Crazy Uncle Mike

Heroes, POWs, Mafiosos, and Hillbillies – (Part 1)

Pow, my maternal grandfather

I had two grandfathers, like we all did, but I was luckier than most in the grandfather department.  My maternal grandfather was an amazing man.  He was a hard worker, a smoker, a drinker, a wise-ass, a tough guy, all five foot four of him.  He may also have been the most charismatic motherfucker who has ever lived.  He was a child of Italian immigrants who as a young man enrolled in the military.  His family was also full of mafia.  My grandfather was in the first army in WW2, he was in the first battle America had with the Germans in Africa (Tunisia} at a place called Kasserine Pass.  The German military genius Field Marshal Erwin Rommel led his tank command against the Americans and overran them.  There were three thousand Americans killed and another three thousand taken prisoner.  My grandfather escaped those fates in a brutal way.  He was on a mortar crew, they were pumping mortars in as fast as they could fire as the Germans were advancing, so much so that the barrel became overheated.  Overheated to the point that it detonated a shell in the barrel.  The explosion killed the other two on the crew and blew shrapnel into my grandfather’s face, chest and shoulder.  He was taken into the village of Kasserine with the other wounded before the American forces were overrun.

Years later I would meet a guy from Tunisia.  I told him I always wanted to visit Tunisia, when he asked why I relayed the story above.  He laughed, he was from Kasserine and he had a story from the Battle of Kasserine Pass as well.  It turns out that during the battle, American wounded soldiers were brought to his grandfather’s house to be cared for during the battle.  So it was entirely possible that my injured grandfather had been cared for in his grandfather’s house.

My grandfather would go on to fight across Africa, Italy, land on the beach at Normandy with the third wave then fight across France, Belgium and into Germany.  He was with General Patton for the majority of the war and served at times as an advance scout for invasions including the invasion of Sicily.  He won a bronze star and two purple medals during the war among other awards.  When he returned home from the war he held the distinction as the most decorated veteran in our county, a bonafide war hero.

My family would always talk about how realistic the scene in the Godfather was, when the mafia members fawned all over Michael Corleone as he returned from WW2 as a war hero.  Apparently the mafia in our family felt the same way about my grandfather.  And in Italian families, the first grandson is a privileged position to be born into, even more so to a hero grandfather.

My grandfather bonded incredibly with his first grandchild, as my granny used to say, he never changed one of his own kid’s diapers, but he changed mine.  When I was an infant he would lean over me with a fist and slowly pretend to punch me and say, pow.  So when I started to speak, I called him Pow and this became the only name he would go by after that.  He died when I was five, I have no memory of it at all.  I asked my granny about it years later, asked had I known what had happened?  She told me that I had been absolutely inconsolable for days.  Apparently my brain has blocked the memory to spare me remembering the pain.  Happily I have many memories of him including us drinking beer together.  We would sit at the kitchen table and drink, him with a mug of beer and me doing shots of my beer (milk).  I would drink it down, slam down the shot glass and yell, “more beer Pow!”  One of my most prized possessions is a photo I have of us doing this. About a decade ago when my great aunt died, I asked my granny to look for reel to reel audio tapes at her house. I knew my great uncle and Pow had exchanged audio letters. My grandmother informed me that there were no tapes, but a month later a box arrived at my house. The box was full of reel to reels and I had them digitized. When they came back there were everything from comedy albums to audio letters with relatives across the country, and several of my Pow. I listened to them, being impacted by hearing his voice for the first time in forty years. Suddenly on one, he yells, “come here and tell Uncle Joe your joke.” Suddenly, there it was my three year-old voice telling a joke, hearing our interaction on the recording I burst into tears.

Prior to my grandfather’s death, the year before, my uncle got married.  Being the number one grandson, I’d met all the mafia guys in the family and they all doted over me as Pow’s grandson.  The most famous of these guys was my cousin, or what I called him, Uncle Pauli.  Pauli held the job that Tony Soprano had in the Sopranos for one of the New York families in New Jersey.  He’d been a hit man and earned the Jersey job because the “brakes failed” on his car and he just happen to crash into a restaurant killing two mob bosses. 

I’ll never forget my uncle’s wedding, in through the door walked Uncle Pauli, a beautiful blonde lady on his arm and two giant guys with him who stood at the door after he entered.  He was an amazing figure wearing a full length mink coat.  He made his rounds then sat down calling to me.  I of course excitedly ran to him and sat on his lap.  While I was there I noticed his pearl handled 45 in his shoulder holster and as a crazy little four year-old asked him if I could see his gun.  He of course said yes.  I don’t remember him dropping the clip, or unloading the chamber.  But I remember him asking me who I wanted to shoot and help me to hold the gun, pointing it at people with his help yelling, “bang, bang, you’re dead.”

When my grandfather passed away the next year I’m told that once again, the funeral resembled a scene from the Godfather.  Big black cars, big Italian guys in nice suits driving into the cemetery and paying respects to my grandmother.  During the funeral my Uncle Pauli gave my granny an index card with a phone number on it.  He told her, you need anything, you call the number, you say the message is for Pauli, this is who I am and what I need.  My grandmother, the hillbilly, then joked can I have people killed.  Pauli in all seriousness said, “I repeat, call the number, say it’s for Pauli, who you are and what you need.”  So my granny was walking around for years with that card in her purse, she’d get a new one in the mail every six months or so with a new number on it.  She was a custodian in my junior high and at times I’d see people yelling at her and all I could think was, shut up you idiot, she can have you killed.

My granny was a full on hillbilly.  She grew up in a house in Kentucky with dirt floors and never had indoor plumbing.  She slept on a stack of cardboard with her six brothers and sisters.  Her first pair of shoes came at age nine when she made her first holy communion.  My grandfather and great uncle, stationed at Fort Knox at the time, literally met my grandmother and her sister hanging in a tree with no shoes on.  My granny was not to be trifled with, most hillbillies aren’t.

My granny only called the number once, when my cousin Vincent, that’s right, cousin Vinnie tried to bring her son into his business.  At one point in the late 70s Vincent held the title of being arrested for the largest cocaine bust in American history.  Nothing compared to what went down in the 80’s, but a record for a time none the less.  Vincent wanted my uncle to open and run a Maytag Appliance store for him to launder his cash.  My granny objected and called the number, saying simply she didn’t want it to happen.

Sunday dinner at granny’s house was a thing and one Sunday several cars and a limo rolled up outside.  Guys started carrying things into the house, flowers, antipasto plates, chocolates, etc… Then out of the limo stepped cousin Vincent.  He had a cane, an arm in a sling and the prototypical raccoon eyes of a broken nose.  He hobbled into the house and gingerly, with the help of two big guys, got down to his knees in front of my granny on the couch.  He handed her an envelope full of cash and then begged her forgiveness for involving her son without her permission.  He then mentioned, and emphasized it was not required, that if she felt so moved to let Pauli know that everything was ok.  My granny agreed and made the call, Vincent looked seriously relieved.

It would be a couple of months before my great uncle in New Jersey would find out what really happened.  Apparently after getting the call, Pauli drove over to Vincent’s club.  The club was on the second floor, with one of those long straight stairways leading up to it.  Pauli walked up the stairs, into the club and asked where Vincent was.  He then walked to the back of the club where Vincent was and blasted him right between the eyes shattering his nose.  He then proceeded to kick the crap out of him on the floor for several minutes, and beat him across the club and toss him down the stairs, never saying a word.  On the way out he said to Vincent, make it right with Buster’s wife.  Apparently in addition to a broken nose and a broken arm, he also had several broken ribs and internal injuries.  But he knew, if he didn’t make it right, Pauli would kill him. Don’t mess with hillbillies or the mob.