I have a great-uncle who was in the Jewish mafia and involved in the booze-smuggling trade during the Prohibition era.
He wasn’t very good at it, or maybe he was too good … some rival gangsters gunned him down, filling him with so many bullets that they basically tore his body into shreds. They had to sweep him into a box for the funeral.
One year we rented a travel trailer, which jackknifed in a graveyard in the middle of a rainy night. We worked mightily to free it from the mud and get back to the road, and left behind three toppled/broken tombstones. But we had miles to go before we slept, so we didn’t stop to find somebody to tell.
Really?
What’s wrong with building an ark is that it blocks the neighbors driveway. After all, he’s gotta get to work.
My cousin can be seen on the 60 Minutes investigation, claiming that God rains down his justice on those who most deserve it.
I’ve heard that it was pretty much common knowledge who did the shooting, and that said shooter died just a few years later. Is that your perception as well?
I was told that everyone in the town knew who the real murderer was, but I was not told that man’s identity. I have not heard about his death either.
There’s a book, In Broad Daylight, which discusses who knew what and where.
My mother’s uncle disappeared sometime around 1932. He had served as an officer in the US Navy (in the 1920’s), and was well educated. The family story was that he had married one of the Wanamaker heiresses, in Chicago-however, he made no contact with any of the family.
My dad tried to search for him-he got the Navy department records…the last the Navy knew of him was in 1931-he was living in a sailor’s home in W. Chicago.
Since he was born in 1901, the odds are that he is long dead-someday I’ll try searching for the guy.
Ooops, forgot about Iris.
I feel bad for Iris.
As you’ve already read, she grew up with a neglectful father, workaholic mother, and never knew when they’d be moving again or admiring a new backyard Spruce Goose. She got the hell out of town as fast as she could, and meandered around the American West.
She had a daughter along the way. Got married. Got divorced. Eventually she hooked up with some religious group. I’ve never heard what their beliefs were, or if it was some David Koresh-style commune, but around 2002 my grandmother* received a phone call.
“Hi Kathy! It’s Iris!”
“Iris? Iris who?”
“You know… Iris Diane…” Grandma listened for a while, let Diane speak all she liked, congratulated her on her newfound Life of Love, and then hung up and told Grandpa that Diane had joined a cult.
Shortly thereafter, Iris-Diane was living in Colorado. Her parents were in Nebraska. Iris-Diane invited Dorothy to come for a visit; but Glen refused to let Dorothy come unless he got to go too. So they both went.
Glen and Dorothy drove in late one night, the three of them had dinner, and then everyone went to bed. Iris got up early the next day to make a nice breakfast. Glen was already up and smoking. Dorothy didn’t come when called, so Iris went to the bedroom to let her know about pancakes and bacon.
Dorothy was stone cold. She had died in her sleep.
What followed isn’t clear. We’ve figured out that there must have been some major fight between Iris-Diane and Glen. It’s likely that Glen refused to do anything about his dead wife’s funeral, among other things. In any case, he grabbed his keys and drove back to Nebraska. He didn’t call anyone about what had happened.
Iris stayed with her mother. I think one of her brothers called to ask how the visit was going, and that’s how the family discovered that she was just…staying there. With her dead Mom.
She refused to call paramedics.
She refused to call a funeral home.
She refused to leave.
She refused to do anything until her father came back. He had done nothing for his wife in life. Iris-Diane wanted him to do right by Dorothy in death. So she held her mother’s body hostage until Glen would do… something. I really don’t know what she expected. Atonement for a childhood of shame? A sudden outpouring of love and affection after a lifetime of Mr. Spock impersonations? Culpability?
A day or two passed. Everybody was calling her - her brothers, her daughter, aunts, uncles, cousins. Finally, my grandmother picked up the phone. Honey, you know how he is. You know he won’t change his mind. Your mother deserves her rest.
Iris-Diane called the proper authorities and Dorothy came home to Nebraska. Glen refused to pay for anything connected with his wife’s burial. I don’t think he even went. Iris-Diane’s mother was buried next to her parents. When Glen died last year, I don’t think he was given so much as a tombstone.
*different Grandma.
At a party for a major wedding anniversary for my inlaws, one of my sisters-in-law kept going off to the bathroom. A lot. We began to suspect (knowing her history) that she was doing drugs in there, and her behavior later in the party led us to think we may have been right. She started doing a lot of really inappropriate things, like for a photo sitting on the lap of an elderly female neighbor of her parents and cuddling up, confusing the poor lady a lot. Then she started making her (teenage) nieces and nephew, and even her only brother (my husband) very uncomfortable with sexually-inappropriate behavior/touching, like repeatedly trying to grab my husband’s and our nephew’s butts, admiring a dress on one of the older teenage nieces and cupping her (clothed) breasts in the process while commenting on the great support, and so on.
My father-in-law is in his late 70s, as is my mother-in-law; both are getting frail, and she has mild to moderate Alzheimer’s. He had his healthy, large English setter put to sleep rather than deal with the dog any longer - even though one of his daughters owns English setters, has a big property, and asked to take the dog. (I suspect he told the vet that the dog had been trying to bite them, or something like that, to convince them to euthanize a healthy animal.)
My mother-in-law twice tried to file for divorce from my abusive father-in-law. Once, one of her daughters was driving her to the lawyer’s office, when MIL changed her mind and insisted they turn around. The other time, my FIL found out and met her outside the lawyer’s office, and convinced her not to go through with it. (My mother-in-law came from a wealthy family and stayed close to them, so she did have outside support and resources besides the couple’s assets.)
My husband knows the abuse was worse before he came along, several years after the last of his older siblings was born, and still doesn’t know everything that happened because of the secrets being kept and too-painful memories to dredge up. He found out that at least once, his father made his mother strip before beating her. He also thinks, from a comment let slip by a sister, that their father might have done the same to one or more of the girls.
This Great Uncle’s story is fascinating. Was he ever diagnosed with what exactly his brain-head injury caused?
Not that I know of.
It sounds like, whatever it was, was enough to cream the front of his brain that’s responsible for empathy and personality.
I only ever met him once, and that was several years ago. It was at a family reunion, and I remember wondering who that man was: he was sitting at a picnic table alone, surrounded by other picnic tables full of family members. His brothers and sisters were too ashamed to acknowledge him. His children were there, but ignored him. It was like he was a ghost that only I could see.
My Dad is a very friendly guy, and he felt bad for the Mystery Man (nearly 30 years of marriage to my mother, and he’d never met him!). He went over and ate with him for a while. Dad was his only company. After the reunion was over, there was a post-reunion pow-wow at my grandparents’ home, where I learned all about his life. What a waste.
I will weigh-in here.
Our family had a nice little summer cottage, purchased in 1959. Two and a half hours from the eastern suburbs of Toronto, it was a little piece of heaven, accesable only by boat. The sanitary facilities were modest. A pit privy. aka outhouse, aka “the wee hoose” aka “the little house out back”. You get the idea.
I hated it. It smelled really bad. I never felt comfortable using it. By 1969, at the tender age of 16, I had convinced the parents that I could, by times, be trusted to stay back in the city and keep the home fires burning.
In the summer of 1970, in his fifty-second year, my Dad suffered a massive and immediately fatal MI while visiting said sanitary facility. My Mom found him a short time later. The only access to the cottage was by boat and there was no phone. I prefer to believe he died instantly.
It only took me 39 years to feel like I could share that little bit of family lore. Thanks for listening.
My grandfather was a WWI draft evader. Yes, that’s World War One.
(He pretended to be a farmer, who were exempt.)
How horrible for your family! Your poor mom. 
Farmers were exempt? Learn something new every day…
My oldest uncle is the family scandal, but no one ever mentions it. He was born 6 months after my grandfather married my grandmother, looks nothing like my grandfather, and has a family name but not my grandfather’s name. My second-oldest uncle is named grandfather jr. No one ever mentions my oldest uncle’s prematurity (because that is how they say it if it comes up), or the fact that he doesn’t carry the traditional jr. My grandmother, if was mentioned at all, merely said that my grandfather was a hero and rescued her, and that girls should be very careful walking alone at night. Popular speculation amongst us grandkids (we’re all in our late 20’s early 30’s) is that Grandma was raped, and Grandpa married her when she found out she was pregnant. My grandfather never treated “his boys” any different from each other, and my oldest uncle has performed, and been expected to perform, all the “first-born” duties, such as executor of wills, larger share of inheritance, taking care of family business, etc.
A week ago my 50 year old sister (on her birthday), upset that her boyfriend of one month was dumping her, left his house and returned 30 minutes later (midnight) rammed her Dodge Charger at high speed into his central heat & air unit, destroying it completely and rendering her car undriveable.
She was charged with Assault and Battery with Intent to Kill. $20,000 bond, 20 years max, felony. That’s the state equivalent to attempted murder. She spent three days or so in jail and my parents bailed her out.
Her charge does not equal her supposed actions. There must be something she is not telling…
Yikes! You’re right man. Something else must be at work here.
Being Italian, my family makes plenty of jokes about “our relatives in the Mafia” even though, as far as I know, no such relatives exist.
However, my grandma gets extremely agitated whenever someone tells stories about the Mafia. She gets so upset about it that I’m convinced I do have a relative in the Mafia out there somewhere. But no one says the word “Mafia” in front of my grandma any more, so I’ll probably never know.