Posted on 02/20/2019 7:15:03 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
“Mayor Tommy D’Alessandro II,”
Kin to Pelosi Galore.
Forgot to mention that Nancy is his sister. She was born on the same street as my mother, but on the Italian ‘hood side.
were they mafia?
Yes; the shared fate of many eastern cities...
Could you imagine that? How does a city ever recover from BOTH of those events?
Good piece. You ought to gather up the material and write a 400-page book and the then-and-now theme.
Baltimore’s Little Italy did not have The Mafia. It did know how to protect itself.
I would like to read such a book. Write it, Grinning.
I’ll even give you working title: ‘The Rise and Fall of Modern-Day Troy (Baltimore)’. Lay out the entire first chapter about the city from 1920s boom-period....through the WW II era, and up to 1967. I might even spend a whole chapter on 1969, the Orioles win-situation, and the World Series.
Re the Pelosi family. Don’t know specifically that they were Mob or mob connected because the Baltimore Mafia was very low-keyed in its criminal activities - mainly prostitution on the Block, possibly loan-sharking and very likely gambling, esp. with Pimlico Racetrack not far away.
However, an honest labor union leader (Laborers International Union of North America - LIUNA) in Baltimore was assassinated, two bullets in the back or back of his head and stuffed in a car trunk, just as Mob-Vegas leader Alan Dorfman was in Chicago - he was skimming gambling proceeds from the casinos (I worked on a federal Organized Crime (RICO) Task Force in which both of these incidents were mentioned).
There is a good chance that I went swimming with the “mob” bosses daughter back in the 60’s (my friend whispered that to me when we met her - she was very nice). However, my family business had a local Baltimore Italian gentleman working for us and he said that everyone knew who the Mob people were but didn’t talk much about it. I would say that is was generally true, esp. for the older generation.
In my parent’s general political district, everyone knew who the open Democrat machine leader was (don’t know if he was crooked or just a damned good organizer) but I once saw him at his weekly softball game in Druid Hill Park (later the dumping ground for drug dealers, not far from the once great Baltimore Zoo).
There was at least one black political and reputed crime organization led by Little Willy Adams (owned a liquor store on the westside that got firebombed every one in a while. I was at the Un. of Md. Dental School for an appointment and was watching TV along with an elderly black woman, and when something was mentioned about crime in Baltimore, I just said something to the effect that it sounded like Little Willy’s territory. She laughed out loud and gave me a big grin. She knew!
However, Baltimore avoided the bloody crime family wars of NY City, Philadelphia, Rhode Island, Chicago, St. Louis, etc. and the apparently protected Little Italy from “trouble” and “trouble” feared them big time.
My father and I would go down to the “harbor” and the Port/Bethlehem steel plants sparrows Point/Curtis Bay areas to watch the ships come in and unload their cargo. In the early 1950’s, the Baltimore Sun had a Sunday magazine section and I still have the one on the Port because I’m sure I write a little story about it in elementary school.
It was a bustling place with hard workers and good jobs. Unfortunately foreign steel came in at very cheap prices and devastated the mills (and some of the steel unions refused, at least elsewhere, to adjust their pay scales to the new reality, thus losing much of the work they had. Trump has helped to rejuvenate the steel industry so I hope that Baltimore got some of the action. They need the jobs.
#27 & 29. I just don’t have the time to write a book. However, I do long commentaries here at FR so much of what I have just written has been posted before.
There is a book coming out in April in which I played a major part for the research and directional guidance of several chapters concerning the POW/MIA issues of the Vietnam war, and I recently finished a major piece for a Vietnam history magazine that came out last Fall.
Right now I have to write a chapter for that same organization’s “Yellow Cover Yearbooks” on the Vietnam War so my time is really taken up until the end of Spring. Plus my wife will kill me if I write another book or even part of one since my office and living room look like the File Rooms of an archives (Lots of material scattered in many boxes since I worked on the book about John Kerry and the Swiftboat Veterans back in 2004. Had lots of good material we used over the years in other books and publications so I couldn’t put it away - It’s nice to be liked, if only for my files but my wife doesn’t appreciate it. Have to keep the matches away from her).
Some of the best writing on Baltimore was by Roger Simon(s), a Balto Sun columnist who really covered the “street” and if I remember correctly, was the inspiration and/or writer for the show “Homicide: Life on the Streets” which starred Yaphet Kotto (who lived in Baltimore)etc.
Also, the author of the book used in “The Wire” was from Baltimore. Might have been Simons too.
Just for fun, if you have seen the movie “Hairspray” about 1960’s teenagers trying to integrate a local tv station’s daily dance show, it was based on some real incidents. I was on the Buddy Dean Show twice, and actually got to dance with the beautiful and talented Linda Scott (”I’ve Told Every Little Star”, “Don’t Bet Money Honey”, etc.)for about 7 seconds.
Life was good in those days.
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