The hoodlum next door

What does it mean to be "mob adjacent?" For Mike Gentile (right), our father, it meant growing up in Chicago's Little Italy at Grand and Ogden with the next generation of post-Capone mobsters. Future mob bosses John DiFronzo (left) and Joe Lombardo (center) were just a couple of kids at Wells High School with Dad. While DiFronzo and Lombardo later went on to serious Outfit careers -- at one point both men shared the top leadership position -- Dad chose a different path. It's not that he had any moral objection to crime or criminals. He didn't want to work for any boss in any industry. Dad use to say (only half kidding) that as long as a man worked for someone else, he was just a money dancing on the organ grinder's chain. Growing up mob adjacent also meant hanging out at places like Patsy Restaurant, owned by "Patsy" Spolitro, father of hit man, Tony Spilotro. It was said Patsy's had some of the best Italian food in the city. It was also ground zero for that next generations of hoodlums and gangsters.

It was at Patsy's Restaurant that Dad met another future mob boss, Jackie Cerone, and other members of the Cerone family. Over the following decades, no man held more sway in what happened to our family (good and bad). It was Jackie who lent a hand when Dad opened his Northside bar on Clybourn after the Korean War. Jackie cleared it with Ross Prio, the man who ran the Northside, then considered the jewel in Chicago's crown, and pushed aside the bureaucracy at City Hall to help Dad get a liquor license with the usual graft payments. Instead of having to grease palms, kiss asses, and wait six months, Jackie made one phone call and got Dad's liquor license within 24-hours, and for the actual $40 fee. And it was Jackie who helped Dad reach his highest heights when he told Dad about a new joint on Mannheim Road. The newspapers called it Glitter Gulch.

Read more about it in our book, Mob Adjacent: A Family Memoir.