showed up tonight he made sure he gave Jean Marie all his attention. He sat in her station and sweet talked her all night. Freddie is a little impulsive and I’m sure he will want to take her home. Freddie is another one who thinks he’s God’s gift to women in general and specifically the current object of his eye. Jean Marie seems to enjoy the attention, so I’m keeping away. At the end of the night Freddie asked me if he could borrow my car to drive Jean Marie home, his car doesn’t have heat and is a junk box. I’m not very happy because I know Freddie is not dependable at all. But he’s been a friend since high school so I let him. He left with Jean Marie at midnight and I didn’t hear a word until 4:00 AM. Freddie called me from the police station in South Boston where he was being held for Drunk Driving. Also, my new beautiful T Bird was in a tow lot totally wrecked. Freddie dropped Jean Marie off and she did not want him to stay, smart Jean Marie, so he was rushing back when he went through a stop sign and a new Corvette hit him broadside on the driver’s side. The T Bird was considered a total wreck because of how far in the damage went. I later found shards of glass from the driver’s door window imbedded in the passenger side door leather frame. However, the Corvette was scrap because the fiberglass body just shattered and the frame seriously bent. Somehow the accident was blamed on the driver of the Corvette and I didn’t have a legal problem but I still had to sue my insurance company to get my car fixed, since the owner of the Vet had no insurance. Typical of Freddie, he acted as if it was my car’s fault. If you ask me, I don’t doubt for a second that he tried to race the Corvette through the intersection. Freddie was like the cooks, he never came back to the club again after that night. I got my magical repairman Pat’s Auto Repair to fix the car and he actually got it back to me looking like new again.
Jean Marie is an amazing person. Here at the club she is indispensable. She is the best entertainer working here bar none, as I’ve said before. I always look to her for help when we need someone to represent the club. Yet, at home, without her make up, she is mommy to three wonderful children, all girls and like herself, budding entertainers in their own right. One more beautiful and talented than the last, I have never envied anyone in my life, but, when I have children I want them all to be exactly like Jean Marie’s girls. Jean Marie could be mother of the year, she gets up every morning with her girls around six am starts them off with breakfast and a lot of love and direct attention to everything they need. She is their tutor, mentor and protector all before eight AM. After they’re off to school Jean Marie cleans the house washes their clothes and prepares their meals for the night. The girls are home by three pm and Jean Marie has to leave at four thirty for work. So, her mother, from whom she learned to be so wonderful with her kids, arrives and sits with the girls all night. Jean Marie usually arrives home about two AM. During the summer, we at the club see her children every weekend at the softball games. Her girls are our biggest fans. A suggestion from Jean Marie got me started on the children’s day, once a month at the club. One Sunday, every month we invite the parents among our employees to bring their children to the softball game and after, to the club for a meal and some small gifts to help them in their schooling, sports activities and whatever special activities are going on in their lives. It is sort of like a Make a Wish type of program. The kids give us a list of their wish needs for any month and a committee of employees and management go over the wish list and pick what we can do for the kids. One Sunday, we all went to the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston for the day. The club paid for the tickets to get in and the food. The kids loved it and everyone had a great time. The monkey house had them so enthralled that we, as a group, spent two hours there. We wound our way around with something new at every turn. Another Sunday, we made it to the Boston Museum of Science, again the club picked up the entry tickets and food. The kids loved the science show, featuring the static electricity ball that makes their hair stand on end, as well as all the other incredible demonstrations put on exclusively for them. I especially enjoy the look of wonder and magic on their faces when seeing something for the first time like the “electricity demonstration highlighting the effects of magnetism, or the live lightning demonstration, which some of the younger children found scary. Another favorite was the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. They saw several great exhibits including the Karsh Portraits, a very contemporary exhibit and the “Dressing up Children, 1720 to 1920. They especially loved the funny costumes of children from earlier times. These outings seem to energize all of us and the kids had a great time. I look forward to the time these children have children of their own and come back to us to talk about the effect these trips had on them. Working with children this way is the most rewarding thing a person can do.
Chapter Eighteen
The State house is not far away and the state’s politicians come in after daily sessions. Some of these guys are great people as well as good politicians. One special one was Edward Brakeman, Congressman of the House of Representatives. He comes in two or three times a week and stays for several hours. He loves the fun atmosphere and the dancing girls. One night the poor guy got so excited he bit into his glass and broke a small piece of glass off in his mouth, which cut the hell out of his tongue. It was so bad he had to go to the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital. He couldn’t talk for three days. To this day we still don’t know how many political shenanigans got pushed through by others, because he wasn’t available to vote against them. When Mr. Brakeman got better he made it a habit to bring his wife in every weekend for dinner and later for drinks on the first floor. She loves the club as much as he does. For all the wonderful people like the Brakeman’s there are others who never quite get into the same spirit of things. Another customer from the State House was Frank Spielman. Frank is a Representative of one of the far Western Massachusetts districts and he is also a degenerate gambler. Frank’s father left him 27 buildings in the poorer section of his district and Frank was ordered by the local building department to paint the buildings. He panicked trying to find enough paint to do the job for cheap money. So, he had a couple of his friends break into a state Highway Department’s supply depot. These brain surgeons stole one thousand gallons of highway yellow paint. The type they use for detours and the yellow line on roads. He hired the entire local high school’s senior class and they painted almost all the buildings in one day. Well that night everyone got a big shock when all these buildings glowed in the dark. It was actually dangerous for anyone driving near these buildings. The reflections from the car headlights blinded everyone on the road. It cost Frank a fortune to paint over all the buildings and he never did explain where all that highway paint came from. The only reason Frank hasn’t sold or lost the buildings before is they are so broken down no one else wants them.
Eddie our handy man is one of the people not in the same spirit. Eddie is different but not in a bad way like Frank. In a bar there is always little incidents that would never happen anywhere else. After all, everyone is drinking alcohol. One night Mr. & Mrs. Calderrone a husband and wife team of regular customers were enjoying the band when our handyman Eddie noticed Mrs. Calderrone’s low cut dress and ample assets. Mrs. Calderrone is an eye catching beauty and tonight she caught Eddie’s eye. Eddie is a nice guy, however, kind of slow, but, since he is a man, he has manly urges. Because he was hovering around anyway, he was asked to hold the table that the Calderrone’s were sitting at, so that one of the girls could dance on it. After the dance he drifted behind Mrs. Calderrone’s seat and positioned himself so he could see down her dress if he looked a certain way. It happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance to notice how close Eddie was to Mrs. Calderrone.
The next thing we knew Mrs. Calderrone pushed her chair back very quickly hitting Eddie in the chest. Looking up, she thought there was a leak from the floor above. It never occurred to her that Eddie was much too close behind her. Eddie ended up on the floor not sure what had just happened. Apparently, a drop of drool from Eddie’s mouth caught Mrs. Calderrone on her bare chest and scared her. We told her it was condensation from the high humidity in the room. We directed the fan toward her and her husband and the condensation was gone. I sat with the Calderrone’s for a while and we talked: “Sometimes the condensation in here is so bad it collects on the ceiling and occasionally drips. Not a lot but some.” “That’s alright Angy, no harm done. It just scared me for a moment there. I didn’t know what it was.” “So, how are you enjoying the band tonight?” “We love them. My husband used to play the banjo but gave it up a while ago.” “How long did you play Paul?” “For ten years, off and on. But I was never in their class Angy.” “I admire anyone who can play an instrument, because I played the trumpet all through high school and know how much work and effort goes into it. But, you need to keep it up, that’s for sure.” “Did Janet scare you when she danced on the table?” “No, she was wonderful and so talented. I could never do that because I’d fall in two seconds. Janet is such a sweet girl and she likes you Angy.” “Well Judith, I think the world of Janet as well.” “It’s time I’d better get back to work or I’ll get fired. I hear the boss here is pretty tough.” They both laughed “It’s great to see you both here, have a wonderful time and if there is anything you need let me know.” As I left them, I had their waitress bring them a round of drinks on me. I left the table and went upstairs to check the dinning room, after making sure Eddie would not be in the bar again. I hadn’t been in the dining room for some time. Everything was fine. When I walked into the room Alex was singing Mama and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. We’re very lucky to have Alex, and since he began working the second floor bar, customers stay after dinner just to hear him sing. Before Alex came, we closed the second floor after nine pm, now; they stay until well after eleven thirty, drinking all the while. Another interesting thing, since Alex has become so popular, is that the Rock and Rye usage has shrunk to about one bottle a week from an earlier four bottles. Alex is happier now because he is making a lot more money in tips. His steady girl comes in every night for a few hours. Her name is Maureen and she sometimes helps out cleaning up and closing the bar. This second floor dining room is an entire operation of its own. With, Marie, Flossy, Marco and Corey, running the floor and Alex and Maureen as the mom and dad, we have a family. With the added bar business everyone is making more money. Even the customers are different, now they enjoy Alex’s music style, partly because it is a totally different pace than the first floor Dixieland. Between the red velvet wallpaper, the amber colored recessed lights and Alex’s music, this room is for lovers. It has actually fulfilled my impression of it the first time I saw it. It looked like a Bordello then and now almost is one
Chapter Nineteen
Just before Halloween we decorated the entire first floor and added more posters on the walls. As part of our décor, we had period posters, mostly from the Roaring Twenties, but some just promoted very famous movies or actors like Gone With The Wind or Clark Gable. The girls loved doing decorations and most insisted on dressing up in costumes. Working schedules were somewhat relaxed as we always had extra girls because they made so much money they had no problem sharing the floor. I wore a costume every night; dressed as the very personable manager of a successful night club. On one of my trips to NY City I found a store that sold tuxedos for fifty dollars each and I bought five different tuxes. For months I wore them all the time, until someone stole the car I was driving, Robert’s Corvette with my tuxes in the open back seat ready for the laundry. After that I had several suits made and looked very stylish in my tailored suits.
Around eight PM, the first floor was jammed and jumping with music when one of the girls complained to me that two young guys were hanging around and touching the girls as they carried drink trays away from the bar. I watched for a minute and saw this young guy reach out and pat one of the girl’s butt as she went by him. At the moment there were people all around me and I reached out and grabbed the guy’s hand. As I did, with his other hand, he put his drink against my chest and tipped the glass so it would spill. Which of course had me grab him with both hands and turn him toward the exit just behind us. Before I could do anything else another young guy, obviously with the one I was dealing with, grabbed both of us. The next thing I knew the three of us were being hustled out the back door and the two young men were pulled away from me by a mob of regular customers, punching and pushing the two young men down the alley way. The last I saw of this incident was the t-shirt hanging off the back of one of the young guys running for his life down the alley, the other fellow not far behind him. Fights were very rare and this one didn’t last very long. All of the guys who helped out were regular customers and none ever mentioned it again. In fact, almost no one outside of the service area in the first floor was aware it happened. I personally had more fights in the kitchen than on the club floors. Our Halloween celebration was a success. Customers loved the Halloween festivities and were openly looking forward to our next holiday celebration, Christmas.
This morning, as I walked down the hallway to my office, I noticed that there was no reflection from the window in my office door. Since last night was the Halloween Celebration I thought I was just tired. As I drew closer I realized the window had been smashed in. Apparently we had been robbed the night before.
When I got into my office I found the two starting cash boxes, made up for each cash register, empty on my desk. The night before I had put three hundred dollars in change and small bills into each box as starting cash for each register. I always make them up the night before if at all possible. I looked around the office and discovered that whoever stole them did not look any further. We had prepared a Shawmut Bank deposit with eleven hundred dollars cash in large bills, and about two thousand dollars in checks to be deposited. First I called Robert who told me to call the police. As I waited for the police I checked out the rest of the building but found no broken windows or other possible entry points. The more I thought about it the more I realized it must be an inside job. There were not that many keys out and only someone with a key could have pulled the job. I had a list of all the keys out and was going over them when the police arrived. The Boston Police took forty five minutes to reach me. The first thing they did was take my statement. They determined that we needed a fingerprint guy to come and dust the office for prints. At that time the Boston Police, because of financial cut backs were using an outside company to do forensic work for them. This fellow from a forensic lab nearby came in. As he was coming upstairs I decided to leave the deposit where it was because it was in a plain envelope much like several hundred others in the draw. With the drawer closed and the envelope under several others exactly like it, I thought it would be safe. Besides, the forensic man did not need to open drawers that weren’t already opened. The Forensic man came in and said he would be a few minutes but would need the office to himself. Stupid me, I left him alone in the office. About twenty minutes later I noticed that I could not hear him in the office and went in to check. He was gone and so was the deposit. I also noticed that he had not dusted anything, not even the money boxes which would have been touched to steal the change. When Forensic people work, they leave a trail of fingerprint dust behind on all the surfaces they dust. It takes too long to clean up so they never do. I immediately called down to the first floor to stop him leaving the building and as I was talking to Robert this fellow left by the front door without stopping, even though all three men, Robert and the two officers were calling him from fifteen feet away. When Robert got off the phone he started running toward the door and took the two local cops with him. As they left the building they saw this forensic guy get into his vehicle and drive away even though all three men, by this time were yelling their heads off. The fact is the forensics guy must have run like hell when he got out the door because the distance from the front door to the street was much further than from the phone where Robert and the two cops were to the outside door. Later, according to Robert the three of them, Robert and the two cops got to this guys office within minutes but he did not show up for an additional forty five minutes. While they waited, they searched his locker and his desk. When he arrived he had no explanation of why it took him so long to get back, but it was none of their business anyway. The two cops now searched him and his vehicle, but found nothing. When Robert got back to the club he was livid, but there was nothing we could do. Now, we had another problem. This guy, although not a cop, is working in an official capacity and when he complained to other cops they took insult from my accusation. There was another problem, because I spoke up and made a complaint the forensic guy never ran the fingerprints he didn’t take. In fact nothing was ever done about the robbery, especially since the forensic guy never took any fingerprints from the office; he also had no explanation for that. The day after the robbery the two cops who arrived first came back with Robert and I showed them that the room had not been dusted at all. The thieves had a friend in this forensics guy. The next thing I knew my car was ticketed everywhere I parked. They hit me with twenty five dollar tickets every fifteen minutes. My car was easy to see and I collected seventy five hundred dollars in tickets in two weeks. I took to leaving my car in a parking garage and taking a cab to work. I couldn’t afford the tickets. Apparently some cops believed the forensics guy and not me. After studying the tickets for a while (I really didn’t know what to do) I discovered that most of the local tickets were from a police officer named Danny Callahan, a local precinct cop. The police from the local precinct have always been friendly and one officer in particular was really a personal friend. His name is Jock O’Hara and he loved our chicken wings, which we kept a good supply, mostly for him. One night, about a month after the robbery, I took Jock aside and asked him if he knew this Danny Callahan. He said sure; “Danny is one of my favorite cops.” So, now I explained what happened and when I told him the guy had really taken the deposit and how it was done he believed me and felt bad that his friend Danny had given me all those thickets. Well, In Boston the law had been changed so the police officer cannot cancel a ticket once he writes it out. So I was on the hook for the original seventy Five hundred dollars. But Jocko dragged Danny in to meet me and explained what was going on and what had happened. Once Danny heard my side of the problem he believed me because we had been in the club for several years and we had many little tussles with customers and others and never made complaints about anyone. Also, one of the cops that saw that the forensics guy did not dust the office talked to Danny. We always worked with the police and tried to be helpful when we could be. Our agreeable attitude and friendly approach brought us respect from the local precinct. Danny was now a friend and the tickets stopped. After this incident the local precinct became our best friends. Later I had to have a hearing and the tickets were reduced to a few hundred dollars which I paid. From that time on our relationship with the Boston Police could not have been better. Apparently others had problems with the private forensics’ companies because a short time after our incident the Boston police took back their forensic work and again made it part of the local officers work. The robbery was never solved. However, I gained a lifelong friend in Danny Callahan. The liquor business is a strange business, on the one hand, the customers love to frequent a successful place, the more successful the better. However, there is always a contingent lurking in the shadows waiting for us to relax our guard and they pounce like the gamblers. Another problem with successful restaurants, every once in a while a couple will come in, usually a different couple every time, and they’ll order their meal and begin eating, about seventy five percent through they start yelling that they found a cockroach in the meal. It’s interesting that this never happens before they start eating but rather at the very end of the meal. Of course we don’t charge for the meal after I get to see their driver’s license. On the other hand if they refuse to show me their license I call the police. Then I tell them they are not welcome in our club because we have several people examining the meal before it ever gets to the customers table. If they complained when the meal first arrived I would believe them, but it is so obvious, they’re crooks scamming a meal I don’t want them to ever come back. This type of scam hurts everyone. I’m aware that, no matter how diligent we are things sneak by sometimes and it is impossible to completely stop it. But occasionally people at another table will see what actually happened and speak up and the Calderrone’s did one night. Two good customers, Judith and Paul Calderrone were sitting in the dining room having dinner when the couple in the table next to them started yelling that a cockroach was in their dish. When I arrived at the table, as the final arbiter of this type of problem Paul spoke up. “Angy, I saw this guy take a small cardboard box out of his pocket and empty it on his plate with something moving.” At this the complaining couple begin talking louder and making a larger fuss. “Really Paul, what color was the box.” “It was a manila box.” “What pocket did he replace the box?” “His right pants pocket.” “I’ll be sure to tell the police that when they arrive.” I said to the man; “Show me your drivers license before you leave or I will make a citizen’s arrest and keep you here until the police arrive.” With me standing over them and Alex behind me looking like a gorilla, they always show the drivers license and then leave without a word. This couple was no different. I gladly paid for Paul and Judith’s dinners. This type scam unfortunately is all to frequent. We just need to stay on our toes.
Chapter Twenty
A three day weekend is coming up and it gave us an excuse to close early Saturday night and not reopen until Tuesday for lunch. I was becoming friendly with the new girl Ella. Ella is a great looking woman and also the first cousin of Amber one of our first floor waitress. Ella was not only attractive but had a chest that caught the eye of every man looking at her. Men would stand in front of the check room and drool, forgetting where they were or why. From the first moment I hired Ella she made it clear that she would like to get to know me better. By the way that last statement is not conceit, by this time I’m aware that my position as boss outshines any physical attributes I might have. Now, I’m not a breast man, my preference is toward the derriere and always has been, but, I certainly am not adverse to a splendiferous chest. Luckily, Ella is attractive in both departments. I have always believed men are hard wired to appreciate both the derriere and the chest area of a beautiful woman. For myself I have found that I have changed back and forth over the years. At one time I greatly appreciated the derriere. However, some time later I began to appreciate the bosom. Now, however, I find I love whatever the dear lady wants me to love.
When Ella worked, Eddie was banned from being anywhere near her. Drooling Eddie would not be able to function if Ella is in his line of sight. Ella and I are both the same age and from conversations we’ve had we both share a lot of likes and dislikes. Ella was someone I could get to like a lot. I know I sound fickle and the reader needs to remember unmarried and twenty one living on my own in Boston I think I could have been worse. Here I may be a majority of one. At this time I moved slowly because I was so busy. The truth is during these years my plate was full. When I realized we had this three day weekend coming up I asked Ella if she would like to go to NY with me to see a play. She was all for it, so I made plans with air reservations and hotel accommodations. Several days before we were scheduled to leave, Ella told me she couldn’t make it, because something had come up. I then asked Janet and while we were talking Mark, a new overly friendly customer, ambled over and said he would like to go also and would pay for meals for everyone. He would ask Jean Marie. Well both Janet and I agreed if Jean Marie agreed, and the plans were made. We arrived in New York very early Sunday Morning by red eye from Boston. We all checked into the Americana Hotel on Fifth Avenue. The next morning before anyone else woke up I got a call from Ella, and with Janet sleeping next to me I made plans to meet her. I was turning into Robert! God forbid I walked over to her hotel, The Hilton right around the corner. She told me that Robert had told her she was going to NY with him and she felt she couldn’t say no. So we had a good breakfast and after making plans to get together in Boston she went back to her hotel room with Robert at the Hilton. Meanwhile, I got back to the Americana to Janet. Soon Jean Marie and Mark came knocking on our door. I told them it was too early and we, Janet and I, were otherwise occupied. They did not take the hint and insisted they come in. It turns out that Jean Marie doesn’t really like Mark and will not be alone with him. So much so that she rented her own room. This is how we came to spend the entire weekend with Mark and Jean Marie. Jean Marie was fun, but, Mark was a dud. He showed up at the club about a month ago with a girl named Marilee and they have been hanging around ever since. Both asked for jobs at different times but I turned them down because we had enough help and it was slow season. The truth is I don’t trust either of them very much.
As time goes by I find that hiring help has gained a new dimension. I now need to decide if the new person will fit in with the people they will be working with. We are lucky enough to have great help and to bring someone in that won’t get along is out of the question. For example, I had a fellow approach me to work at the club as a roaming singer like Alex. This new fellow has a great voice, but he is a Country and Western singer. I like Country and Western Music very much, but it just doesn’t fit into the Dixieland and Show tunes we now have at the club. Maybe if we had another room or two we might have a Country and Western room, but as it is we are at the limit of musical styles for the size of our place. The new musical genius, John Denver is one of my all time favorite musicians. His song, Leaving On a Jet Plane will always be one of my favorite tunes. But again, Country Western here at Gas Light is wasted. Even Rock and Roll would not fit in. We have had many different entertainers play the third floor and the plan is to continue doing so. But, the best will always be a good “down east” comedian like Rocky Regan, who we are now negotiating with. We had Donald Flyer the impressionist and he was very successful, people loved his topical impressions like those of Richard Nixon, Henry Fonda and Hubert Humphrey. A funny story about Donald, when he worked for us at the Gas Light he would use the second floor ladies room because it had the all around mirrors and he could see what he looked like from every angle. He loved it. For our guests it was a little unnerving. I would be walking down the hallway from the third floor to the first floor and as I walked along the corridor on the second floor, it was eerie to hear Richard Nixon booming from the ladies room, having an argument with Henry Fonda and Hubert Humphrey. People loved Donald. We did have one that didn’t pass the Boo Hiss rule. Paul Donavan was an Irishman from Belfast. Paul played the Nose Flute and the audience didn’t let him stay a full minute. I always thought it was the nose flute, not the act. Paul would sort of hum while he strummed his nose.
We had David Harper for a week and he was great as a Mentalist. David could figure out what people were holding up every time. I know he couldn’t see through his blind fold because I was asked to ascertain his ability to see through the blindfold several times during his run. He would put half dollars on his eyes then a tape that stuck to his eyebrows and cheeks every time. Next he put a thick velvet blindfold across his face that, in itself was enough to block his sight. I can swear he was blind, but he somehow never missed guessing what the object was. I know they say it was a code from the spotter to David, but none of us could figure the code out. His biggest draw was the change in your pocket his guess was right on and surprised many people. The only drawback of his act was people thought he was a real clairvoyant and asked him questions about people or things not in the room. He would patiently tell them, it had to be in this room right now or he couldn’t see it. We also had several magicians, but the stage was much too small and much to close to the audience. Although some magicians are great at the close quarter’s magic, we were not lucky enough to find one. The magicians that did hand and card tricks worked out ok. Unfortunately we never had a great magician work the club.
Chapter Twenty One
An exciting and jumping operation like we had naturally attracted all sorts of help, good and bad. Two would-be employees who never made it were Mark and Ginger. Mark was a good looking twenty five year old who thought he was another Gods gift to women. His friend Ginger was a red headed bomb shell who jumped into my bed the first night and kept saying “My kids will love calling you daddy.” The sex was mediocre and the conversation was completely off putting. I don’t think she ever exercised. Her body was pretty until you touched her. She had absolutely no muscle tone. If you grabbed her arm your fingers closed almost completely. I never realized how un-sexy that could be. If you weren’t touching a bone the skin kept going in. Being who I was at where I was in my life, the last thing I wanted was a girl friend with kids and one who didn’t exercise at all. Yet on she prattled. I found my self thinking “What the hell am I doing here”? This girl was the last person I wanted to be in bed with and thank God I remembered to wear a condom. Sometimes the chase could turn and bite you in the ass. God, I hope this doesn’t mean I’m growing up, it’s too early. Thirty days later, having not seen her since that night, Ginger showed up at the club looking for Robert and told him; “I’m pregnant by Angelo and want to sue him but I thought I would talk to you first.” Thinking about what she had just said and knowing what was going on at the club Robert gave her a couple of hundred dollars to get rid of her and she was satisfied. When Robert told me what she did I was furious and decided to keep her out of the club. Later During a conversation with Mark I found out that Ginger was actually pregnant long before she went out with me. It didn’t take much to keep her away from the club. A jail term for blackmail can make you nervous. Blackmail is illegal in most states, and we certainly had our share of law enforcement people as guests. I made sure Mark let her know how displeased I was. The list of people never coming in again is growing. “Mark, when you get a chance to talk to Ginger, let her know if she shows up here I will throw her out.” “Really Angy, what did she do?” “She got me in bed and then told Angy she was pregnant by me. I know for sure I used protection. Robert didn’t know that and gave her money.” “I’m sorry to hear that, I know you couldn’t be the father as she found out she was pregnant about three weeks before we came in here the first time. She was really upset by it.” “So, you know for sure. Thanks remind her of that and tell her I will gladly take her to court if she shows up here ever again.” “No problem.” That ended the Ginger problem. She never did come back. To tell the truth I think I was sorry she didn’t, the more I thought about what she did the more angry I got. If I were not good friends with Robert and he didn’t know me as well as he did he might have fired me over the incident, as it was I was insulted that he didn’t consult me before he did something like give here money. Robert’s attitude was, the girl was a whore and two hundred was cheap to get rid of her. Generally, Robert and I were pretty much in tune. If he said something to an employee he would let me know right away. And, any new rules or regulations I set up would have been run by him first. From the beginning it was agreed that as the manager, I was the one to introduce new club policies and regulations, if any were needed. When I first introduced the Players Club, manual, as our manual, I spoke with the waitresses first and after some time kicking it back and forth I decided it was a mistake for us. Player’s rules and regulations were designed for operations run from a distance. No one on premise had the final say about anything. In fact, sometimes a decision was made, not based on what was best for the current club, but for the chain as a whole. Policies like that had no place in our operation. Robert or I were around twenty four hours a day, three hundred sixty five days a year. A final decision was a question away from being decided. In our situation it was more important to be able to change a rule instantly to accommodate any given new situation. The rule that we should have had implemented from the first day we could not. That rule was dating employees. Both of us, Robert and I were guilty of this and have broken the rule many times the first few years alone.
Early in our relationship Robert decided that if this club was going to succeed, it needed a single person running it. In the end that task fell to me. Robert still had the meat company to run and it required all his attention. The club is a totally different type of operation and required a different approach. The live in guy around twenty four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a year is the only type of management that will succeed in the club. Over the last few years I have tried several different approaches, mostly variations of me. From the hard-ass to the marshmallow and the extremes don’t work at all. Every situation is different and the manager has to be able to evaluate the current problem and come up with a solution that fits today. I think our current management works fine, but I may be prejudiced, since I’m it. I try to listen to feed back and keep an open mind, even when I know they’re full of B.S. I never said I’m great; I’m actually a work in progress.
Chapter Twenty Two
Alex has become the hero of the dining room. We’ve scheduled the piano player to come up between sets and we’ve put in a microphone for Alex to use. Now, with the small piano in the corner and the single spotlight, Alex has his stage and a microphone. The people love him, they keep tipping him. His singing is so good he also does several songs on the first floor weekends. I’ve hired a bartender to work the dining room for weekends so Alex can roam free singing anywhere and he does. I still trick him by paying customers to give him a tip to sing but everyone loves him, and he does great in the tip department on his own as well. One night a customer, Mr. Brakeman, played a mean trick on Alex and D’Aldo D’Angelo the famous Metropolitan Opera Singer. Actually, it was not really a mean trick against Alex, but Alex would never have let it happen if he knew what was gong on. D’Aldo D’Angelo was in town at the Boston Symphony Hall singing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Brakeman, a friend of D’Aldo’s, invited him over, to the Gas Light Club, after the performance, at the Boston Symphony Hall, to hear the Dixie Land band and secretly hear Alex. He told Carl, our band leader, that D’Aldo D’Angelo was in the house and that he, D’Aldo would be willing to sing for our customers if the piano player would accompany him. With this set up D’Aldo sang Mario Lanza’s song Mala Femmina, and he sang it like an angel. Every one loved him. Everyone wanted him to sing more but, Mr. Brakeman told the audience that having sung at the Symphony Hall earlier tonight D’Aldo would strain his voice if he sang any more. But, Brakeman was not finished yet. He went upstairs to Alex and gave Alex a fifty dollar bill to sing on the first floor and of course he had him sing Mala Femmina. Well the two rooms were isolated enough that no one on the second floor heard D’Aldo sing earlier. So Alex went down not knowing D’Aldo D’Angelo was there and his piano player accompanied him. At first the customers were a little shocked but soon everyone fell absolutely quiet. When Alex finished they began clapping and shouting Bravo for Alex. D’Aldo shouted “Bravo” loudest of all. When the room quieted down a bit, D’Aldo got up and shook Alex’s hand and put his arm around Alex’s shoulder. The room exploded into a standing ovation for both men. I later learned that D’Aldo invited Alex to sing with him at the Boston Symphony Hall the next night if I would let him off work. Alex had a fear of singing anywhere but in a “Gin Mill” as he called us and declined D’Aldo’s wonderful offer. Had I known I would have dragged Alex over to the Symphony Hall myself and stood behind him making sure he sang. Alex’s voice was incredible and if his personality was just a little different he would have been a famous world renowned tenor. Both, D’Aldo’s gracious invitation and Alex’s beautiful voice and behavior won the hearts of everyone there that night. Years later I invested a few thousand dollars buying several hours at a local recording studio to record Alex. He showed up so drunk he couldn’t sing a note. Sadly we did not get a single word recorded. This is the same guy who, no matter how late we were out on a Saturday night, would arrive early to sing in his Greek Orthodox Church in Watertown MA for the 7:00 AM Mass. He had been donating his singing every Sunday for the last 30 years. I found this out at his funeral years later. I truly loved Alex, a real friend; I would gladly have taken a bullet for him anytime. He felt the same about me. Many times over the years Alex stepped in front of me and stopped me getting a beating, at the hands of some wandering criminal. I have seen him take on six rather large thugs’ intent on doing him serious injury. He would dispatch them, like a magician, with a few waves of his arms and never raise a sweat. When he sang to an audience, the angel in him would reach out and touch the hearts of everybody listening to his voice. It was impossible not to be moved by his singing, he put so much of his heart into every song. Alex was my friend, guardian Angel and favorite singer. I will miss him always.
Chapter Twenty Three
Even friends can become a problem in business, when they want to be. Right after we first opened, a high school friend, Karl Borski came in to see me. He had a problem. . I knew he had a motorcycle shop in Saugus, a town north of Boston, and he dealt with very tough customers all the time. A real problem fellow came to see him and somehow got it in his head my friend owed him something. The fellow was one of these heavy set bouncer types that didn’t have an ounce of fat on him. When he showed up at my friend’s business on his Harley he wanted it fixed. The problem had to do with the drive chain. Well, Karl had no intention of fixing it for free so he removed the chain and stopped. It took several hours to do this and apparently it would take longer to replace it. When this thug showed up to see his bike a week later, Karl told him he would pay in advance or Karl would not fix the bike. The thug went back to his car and got a sawed off cue stick. (In this man’s hands the cue stick was as dangerous as any gun). He came back to rearrange Karl’s head but when he got back in the shop Karl was holding a thirty eight long barrel pistol. Karl made it clear he would not back down and the thug lost his mind. He raised the cue stick and attacked. Karl shot him in the chest and it took all six bullets to stop this guy. Well the Police took a dim view of all this and arrested Karl, saying he intended to kill this man, criminal or not. During his trial Karl came to work for me as assistant manager and all around number two. His pay was One Hundred a week clear and he worked five days a week. Karl is a very smart guy and he quickly saw many opportunities for him to make serious money. Our friendship not-with-standing He had no trouble stealing from me, even though we had been friends for years. When Karl worked for me I trusted him to be my eyes and ears on the floor during the day because I had to work the floor at night. He stayed with me a year and I later heard he had bragged to a mutual friend that he had saved over $10,000.00 in cash that year. Now, having earned five thousand cash from me this was a little difficult. What he was doing was signing in 40 cases of liquor at a delivery, when the actual delivery only had 30 cases. He, the salesman, and delivery men split the 10 case differences; when the salesman sold it the second time to another bar. His duplicity must have cost us over $40,000.00 during the year he was there. Karl is one of those people who can look you in the eye while he is stabbing you in the back. Karl is truly without a conscience. He approached me years later and attempted to sell me stolen goods, like my liquor, this was stolen from someone else who trusted Karl. I declined enough is enough? Karl made me realize, no matter how smart someone is if they’re crooked, they will not be able to deal honestly. Their personality, like Karl’s, wouldn’t allow them to act honorably.
While I was worrying about my old friend stealing, an old problem raised its ugly head again. Mr. Stephen Crivitz, the gambler from a while back. Mr. Crivitz walked in the door as calm as you please. Luckily, I happened to be at the first floor bar at the time and saw him right away. I told the bartender to call the police right away, and walked to the front door. When Mr. Crivitz saw me coming he stood still. As I approached him I said; “Mr. Crivitz, please turn around and leave, the police have already been called.” “You asshole, what’s the matter can’t handle me yourself?” “You must have liked jail, cause, your going back.” Before I could do or say anything else, Alex went around me and reached for Mr. Crivitz. I reached out to Alex and said; “Don’t touch him yet. If he doesn’t leave we have every right to damage him thoroughly, but let’s follow the law.” “Fuck you, if either of you touch me I will shoot you dead.” “Mr. Crivitz, now that you’ve informed us you have a gun, I promise you, if you start moving as if to pull the gun Alex and I will kill you right here.” “You are breaking the law by being in this building, I’ve already called the police, when they arrive you will be arrested.” “For what I haven’t done anything yet.” “Entering this building was a crime you were warned about six months ago. Add to that the threat to shoot us dead and you are looking at several years in jail.”
At that moment the police opened the door behind Mr. Crivitz. “Hi Frank, this is Mr. Crivitz, he has been barred legally by your officers six months ago. He spent the last six months in jail for resisting arrest and gambling. He’s returned, this time I think a few years in Walpole will teach him a lesson or harden him enough for us to kill him the next time he shows up.” “I think your right Angy, Mr. Crivitz you are under arrest for ignoring a legally executed TRO, put your hands behind your back.” “Frank, Mr. Crivitz may be armed, he threatened Alex and I with being shot to death if we touched him.” “Mr. Crivitz do you have a gun?” “They threatened me first.” Before saying anything else Frank grabbed Mr. Crivitz with a “come along device” which would crush his wrist if he resisted. Frank forced him to the floor, where he searched him and found a small caliber pistol in his front pocket. Mr. Crivitz was now forced over so he was facing down on the floor. Frank then knelt on Crivitz’s back and forced his arms around behind him. Now holding Crivitz’s hands behind his back, Frank expertly cuffed him. Standing up, Frank pulled Crivitz to his feet and told him he was under arrest. All the while he was being cuffed; Crivitz yelped in pain and threatened law suits. “Need any help Frank?” We asked, while Frank was cuffing him, but it was obvious he had everything under control. “Thanks Angy no, Mr. Crivitz and I have a date with a judge. The gun in his pocket changes everything for our friend. He’ll do more than a few years in Walpole for this and if he comes back after he gets out, you will be justified to shoot him on sight.” “Thanks Frank, I will be happy to sign anything you need me to sign. Alex and I are witnesses to the resistance at being arrested so, that’s another charge.” “Well, gentlemen, I can’t say it’s been a pleasure, but it is always fun. Angy, I’ll let you know what I need later on.” “Ok Frank.” As Frank turned around the door burst open behind him and several cops stood there. “Sorry Sergeant, we just got the call.” “Ok, Take this slime away, book him for possession of a weapon, making threats and trespassing in a licensed establishment. I’m coming right out with you.” At that they all turned around leading Crivitz away and the sergeant following behind. A short while later, when they were off duty the boys came back and we hoisted a few for old times. It’s always a pleasure to deal with the good men and women of the Boston Police Department.
Chapter Twenty Four One of our customers, a local attorney, told us about a great cook who was out of jail on bail and needed a job. Frankie Shaheen, who is about six foot three inches tall and thin, about one hundred seventy pounds he smiles a lot and tries to please. But, he has what Shakespeare called “a lean and hungry look.” After being here a week Frankie bragged to the waitresses that he was in jail for murdering his wife. As he got to know the place a little better he became belligerent and had a problem taking orders from anyone. In one of his bragging moods he claimed his first three wives died of food poisoning, but, the last wife died of Blunt Force Trauma, she wouldn’t eat the soup! Strangely enough Frankie is also a concert pianist; he would sometimes sit at the second floor piano and play wonderful music. Bach, Schubert and others; when the mood struck him. The customers liked his playing but he was inconsistent. Some nights he would play for hours and others he would not play at all. Although we appreciated his playing we stood back not encouraging or discouraging him. We had all union musicians at the club and did not want to ruffle feathers or cause a problem. Frankie was working out but, there was something not right about him and you couldn’t miss it. Some times he would be playing the piano and have a look on his face that; scared old ladies and little children.
Apparently Frankie was wooing one of the girls, a new first floor cocktail waitress named Millie Spofford. I guess trying to make her wife number five. One night she asked for a sandwich and he gladly made it for her. Before he could send it down to the first floor a girl from the second floor called him and asked for a sandwich also. Instead of simply making two sandwiches he shouted no at the girl from the second floor and hung up the phone. Then this nit wit cook sent the single sandwich down and he sent it to the second floor with the cocktail waitresses name on it. It was almost as if he were taunting the second floor waitress. Further compounding the problem, the girl from the second floor was my girlfriend Maria at the time, and she didn’t hesitate to let me know how badly she was being treated. Well I was getting kind of angry as I called Frankie from the first floor bar, when he heard what I wanted he hung up the phone telling me the kitchen is closed. Well, this was declaring war. I stormed up the stairs and by the time I got to the fourth floor kitchen I was boiling over. As I entered the room Frankie was over by the dumb waiters drinking a beer. When he saw me he moved quickly to his left away from the dumb waiters and putting a steam table and several counters between us. As he moved I saw his arm reach toward the knife rack. Thinking he had a knife I moved in quickly and just knocked him down. I made sure his hands were empty and then dragged him up with one of his hands behind his back. By this time he’s saying he’s going to sue me for assault as I dragged him out of the building. The next day his lawyer called and said they were making a police report of my attack. However, before he could say another word, I told him his client reached for a knife. I defended myself against his armed client who was out of jail on bail from a weapons assault charge, the lawyer changed his tune. Another cook we never saw or heard from again!
Here I go again, taking over the kitchen. I think sometimes I make things happen because I want the results. I knew that firing Frankie, I would take over the kitchen and here I am again. Frankie deserved to be fired; it was coming for a while. He scared the girls with his mercurial temper. One minute he’s as calm as a gentle rain and the next he’s exploding like a tornado. I guess I never trusted him from the first moment. Well, I enjoy cooking now; it is a pleasure sending a meal down to the dining room that will be appreciated. Our customers have come to expect Prime Steaks and when they get a great meal they make sure the chef gets his compliments. I’m actually more appreciated working the kitchen, but, just because I like it doesn’t mean that’s where I should be all the time. I shudder to think what would happen if the bartenders or even Alex, who I love dearly, were in charge of dealing with our occasional unruly patron. I have put my right arm around a belligerent drunk’s shoulders and walked him out the door before he even had time to react. Once outside, I give them a choice to get hurt or go home. Most choose going home. Some of our customers are wonderful people who can get unruly with their drinks. It doesn’t mean their bad; it usually means they’re having a bad day, something I’m very familiar with. The way I handle them taking them outside, removes the embarrassment of their reacting drunkenly in front of strangers. The friendly pat on the shoulder and the gentle tug of my persuasion doesn’t hurt their egos at all. As I’m putting my arm around their shoulders I am actually hugging them. An action many of our customers and many lonely people all over the world miss very much as they get older. This personal friendly gesture is disarming and very calming at the same time. However, rarely I find a person who emphatically hates being touched and reacts explosively, if he is bigger than me, I will hit him with a police baton squarely on the head, this takes the fight out of him instantly, then the two of us (Always two with big guys) escort him out of the club. As you can see by the last solution, it takes an experienced person to deal with unruly drunks. I must know before I even begin whether to have the club in my hand and a partner standing behind him or a sympathetic smile on my face and a calming hug of his shoulders. Women are entirely different. A calming hug is out of the question most of the time. If you touch a woman in any way without her express permission, it could be a swift knee and a painful result for your efforts. What I do is I stand in front of her with a huge smile on my face and gesture with my arm out that I would like to hold her. She will quickly respond by either moving into your arms or pulling away emphatically, and you have your answer, and can react accordingly. The huge happy smile and friendly attitude coupled with a calm voice works wonders. Just be prepared, one in ten will spit in your face and bite your ear off.
Chapter Twenty Five
The day to day business was good because we had a captive audience; however, nights were another story. After 7 PM we needed to have something going at all times to attract people to our area. After 6 pm there was not a single business open near us. We had a Dixieland Band six nights a week and we had the piano player six nights a week. The Dixieland band played sets, on forty minutes, off twenty minutes, so when they were off, the piano player filled in. Robert, our major investor, was also a draw of sorts. Between his ever present beautiful girl friends, usually one on each floor, and his penchant for buying tables rounds of drinks or picking up their entire tab, after he talked to them. Everyone wanted him to stop by their table, they might drink for free. Also no one ever knew when his girl friends might meet up and start a cat fight. This suspense worked, people liked the combination. Of course this was a mixed blessing! We still needed some real draw at night to fill our day’s business. We found what we needed in an ad for a comedian working at the Rat’s Geller Bar across town in the Bentley College District. I went over there on a Thursday night to see his act. The comedian’s name is Rocky Regan and his act is calculated for the College Crowd. He did college songs and naughty jokes and was a great hit. I waited until he was off and bought him a drink for some conversation. He worked four nights a week four hours a night and got $2,500.00 a week for pay. His contract was over in mid May and he worked in VT from Aug 31 to Oct 15. He was looking for something from the end of May to the end of June and from the end of Oct to the middle of December. He was looking for a total of 14 weeks and though the price was high I thought we could make good money on this Rocky Regan. After talking to Robert We both agreed to try this fellow for one year and see what happens. At this time he can work from Oct 25, to Dec 16. During our discussion about hiring Rocky we also examined the possibility of hiring other types of entertainers when Rocky was not available. We have already examined having other entertainers on the lower floors and we even had to open the third floor for the contest we had earlier in the year, but this was different. We were contemplating opening the third floor on a steady basis. Once we made the decision and went ahead with the contract for Rocky we were committed to him for a year. We still had the Gas Light Players twice a week and the occasional magician or comedian on the first floor, who worked for tips. This entertainment was free, but Rocky was very expensive. The decision was to go ahead with Rocky and we did.
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