I of IV
I was 20-years-old, on spring break. Lounging on Miami-or some Gulf Coast beach was as alien to me as the stars. I had to work. “Peanuts,” the dispatcher at Cambie’s Trucking on Third Avenue and First Street, would hire “helpers” to unload shipments of Del Monte pineapples and peaches—the sickly sweet smell of leaky cans intoxicating, then nauseating— delivered to Long Island warehouses. He operated out of a grey trailer on a greasy, garbage-strewn lot next to the Jewish Press, a bleak windowless, soulless building, formerly a MTA power-generating station that had been built at great cost and never used—its tons of valuable copper winding stripped and sold for pennies on the pound to local junkyards. Cambie’s front office was run by an irascible dwarf and I had no prospects there.
I peered through the plate glass window of Monte’s Venetian Room, a Carroll Street landmark for almost a century. Though across from my house, I’d never eaten there. Monte’s was a favored by the wiseguys, Court Street lawyers and local politicians with names like Meade Esposito. Its waitresses had hair piled high like spaghetti. I’d seen Joey Heatherton—Honey Christiano had carried her shrieking across Carroll Street and tossed her in his backyard pool, her long, dancer’s legs fully exposed. I’d fought furiously for a fistful of coins Dean Martin scattered on Monte’s sidewalk one evening.
Honey wasn’t there. I crossed the street, walked down the tiny alley, hoping he'd have Peanuts put me on as a laborer at $40 a day. I was tall and husky, awkward and rarely without a book. The door was open—nobody would rob Honey—and I walked into the kitchen expecting the usual shouted “Mamone!” which either meant “mama’s boy” or simpleton. His Scandinavian “housekeeper” (At the time Bay Ridge seemed to have more Norwegians than Oslo) did not appear, and no one was playing poker at the kitchen table. Unannounced, I walked into the “parlor.” Honey was sitting next two hardcore guys, “Jerry Lang” (Gennaro Langella) and a hulking, black Irishman named Hugh McIntosh, who, not surprisingly, was nicknamed “Apples,” though I couldn’t imagine who would dare say such a word to his face. Both of them stared coldly at me. These were men—I’d seen it—who would beat you to a pulp or worse for looking or saying the wrong thing.
Honey said, “Way, college boy, what is it!”
“I’m looking for work,” I blurted. “I thought maybe Cambie’s….”
“He’s a college boy,” Honey explained, as if to excuse my stupidity. “Joey Coppola’s son.”
Jerry Lang had once worked “down the docks” with my father at the Black Diamond Lines pier in Red Hook. A bunch of us had moved his furniture from Brooklyn neighborhood to another. (He’s now serving life along with his boss, Carmine “Junior” Persico, whom the tabloids persist in calling “Snake.” More recently, Junior has become Bernie Madoff’s confidante at the federal prison they share in Butner, N.C.)
"You wanna work?” Jerry asked.
“Yeah.”
What I really wanted was to get the fuck out of there.
“Be here tomorrow. 7:00. A.M. Got it?”
“Yeah…Thanks.”
“What are you wating for?”
There it was: A job offer I couldn’t refuse.
Part II http://gowanuscrossing.blogspot.com/2012/03/union-busting-for-mob-part-ii.html)
Part III http://gowanuscrossing.blogspot.com/2012/03/union-busting-for-mob-part-iii.html)
Part IV http://gowanuscrossing.blogspot.com/2012/03/union-busting-for-mob-conclusion.html
I was 20-years-old, on spring break. Lounging on Miami-or some Gulf Coast beach was as alien to me as the stars. I had to work. “Peanuts,” the dispatcher at Cambie’s Trucking on Third Avenue and First Street, would hire “helpers” to unload shipments of Del Monte pineapples and peaches—the sickly sweet smell of leaky cans intoxicating, then nauseating— delivered to Long Island warehouses. He operated out of a grey trailer on a greasy, garbage-strewn lot next to the Jewish Press, a bleak windowless, soulless building, formerly a MTA power-generating station that had been built at great cost and never used—its tons of valuable copper winding stripped and sold for pennies on the pound to local junkyards. Cambie’s front office was run by an irascible dwarf and I had no prospects there.
I peered through the plate glass window of Monte’s Venetian Room, a Carroll Street landmark for almost a century. Though across from my house, I’d never eaten there. Monte’s was a favored by the wiseguys, Court Street lawyers and local politicians with names like Meade Esposito. Its waitresses had hair piled high like spaghetti. I’d seen Joey Heatherton—Honey Christiano had carried her shrieking across Carroll Street and tossed her in his backyard pool, her long, dancer’s legs fully exposed. I’d fought furiously for a fistful of coins Dean Martin scattered on Monte’s sidewalk one evening.
Honey wasn’t there. I crossed the street, walked down the tiny alley, hoping he'd have Peanuts put me on as a laborer at $40 a day. I was tall and husky, awkward and rarely without a book. The door was open—nobody would rob Honey—and I walked into the kitchen expecting the usual shouted “Mamone!” which either meant “mama’s boy” or simpleton. His Scandinavian “housekeeper” (At the time Bay Ridge seemed to have more Norwegians than Oslo) did not appear, and no one was playing poker at the kitchen table. Unannounced, I walked into the “parlor.” Honey was sitting next two hardcore guys, “Jerry Lang” (Gennaro Langella) and a hulking, black Irishman named Hugh McIntosh, who, not surprisingly, was nicknamed “Apples,” though I couldn’t imagine who would dare say such a word to his face. Both of them stared coldly at me. These were men—I’d seen it—who would beat you to a pulp or worse for looking or saying the wrong thing.
Honey said, “Way, college boy, what is it!”
“I’m looking for work,” I blurted. “I thought maybe Cambie’s….”
“He’s a college boy,” Honey explained, as if to excuse my stupidity. “Joey Coppola’s son.”
Jerry Lang had once worked “down the docks” with my father at the Black Diamond Lines pier in Red Hook. A bunch of us had moved his furniture from Brooklyn neighborhood to another. (He’s now serving life along with his boss, Carmine “Junior” Persico, whom the tabloids persist in calling “Snake.” More recently, Junior has become Bernie Madoff’s confidante at the federal prison they share in Butner, N.C.)
"You wanna work?” Jerry asked.
“Yeah.”
What I really wanted was to get the fuck out of there.
“Be here tomorrow. 7:00. A.M. Got it?”
“Yeah…Thanks.”
“What are you wating for?”
There it was: A job offer I couldn’t refuse.
Part II http://gowanuscrossing.blogspot.com/2012/03/union-busting-for-mob-part-ii.html)
Part III http://gowanuscrossing.blogspot.com/2012/03/union-busting-for-mob-part-iii.html)
Part IV http://gowanuscrossing.blogspot.com/2012/03/union-busting-for-mob-conclusion.html
How come you don't mention Ernie as source for some of you writing information
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