The Biggest Jew In Chicago Part 6

Praying to God was not the only act of submission that Poppy conceded to. He also yielded to a basic, human need.

Abe “Longy” Zwillman (1899-1959) was known as the Al Capone of New Jersey, running the state as his personal fiefdom.

As a youth in Newark’s rough Third Ward, he was a pushcart peddler and, because of his 6’2” frame and attitude, became a protector of fellow Jewish merchants. He began selling lottery tickets, soon afterward assuming control of the Newark’s numbers racket. With the onset of Prohibition, he became New Jersey’s top importer and distributor of bootleg liquor. He later took control of Newark’s prostitution, gambling rackets, and labor unions. With his hands in all the illegal rackets, Zwillman was the most successful of all Jewish gangsters. Meyer Lansky may have been more notorious but he essentially confined his activities to gambling operations. The Zwillman reality trumps the Lansky legend.

With Repeal came straw-man partner/ownerships in many legit businesses, including hotels and restaurants. He had pieces of the casino action in Havana, Miami, Newark, Las Vegas, and New York. Longy Zwillman controlled the cash-cow cigarette vending businesses in cities throughout the U.S. He was movie star Jean Harlow’s lover early in her career. For over twenty years he had most of New Jersey’s politicians in his pocket.

But by 1959, FBI and IRS probes and various and sundry legal tsouris were taking their toll on “der Langer” (“The Tall One,” in Yiddish). Subpoenaed to testify before the McClellan Senate Crime Committee, on the cusp of his appearance he was found hung by an electrical cord in the basement of his home, one hand grasping a section of the noose, dressed to the nines in silk pajamas, bathrobe, socks and leather slippers. Tranquilizers were found in his pocket, and a half empty bottle of liquor nearby. The authorities ruled his death a suicide secondary to temporary insanity but considering that new bruising was found on his body, wire marks on his wrist, and that the manner in which he hung  would have required the skill of a Chinese acrobat to pull off solo, his associates were dubious, at best; Luciano and Lansky considered it a rubout, Vito Genovese ordering the killing to quell his fear that Longy would recite the long and short of his resume.

Longy Zwillman in 1959, just a few months before his "suicide."
(Photo: Life magazine).

Zwillman was Poppy and Joe Davis’ silent partner in Oxford Distribution, taking half of Davis’ 66% ownership; it was Longy who had initially bankrolled the business, through Davis. Rosenstiel knew it, Poppy knew it. Until my father told me a couple of years ago, I didn’t. There are a few in the family who I suspect remain ignorant of this glaring fact.

I am not naive. I know that the line between the legitimate and illegitimate world is sometimes, at best, fuzzy, I know that Poppy was an honorable man; Oxford was a legit business, run straight, though bankrolled by money a darker shade of green. I have also come to understand that his profound need to be his own man with his own business - to feel important, by his standards - led him to partner with, however personally likable Zwillman may have been and long-standing their relationship, one of the most notorious crime lords in the U.S. It is one thing to be friends with mobsters; it is quite another to be a business partner. All of a sudden, the romance of the underworld had lost much of its allure. It was no longer great stories, colorful history, the toughness borne of struggle, the ability to mete out punishment without benefit or care of the justice system. It had always been at my doorstep - a guy living down the block from us in Queens was a major bookie, and the son of the local capo stole one of his mother's bracelets to give my to my sister, whom he had a crush on - now it had entered my home, if only as uneasy history.

I winced.

Yet I cannot pass judgment so easily, if at all. "All of us go thru certain stages of life with mixed feelings," he wrote to me forty-two years ago, when I was seventeen. I suspect the partnership may have risen in a corner of his heart as he was writing that line. It was not a Faustian bargain he had made; God, the soul, and Satan had nothing to do with it. It was a Chicago deal: You did what you needed to do, pragmatic, no B.S., stark reality, and, if not amoral, not too fussy about ideals. There were no virgins in the liquor business; chastity was not 100-proof. And I am not a prig. Nor ignorant: Oxford was not the only liquor wholesaler in the United States with a hidden investor of interest to law enforcement. It was far from unusual: Men of question who were in the liquor business during Prohibition continued in the trade after Repeal, masked from state regulators; it was what they knew.

Not too long ago my father bestowed upon me a blessing that filled me with enormous pride: During a phone call, he told me that I was tougher than him, more like Poppy than he was. I felt my father’s admiration and it wrapped around me as Poppy’s embrace once had. And, alone that night, I nearly cried.

My father spent much of his life trying to measure up to Poppy. Me, too. I pulled time fighting as an amateur, worked as a bouncer, and did some strictly legal though ethically dubious strong-arm work. I also provided occasional enforcement, gratis, for a friend, who, at the time, the mid-1970s, was the largest pot dealer on L.A.’s West Side.

Contrary to the bum’s screams as he ran down the alley at 2AM afterward, I was not trying to kill him. Pancaking and dropping a thief with a swiftly kicked-out car door as he tries to flee with a thousand dollars that do not belong to him, who had stolen a lovingly restored Harley the day before and now demanded a kilo of Humboldt County’s finest sinsemilla for its return leading to a wild chase through the back alleys of Santa Monica with mystery tail cars and paranoia rooted in reality, is not a homicidal act. It is a concerned citizen’s arrest. And a measured response.

The fully-automatic AR-15 assault rifle that Wayne’s brother, Jimmy (whose presence was not of my choosing), owned, he'd left at home lying on the couch. The .45 automatic that he brought along to keep him company during the proceedings was not, on my watch, given opportunity for exercise. In this extreme I was in way over my head but in too deep to back out and I had to see it through. That imbroglio, which could have easily gone a lot - a lot - worse, began to put things into perspective. My career as a shtarker ended.

Once, Poppy, in his sixties, and Dad were in an elevator together, another man, a younger, tough-looking guy riding along with them. When the man exited, Poppy turned to Dad and said, “I can take him, I can still do it.”

Poppy, Jack Dempsey, and liquor business associate Bill Lewis, 1951.

He was, perhaps, thinking of his pal, Dempsey, who, in his late sixties-early seventies, was mugged by two punks on the street outside of his apartment building in New York. When the cops arrived, the kids were on the ground and afraid to rise until the police made sure Dempsey was no longer a threat to their lives.

A few years ago, I got into it with a young jerk who had, in the wee hours, illegally parked where I live, literally at my doorstep. I start, per usual, polite. He balks. I reason. He lips. That's it; I’m ready to start swinging. And then it hits me: I’m in my late 50s. Yeah, I could probably take care of this putz but there's no guarantee; why am I even considering it? And over a parking beef! He doesn’t know my background,  I don’t know his. I backed off, the scene ended without incident, and I felt like a schmuck afterward. Poppy would have taken care of this without flinching.

Six months ago, I was assaulted from behind while in a liquor store paying for a pack of gum. It was a hard, forceful punch to my shoulder and though not painful was a serious statement of intent. I slowly, carefully turned around, on guard, to face a wild-eyed guy who accused me of staring at and “fucking with” him. No such thing occurred. What would Poppy do?

This is what I did: Nothing. One look at the guy and I not only know that I could seriously hurt this person - the way he held his hands up to fight told me that he had no idea what he was doing - but that he was a schizophrenic off his meds. I was dressed up to go somewhere I wanted to get to. I didn’t want to get my clothes messed and I didn’t want to be late. In a quiet voice I firmly told the man he was crazy, advised the store clerk behind plexiglass to call the police, and walked out.

Twenty-five years ago, I would have crawled into a hole and died of shame. This time, I felt great.

In retrospect, I understand that at that moment I had cast off Poppy’s shadow and hung-up the suit of lead. Forty-six years after my Bar Mitzvah, I had become a man.

My father came into his own after Poppy, Joe Davis and Longy Zwillman closed Oxford (an exclusive distributorship was at a major disadvantage by the mid-1950s). He grew into sales, succeeded, and worked for another distributor for a few years before accepting an offer from Poppy's brother, Uncle Bob, who had become a vice-president at - the ironies don’t get richer - Jim Beam, still owned by Uncle Harry Blum. Uncle Bob had ultimately risen higher in the executive suite than Poppy and had certainly earned more money: Uncle Bob and Aunt Belle’s apartment on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago was a cozy stadium with four-bedrooms. And when Uncle Bob retired, Dad stepped into his job. But not before Uncle Harry sold Beam to American Tobacco for seventeen million dollars in 1967. I have no idea what Poppy made of all this but it had to hit him on some level.

Last year, a guy my age who had once worked as a liquor salesman contacted me to find out if I was Ken Gertz's son. He liked, admired and respected him. He had no idea who Poppy was; ancient history. To him, the only great, big, awe-inspiring Gertz was my father. I was very proud.

I was luckier than him. He and I were able to put aside our differences, bond and become close while we were both relatively young men. Dad had to wait until Poppy was quite old before the distance could be bridged and it was a tentative trek.

My bond with my father runs deep; were were raised by the same man. Despite promising himself that he'd never repeat Poppy’s failings as a father, he, with no other role model for guidance, did so anyway; it was in the marrow. 

When I got spanked - which was not often - Dad says I never cried. I suspect the tears were too scared to show up. Though utterly intimidated, I dared talk back to him. It wasn't courage: I was a precocious moron. As I got older, I used language that if Dad had used with Poppy he’d have been the boy who died young due to complications secondary to big mouth. Dad said he was torn between respect for standing up to him and impulses toward filicide.

The first lesson a boy learns about being a man is that he will never, ever measure up to his father. It occurs during the first lesson on pissing while standing up. The boy looks over to his father; all he sees, just above eye level, is his father's penis. He looks down at his own. No comparison, not even close. The impression lasts a lifetime, remaining in the subconscious regardless of the passage of years and physical maturity.

Men learn to resemble their fathers, an unconscious home-school education and metamorphosis. Until my late teens, I was always told that I favored my mother's side of the family. Boys don't like being told that they look like their mother. As far as facial features and coloring go, I still do. But somewhere along the way, my physiognomy and physique became overlaid with my father's facial expressions, body language, gait, gestures, mien, and manner of speech. People who know us both now tell me I look like him. What they mean is that I remind them of him. I couldn't be prouder.

With the death of my grandfather, age, and - let us not discount the obvious - declining testosterone level, Dad's fundamental sweetness surfaced with a high brix rating.

My father dreams about his father. They are at peace. And I am at peace with Poppy, who, having dominated every thought of manhood I’ve ever had, has now receded to place where I can deeply love him without feeling inadequate and accept him with all his faults while remaining in awe of a man, a milieu, and a vintage notion of masculinity, manhood, and male behavior forged in a bygone era. Tempered by time and experience, I am my Poppy and my father but I am most of all, me.

My eyes have welled up. I’m going to cry. I don’t care. This is my memorial to Poppy. And an aching acknowledgment of a man, and an inevitability that looms large on the horizon. This is my giant embrace of both these men. God, I love them.

But I chuckle through tears as I recall the time when Poppy, in retirement, was wheeled out of his building on an ambulance gurney. He turned to Grandma and weakly commanded, “Molly, make sure to take care of ‘em!” To not tip the paramedics would have been a crime against nature. It was the way to make sure that things got done and got done right.

"You can get away with murder in Chicago but you can't get a parking ticket fixed," Poppy used to complain in the old days, referring to the notorious Judge Homer Lyle, who took his (then) job as head traffic court magistrate very personally, pocketing a hefty percentage of all parking and traffic violation fines for the entire city. Being well-connected, knowing the right people no matter who they were, exerting strength and power, and greasing the system with green lube was just the way things worked in the world. At least in the world of the biggest Jew in Chicago, a good and decent man fired in the kiln of "the Bloody 20th" and glazed by Prohibition in the city of big shoulders, who, a few years later, died from exhaustion while trying to take care of the woman who had taken care of him for his entire adult life. Her job finished, she died five days later and, per Jewish law, was buried twenty-fours hours afterward - on his birthday.

Poppy and California real estate magnate, Bill Lyons, 1970.

I have a vision of a time when Dad, Poppy and I are together in the realm of the gone. We order shots of Schenley or Jim Beam, not for consumption, just to make sure they’re in stock. “It’s for selling not for drinking” continues to be the family motto. The booze evaporates in the glasses as we have an eternal conversation. Death has a way of stripping away defenses and masculine posturing. Age differences and relationship hierarchies are rendered meaningless; we speak as close friends who, with nothing to lose, speak freely without fear; the three of us are old Jewish men. After reviewing ongoing bowel and frequent urination issues (some things never end), swashbuckling and swordsmanship in youth, we just talk. And talk. And talk. As always, I never tire of listening to them. They’re my pals. I always said I could listen to them forever. Now I am. (It may get a bit tiresome after the first 50,000 years, at which point we'll declare enough already and begin to mix with the rest of the family, friends, and other post-life alter kockers).

Who was the toughest? Turns out that, under the skin, we each had soft centers. That’s us, three cream puffs in search of crust to keep the custard safe. Don’t mess with us, we’re baked goods, rough n’ ready prune rugellah with cinnamon sugar on top and the only thing we now intimidate are dearly departed Pillsbury Bake-Off losers.

Poppy, however, remains first amongst equals. No contest.

On the occasion of my father's Bar Mitzvah, 1933:
My great-great grandfather Aaron Gershowetz, age 107 (front); 
my father, Kenneth Post OptionsG. Gertz; my grandfather, Edward M. Gertz; 
my great-grandfather, Morris/Maurice Gershowetz/Gertz.
I am proud to be the cub in this pride of lions.

____________

Part [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The Biggest Jew In Chicago Part 5

Older, more relaxed, and with no need to exert authority, Poppy's affection for his grandchildren was enormous. The rind peeled, his sweetness emerged.

My father never tasted it.

Prior to the War, Dad studied at Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania, his thesis covering the liquor industry but his heart wasn’t in it. When the War ended, Dad had ambitions to get into the air cargo business with another officer he’d met in Japan during the occupation. This was an emerging industry with exciting prospects for a young man. When he wrote Grandma of his plans, she shot his air cargo career out of the sky with a surface-to-air missive: “You’ll break your father’s heart.” After hearing that, telling Poppy of his dream was unthinkable, the prospect of confrontation unbearable.

The Oxford sales team, 1949. My father is 3d from right; my grandfather at far right.

He went to work for Poppy at Oxford as a street salesman. In Brooklyn. Tough territory. Poppy was tougher on him than any of his other salesmen, just to prove he wasn’t playing favorites. Dad was forbidden to enter his office but for anybody else at Oxford, secretaries to sales, the door was always open. Poppy was not a hard businessman; at heart a softy, the prospect of firing someone kept him up for nights beforehand.

When I was a kid, Dad would sometimes take me with him on his rounds. It seemed to me that Brooklyn liquor store owners were animals. They didn’t merely have rough edges, they were all rough, edges to the bone. Dad was not a natural salesman like Poppy. It was a square-peg gig for him. Worse, Poppy was a giant in the business, all these guys knew him, his reputation, were in awe, and respected him; they ate out of his hand.

They ate my father’s hand. Though he was 6’ 2”, 220lbs, and oh so far from a milquetoast, he felt like a midget, the weak son, an interloper in the dominion of his father, the king. He was well into his twenties before Poppy acknowledged that he was a man, and this is what earned his blessing: One day, Poppy - a sensitive, situationally volatile person behind the wheel never hesitating to mete out a good dressing down or worse to offending drivers who he felt slighted by - and Dad were in the Caddie in Manhattan when a truck cut them off as they approached a red light.

“Ken, get out of the car, go get him!” he exhorted. An obedient son, my father carried out his commanding officer’s orders. It was one of only a few bonding experiences they shared.

It used to drive my father crazy when Poppy leaned on him for being too tough with me; it was like Poppy had been abducted by aliens and returned a different man.

Poppy, Dad, and I. My Bar Mitzvah, 1964.

In the summer of 1964, on the cusp of thirteen, I visited Weatherford, the small town in Texas where my mother’s family hailed, home of my other grandfather, who died nine years before I was born, beatified, it seemed, by my mother and maternal grandmother after his death, was the polar opposite of Poppy, and, to me, an oppressive angel. He was the sky, Poppy the earth. My mother's brother-in-law, my Uncle Bill, taught me how to drive, each afternoon taking me out on an old rural delivery route outside of town where the only thing I risked crashing into was a cow, an unlikely prospect in the extreme. I was physically ready; tall, I could reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel at the same time, and reasonably coordinated for the task. It was a heady experience.

A headier experience was yet to come. Chicago was the next stop on what had become an annual summer tour, and Poppy, upon learning of my new-found skill, decided that next class in the driver’s ed. syllabus would, naturally, be Urban Navigation, a relaxing motor along the tranquil streets, avenues and boulevards of a pedestrian-choked, traffic-packed metropolis.

No dummy, he didn’t tell Grandma of his plan for my higher education; he loved her dearly, why trigger a conniption fit leading to a massive stroke? And so two fools, one old enough to be my grandfather – wait, he was – the other old enough to know better but too young to care, embarked on a Disneyland attraction the Chicago Way, Mister and Master Toad’s Wild Ride Through The Loop – but, of course, without a Disney employee to panic-wrench the stop lever down at first scent of danger.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, alas, prevents me from recounting the adventure in detail. Suffice it to say, though I projected an air of insouciant confidence throughout l’affaire insanité, I’m quite sure that the grip indents on the steering wheel present at its conclusion were not so at its onset. I do, however, remember the car, a 1957 white Cadillac Coupe de Ville with two-tone gray interior kept in immaculate condition, though not through any manual effort by Poppy.

1957 Cadillac Coupe de Ville.

Occupants survived the ordeal intact, as did the car, pedestrians, and surrounding traffic and inanimate objects but it’s my understanding that afterward the poor Caddie exhibited strange tics, increased compression and resting rpm, tremors throughout the Body by Fisher, spasmodic air-intake to the manifolds, and distress in the lower tract, all of unknown origin. Had Poppy’s mechanic been a strict Freudian, I’m sure he would have recognized a classic case of GVAS, Generalized Vehicular Anxiety Syndrome. It’s in the American Automotive Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual; you could look it up.


Upon our return home, Poppy exulted to Grandma about our escapade, her characteristic rubbing of lower lip against upper when distressed accelerating into overdrive with each emerging detail. Silent throughout, at tale’s end she turned and walked into their bedroom, returning moments later with object in hand. She shook it in his face.

“Your wallet! You didn’t have your wallet! No driver’s license, no identification, no money, no nothing! What if -"

"- Aw, Molly, you should have seen him. The kid’s a pistol!”

Oh yes, he was my god.

By late adolescence, I realized that if I wanted to be a man in this family I'd have to transform the tall, skinny bookworm with zero physical confidence, who squirmed out of physical confrontations throughout childhood and teens due to cowardice and lived in chronic shame, into some semblance of Gertz. I went from one extreme to the other.

After Oxford Distribution shut-down in the mid-1950s, Poppy again worked for other men as a sales executive. In 1966, Grandma and Poppy moved to Florida, living in a small apartment in a new building on Collins Avenue in Bal Harbour, just north of Miami Beach. Poppy retired.

While still vigorous, he had health issues; he’d suffered a heart attack a few years back and had slowed down. He took long walks on the beach for exercise, and I’d walk along side and listen to him share his experiences. I ate them up, enraptured. But I couldn’t help noticing that the flesh on his torso was atrophying, his legs – always thin in comparison to his upper body, had become pencil-thin.

Grandma, her life with Poppy one of love and admiration and martyrdom punctuated with a liberal dose of tsks and resigned head shaking at his behavior, now had to cope with having him underfoot 24/7/365 as he tried to exert his authority over their domestic life, her turf. He was doomed: Grandma, in her way, was tougher than he was and treated him as an indulged, overgrown son that needed to be watched over and cared for but she had the gift of allowing him to feel that he was the king while she ran the kingdom; she was wife-mommy. His world had dramatically shrunk. He became Keeper of the Carpet, rigorously inspecting the bare feet of all who’d been on the beach before they entered the apartment, making sure the white wall-to-wall wasn’t stained by tar from the sand.

11/18/68

Dear Steve -

We were so pleased to receive your letter altho it reflected the mood that you were in, which is a perfectly natural thing for one to be moody at times - when young one may call them growing pains, you begin to look, take stock of yourself and your outlook on life begins to take on different views.

Before I write another word I want you to know that I am not writing a lecturing letter, for I too am like you. I will not do anything that I don't wish to do. I know that I am a stubborn guy & just can't be false to myself. If I don't care for someone I keep my distance, I speak out as I please when I feel that I am right, altho many times I wish that I kept my big mouth shut...

One should always be a gentleman...

...All of us go thru certain stages of life with mixed feelings & I know that you will have your up & down charts, not because you are my grandson you are a pretty good thinking young man & will find yourself...

Talk about friend problems, as you know I know so many people, however I only had one real close friend in all my life one who I could discuss problems, women, etc.

Your letter so expressed my young feelings, when you say you feel like you're living from the outside in. You are a part of life. Get over it Steve, this whole wide world is yours.

I want you to know that your Poppy is behind you 100%.

By the way, after reading your letter you sure know how to express your thoughts & feelings & you can become a writer (now don't laugh).

Grandma & I are just fine - enjoying life & in a way each other, when she doesn't pester me too much.

Affectionately,

Poppy

I sure write lousy

Only if penmanship trumps content.

Early one morning, from my foldout bed in their living room, I saw something that I never thought would occur. Through their slightly ajar bedroom door, I watched in amazement as Poppy wrapped phylacteries around his forearm and forehead and davened. My God bowed before another in submission.
___________

Tomorrow: Part 6.

Part [1]  [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The Biggest Jew In Chicago Part 4

The Depression was not a disaster for the family at all. But though Poppy was working, money was tight. He helped support some in the rest of the family and was assisting with tuition for two of his brothers' college and post-grad education. And maintaining image in his world was important, losing status could be construed as weakness – devastating to his standing amongst his peers and to business and, admittedly, his ego.

1931 Buick 4-door sedan, in red.

In 1931, he bought a top-of-the-line dark green Buick 4-door sedan with wire wheels, white sidewalls, running boards and a chrome trunk rack. The fine clothes had to continue, the generous tips, the handouts to the less fortunate. There were times when Grandma had to ask her mother for a few dollars here, a few dollars there, to help ends meet. Poppy was also borrowing money from the company. On the cusp of Repeal, he owed $6K, a major sum in those days, and he hated having that hang over his head.

Great-Grandpa Abe Degrafsky/Bernstein had retired early as a very successful horse-trader and had become an equally successful day-trader in the stock market, spending his days at a brokerage house watching the ticker. By never buying on margin and selling at the slightest downturn, he survived the Crash of 1929 and thrived, picking up stocks at their nadir when they had no place to go but up. Grandma’s brothers, Leo and Joe Bernstein, were looking for opportunities, Poppy was seeking help. Great-Grandpa Bernstein stepped in with a solution. He loaned Leo and Joe $10K to buy out Poppy’s share in National Brokerage, taking care of his debt and putting an extra $4K in his pocket, a sweet short-term return for Poppy but a major long-term disappointment, a fortune slipping through his fingers.

Prohibition had devastated the distillery business. Most had shut down completely, putting their equipment into storage. But by the early 1930s, the handwriting was on the wall for the Noble Experiment. In Kentucky, a small family business with a great name and established brand recognition decided it was time to prepare for the future but cash-poor, they needed a serious transfusion of capital. What had been National Brokerage Company had now morphed into Philip Blum Co. controlled by Great-Uncle Harry Blum, his father, Phillip, and Great-Uncles Leo and Joe Bernstein, in partnership with two others. They bought the Kentucky family’s business outright from its patriarch for $100,000, leaving the family to practice their art while they provided marketing and sales savvy.

The patriarch’s name was Jim Beam.

And so, while it then rained money in torrents and drenched the Blums and Bernsteins, Poppy was left holding an umbrella.

No longer a partner in a business, he became an employee, working for Isaac Bernheim’s Bernheim Distillery with the established brands, I.W. Harper, Old Charter, and Belmont. Prohibition was over, and in spite – or because - of the Depression, the liquor business boomed. Money was coming in and times were very good. Poppy was Western Sales Manager for Bernheim. All of the country’s wine and spirits distributors were Jewish. Well, not all. Missouri’s notoriously corrupt political boss, Tom Pendergast, owned a whiskey wholesale house that Poppy did business with. Poppy, of course, knew Pendergast, and one his political underlings, a then-hack named Harry Truman.

The children of Maurice and Grace Gertz, c. 1939.
Front row, from left: George, the youngest; Bob.
At rear, from left: Elmer, the runt of the litter,
who would become one of the nation's most
respected 1st Amendment lawyers; Bernice; Sol; Ed.

Grandma and Poppy moved to 5240 Sheridan Road, a major step up. In the mid thirties, Poppy started to go to New York on business, staying at the Park Central Hotel where ball players and fighters parked their carcasses while in town. That's where he met Max Baer, Tony Canzoneri, and most of the other contending and champion fighters of the era.

Max Baer (L) and his pal, Edward M. Gertz, 1935.

He met Baer in the hotel’s elevator. Impressed with Poppy's size and demeanor, Baer initiated a conversation; they became fast friends. In 1940, Poppy took my father to Trafton’s Gym, Chicago's boxing-mecca, to watch Max train for his fight with “Two-Ton” Tony Galento. To Baer and the star fighters he was “Eddie;” to the up and comers, “Mr. Gertz.” After kibitzing with Max et al, Poppy took Dad upstairs to Babe Barron’s betting parlor. Charlie "Babe" Barron was Chicago’s gambling kingpin, his bookie joint action central. Though he was never a problem gambler, Poppy did like to bet on the fights and baseball games, and to a lesser extent, the ponies but, as with his card-playing, he was conservative, never a high-stakes player. Poppy walked into Barron’s, Dad in tow. “Hiya, Eddie!” Barron big hellos. “Hi, Babe,” Poppy returns. Barron turns away, and Poppy leans over to Dad and whispers that Barron was tried and found not guilty for killing a guy in self-defense. My father is goggle-eyed.

On March 20, 1941, Max Baer wrote my father a letter written on the letterhead of the 20th Century Sporting Club, which controlled all boxing in New York and, by extension, the nation. He promised Dad, who he had become close to, a special 21st birthday present.

Dear Ken:

 Your dandy letter here and tickled me pink. I got quite a giggle out of your reference to my having written your Dad requesting that you come here to act as a spar mate for me in my preparatory work for the unraveling of Lou Nova, April 4, Madison Square Garden, N.Y. City.

I let you down the last time I met Nova. Not only you but many others. It was you I worried about, as I know all the boosting you did for me and any wagering you did was from the heart. I am going to give you a birthday present, Nova getting an assist, April 4. I trust it will be a happy crossing of another year in life’s journey. Sitting by the radio you will hear me give you the wishes for the happiness of the day, when I step to the ‘mike’ after tucking Nova away in sweet slumber. Maybe ‘sweet’ is not the word from the Nova viewpoint, but t is perfect from my angle. And yours, I know.

We are in a great spot up here. Cool, crisp, pine laden air that is so invigorating. Peps one up and makes him a glutton for work. It is the spur and oldster like me needs. I am right now in the best physical condition I have ever been in since I bowled over Max Schmeling. I have my [mind] set on putting Nova away, to be followed by (I hope) by a crack at Billy Conn, the winning over bother of them placing me in direct line for my coveted return bout with Joe Louis. Oh! Boy, if it just works out that way. Then my ring days will be complete. The first man to regain the heavyweight championship.

I want to tell you, Ken, that we do not work out on Saturdays. Every other day at 2 PM. Do try to come up some Sunday. YOU ASK ME ARE LADIES ADMITTED. You know me, Ken, they are invited and welcome. Bring along the fair one who has you entranced, this day & age. Will be looking forward to your coming. Best personal good wishes, Sincerely Max Baer. P.S. What lousy typing Forgive me please pal. - M.”

Baer v. Nova, The Birthday Bout, April 4, 1941.

Max lost to Lou Nova by TKO in the eighth round. Some birthday gifts are best presented in a box rather than a boxing ring.


He was good friends with Joe. E. Lewis, the speakeasy singer who had his throat slashed when his Mob employer became offended when another Mob-owned club offered him a higher paying gig which Lewis had the nuts to accept. Lewis’ biography later became a star-vehicle movie for Sinatra, The Joker Is Wild. His vocal cords mangled and singing career over, Lewis became a popular nightclub comic. A notorious drinker and horse-player, he’d customarily punctuate his comedy routines with a shot of whiskey, exclaiming “Post-Time!” They met one night while the two were at an illegal gambling club. Lewis was, typically, losing at a craps table, Poppy next to him. Disgusted, Poppy grabbed the dice from him, rolled, and won. Lewis bet with Poppy that night, and for the rest of their friendship called him “Gertzie!,” the only person on the planet able to get away with that way too breezily familiar, irreverent moniker.

Things were sweet. Grandma and Poppy went to the Kentucky Derby every year, enjoying the high life.

In 1937, Bernheim sold out to Lewis S. Rosenstiel, who, during Prohibition, had been furiously buying up distilleries with large warehouse inventories holding permits from the federal government. When Repeal arrived, Rosenstiel, under his Schenley Brands umbrella, was poised to assume primacy of the liquor business in the United States, consolidating his position during the 1930s by buying every distillery he hadn’t already bought and making deals to import all the scotch, wine, and cordials he could.

Suffice it to say, gentiles may have been making all the whiskey in Kentucky and Tennessee, but Jews owned it, sold it, and dominated the business.

1938 Buick Roadmaster sedan.

With Bernheim now owned by Rosenstiel, Big Ed – now driving a 1938 Buick Roadmaster sedan that would last through the War - became Rosenstiel’s top man for the West; they had known each other during Prohibition, doing business and socializing together. Decades later, when Poppy was retired and living in Miami Beach, he told me, age 14, in a sudden flash of memory apropos of nothing, about their first meeting as employer-employee. Rosenstiel declared “Ed, you’ll wear the finest suits, stay in the finest hotels, eat the finest food – but I won’t pay for schtupping!” Poppy chuckled in the telling and it remains unclear whether Rosenstiel was routinely laying down the law for potential behavior, or whether he was making a point based upon knowledge of my grandfather's habits. Poppy attracted women like static electricity attracts lint but it’s a mystery whether any of them stuck, had the hair on their arms stand up, and felt his current run through them. (But I have my suspicions).

In 1942, Rosenstiel, dissatisfied with his distributor in New York, asked Poppy to move there and establish a wholesale house to exclusively handle Schenley’s goods. An opportunity to become his own man again was thrown in his lap. Irresistible. But Poppy didn’t have the scratch, so Rosenstiel hooked him up with a mutual friend, Joe Davis, a gentleman from Newark who had previously owned the company that imported White Horse scotch and produced a couple of whiskey brands that were popular in the East. Poppy owned 33% of the business; Davis 67% for putting up the money, but management was equally held by contract. Poppy, who yearned to be a macher and have a business of his own, was now in the roses.

And it was roses for my father. Enlisting in the Army, he was now far away from home – and Poppy. World War II couldn’t possibly be tougher than being Ed Gertz’s son.

The author's father, Kenneth G. Gertz, in 1941, age 21.

He was a critical, judgmental and intimidating father. As a young boy, Dad once knocked a window out while playing baseball and spent the rest of the day in abject fear of Poppy’s wrath. Fortunately, when Poppy learned how the window had been broken, it was aces; he lived out his baseball fantasies through my father. But he constantly criticized Dad’s performance on the field. Home was where never was heard an encouraging word and the skies were all cloudy all day. Poppy was fearsome Chief Black Cloud, a figure of awe, respect and terror, though the prospect of punishment was far greater than the actual penalty.

Poppy seemed to be omniscient, the All-Seeing Eye, every citizen of Chicago his minion. Once, while in high school, Dad cut football practice and went to a burlesque show. That night, Poppy asked how football practice went. Dad told him oh, it was tough, a real workout, whew! Poppy gave him the Death Ray, declaring how would you know, you weren’t there! Dad protested but Poppy had him on the grill, demanding to know what he was doing on the corner of Van Buren and State Street. Dad cringed, grew pale, his chest tightened into a knot, his soul withered to a wisp. He stammered out the truth.

Poppy didn’t talk to him for three weeks. It would have been easier to bear a beating, which, fortunately, Poppy never delivered, not once. But an occasional sharp punctuation mark, oh yeah. One night, Uncle Sol’s at the house. He and Poppy get into it, trading punches. Next day, while Poppy’s driving Dad somewhere, my father commented that Uncle Sol was a mean man, he hit you. Poppy's reaction was instantaneous primal instinct. “Don’t you ever say anything against your Uncle Sol!” Whack!

But Dad had his moments of triumph. Getting into a fight one Friday afternoon after school, he came home with a broken hand. Grandma feared for my father’s life. Not to worry. When Poppy came home and learned the circumstances, Dad’s stock went up into the stratosphere. Next day, Poppy schlepped Dad around to his accounts. Swollen with pride, he showed off Dad’s swollen fist to all, declaring “the kid’s a regular Dempsey!” Dad was in seventh heaven. A bit short-lived. The following Monday, Poppy accompanied Dad to school to check out the boy who had been on the other side of Dad’s fist, needing to know that the kid got the worst of it. Fortunately – but not for the kid – his left peeper was blackened, his lower lip split.

Other people would tell Dad that Poppy said good things about him but Dad never heard them to his face. Poppy traveled a lot, often being away for three week stretches. During those interludes, Dad was king of the house with no one on top of him all the time with criticism. He was happy to see Poppy when he returned but after few days was glad to see Poppy leave again.

Cowardice was a mortal sin. One night, there was a big storm. The power went out and Dad started to cry. Poppy yelled at him for being a sissy. Dad was seven years old. At age nine, he went to a summer camp run like a military institution. He was terribly homesick, and he cried in Grandma’s arms when she came to visit – Poppy was, as usual, away on business - begging to be allowed to come home. Grandma told him Poppy would think he had a yellow streak down his back, the worst crime imaginable. Dad sucked it up.

Poppy’s job was embarrassing during Prohibition; Dad would tell his friends that Poppy was a broker rather than in the whiskey business. Poppy tried to be circumspect about the family field of employment. He had to visit Uncle Sol one night at Sol’s job. Which was managing a bottling plant for Capone. Taking him along for the ride, Poppy told Dad that Uncle Sol ran a soda factory. Whoopee for my father, who immediately upon arrival asked for a strawberry pop. Oy. Minions are sent scurrying to find an open grocer and fetch the kid a soda.

Grandma shielded Dad from Poppy. He thought my father had it too easy, was spoiled, as if it was Dad's fault that he wasn't born on Halsted Street. To the outside world, he was a hail fellow well met. At home, different story. He put a high premium on being manly; expressing emotion was not easy for him; it was at best a difficult task. There was a gruffness to him, tough to penetrate; he just couldn’t open up. He wrote expressive letters that were incongruous with his persona and the only evidence of his affection. Eye to eye, his tongue was stone or bristles. Though he yearned to have his daughter, my Aunt Marilyn, sit in his lap to be dandled and have affection returned, it didn’t happen. She was intimidated by him, too. He wanted to be gentle. He didn't know how. There are no photographs of Poppy playing with his children.

Physical affection and emotional warmth
with children would skip a generation:
Poppy and my sister, 1949.

___________

Part [1] [2] [3] [4]  [5] [6]

The Biggest Jew In Chicago Part 3

According to its press book, a movie was loosely based upon Terry Druggan, his partner Frankie Lake, and their activities.



William Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931), starred James Cagney as Tommy Powers/Terry Druggan and featured Edward Woods as Matt Doyle/Frankie Lake. The 1923 tragi-comic death of Sam “Nails” Morton was depicted in the movie: An avid horseman, Nails (in the film, “Nails Nathan”) was riding in Lincoln Park one morning, a stirrup broke, the horse reared, Nails was thrown, the horse kicked him in the head and killed him. So upset and grief stricken were his Irish boon companions and partners that a hit squad was sent to the stable. They aerated the horse’s head. In the film, Cagney/Tommy/Terry is the equine’s assassin. In reality, it was Louis “Two-Gun”Alterie, an ex-gunsel for Druggan and member of O’Banion’s gang, along with a couple of other equestrian executioners in the employ of O’Banion.

In A Little Piece of History: The Village of Kildeer [a small community northwest of Chicago], Clayton W. Brown recounts that:

During Prohibition a gentleman named Terrance Druggan purchased about 215 acres of land on both sides of Long Grove in what is now Kildeer's Farmington Subdivision. Mr. Druggan had a nickname, ‘Terrible Terry.’ because he was a Chicago gangster, head of the Druggan-Lake Gang (or Valley Gang) prominent in the 1920's. His partner was Frankie Lake, an ex-Chicago fireman...They were both trigger-happy bootleggers who controlled a territory on Chicago's west side, between Cicero and Chicago's Little Italy, as lieutenants of Al Capone [they were not lieutenants of Capone; their gang was part of Capone’s syndicate]. Both Druggan and Lake, as young teenagers, joined the Valley Gang then controlled by...Paddy ‘The Bear’ Ryan and Heinrich ‘Big Heinie’ Miller. When they reached maturity they took it over.

Druggan was a dwarf-like character who lisped when excited, especially when shooting down an opponent or hijacking a liquor truck. Both men wore expensive fedoras, tailor-made suits and horned-rimmed glasses, which gave them the appearance of mild-mannered businessmen. Druggan was very religious, a devout Catholic, in spite of the his criminal activities. Druggan and Lake both became millionaires during Prohibition and rode in limousines driven by chauffeurs. They owned a private railroad car, but used it only once after it's windows were shot out by rival gangsters.

Most of their fortune came from Joseph Stenson who gave them 50 percent of five large breweries so they would stop hijacking his shipments and he could continue to operate. By 1925, Capone was taking more than 40 percent of the profits from their breweries, but provided Druggan and Lake with an army of gunmen to protect their territory. Both were imprisoned once for operating illegal breweries. Terry Druggan built a stucco-sided house on Long Grove Road, near Middleton…There formerly was a flagpole in front that could be seen from Rand Road. He had a handy man who's job it was to raise and lower the flag. If the flag was at the top of the pole it was O.K. for Druggan to come home, at half-mast it meant someone was there looking for him and he should keep going. Whenever Druggan heard a noise outside the house he would look out the windows carrying a machine gun. Having once been shot through one of the windows caused him to move into a rear bedroom. A subsequent owner of the house claimed there were bullet holes in the gutters and siding.

Of Druggan and Lake, Herbert Asbury, in Gangs of Chicago, wrote:

In 1924, for refusing to answer questions put to them by Judge James Wilkerson of the United States District Court, Druggan and Lake were sentenced to a year's imprisonment for contempt of court. Several months later a newspaper reporter called at the county jail to see Druggan, but when he asked for the gangster he was told: ’Mr. Druggan is not in today.’

’Then I'll talk to Frankie Lake,’ said the reporter.

‘Mr. Lake also had an appointment downtown,’ the jailer said. 'They will be back after dinner.’

The dazed newspaper man returned to his office, and an investigation disclosed that both Druggan and Lake, in return for twenty thousand dollars in bribes, as they testified later, had been given extraordinary privileges. Supposedly incarcerated and treated the same as other prisoners, they had actually spent much more time in Loop restaurants and in their own luxurious apartments than in jail; they had been permitted to come and go as they pleased, and the death cell of the jail had been turned into a private office where they received their gangsters and issued their orders.

James Cagney as Terry Druggan in The Public Enemy.

Poppy and Druggan loved cards, and Terry would occasionally come over to the house to play a few hands of poker or pinochle with him, continuing to do so, presumably, during his extra-joint jaunts into town.

The legal and illegal trade in liquor co-existed on an incestuous, go-along to get-along basis in an unspoken truce; there were family members on both sides. After Capone organized the various gangs and ended, for the most part, the constant hijacking of each others' trucks, some rogue mobsters would try to hijack legitimate whiskey but if they knew you and liked you they’d leave your stuff alone. Particularly if your name was Gertz. Poppy, because of his size, reputation, where he was brought up and the people he knew, was given wide- very wide - berth. Sometimes, though, things got a bit confusing on the streets.

One night, Poppy got a call and immediately phoned Great-Grandpa Bernstein: One of National Brokerage’s trucks was being followed by mob guys and Poppy needed help; Abe Bernstein né Degrafsky was no shrinking violet. Yet another Livak from Vilna, and, like Aaron Gershowetz, a horse trader but with bear in his heart and a hard-flint disposition borne of a childhood evading capture by Cossaks for 20-year enslavement into the Russian army, he and his were not be trifled with. Armed and dangerous, the two of them chased off the would-be hijackers.

Next morning, Poppy went for his regular haircut at the College Inn Barbershop in the Sherman House, the big hotel across from City Hall where all of Chicago’s politicians, gangsters and sports crowd congregated, and ran into Terry in the lobby. Druggan comically related the previous night’s incident, excitingly commenting upon the crazy Indian pumping shot at him from the truck ahead and the wild men spraying him from behind. (Both Poppy and Uncle Sol, because of their broad, thick, high cheekbones, somewhat resembled Native-American chieftains). Poppy didn’t know Druggan was the guy following his truck, and Druggan didn’t know it was Poppy’s truck or that Crazy Sollie was literally riding shotgun in it. Poppy set him straight. “Gee, Eddie, I had no idea.” No harm, no foul.

There were a couple of occasions when Poppy and Uncle Sol were pulled over by other Capone associates while delivering a shipment.

Bad idea followed by hard swallows and awkward salutations: “Uh. Hi, Eddie.” The other opens the back of the truck and is greeted by Sol with a shotgun. “Uh. Hi, Sollie.” End of incident.

Druggan was a good guy to know if you had a special problem. A few years before, Grandma was robbed on the street. When she told Poppy about it, he immediately knew what to do. He called Druggan, Terry got hold of guys who did it and retrieved Grandma’s jewelry. No word on the fate of the thieves.

Boxing was Poppy’s favorite sport. He spent a lot of time at Davey Miller’s gym getting to know the young guys who would later become well known fighters. He took my father to all the Friday night amateur fights that Miller ran at his gym. By the mid-Twenties, Miller had become the outstanding boxing referee in Illinois.

Come 1927 and Dempsey and Tunney are set to fight their rematch in Chicago. Davey was the appointed ref for the fight but Miller had a brother, Herschie, who was a member of Capone’s gang. Capone idolized Dempsey and Davey Miller was considered to be in Capone's pocket because of Herschie and Davey’s gambling operation. (Miller, a paragon of character and completely unintimidated by Alphonso, many years later admitted that Capone had approached him but that he had politely and firmly turned down Capone’s pre-fight bribe to make sure things went right. He didn’t report the Capone offer; having refused, it was of moot importance). Before the fight, Poppy took my father, seven years old, to Dempsey's training camp. It seemed that everyone in the fight crowd knew Big Ed; he was a star amongst them. Poppy and Grandma had ringside seats at Soldier Field at the then extravagant price of $40 each.

In an unusual example of backbone, at the last minute the Illinois boxing commission nixed Miller, Dave Barry was substituted as referee, and the result was infamous "long count." My father, listening to the fight on the radio at home, cried when Dempsey lost. Jack was Poppy’s friend and his as well.

Just a few weeks before that fight, Poppy went to see the Cubs play the Reds at Wrigley Field. As usual, he was in his box seat right behind the visiting team’s dugout. At the close of the ninth inning, a few men behind him gave Reds’ pitcher Pete Donohue the razz as he walked to the dugout. Donohue, assuming Poppy was the ringleader, “took him to task,” and spit-balled “Jew Bastard” at him.

Bad idea.

Poppy jumps out his seat, leaps over the railing onto the field and decks Donohue. The entire Reds team comes to Donohue’s rescue and a few others take the horizontal express before “hostilities” are officially ended by the erstwhile cop, Officer Hunt. Poppy is unscathed. A few of his upstanding and lowstanding friends in attendance then whip up the Jews in the crowd to Poppy’s defense as he’s taken away. Post-game anarchy ensues. Enter the Riot Squad. True to form, however, Poppy made a new friend. Though Donohue – his topography and ego seriously bruised - never stood up to the plate, Reds’ manager Jack Hendricks and Big Ed became buddies.

Contrary to the newspaper accounts, Poppy was taken to Summerdale Station and held uncharged and unbooked for a few hours. The police called Grandma at home and told her he would be home shortly. Grandma was relieved. Until receiving the call, she was supremely angry, assuming that Poppy was late for dinner because he was out playing cards. Starting a riot and getting arrested were the lesser of evils, as far as she was concerned; after all, he was defending Jewish honor.

Poppy also defended hers. One day, the two are strolling along State Street, Grandma walking ahead with a friend. On the corner, a wise-acre begins to wolf-whistle and catcall the ladies as they pass by.

Bad idea.

Said wise-acre was Harry, b. Hershel, Krakow, aka “Kingfish" or "King Levinsky,” a tall, husky, popular, somewhat buffoonish Jewish heavyweight contender with a crushing overhand right who fought Max Baer and defeated Dempsey, ending the ex-champ’s comeback. Kingfish was renowned for his colorful post-fight commentary - “I hitted him where it hoit da most. Da King ain’t no sucker, ya know,” he reportedly declared after his fight with Jimmy Slattery – and his unorthodox defense methods in the ring: An early conservationist, rather than waste valuable energy moving out of the way he blocked punches with his face.

Kingfish, aka King Levinsky.

Poppy laid him out cold on the sidewalk.

Levinsky’s post-fight commentary for this quick business is lost to history. But though his manager at the time was Davey and Herschie Miller’s brother, Al, there were no repercussions for Poppy. After all, Davey and Herschie were his friends, and Kingfish was seriously out of line; any man would have done the same. Suffice it to say, after Poppy hitted him where it hoit da most, King Levinsky became his friend: Da King wasn’t no sucker, y’know.

Later on, when there was a big fight in New York, the 20th Century Limited would run from Chicago and all the politicians, gangsters and sporting crowd would be on the train, including Poppy, so his circle of friends and acquaintances grew larger. He was the biggest, toughest Jew in Chicago and in the liquor business, a magnet for friendship and respect.

_________

Part [1]  [2]  [3] [4] [5] [6]

The Biggest Jew In Chicago Part 2

Julius Rosenwald wasn’t the only one keeping an eye on Ed Gertz.

Concurrently, Chicago was in the midst of bitter Taxi Wars. The taxi business was still developing, wholly unregulated, and competition amongst growing cab companies and independents was fierce, endangering drivers, riders and pedestrians who had to dodge the pack of cabs that would descend upon potential fares en mass with contesting drivers invariably getting into fights. Poppy supplemented his income working as a schtarker – muscle - for John D. Hertz, whose Yellow Cab company was asserting dominance.

In his youth, Hertz (b. Sandor Herz, Slovakian Jew) hung out in boxing gyms and became a reasonably skilled pugilist, fighting under the name "Dan Donnelly." Now, establishing himself as a entrepreneur who would become a leader in the transportation industry, Hertz put Poppy in the driver’s seat, making him his top street troubleshooter/negotiator. Living in the upscale German-Jew part of the Southside, he’d no doubt heard of Big Ed Gershowetz, perhaps from Rosenwald himself, another Southside resident. Here was a good kid but tough, who could keep his head while asserting strength but if necessary deliver the hard knocks. Poppy’d get a distress call from the street, race to the scene and either part the combatants without incident, knock heads together, or end the fight decisively in Yellow Cab’s favor. Yellow Cab won the war.

As respected and successful Jewish businessmen, Rosenwald and Hertz were his early influences and role models. It is not unreasonable to conclude that it was while working for Hertz that Poppy changed the family surname.

In July of 1919, an angry Polish-American mob swept through the Southside, looking for Jews. Riotous, they’d been whipped up into an anti-Semetic frenzy by the rumor that one H. Kahn, a local Jewish merchant, had murdered a Christian child as part of a mythical, occultish Jewish blood-letting ritual – a decent piece of matzo traditionally impossible without a dash of gentile red-cells in the mix. Southside Jews were being terrorized and beaten. To the rescue, Davey Miller and his gang of tough Westside Jews poured into the Southside. And while there is no direct evidence, I’m quite certain that Poppy was right there, next to Miller; Uncle Sol was nearby, for sure. This was Poppy’s kind of scrap, and Uncle Sol lived for this sort of action.

At age 16 Uncle Sol lied and enlisted in the army, anxious to get into WWI. His platoon sergeant was guy from Chicago, born in 1893 and eight years older than Sol. He was another Jewish tough who feared nothing – nothing - and from the Westside. Why he’s practically meshpucah, family! They’d probably heard of one another. After all, Samuel Morton né Markowitz aka “Nails” Morton was a popular Chicago anti-Semite basher who protected harassed Westside Jewish merchants and school kids; before the war, Morton organized a Jewish defense club to keep Jew-baiting Polish gangs out of “Jewtown.” It’s likely that Uncle Sol and Poppy were part of Morton’s proto-Jewish Defense League. Sam became a war hero, won the Croix de Guerre for bravery (he captured a German machine gun nest despite severe wounds) and was awarded a battlefield commission to first lieutenant. Sol was promoted to platoon First Sergeant, “Nails” old job. After the war, Sam received a hero’s welcome from the Westside Jews. Then he got down to business.

He ran an automobile garage that fronted for his extra-curricular activities – car theft, gambling and, after the Volstead Act became law, distributing booze and beer via his fleet of trucks. Because the Jewish gangs were too small to compete, leaders had to align themselves with either the Italians or Irish. Nails allied himself with Dion O’Banion, the gangland florist, distributing O’Banion’s booze. After the war, Nails Morton gave Uncle Sol his first job, as an armed driver. Sol would hopscotch between the legal and illegal trade until finally settling on the good foot.

Given his background, Poppy could have easily strayed from the straight and narrow as so many of his friends from the neighborhood had done. And a few in the family.

One of his first cousins was Louis “Sleep-Out Louie” Levinson, the son of Maurice’s sister, Poppy’s Aunt Mary. Sleep-Out earned early fame as a second-story man, a gifted burglar, and, later, a well-connected gambler of renown, casino owner in Newport, KY, and person of interest to a couple of Congressional Sub-Committees. Sleep-Out died prematurely, not by natural means.

Sleep-Out's brother, Eddie Levinson, was more fortunate. At a young age he discovered that paradise was a pair of dice, and, before and after WWII, he and his friends had the bookie concession at fourteen Miami Beach hotels, courtesy of his New York friend and associate, Meyer Lansky. In 1946, Uncle Eddie arranged for my parents to honeymoon in Miami, first-class. Soon afterward, he managed the Riviera in Havana and the Fremont in Las Vegas, and later was partner and casino manager at the Sands, each job as Meyer’s man. In the mid-1950s, mom and dad went to Vegas. Uncle Eddie put them up, deluxe accommodations, and made arrangements for them to have dinner and see the shows at the other hotels in town – all seven of them; Las Vegas was a small town then - everything on him, with one condition: they were forbidden to gamble, or, rather, he was so breezily dismissive of amateurs, i.e. those other than The House, to wit: losers, that they were too ashamed to do so. When I was a kid, Uncle Eddie came to our house for dinner a few times. Nice guy. Last time I saw him was at my sister’s wedding. He lived long and died peacefully.

One of Uncle Louie and Uncle Eddie’s sisters married a mob-connected accountant. After they divorced, he was bumped off. I’m assured the two events were unrelated.

Why Poppy and Uncle Sol didn’t take a bad turn remains unclear but perhaps their father had something to do with it. Though Maurice – a dedicated anarchist (until becoming a small business owner) whose method of fitting a suit entailed having the client lie on the floor while he precisely outlined the supine figure in chalk, ultimately creating a garment of surprisingly accurate fit - was Orthodox, and, until early adulthood, so was Poppy, a sense of right and wrong was instilled not by religious training alone. When Poppy or Uncle Sol disobeyed or got in trouble, Maurice - a solid six-feet and a tough customer in his own right – would grab them by the ankles, upend them, and bounce their heads on the floor. Though as crude as his suit-fittings, paradoxically, over time, this disciplinary ritual had a salutary effect upon the pre-frontal cortex.

c. 1919.

In 1919, Poppy married Mildred, “Molly,” one of the eight children of Abe and Celia Degrafsky. She attended her first day of school with her best friend, whose last name was Bernstein. And so, courtesy of a school enrollment clerk, when she returned home that day she was Mildred Bernstein. A popular accident, apparently: the entire family joined in.

The author's grandmother, Mildred Gertz, c. 1921.

After finishing his studies, Poppy went to work for his maternal uncle, Dave Belson, as a draftsman at his manufacturing plant. But a sit down job for a stand-up guy was no life; he was restless and hated it. One night in 1920, at dinner at Great-Grandpa Abe Degrafsky-Bernstein’s, his brother-in-law, Harry Blum, married to one of Grandma’s sisters, told Poppy that the State of Wisconsin was ripe for the sale of medicinal whiskey and liquor for food processing and suggested that Poppy go up there and see what he could do. Next day, Poppy went up to Milwaukee. He opened up some drug store accounts and two bakeries for Blum, discovering that he had a gift for sales. The following day, he saw Uncle Dave and turned in his T-square and protractor. That was the end of his engineering career and the beginning of forty-five years in the liquor business.


It is around this time that Poppy developed a taste for sartorial splendor, which would last all his life. In an early photograph he’s dressed for success, starched collar, tie with stickpin, camel’s-hair coat, fedora, and walking stick. He’s twenty-two years old. Custom-made (they had to be – nothing fit off the rack) suits, shirts, and sport jackets became de rigueur. He cut quite a figure: huge, ramrod-straight posture, manicured nails, elegantly dressed, neatly groomed, he radiated power and authority and would do so for the rest of his life, long after power and authority had faded.

To implement the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, on October 28, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act, which legislated the prohibition of alcohol in the United States effective January 16, 1920. Under Title II, sections 3, 6, and 7, alcoholic beverages were legal but strictly regulated for sacramental, medicinal, and industrial purposes. And so, parallel to the fast-growing illicit trade in the sale and distribution of booze for strictly recreational use, a legal business grew selling alcoholic beverages to drug stores, churches, synagogues, and bakers (without rum cake, the nation crumbles).

After a year working for Blum, Poppy went out on his own. He partnered with two older, more experienced men and formed the Royal Drug Company. After a few months, he noticed that the inventory in the warehouse was less than what was on the books. So, one night, he staked-out the warehouse from his car, parked across the street. Soon, a truck pulled up, his two partners got out and started taking goods out of the warehouse, apparently for diversion into the illegal trade, which paid a premium for the real McCoy. Poppy jumped out of his car, raced across the street, and beat the shit out of his partners. End of the Royal Drug Co.

Edward M. Gertz, 1923.

He then formed Retail Druggist Supply Co., a partnership with an honest guy that amicably dissolved after a year. Now, Poppy rejoined brother-in-law Harry Blum as a partner in National Brokerage Company which, in addition to selling legal alcohol, traded in warehouse receipts for pre-Volstead Act-manufactured whiskey that the government stored in bonded warehouses for release to receipt holders only. Control the receipts, you controlled the legal flow of booze. The other partners in the business were Moe Rieger, married to Blum’s sister; Joe Levy, who was married to Great-Aunt Eva Bernstein; and Joe Guzik, brother of Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, Al Capone’s loyal business advisor and financial wizard. Aunt Bernice, Poppy’s sister, kept the books.

1925 Cadillac V-6 4-door sedan.

These were good times. Upwardly mobile, Grandma and Poppy moved to the North Side and in 1925 traded up from a Hudson Super-6 to a Cadillac V-6 4-door sedan, a monster car but Cadillacs had not yet become the standard for luxury in America.

In 1928, Poppy bought a light green Buick Brougham, Buicks at the time the hottest, most reliable, well-engineered mass-produced cars in the world, the Brougham the top of the line and more prestigious than a Caddie. Money was coming in, oh yes, though not in the fabulous sums that many who Poppy knew were raking in. His old friends since youth, Terry Druggan and Frankie Lake, for instance, were becoming extravagantly wealthy.

And who were Druggan and Lake?
_______


Part [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]