You Can Call Me Al

This guy ....

He of the soggy cigar
and the white fedora
alum of Catholic School 133
(from which he was expelled at age 14)
the Junior Forty Thieves
the Five Points Gang
ringleader of the Chicago Outfit
fiesty inhabitant of Atlanta US Pen,
Alcatraz Island, Terminal Island,
and even this lovely cell in
Eastern State Pen (Philly).

Yes, this is for real people!
Mr. Capone got special permission to decorate his cell
and so,
as you can clearly see,
given his Italian roots and all,
he went with the Tuscan Look.
It must have taken Alphonse weeks
to get that retro/adobe walls/wine-cellary ambience
and I'm pretty sure that he stole that
wooden radio from our house in the ghetto.

Apparently, his time at Alcatraz,
wasn't quite as cozy.
While there, Mr.Capone failed to adhere to
the basic rule that every school kid over the age of 5
can sum up in two words:
"no cuts".

When Al tried to take cuts in the prison barbershop queue,
James Lucas, a Texas bank robber serving 30 years,
pressed a pair of scissors to Al's neck and told him
to get back to the end of the line.
Al wondered aloud if Mr. Lucas knew who he was...
Lucas answered, "Yeah, I know who you are,
greaseball,
and if you don't get back to the end of that line,
I'm gonna know who you were."

Dang!
Better than Once Upon A Time In The West!

And yes, Mr. Lucas did stab him,
although at a later date for an equally "serious" infraction,
and down to solitary confinement he did go.

Well, as we all know,
our Al was a very bad boy indeed,
despite all the aforementioned quaint rehabilitative anecdotes.
His obituary in the New York Times
attributed over 300 deaths to His Chicago Outfitness
due to his creatively inspired gang wars.

That's not to say Al didn't have his good points ....

Here we have the starving and the unemployed
of the Depression era
lining up for Al's free coffee and doughnuts.
I believe this was the
"One doughnut, one vote" line.

Okay okay okay okay.
What does this have to do with BSL? you say.

Because because because because
we all know that Alphonse Capone
liked to hide from the Feds, from the G-men
and from his arch enemy "Bugs" Moran
in Lake County
and we are pretty sure
it was right about here:

Do you see that leetle yellow boat, senoir?
Now do you see that pointy promontory peninsula thingy
directly across the lake from the leetle yellow boat?
Bingo!

This is where, for some reason,
through some overheard grown-up conversation,
or whispered pseudo-ghost story around a campfire
we believed Al Capone was lurking,
no doubt spying on us with his binos
from his perch on the hill
facing conveniently east toward all the cottages
we normally inhabitated
(Strovens, Owens, Elharts, Laansmas, D'Archangels)
plotting our early Hofman demise.

It didn't seem to make any difference
that we were born in the 50s and 60s and
and Al Capone died in 1947.
It just made it spookier.

By the way, there is an excellent post here:
http://bigstarlakehistory.com/capone.htm
that is much more informative than my random Hofman rumors.