Jack Spiegelman on YouTube

I grew up in Buffalo. Buffalo was a good town for a writer.
There are three things in life: food, music and sex.
Buffalo is on the Canadian border. During prohibition there was a tremendous amount of activity in the form of the smuggling of bootleg whiskey across the border. The bootlegging was largely a Mafia controlled enterprise. The result was the establishment of Buffalo as a lively hub of Mafia activity.

The boss was Steve Magadino. Magadino was the classic Don—right out of The Godfather. He liked to get duded up for a holiday stroll and tip his hat to the wives and pinch the kiddies on the cheek while muttering some affectionate diminuitive in Sicilian and then go back to the house for a meet with the boys to decide if someone should be strangled to death with piano wire.
He spoke a little fractured English. My mother sat next to him once at a wedding. They had a long chat. Then she turned to my father and said: what is he talking about?

Magadino lived in Lewiston, a quaint little burg outside Niagara Falls. For a fart hick town with 9,000 people of mostly Polish descent there were an amazing number of Italian restaurants. Magadinos main guy was Joe DeCarlo. Joe DeCarlos nickname was The Wolf. Most people were unaware that Adolf Hitler was also known among intimates as The Wolf.

I had heard many stories about Joe DeCarlo. My father worked for Joe DeCarlo. Also my uncle. My uncle once spent 3 years in California because he had stolen some money from The Wolf and got caught and was given the choice of leaving town or dying.

My point is this: Where there is bootleg whiskey you have the Mafia and where you have the Mafia you have nightclubs and some good Italian restaurants.

Read More of Jack's Essays