The My Guy Club: The Chicago Machine, Mob. Teamsters and the Guv!

By Daniel Stefanski

Follow the Squirrel through the tough gang infested Bungalow Belt neighborhoods of Chicago as a member of the Gaylords street gang. His appointment as a Precinct Captain in the legendary Mayor Richard J. Daley Cook County Regular Democratic Organization known as “The Machine” .His interactions while employed by the City of Chicago with coworkers that were members and associates of the Chicago Crime Syndicate in the infamous Department of Streets and Sanitation.

His rise as a rank and file truck driver in The International Brotherhood of Teamsters to the position of Principal Officer/ Secretary Treasurer of the 5000 member I.B.T Local Union 726.While as the Principal Officer his experiences with Organized Crime figures and numerous powerful politicians.

His support in the election of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters General Ron “The Reformer” Carey. Thereafter, the son of the legendary I.B.T. General President James R. Hoffa Sr., I.B.T. General President James P. Hoffa Jr.

Explore his relationship with his boyhood friend Governor Rod Blagojevich and his involvement in Rod’s election to the Illinois General Assembly, U.S. Congress and to Governorship of The State of Illinois.

Blagojevich was eventually indicted on 24 counts by the Federal Government. The main count was the Quid Pro Quo charge that he had requested something of value in return for an appointment to the vacant U.S. Senatorial seat of Barack Obama upon his election as the 44th President of The United States. He was acquitted on all counts except for one. He was then quickly re- indicted on 20 counts and was convicted on 17 counts.

After an appeal whereas, several charges were overturned he did not receive a reduction in his 14 year sentence. Eventually, he received after serving over 7 years of his sentence a long overdue pardon from President Donald Trump.

“I believe that Rod received a raw deal in his conviction and severe sentencing for what was and has been considered the norm of “Political Horse Trading.” Even though it was never proven that he took a dime the jury convicted him for what was perceived to be unethical practices.

In Memoriam of The Almighty Gaylord Brothers who were slain by rival gang members as a result of gang violence:

Rest in Peace Almighty Gaylord Brothers

Hillbilly

Duke

Lil Capp

Harpo

Tessie

The Almighty Gaylord Creed

When I Die Bury Me Deep With A 100 Latin Kings At My Feet, Lay A Shotgun Across My Chest, And Tell My Brother Gaylords I Did My Best!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781645317159

Book preview

1

My Roots

There laid his body, motionless on the floor of the plant. The odor of burnt flesh filled the air and alerted his coworkers that something was awry. Those who discovered him minutes later found that their efforts to try and save his life were to no avail. A phone call to the emergency line for an ambulance and a two-minute ride to Norwegian American Hospital on the City of Chicago’s west side was not enough to save his life. Edwin was pronounced dead upon arrival, and his soon-to-be widowed wife, Lorraine, would be notified only minutes later.

Edwin’s brother, Roman, called and woke Lorraine out of bed around 3:00 a.m. to let her know that Edwin had experienced an industrial accident at the plant. She answered the phone, and Roman somberly explained to her that Edwin was at the hospital and the news was not good.

Lorraine felt a lump in her throat and had a hard time responding. Is he okay? she asked, bewildered from just being awakened.

All I can tell you is my brother, Teddy, is coming to pick you up and take you down to the hospital.

Lorraine immediately called her mother-in-law who lived downstairs to watch her son, Edwin, and to alert her that Edwin, her husband, and the son of Sophie, had an accident at the plant, and she was on her way to the hospital.

As Roman hung up the phone, he was very distraught and could only mutter the words that his kid brother was gone.

Lorraine went to her son Edwin’s room to wake him so that he could wait downstairs with his babcia, Sophie, in her apartment. Then Lorraine went to the hospital to be at her husband’s side. Sophie was as confused as Lorraine about his welfare, and all that was keeping her together was her adrenaline to prepare for what was in store when she arrived at the hospital. When her brother-in-law Ted arrived, he had no answers for her when she questioned him about what had happened at the plant.

As Teddy drove Lorraine to the hospital, she began to weep, and Teddy offered his arm around her and a hug to comfort her. She asked if maybe this was all a mistake and Edwin would recover from the mishap. Teddy just continued to drive, knowing that Lorraine was now a widow because his brother, Roman, had told him that there was no hope only minutes before he had picked up Lorraine.

When Lorraine arrived at Norwegian American Hospital, she was met there by her brother, Steve, and her sister, Emilie, who were contacted by Lorraine’s mother, Rose.

As time went by, more family members arrived to witness the loss of thirty-one-year-old Edwin and his twenty-six-year-old widowed wife, Lorraine. Days later, Edwin was waked at the Malec Funeral Home on Ashland Avenue only two blocks away from the family home. On June 24, 1957, a mass was held at Holy Trinity Church in the heart of the Polish community near the intersection of Division, Milwaukee, and Ashland Avenue on the northside of the City of Chicago.

It was at this church where Edwin was baptized and had made his Holy Communion, Confirmation, and married Lorraine just six years prior to his death. As the funeral mass ended, family, neighbors, and friends loaded up their cars and proceeded in a ritual procession past the 853 North Hermitage home where Edwin was born and lived with his wife and son. Then they proceeded down Milwaukee Avenue to Saint Adalbert’s cemetery on Chicago’s northwest side. As the procession passed the house, Lorraine thought about all the happy times and memories that she had about Edwin. This was her home where her first son was born and soon to be the home of their second child born some several months later named Daniel.

All of Edwin’s family lived in the tidy flat, his parents, and the families of his brother, Ted, and sister, Dolores. It was not uncommon at the time in the 1950s to have all of the siblings and their families living in the same complex or apartment building.

Second and third generations of European enclaves would be inhabited by family from the same countries and towns. This was the Chicago way, this network of family and friends within a four-block area was their universe. They learned to rely upon their neighbors, neighbor helping neighbor, family helping family. They learned to rely upon them for safety, security and, most importantly, survival.

As the hearse and family car proceeded past Edwin’s house and then past the movie theater (located at Division and Ashland Avenue where Lorraine had worked the candy counter and met Edwin), Lorraine remembered how Edwin yelled, Hey! from behind as she strolled down the street seven years earlier.

Hey, I got a name, she responded.

Edwin knew her name was Lorraine, but he had to stroke his ego and bravado by yelling, Hey!

One block away from the movie theater, they passed the old dance hall, Zakopone, where Lorraine and Edwin would dance away the night when they were young and courting. Back in the 1950s, Division Street and Milwaukee Avenue was filled with nightlife. In those days, Milwaukee Avenue was known as Polish Broadway, because from one end of the City of Chicago to the other, it was inhabited by Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks.

On the east side of Milwaukee Avenue, it started with the Polish church, St. John Cantouis, and at the end of the city, Saint Adalbert’s Polish Cemetery with the White Eagle Polish restaurant and banquet hall across the street. It was at Saint Adalbert’s that Edwin would be laid to rest next to his father in the family plot who had died just several years earlier.

After Edwin’s burial, it was Lorraine who had to cope with life and face the challenges as a widow with her son, Edwin, and a child to be born several months down the line. Lorraine had just lost her youngest brother, Eddie, several years earlier as well as her father, Steve, back in Yugoslavia. In addition, she had endured several miscarriages in the past three years, so death was all around her. She was very close to her brother, Eddie, who was a provider for the family back in the lean times.

Eddie was a hustler. He’d shine shoes, sell newspapers on the corners, and catch stray chickens from the slaughterhouse less than a block from their home. The family never went hungry because of Eddies efforts. She would reminisce about how he hustled enough money for his two sisters to go to the show while he and her other two brothers, Steve and Bill, would go off and get into mischief. They would have to meet before they all went home. Lorraine and her sister, Emily, would have to tell their brothers what the movie was about in case their father or mother asked them about it.

Everyone in the family was worried that she would experience another miscarriage because of the death of her husband. She was six months pregnant with her unborn baby when Edwin passed on, so there was a lot of concern about the birth of her second child.

Lorraine had always endured a rough life. Her parents were divorced and her father had moved back to Yugoslavia. By now, Lorraine was pretty acclimated to hardship and grief. Growing up having very little was what she had been accustomed to. Years later, she would share with me that my grandmother would take all the kids down to the beach, and they would have tomato on bread sandwiches with a slice of cheese because that is all they could afford. She never complained about what she did not have but embraced everything life had to offer.

2

Born into Conflict

On September 26, 1957, just three months after her husband, had passed away, Lorraine gave birth to another son named Daniel at the same hospital, Norwegian American, where her husband had been pronounced dead only several months earlier. The birth was going to be no more simpler, because Daniel was to be born of a Cesarean Section to save his and her life. The umbilical cord had entangled around his neck, and in order to deliver him safely, the doctors had determined they would have to perform a C-Section. Because I was a blue baby.

Lorraine had been married to Edwin for almost seven years. The marriage had its ups and downs, like most do. Unfortunately, most of them were down. Edwin was a hard worker and good earner who held down two jobs. He worked at the Kraft Foods processing plant located at Grand and Sacramento, only blocks from his house in Humboldt Park, on the night shift, and drove a liquor truck for the Korshak Family during the week and on weekends.

The Korshaks, Stanley and Marshall, were very powerful in the City of Chicago. Marshall was the city treasurer back in the day and was a powerful westside ward block Democrat. Edwin had a tough reputation and was known to hang out with Tony Jaw Jawrowski and Tony Moskal, who both had done time in federal prison, as well as the legendary burglar brothers known as Pops and Peanuts Panscko. On the corner intersection of Chicago and Ashland Avenue, they were known as the Zoot Suit Boys. Mostly all of the group was of Polish descent, but they were allied with the Italians just south and east of their neighborhood. Edwin had a tough reputation in the neighborhood and wouldn’t back down no matter how big or bad his opponent’s reputation; he was always ready to fight.

Lorraine remembered one time at a wedding, Edwin was all decked out in a suit and a fedora hat, and a fella said, Look at that pollock!

Edwin knocked the guy out with one punch. Edwin loved to brawl and he loved to drink liquor too. The drinking had really affected their marriage, and Lorraine had threatened to leave numerous times if it didn’t stop. Edwin had stopped six months prior to his accidental death, and their marriage had become joyous and loving once again.

All the recent happiness turned to grief the day the Lord took Edwin’s life that summer night in 1957. His death left Lorraine with two sons to care for all by herself. Family members contributed and helped as much as they could, but none could replace the loss of Edwin’s life. Lorraine had received a mere $10,000 for Edwin’s accidental death. It was concluded after an investigation that an exhaust fan had short-circuited while Edwin was cleaning an area of the plant which caused him to be electrocuted. Lorraine took the $10,000 and bought a Chicago-style redbrick bungalow in the near northwest side of Chicago area known as Belmont/Cragin.

The home that she purchased was nestled along with many other identical Chicago brick bungalows. The homes were constructed like fortresses of brick and had fireplaces with large formal dining rooms and huge front rooms where you would entertain guests and family members.

The Bungalow Belts, as they were referred to, are located on the far northwest and southwest sides of the city and are defined by the parish boundaries or township names. Many times, a person only had to mention the Catholic Parish they attended school or worshipped, and a person could identify the vicinity of the city in which you resided. Same went for a park, school intersection, or the name of a township. Chicago is structured under a grid system whereas you have south, north, east, and west streets that define the grid every four blocks, with a main street every four blocks or secondary main, every four blocks which makes the city easy to navigate.

Lorraine would send her two sons to Saint Genevieve grammar school only two blocks from their home. Back in the early 1960s, the Catholic schools would have 90 percent of the classes being taught by nuns from the sect of the church that they belonged and had four priests to serve the parishioners at mass. Lorraine went to work full-time while her eldest son, Edwin, was enrolled in the school, and Daniel, her youngest, went to Galewood school several blocks from their home until he became old enough to attend first grade.

Edwin would go to a friend’s house after school, and Lorraine would pick both of them up after her shift at the construction company where she worked in the payroll section each day. It was a grind, but Lorraine was a strong-willed woman and was bound and determined to make it through all the recent deaths of loved ones and life’s setbacks.

When I entered into grammar school, I knew that I was in a different situation than most of the children in the class. Everyone else had a mother and a father, except for me. I would always remember when at six years old, I would see my friends playing catch with their fathers in the alley or the street while I had no dad to play catch with. Even more difficult was to hear the stories about the summer vacations that my friends would go on while my mother could not afford for us to go anywhere. I accepted my situation and just moved on. I learned you had to play the cards you were dealt at that time and place and to live with it.

I started first grade at Saint Genevieve in 1963, and my first nun’s name was Sister Charlotte Anne. She was young, vibrant, and the aunt of one of my classmates, Joe Golly, who has been my friend for life. Sister Charlotte Anne could be as nice as could be, but she still had the furor of an old-time nun that could dish out corporal punishment like the rest of them.

One day, Sister Charlotte Anne asked my mother to come to the school while class was in session that morning. I didn’t know what it was about but found out pretty quick that it had to do with my desk being untidy. My mother slapped me in the face in front of the whole class, and I was completely embarrassed. My head was spinning and pounding profusely from the blood rushing to my head. In those days, corporal punishment was an accepted practice from your parents and the clergy. If a nun or a priest gave you a kick in the ass, you never went home and told! Because as far as your parents were concerned, you must have done something wrong.

If you objected and told them it wasn’t fair, you received another beating for being an embarrassment to the family and challenged God because you must have done something wrong! So you never ever went home and complained about how you were treated by the nuns and priests at school. Needless to say, I kept that desk as clean as could be for the rest of my stay at Saint Genevieve for eight years. The same went with respect to your neighbors on the block where you lived—if you disrespected the old man with the meticulous lawn and stepped on it, and he came out to kick you in the ass, you did not go home to tell; otherwise, you received another one for good measure.

My mother tried to keep our lives as normal as possible. We had a bike, baseball glove, and a dog, but no father. It was very difficult when my friends asked, What happened to your father? I would always respond that he had died because that is all I really knew and was told. Family friends and neighbors would help out and offered to take us places to fill the void of the loss of my father. In those days, everyone knew their neighbors on the block, and you could leave your bike or toys out all night on the front lawn, and they would be safe. Everything back in the ’60s was pretty much more structured then.

As time went by, my mom couldn’t afford our house any longer, and we sold it and moved to a rented apartment several blocks west of the house. It was devastating and an awful experience for me to leave my childhood home and all my friends on the block where I grew up. We moved to a rented apartment, and I thought we were a million miles away but soon found out it was a five-minute bike ride away. I was in the fifth grade when we moved, and Mom had taken a second job several nights a week and on the weekends to make ends meet. After school when we arrived home, we would have to call my mom to let her know that we were safe and were only allowed to go on our block and the park adjacent to our block after school. At night, we would have to be home to call her at work (before the streetlights went on) at her nighttime second job at the restaurant.

My brother, Eddie, upon entering his sophomore year in high school, took a job at a local pizzeria several blocks from the house. So I would see less and less of him and my mother between school and their jobs. My nights at home were pretty much filled with loneliness. I would stay busy by playing football, hockey, and baseball with my friends.

In the summer, my mother would send me for a month at a time to Camp Richards in East Troy, Wisconsin, a Divine Word Seminary Camp where we would have religion pounded into us daily with Benedictine and mass every day of the week by the priests and clerics that ran the programs.

I would always wonder what it would be like to have that normal family structure and I felt there was a big void in my life because of my father’s death. I also felt sorry for my mom who had to work so hard to bring us up. She had a difficult, poor childhood, and now she was living it all over again. You know that God had a plan, but circumstances made you wonder why some people would be up against so many barriers to make it in this world.

Prior to attending camp, my summers would start out with Little League baseball. This is where, unknown to me, I would meet my first and future celebrity, Rod Blagojevich. Rod and I would become friends for the next fifty years after playing Little League baseball. I couldn’t wait for the Little League season to end so I could go to camp, because I really enjoyed camping, fishing, boating, and horseback riding. The outdoor experience was really a treat for a city boy like myself. At other times, our neighbors and friends would take me to Hayward, Wisconsin, to fish and to Athens, Wisconsin, on a dairy farm.

Two sisters that lived in the three-flat where we resided had met two brothers up in Wisconsin that had owned a family farm, so I was invited many times to go up there with them to visit. I really enjoyed that experience because they had over 400 acres of farmland and fifty Guernsey cows, pigs, chickens, and two dogs to hang out with on the farm. My job was to scrape the cow shit off the floor every morning and afternoon when the cows were milked. Even though I smelled of cow shit from the morning I woke up until I went to bed that night, it was an experience I will never forget. Those cows have to be milked twice a day, so there is no getting the flu or getting sick. You have to be there and ready to work on a farm no matter what.

When I would return each summer from visiting the farm with my bib overalls on, my brother Eddie would refer to me as the Plowboy. He did not really realize what he was missing in all his teasing about my going on the farm each summer. Ray Hart owned the farm, and Ruben was a counselor at Camp Richards. They both taught me how to hunt, fish, and ride horses. Besides my uncles and Mr. Depoalo, my Little League coach, nobody had as much influence in my early days as they did.

At Camp Richards, they had a group called the Chief White Cloud Honor Society. In order to become a scout in the group, it required your fellow campers to vote you in as a scout. My first year at camp, I was voted in by my peers as a scout into the society. In my second year, I was voted in by the scouts, braves, and a warrior as a brave into the society. This made me feel real proud and gave me stature among the rest of the campers.

Chief White Cloud was a camp counselor, and we would all dress up as American Indians exalting the virtues of Christianity and love of the earth by the American Indian. It was really cool dressing up as an Indian with war paint and their authentic Indian gear.

We would gather at campfires and discuss how we would lead by example using the principles of truth, loyalty, and integrity to lead our fellow campers. Being a member of this twenty person group was a real honor, and many of our fellow campers looked up to us for guidance and leadership. After seventh grade, at the age of twelve, I would no longer be going to camp because money was tight in our family, and it cost over $250 a month for me to attend camp, and my trips to the farm were also becoming shorter and less often. Besides, Little League baseball had become my passion.

My coach, Mr. Depoalo, on the Orioles, was an inspiration early on in my life, because he had shown a lot of confidence in me. At that time, being so young, I had not realized how much of his confidence in me would have an impact on my life. He taught me to work hard in order to achieve success and goals and to not be afraid to accept change in my early years.

I will always remember when Mr. Depoalo inserted me into the clean-up spot in the lineup in a playoff game, and I hit the winning home run in the last inning to place us in the World Series. We went on to win our major league division as champs that year, and I was proud to march down Fullerton Avenue to Hansen Park, carrying the championship banner for White Cap Little League. We would march six blocks from Blackhawk Park to Hanson Park while the street would be lined with friends, neighbors, and parents cheering us on.

My mom would attend every game and root me on, but I played hard for the coach, because he had accepted me as part of his family. I was always welcomed into his home and developed a friendship with his son, my teammate, Kenny Jr. He saw things in me that I had never realized. One day, I showed up to a game and was pulled from third base by the coach where I was taking practice ground balls, and he said, Hey! Sean our catcher isn’t going to make the game tonight, put on the catching gear.

I was like, Are you crazy?

He said, Put it on, you can do it!

He was right. I hadn’t ever played catcher before until that day, but you never would have known because it was like I had played the position all my life. I never wanted to disappoint Mr. Depoalo because he was my Little League father, as I would refer to him. He even had a nickname for me because he would call me the Polish Tank, ’cause I played the game so hard to win. I did so well that a coach who ran a traveling team from Our Lady of Pompeii Church located in the old west side Italian Taylor Street neighborhood picked me to join his team.

George Capizzano was a coach of another team at White Cap Little League and asked me if I wanted to play travel ball. I said, Sure, but my mom works, so I don’t know how I will get there every day.

No problem, he said, I will pick you up and drop you off.

George was a great guy and loved kids. He was never married and lived with his brother and sister on Taylor Street but dedicated his life helping kids like me. After baseball season was over, George had me enroll into a football program at McGuane Park in the southside Bridgeport neighborhood. It was a great experience for an eleven-year-old because I learned how to adjust to intermingling with people of different cultures and from different neighborhoods throughout the city. I always looked forward to seeing Mr. Capizanno pull up to pick me up for a game or practice. I felt that every day would become a new adventure.

When I was in the seventh grade, I was appointed a patrol boy and an altar boy at the school and church. They asked for volunteers, but you knew you better volunteer or else. I would get to school early and stay late each day to ensure that the younger students could cross the streets safely to and from school. On weekends, I would serve mass at weddings, funerals, and Sunday service. We loved to serve weddings and would compete to serve because many times, you received a tip for serving that mass. When I first started serving mass, the church had changed from having the mass performed in Latin, to english in order to bring the teens and young adults to church, they had what was called a folk mass where the hymns were performed by a guitar player.

Usually, three altar boys would serve the mass, and girls were not allowed to serve mass at the time in 1970. One day, two of my friends and I got together, and we got a hold of the altar boy phone number list. So we called twenty altar boys to serve the same mass. My buddy John could imitate an old Irish nun, Sister Francis Eileen, to a tee. He would talk with a brogue and tell them, This is Sister Francis Eileen from down at the school, and it is your Christian duty to come down and serve the 9:00 a.m. mass this Sunday.

We showed up too so nobody would suspect us and acted as dumbfounded as the rest of the guys. We would say, I don’t know, who called you? We laughed the whole Sunday away. Thank God that they didn’t have caller ID back then or we would have been caught for sure. For months, the school was looking into who the pranksters were; we never were caught.

In eighth grade, Sister St. Charles, who was known as the toughest nun in the school, appointed me as the lieutenant of the patrol boys. My job was to guard the entrance of the school in the morning, afternoon, and the end of the school day. I also had to preserve order as the students entered and exited the school. At noon, I would come out on the school steps and ring the bell to end the lunchtime recess. I was so proud, because I had a position of authority and a lieutenant’s badge to boot.

Sister St. Charles, or Charlie as we would call her behind her back, would knock the heck out of you if you broke policy or talked while she was giving instructions. She really disliked this one guy, Paul Cozzo, who would show up to school dressed all sloppy with ink pen stains in his school uniform pocket. She would give him a whack, and we would all start laughing, which got her even more upset. Therefore, she would go down the line like Moe in the three Stooges and crack us all in a row. That was her other nickname—Moe from the three stooges.

She definitely was an old-school nun who was feared by all. On the other side of the spectrum, in eighth grade, I had a nun by the name of Sister Jean Michael who was one of the greatest ladies ever to wear the cloth. Sister Jean was a sports fanatic who loved to talk about baseball and football. She would refer to us as guys and dolls and was such an endearing woman. She started the first bowling league for the seventh and eighth-grade students and was always there for you when you needed to talk. She was very special.

I remember one time I told her that my brother and I as well as a couple of other guys were going down to the firemen’s gym to see Mohammed Ali spar for his return to the ring against Joe Frazier for the Heavyweight Boxing Championship of the world. She was so excited for me.

We all went down to Navy Pier about four hours before the sparring session was to begin. I was so excited, because we were right up on the apron of the ring. When Ali came out to work out and spar, the whole place cheered him on. Ali got in the ring and did his dance and taunts and proceeded to fight the first of four boxers to train for Frazier. After the first two fighters were done, a small middleweight came in the ring to challenge Ali’s speed. This little guy was swinging for a knockout, and Ali turned to the crowd and said, He’s a cocky little nigger, isn’t he? Should I do him in?

The crowd roared back, screaming, Yeah!

Ali was the first big legend and celebrity for me to ever meet. I felt so fortunate that day to be in his presence.

After the sparring session, we went over to Rocky’s Fish House down the street from the fireman’s gym located on the shores of Lake Michigan. They had the best fish sandwich around, and you could garnish it with onions, tartar sauce, and hot peppers by yourself. When smelt fishing season would start, we would go down to Rocky’s with the older guys from the neighborhood at night to catch the smelt. It was like a tradition. You would stand there all night, freezing with your nets in the water, drinking beer, shooting the bullshit. Those were very simpler times in my life of which I miss very much.

3

High School Years

Upon graduation from St. Genevieve school, I was accepted to Lane Tech High School as a freshman in 1971. This would be a historic year for the high school. Lane had always been an all-boys technical trade school, and for the first time, girls would be admitted that year. I was happy about that, because I did not want to attend an all-boy school. I was offered a hardship scholarship for Weber All-Boys Catholic High School because of my family situation, I declined.

Lane was considered an elite public high school at the time. You had to have a B average or better in order to be considered for admittance. You were required to take an entrance exam to be accepted. In the eighth grade, I had almost straight As, so getting in was no problem.

Lane was long on tradition. Their football teams were considered perennial powerhouses, because prior to the admittance of girls, they had over 5,000 boys to choose from all over the city. This made Lane unique at this time.

Most high schools in the City of Chicago, with the exception of Joan’s Commercial Prosser Vocational and a few others, only accepted students from within their specified district boundaries. Students came from every ethnic, race, and class of the City of Chicago. This, I believe, was one of the greatest learning experiences for a student at Lane Tech. It enabled you to learn about different cultures and the many geographical areas of the city the students resided within.

The world was changing, and race relations were changing as well. The British Beatles invasion had just occurred several years earlier, and hippies and drugs were the popular scene of the time. Heavy metal rock bands and the Rolling Stones were beginning their ascension to rock and roll fame. It was vogue to be a free spirit, the peace sign evolved; sex, drugs, and rock and roll were standards that teens of this era would be known for.

The Vietnam War was in full throttle, there was not a person who did not have a friend or family member that they knew either injured, killed, or in need of mental health services after experiencing that war. The turbulent sixties, the race riots, anti-war demonstrations, and drugs had not stopped in 1971. I still remember when in 1967, standing on the corner of my all white neighborhood, viewing African American marchers trek down Laramie Avenue to protest housing discrimination against Blacks.

I watched as adult men and women hurled racial slurs toward the marchers. I felt very uneasy and frightened and remember walking away, going home where I felt safe from the conflict. Many times, our parents would reinforce that uneasiness in us, because when we would travel by car through the black neighborhoods, we were instructed to lock the car doors and/or roll up the windows.

I remember once when my grandmother from my mother’s side, Rose, made us leave a restaurant because she had noticed the cook at the grill was black. I was very much confused about people from other ethnic and racial backgrounds, because they were stereotyped as bad people by the adults in my life. Speaking of my grandmother Rose, she stood about four-foot-three but was a firebrand and a hardworker. I really loved her, and she showed it in return.

Rose had emigrated from Czechoslovakia and married my grandfather in Chicago in the 1920s. She had been married prior to that and had my Uncle Bill from a previous marriage. She had a total of five children in the two marriages. She worked hard as a laundry woman for over thirty years at the old Sherman House Hotel located at Randolph and LaSalle where now stands the James R. Thompson State of Illinois Building.

Rose would wake up every morning and walk down Milwaukee Avenue to the bus in the wee hours and return in the midafternoon, six days a week. She never drove a car and, up until the early sixties, had not ridden in a car.

Rose was tough as nails and knew everybody and everything that went on in the neighborhood. When we would walk down Milwaukee Avenue to Walgreens for ice-cream or the Alliance Bakery on Division Street, we couldn’t get half a block without my grandma, or Granny as we would refer to her, stopping and speaking Polish with a neighbor or friend.

My brother and I would groan and complain, Come on, Gram! But it was to no avail; she just kept on talking.

Back in the sixties, they still had some horse-drawn carriages that would carry fruit and vegetables down the middle of the cobblestone street. The fruit salesman would yell out, Strawberries, apples, tomatoes, etc., but most of the customers were already assembled on the curbs along the streets in anticipation on the day and time the vendor would arrive.

In the sixties, in the old ethnic neighborhoods, the street was where all the activity took place. This was how the news was spread and the rumors were started. Many people back then did not have phones or television sets, so the radio, newspaper, and personal contact in those days were the lines of communication. Even if you had a phone, many of the kids were not allowed to use it, and when you did, you only did so to call your parents to tell them you made it safely to your destination.

Phone calls were made on a Sunday afternoon to call a friend or relative. Money was scarce, and a phone was considered a luxury to be used only for emergencies or communications that were a must. My time at Lane Tech High School would become a life-changing experience and the road to destructive behavior. While you were growing up as a teen in Chicago, you were identified by the way you dressed and what group of peers or people you hung around with. I was called a greaser—short hair, clean clothes, and a tough guy image to uphold.

The attire included an Italian dress knit shirt or short-sleeved shirt, most likely black. You wore what you call baggies, present-day khakis or dickeys as they are referred to. The colors would range from blue, green, tan, and gray. The gray baggies were worn as a pair of dress pants with a black leather jacket. Suede jackets were even dressier or considered very stylish.

Greasers would wear what is called a Dago t-shirt to show your physique or a colored t-shirt with a pocket in the front for your cigarettes to look tough.

Black shiny combat boots in the fall and winter and black leather Stacy shoes with wing tips in summer were the footwear of the greasers. For sports or hanging out in the summer, a lot of guys would wear Converse gym shoes or what we called straws. Straws were a casual shoe similar to a pair of slippers or slip-ons worn today. The hippies of the day all wore their hair long with a tie-dyed t-shirt and bell-bottom blue jeans. The bigger the bells and sloppier the look, the more hip they would be considered. The real straight guys would wear blues jeans with a button-down shirt.

By straight, I mean they were not a greaser or a hippie. They were referred to as doopers. They could be identified by wearing what they called penny loafer shoes. Many doopers would insert a penny on the outside of the top front of the shoe. Greasers were all about beer hot rod cars, girls, fighting, and hanging out at a drive-in, park, or a schoolyard. Lane Tech was loaded with greasers, especially since it was a technical vocational school that offered numerous classes in auto shops where the greasers would work on their hot rods, improving their skills as mechanics.

Another reason that Lane had numerous greasers is because it was an all-city school, which means it would draw students from all over the city of Chicago.

Most high schools were district schools with certain geographic boundaries. Neighborhood grammar schools would feed into the district high school. Many of the greasers in the school had come from rough neighborhoods throughout the city. If they were required to go into their neighborhood school, they might be a minority with respect to Black or Latino populations where they lived and resided. The patch, for example, in the Old Italian Grand and Western neighborhood on the near west side of Chicago, it was predominantly Italian, Polish, and Ukrainian; but once you left the boundaries of the specific neighborhood, you were surrounded by Latino and African American neighborhoods, which would dominate the population of the area high school.

A lot of the greasers were in gangs. If they had to go to the district high school, they would be outnumbered ten to one, so they worked very hard to gain entry to Lane Tech. Lane Tech had 5,000 students and was predominately a white high school on Chicago’s northside. The school in the early 1970s was about 65 percent white, and in 1971, because of the amount of gang influence and greasers in the walls of Lane Tech, many students were recruited by the gangs, even though they came from all-white communities. Young men from good families, were drawn to the attraction of being a member of a gang.

There were probably over 300 active street gang members at Lane while I was a student, and the biggest gang of all was the Gaylords. My first day as a freshman and indoctrination was capped off by a visit to Lennie’s, a Local diner that was claimed and patronized by the greasers. Black, Latino, and female students need not apply or enter, and the only way that any other person could come is if you had a sponsor accepted by a member of the gang or Lennie’s stormtroopers.

There were probably about ten gang affiliates that would visit Lennie’s throughout the day. They included the Gaylords, the Taylor Street Jousters, Chi West, Simon City Royals, the Rice Boys, the Playboys, Ventures and Pulaski Park, the Aristocrats, the C Notes, CORP, and Holstein Park. My brother, Eddie, who was an alumni and had graduated the year before, met me that day and had introduced me to the fellows in Lennies. He had convinced me to go to Lennie’s for lunch everyday.

When I walked into Lennies as a freshman high school student with green bellbottom pants my mom bought me for the first day of school, a big Italian-Mexican guy named Artie stared at me as I walked in. He said, Hey, freshie.

I looked at him and said, I’m Weasel’s brother.

He laughed and let the rest of the establishment know, Hey, this is Weasel’s little brother.

I immediately got the nickname Weasel’s Little Brother; this gave me status and protection against intimidation until I made enough friends or gained acceptance among the greasers within Lennie’s establishment. I will admit I was a little bit intimidated.

My brother came later that day and told everyone, Don’t fuck with him. I felt secure and proud that my brother made sure I was well-accepted and taken care of by the seniors and juniors at Lennie’s.

Frank and Rose, his wife, were the owners and made sure that a legacy like me would not be messed with because it was not good for business. They had about thirty pinball machines in their establishment. So it was a big draw for guys at lunch and during school. No doubt, Frank had outfit connection. It was a cash business—all the machines and sandwiches—so Frank liked that we spent our lunch money and extra money on the machines all day.

If you walked into Lennie’s at 7:00 a.m. before high school started, the jukebox would be blasting songs like Cherry Hill Park and Alice Cooper’s I Am Eighteen while guys in black leather jackets, baggies, and combat boots screwed around and played the pinball machines. The cigarette smoke was so heavy, you could cut it with a knife. There could be eighty to a hundred stone greasers in there at any time in the morning, and it was loaded during all three lunch periods.

The place was a typical diner with a snack bar and stools with the greasiest hamburgers and fries around. Frank was the cook, and he would be by the grill, smoking cigars while flipping the burgers. We would egg Frank on to put cigar ashes on the food for flavor. He would laugh and say, Go fuck yourselves.

The place was like a fraternity. All of us were greasers, and this intimidated other students and teachers at the school. Lane Tech High School had a long tradition of being an all-boy high school prior to admitting girls in 1971 that excelled in sports and academics, so the tough guy image was pretty much expected and accepted.

One morning, I showed up at school, and the leader of Lennie’s, Mike Bonadonna, was talking about attacking the Black students in the lunchroom. It was to be revenge for a bunch of Black guys who attacked Pete Mulligan after school the previous day. About fifteen minutes before the first period bell rang, about seventy-five of us started to march to the school lunchroom. I could not stay behind, because you would be considered a chicken, so I had to go on Mike’s orders.

As we entered the lunchroom, all the Black students were gathered in the center tables. Bonadonna picked up a chair, and so did about ten other guys, and rushed toward the group and started hitting them over the heads.

The Black students started to throw chairs, and guys were fighting all over the place. I was scared because I was a freshie, and most of all the guys fighting were upperclassmen. Guys were flinging and beating one another with food trays; it was a genuine riot! We had two school cops and a few teachers who tried to intervene, but it was out of control. I started to throw chairs so I would look like I did something, but I was scared. I had never seen anything like this in my life. More police showed up, and we all started to run to avoid getting busted. They had about ten cops at the school the rest of the day.

It didn’t stop there. The following day, after school, about twenty of us were still at Lennie’s. All of sudden, you could see about a hundred Black guys coming toward Lennie’s. We started to get bricks, bats, and lumber and stood in front of Lennie’s as they approached. Roger said, Nobody run. We’re gonna take them on.

I was shitting in my pants. As the group crossed Western Avenue, about five police squad cars pulled up. I was never so happy to see cops in my life. They saved our asses that day.

The Black Student Union at the school demanded that they be allowed in Lennie’s for lunch, so the cops showed up the next day and escorted them in to sit at the lunch counter. We all stood outside and watched as Robinson, the leader of The BSU, smiled at us, sat down, and ordered lunch inside. It was like the Deep South where the Blacks finally got a seat at the lunch counter. That brought closure to the war.

Lane had what you called hall guards and campus guards. The campus was very large for a high school, and the building had to accommodate 5,000 students. During class, the hall guards would be stationed on all four floors throughout the hallways of the school.

If a student was in the hall, walking around, the hall guard could request his or her school ID. If they were not where they were supposed to be, you could give them a write-up and send it to the school disciplinarian who would in turn conduct a hearing and dole out the discipline. That would be Mr. Pauly who was a giant of a man. He was a machine shop teacher, very strict, and old-school. If he liked you, you would get a break.

Same went for the campus guards who would patrol the campus during lunch periods. They would act in the same manner as the hall guards. If you were on campus and cutting class, the campus guard had the power to bust you. The system was very effective since 90 percent of all the hall guards and campus students were greasers.

4

Joining The Gaylords

Freshman year, I was pretty much a regular normal student. I always attended class and received good grades. I was thirteen years old, and when I turned fourteen in September of 1971, my mom got me a job at the Local pizzeria. The name of the pizzeria was Leonardo’s Northwest, and we had ordered many meals from them over the years. It was located at 5010 W. Fullerton, several blocks from our home. Joe and Mike Divinere were the owners. Both had immigrated to the United States in the 1960s and took jobs in the factory until they earned enough to buy Leonardo’s Northwest Pizza. Joe spoke with a heavy Italian accent and lived upstairs from the restaurant.

It was very common for small business owners to reside near or above their places of business. I started out at about $2 an hour. This was my first real job. I had distributed handbills for the pizzeria my brother worked for at one penny per flyer, but this was my first real job. I worked three days a week for six hours after school and twenty hours on the weekends. I learned how to cook and make pizzas. It was very beneficial for me to learn how to cook for myself. At that point, my freshman year was all about work and school. I really did not have time for socializing with the guys from the neighborhood. I would bank my whole check, because I really did not have time to spend it.

I enjoyed working at the pizzeria; the guys I worked with were fun. The work was hard. If you were not doing food preparation, you were waiting tables, filling stock, cooking, cleaning, or answering the phone for the takeout orders. The pizza place did a pretty good business. A hundred deliveries on a Friday and Saturday night was the norm.

Joe and Mike made most of their own dishes and sauces from scratch. This is where I learned the difference between eating fresh food and leftovers. They would make their own roast beef for sandwiches. When it came out of the oven, we would slice it and throw it on a fresh piece of French bread; nothing like a Chicago-style Italian beef sandwich loaded up with green peppers and hot giardiniera.

One warm hazy summer weekday night, Joe and I were working the restaurant. Joe was in the bathroom, and I was packaging an order. It was quiet, and I had the feeling that someone was watching me. The front of the kitchen had a four by six-foot hole cut window in order to serve the customers. I looked up at the service counter, and there was this tall black guy stooping his head down at the window, smiling at me. I walked over and asked him if he wanted to place an order. He had a super fly hat on with a feather in it and a fancy black-blue suit. The movie Super Fly had just come out, and it was the black militancy; big drug dealer Super Fly was in.

In the movie, it portrayed a flamboyant drug dealer trying to quit the trade. Also, black guys were wearing what we called pimp hats. Their rides were all pimped out with all kinds of chrome and designer landau tops. Super Fly was a song in a movie by Curtis Mayfield.

Next thing I know, this guy smiles and places a big shiny watch with a $100 price tag in the box. He said, Hey, man, you want to buy a watch for $20?

I just looked and I was so impressed by the sparkle and diamonds. I told him to wait there a minute. I was going to ask my boss for the money. I knocked on the bathroom door. I said, Hey, Joe.

He replied, Wadya want?

I said, Could I talk to you?

I’m taking a shit, wadya you want?

I waited for Joe to come out.

He said, Now, what do you want?

I said, Joe there’s a guy with a $100 watch upfront. All he wants is $20 for it. Can you forward me $20 on my pay so I can buy it?

Joe walked toward the counter, looked at the watch, looked at the guy, and said, Hey, get the fuck out of here. You heard me.

The guy just walked away.

I was mad. I said, Joe, why did you do that?

He said, Come on, ‘you want to buy a watch’ is the oldest scheme around. You’ll buy that watch, and the darn thing won’t work in a week.

I was embarrassed that I almost fell for one of the oldest tricks in the books. Joe couldn’t wait to tell the delivery guys and all the other guys at work about my watch episode. All I heard for weeks was, Hey, Danny, you wanna buy a watch? It took a while to live that one down.

I just went to work and went to school pretty much my first freshman year and little time off to hang out with my friends. When I did, I went down to St. Genevieve schoolyard and hung out with all of them. We would play a game of sixteen-inch softball, and afterward, the older guys would all park their cars in the schoolyard in a row and lift their trunks and put on the same stereo station of music, and we’d sit out in lawn chairs, and they’d crank it up. We’d have a few beers from the ice chest and sit around and talk and drink beer.

Another pastime is what we’d call pitching pennies. We walk off a two-slab, five-foot sidewalk and pitch down to the second line. The closet the penny pitched to the line would win the pot. If you hit the line or it was stuck on the line, it was called a liner. The young guys would pitch pennies while the older guys would pitch nickels or quarters, because they had more money then us younger guys. If you had a winning streak pitching coins, it was possible to win ten or fifteen bucks in a day, depending upon the value of the coin you were pitching.

One day, I won about eighteen bucks pitching nickels. My buddy pal, Joey, lost ten bucks that day to me. I went out and bought a pair of powder blue converse high-top gym shoes with black laces.

Otherwise, if we were not gambling or pitching pennies, nickels, or quarters, we would play football or softball.

When I showed up at the schoolyard the next day, I ball-busted Joey and said thanks for the $10 of his that I won that enabled me to buy this new pair of converse gym shoes. He was just smiling, calling me a jag off. Every time I would wear them, he would just sneer and shake his head.

The schoolyard was where my brother, Eddie, and my cousin, Chris, and most of all my friends hung out during the spring and summer months. The older guys all had pretty cool cars. There were many street rods back then, and the girls would ogle over the hot rods, and the guys would stand around with hoods open, admiring the engines in the car all day.

Some of the older guys at the lot were members of the Gaylords gang at Foreman High School. I favored the gang and began to gravitate toward being accepted by them. A lot of the time, arguments broke out to whose coin was closer to the line. There was an older guy named Porky who would periodically stop by and pitch pennies against the younger guys. He was called Porky because he lost the last three fingers of his right hand while operating a punch press in a neighborhood factory. He only had a thumb and an index finger on his right hand to pitch his coins.

Well, Porky would hustle all the young guys. One day, an older guy by the name of Bobby Marcese saw Porky taking advantage of the young guys at the schoolyard. Bobby told him, Go find somebody your own age to play with.

Porky said, Fuck you.

At that point, Bobby rushed Porky, and both of them fell over the front yard fence of the school building. Bobby was getting the better of Porky, but Porky was no pushover. Actually, he broke Bobby’s nose. A bunch of the guys jumped in on Porky. He got free and started yelling that he was gonna come back with ten Latin Kings to kick all our asses.

We all busted out laughing, cause he was yelling, Ten Latin Kings! As he raised both hands, but we knew that three fingers of his right hand were missing. So actually, it was seven. He was pissed and got in his car and drove away.

This was the first time I saw the older guys fight. I got a rush of adrenaline just watching it. Sure, I saw schoolyard fights and had been in the same type of scraps with my brother, Eddie, and other guys; but this was for real. Both guys really hated one another, and they were out for blood. Man, that fight was cool.

When school let out that summer in 1972, I finally had a little more time to hang out. I started to go to Kilbourn Park and Manor Bowling Alley where a lot of the Gaylords from high school hung out.

My best friend, John Mackey, was also inspired to join a gang. We would meet at 6:00 p.m. on nights that I had off in the summer. We would walk up the street corners where the Gaylords and Jousters, a northwest street gang, would hang out. We would have on Dago white t-shirts on to show off the muscles we thought we had. We had our baggy khakis on with our Gaylord color converse gym shoes, and we would trek up along the railroad tracks a mile and a half up to Kilbourn Park where many of the Gaylords from Lane Tech High School hung out.

I got to know a couple of the older guys from high school like Gunner, Roger, Butch, and Saint who were the ones I wanted to hang out with and get to know among all the tough guys. We talked the tough talk and would run when the cops would come to bust up the crowds that would gather at the park to drink beer and smoke pot.

That’s where I met my first girlfriend as a teen out of grammar school. Her name was Cindy. She had these beautiful light-blue cat eyes, tall, with blonde hair; she was hot. It was my second time hanging around the park that I met her. We started talking and flirting and feeling each other out. She asked where I was from, who I knew from the park. She asked my name, and I told her, Daniel.

She said, No, your nickname.

I just looked at my buddy, John, and said, Squirrel. My brother, Eddie, started calling me that, and it just stuck.

She laughed and said, Squirrel. And then she said, Squirrelly.

I was kind of embarrassed but said, What is so funny?

She was just amused. She thought that I was already a Gaylord, so I didn’t tell her that I wasn’t one yet because I thought that she would become disinterested in me if she knew I wasn’t part of the gang. This is what belonging to a gang brought to the table—chicks. This only made me more determined to become a Gaylord, because it would attract many girls.

I would continue to shop for a Gaylord section to join. John and I would go up to Manor Bowling Alley at Reinberg schoolyard where the Gaylord members would gather and worked to gain the trust of the already full-fledged gang members in order to become one of them. I started to gravitate more and more to joining the Manor Bowl Gaylords; many of the gang members lived in the neighborhood and went to the Local high school, Foreman.

I hung out with many of these guys at the St. Genevieve schoolyard like Wino and Wildman, while some of the guys from Manor Bowl at Belmont and Central went to Lane with me like Wop and Gator. I started to hang out with Gator who was the president of the peewee Manor Bowl Gaylords.

After a few months, they asked me