After coming to Minneapolis to take a position with Holiday Inn as their first high rise trouble shooter in the mid-60s (they had just purchased the old Capp Towers in downtown Minneapolis) and then finding out that the cost of living in Minneapolis was about twice what it was in Phoenix and unable to get my agreed to salary raised to a living wage, I found myself, in my very early twenties, in a strange town with no job prospects and little money.
Remembering Willie Sutton’s famous reply to the question of why he robbed banks; which was because that was where the money was, I soon got a job in an employment agency. There I found a veritable smorgasbord of good jobs, some of which would require new training and a long term commitment. Having originally been raised near Mille Lacs Lake, I was all too aware of the miserable winters and was not eager to stay long term after sampling the 70° Christmas days of Phoenix.
My background, to that point had been in the hospitality industry so I felt that would be the best avenue to pursue.
Along came McCarthy’s job order to hire someone to work in their liquor store. I applied for the job and was interviewed by Jerry Murphy and then sent home. I was called the next day and was told that I had an appointment to interview with Tommy Banks in two days at his office in down town Minneapolis.
I showed up at the appointed time to find an office building of 2 floors (I think) on Hennepin Avenue next door to the old St. Andrews (or maybe it was just Andrews) Hotel.. The building to the south of Tommy’s building had been demolished previously and it appeared that Tommy’s building, defined by a solid brick exterior wall, extended back about 75 or 100 feet from the street. It was only about 18-20 feet wide. I remember, as I walked in, marveling at this odd layout as I had never seen anything like this in the past.
The building had a corridor on the right and a stairway on the left. It was only one office and a corridor wide. I peered down the dark corridor to pitch blackness.
I had been told that Tommy would be on the second floor so I went up the stairs to a nearly equally dark corridor except that I could see the faint glow of a lighted doorway about 50 or 75 feet down the hall. Everything else was dark and covered in a thick coat of dust. It was a little creepy.
When I got down the hall and went into a lighted office, there was no one there. As I looked around, it appeared that there were doors in both sides of the office so one could walk parallel to the corridor, through the offices.
There were steel desks in most of the offices that appeared to be from the 30’s or 40’s with 3 foot high piles of 10 or 12 inch thick post binders stacked on them. I assumed that they were old accounting ledgers but I didn’t look. They too, were covered in thick dust.
My mind then returned to the task at hand and, in a raised voice, asked if anyone was there. No answer. So I walked into the next lighted office. I stepped out into the hallway and then realized that although, from the front of the building, it had appeared that there was only one lighted door way, there were, in fact, several. Looking back towards the front of the building, the glass window on the front wall was the only source of natural light in this entire building.
I continued to walk through two more lighted, but vacant offices, once again calling out to no one in particular. No answer; so I continued. I called out a third time and a gruff voice said “in here.”
I walked through two more offices and found him sitting in a third office. He was sitting at a desk facing me and without looking up from what he was doing, told me to sit down.
As I waited for him to speak to me, I had the opportunity to appraise him. A balding man in his mid-60’s neatly dressed in a gray chalk-stripe suit. His tie reminded me of one of the splashier ties that one of my grandfathers had and suggested to me that it originated in a bygone era.
Then he looked up at me and I am not sure if I made an audible noise as the breath left my lungs. The man’s eyes were small and appeared to be piercing black beads. My impression was that they were the meanest eyes I had ever seen. Later on, someone told me that he had recently gotten out of prison after doing a 7 year stretch for tax evasion.
He conducted a perfunctory interview with me, asked me some questions, looked at my rather short resume and sent me on my way with “We’ll call you if we think we can use you.” I left thinking I had blown it. It was Thursday afternoon.
Jerry Murphy called me on Friday and told me to show up for work on Monday.
Jerry was the quintessential Irishman. At the time, I was told he was the highest paid restaurant manager in the state. He was blunt, blustery and subject to dressing one down for no particular reason at the top of a deep voice that sounded like he might have borrowed it from God.
My first few weeks at McCarthy’s included many of those dressing downs and while some were deserved, most were not. One day, he went off on me in the receiving area behind the liquor store and dressed me down for something that had not been done because, as it turned out, he had dropped the ball. In loud and in somewhat unchristian like terms I told him that if he didn’t like the way I did things he could find someone else. I figured I was done. But he came back a little while later and asked me to stay. After that, we started communicating in a normal human way and Jerry and I became friends. After Banks sold McCarthy’s, Jerry retired. I left about a year later and went back to Phoenix. Jerry would call me when he would come out to Phoenix on vacation every winter and we would always have lunch together. I developed quite a fondness for him. Funny how some things work out.
In any case, when I came aboard, John Ralles, the former and much loved liquor store manager had secured an investor and bought his own liquor store and was leaving McCarthy’s. His assistant, a personable young man named LeRoy Honl, if memory serves, me, took over his job for a short while before he left and I was moved up. In his day, LeRoy might have been the prototype for Sam Malone of Cheers. He and John were good friends and I suspect that John’s leaving had something to do with LeRoy’s departure.
In any case, McCarthy’s kept humming along. The liquor store was a little 900 sq. foot store with plate glass windows that overlooked the large parking lot on the east end of the building and Wayzata Boulevard on the South. There was a direct entrance into the lounge just in front of the liquor store but the regulars preferred to park in the east parking lot and come in through the liquor store to the lounge. The lounge had booths that could sit, (and I am guessing here) about seventy five for dinner and the bar had about 20-25 bar stools.. On the west end of the building there was a large formal dining room that could hold a similar or larger number of people and in the basement, a large banquet room that I think could be divided into private dining rooms…
My job, however, was to be liquor manager of the establishment; to buy all the liquor and sell it. My hours were 10 AM to 8 PM and were certainly perfect for a 23 year old kid.
At the back of the liquor store, there was a two person office that I shared with, if memory serves me, Rita who did the bookkeeping. She was older and bleached blonde, but younger than Tommy by a number of years. She seemed to be a nice person and quiet, but I always thought of her as the equivalent of what we would call today (thanks to Helen Reddy) Delta Dawn; a faded rose from days gone by. I once wondered if she was a former show girl in one of Banks’ clubs. All of that was idle speculation on my part.
I believe that Rita was Tommy’s wife or ex-wife. I don’t believe that they lived together but he took care of her and kept her working some. She was usually gone by noon on most days.
The safe was also located in that office. For some reason, I was entrusted with the combination.
Early on, Jerry had admonished me that this was the only liquor store in the state that had never been held up because the word was out that if you robbed it, the police would be the least of your problems. Given its location, which was a little remote, even in the 60s with Highway 12 in front of it and Highway 100 a couple of blocks to the east, Turner’s Cross Road adjacent to its parking lot and County Road 18 a mile or two to the west, the availability of getaway routes should have made it a prime target, especially in the earlier years. So I believed him.
Much of my knowledge of the organization came from Jerry answering my questions and in general conversations with him and others.
My understanding was that Tommy Banks had a partner, whose name currently escapes me. He was a short little guy. I was told the story that back in the day, he and Banks and Kid Cann had some issues with each other and it was Banks idea to call a meeting with Cann to discuss a peace treaty because to do otherwise would be bad for business. I was also told that Banks proposal was that they split the cities with Kid Cann taking everything east of the Mississippi, including St. Paul and Banks and his partner would take everything to the west including Minneapolis. Apparently, it was agreed to as I am told that peace reigned between the two of them. How much of this was romanticized, I do not know.
I was also told that the word was put out to the gangs of the 30s including the likes of John Dillinger et al, that they were welcome to come to vacation in Mpls/St. Paul with the proviso that if they caused trouble they would have to answer to Banks and Kid Cann. Apparently everyone knew that and behaved themselves.
I have since seen film of a tour of the caves in St. Paul where Kid Cann had an underground speakeasy and had invited mobsters to come there on vacation and mix with the St. Paul elite.
Reportedly, Banks and his partner owned a number of Burlesque Houses on downtown Hennepin Avenue. I believe they still had them when I went to work for Tommy. While I met Banks’ partner on a couple of occasions at McCarthy’s when he was there to meet Tommy or they were out together and just stopped in, I got the impression that the Burlesque Houses were part of his partner’s bailiwick to watch over. But I could be wrong on that item.
Interestingly enough, I believe that Tommy’s downtown office building was right across the street from those burlesque houses.
It is also my understanding that Banks was deeply involved in the spirits industry during prohibition. I know that Tommy Banks owned the Blue Goose at Garrison for decades (my folks would occasionally take me there with them when they were young and I was even younger (about 5 or 6), to meet friends and party. I was only included in this when they could not find someone willing to put up with me for the evening.) To this day, the Blue Goose holds a strange fascination for me.
Banks had been an avid hunter and was known to keep hunting dogs throughout his younger years. He also had a cabin in the woods near the Blue Goose for many decades and reportedly the woods were alive with the sounds of stills dripping out their alcohol to be bottled and shipped to Minneapolis and Chicago during prohibition. I was told that he had stills throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, parts of North Dakota and maybe even Canada, but my memory is fuzzy on Canada.
In any case, working at McCarthy’s was like going to Disneyland for a kid who’s days during high school started at 4 AM and didn’t finish until 11 PM as I carried two jobs to pay for books and clothes, etc. The clientele of McCarthy’s was the ne plus ultra of Minneapolis. Being located halfway between downtown Corporate Minneapolis and Wayzata/Lake Minnetonka made it the perfect place for the hoi polloi to meet after work.
I found that I formed some warm relationships with wealthy customers that pretty much put the popular notion of class warfare to rest, as far as I was concerned. They were really nice people.
In one instance that I recall, I had thoughtlessly forgotten to change the address on my driver’s license. Having received a previous speeding ticket, I was required to file an SR22 form with the state showing proof of insurance. I was picked up for speeding again and found that the state had suspended my license about 6 months previous because I hadn’t filed and was now charged with driving on a suspended license. They planned to revoke my driver’s license for a year even though I had proof that I was insured the entire time. One of my good customers, a judge and senior partner in a large Minneapolis law firm upon hearing of my troubles said he would handle it and fixed me up with a young attorney in his firm. At the trial, my attorney noted that the prosecutor was a poker playing buddy. My case was moved to first on the docket, and the two attorneys moved to the bench and spoke with the judge. The judge than dismissed the case but charged me something like $150 in court costs. The attorney’s fees were a pittance. I thanked my attorney and the next time I saw the judge, I gave him a bottle of his favorite beverage.
As I said, they were pretty nice people. There were a couple of other times that some other customers helped me out of some small troubles. In fact, there were some great adventures with some of the other customers but they are off the subject of McCarthy’s.
At the time, there was an ongoing debate of who was the top restaurant in Minneapolis, Charlie’s downtown or McCarthy’s in St. Louis Park. Having eaten at Charlie’s on several occasions and McCarthy’s 6 days a week, I would have to say McCarthy’s was the clear winner but maybe I am just biased. I sure loved their food.
As part of the management team, I was allowed to order off the menu and ate three meals a day there when working. The other employees were fed the specials and sometimes leftovers in the employee’s dining room before they went on shift. If that sounds demeaning, it shouldn’t because I have also eaten that food and it was a hell of a lot better than what I got at home growing up. Not that I didn’t love my Mom’s cooking; it was just a case her not being able to afford this kind and quality of food.
Being new to the state, I had a lot to learn. One of the things that I had to learn about was the Fair Trade law. We didn’t have this in Arizona. This law amounted to the government’s price fixing of liquor so that the municipal liquor stores could maximize their profits with no fear of a private establishment undercutting them on price. Another thing that I had to learn about was that one could not charge liquor on a credit card back then.
These issues had been put to rest by McCarthy’s (and most other liquor establishments in Minnesota) by the time that I got to McCarthy’s. I was instructed that each customer had their own particular price for each liquor item they bought, depending on the price they were able to negotiate. These prices were never written down anywhere. They were to be kept solely in your head. When a customer would stop in or call in for a liquor order, either I or one of the clerks would take the order by writing it, along with their name and credit card number, on a little order form with a carbon copy. The order would either be boxed and carried to the car or delivered to their home or office at a later date. They were given the carbon copy of the order for their records and the original would be speared on a spindle for me to process later.
McCarthy’s had issued their own credit cards a few years before I got there. I think I still have my card somewhere. Everything would be charged as food. Given that the average liquor order back then would run to several hundred dollars and as high as into the thousands some times, one had to wonder why the customer wasn’t fatter; at least if one believed the billing statement. I don’t remember there being any itemization back then. Just a lump sum for food that month.
About 99+% or our liquor orders were on the credit card because we had little walk in business. Walk-ins were charged shelf price. I never knew what the liquor store did financially but I had heard that it was over a million dollars a year at one time.
The clerks/delivery drivers worked from 8 to 5 and would go home leaving me alone in the liquor store. I took my evening meal in my office, from where I could watch the store and the comings and goings of people to the lounge. There was little or no traffic after six, save customers coming in to eat and stopping by to chat or place an order for later delivery. During this period, I would pull a 4 or 5 inch stack of orders off the spindle. I would put the individual price for each item in the column next to it. Rita would then extend it, add it up and post it to the customer’s account the next day.
I look back on my amazing memory back then and given what it is today, can only suspect that the reason for it was that I was so young; my head was still predominately empty. Pricing the billings never took more than a half hour.
Tommy appeared to be a pretty loyal guy to old friends. We had a liquor salesman from one of the big houses that always seemed a little slow. He was a big guy and always dressed in a suit with a tie that appeared to be from the same era as Tommy’s ties and always wore a snap brim hat right out of the 30s and 40s. Jerry told me that the guy had been a fighter for Tommy back in the day and by the time he retired, was punch drunk. Jerry said that it was Tommy who got him his job and kept him there.
I had one very scary experience while working at McCarthy’s. Jerry had told me early on that it was OK to cash a check for a credit card holder and if it was bad, we would not be held accountable. Cash a bad check for someone else and we would have a real problem.
I followed that faithfully. I should note that while we had a huge amount of net worth having dinner and drinks every night in our establishment, we also had some up and comers that would come in to the bar on a regular basis for cocktail hour. Many of these guys, while not wealthy to the degree that many of our customers were, were quite well to do. We never knew what most of these guys economic status was, unlike some of the more illustrious customers whose net worth required more zeros behind it than we could write.
In any case, one of the former came sweeping into the liquor store one evening about 7 pm and said he needed to cash a check. Since he was a cardholder, I said no problem. He wrote the check for $3,000.00. I wrote his credit card number on the check and went to the safe for the money. The size of the check, while out of the ordinary, was not an unusual amount for me to cash.
The next week, Jerry came by with the bad news that the check had bounced. So I asked him what the bad news was, besides the obvious, because I followed protocol and wrote the credit card number on the check. Jerry informed me that Tommy had told him that if I didn’t get the money back, I would have to stand for it. I nearly fell over.
So now I had a new task. The guy never came in again so I started working the guys at the bar to see if they knew what happened to him. One told me that he had moved out of state and another told me the city where he moved. Information provided me with the new listing for him..
I left messages for 3 weeks and it became clear the guy didn’t want to talk to me. By that time, Tommy was really beginning to press me now with insinuations that I took as unspoken threats. The stories that I had heard about Tommy left me believing that these unspoken threats were him being nice to me and things could get much worse.
So I calculated the time difference and called in the middle of the night. His wife groggily answered and said he was out of town. I told her I was supposed to meet him and had to change the appointment and how could I get in touch. She said he was in Minneapolis, staying at the North Star Hotel, but was scheduled to come home that morning…
I called Tommy up, as instructed, and he told me to meet two policemen at McCarthy’s at 7 AM sharp that morning and they would help me get the money.
I am waiting and these two guys pull up. Both are huge, wearing overcoats, suits, ties from a bygone era and snap brim hats. They identified themselves as police, but I never saw a badge. They were driving an unmarked car with none of the police paraphernalia that one would expect it to have, like a police radio, for instance. So you can do the math on those two.
They put me in the back and we had a silent ride to the North Star Hotel. I went right to the desk and inquired about the person of interest and the clerk said he had called down for his bill and was checking out in a few minutes. My two friends, members of the Sequoia Club no doubt, went to the middle of the lobby and watched. When he appeared, I pointed the guy out and they instructed me to stay put and they would bring him to me.
Now this person of interest was himself about 6 ft.3 inches and about 345 pounds. No shrinking violet to be sure. My two Sequoias split and came from behind. Each walked up beside him, put a hand under each arm and without breaking stride, lifted him off the floor and swung around to bring him to me. No muss, no fuss and no one even noticed. They carried him that way for about 75 feet and let him down in front of me. When he spied me he knew what it was all about. He said he didn’t have that kind of cash on him but could give me a check. Even being the rube I was, I knew that wasn’t going to fly. So then he said he didn’t know what else to do.
When asked, he admitted that he still had his American Express card. I told him to borrow the money on that. He started to hem and haw and one of the Sequoias stirred and in a low growl, told him in no uncertain terms that he was not leaving town until I was paid… no matter how long it took.
Now the sweat popped out on his brow. He now knew the rules of the game that he had gotten himself into. Did I mention that it was the middle of the winter and the lobby, which took most of the 7th floor and had two story windows, was about 55°?
So he agreed to try. So my two Sequoias picked him up and surreptitiously carried him, with his feet about two inches off the floor, the 75 or so feet to the hotel desk. They talked to him as they went but I could not hear what they said. I did see him gesturing a little when trying the get the desk clerk to give him the money on his credit card. Finally the three of them came walking back. Well actually two of them were walking. When they set him down in front of me, he counted out the $3,000 in cash to me, I gave him the bad check and my new friends allowed him to leave. Not a word was said on the 30 minute drive back to McCarthy’s and when I thanked them for their help as I exited the car, I got a growl as a reply.
It turned into a great day for me as I knew that I would now see the end of the week. Before that, I wasn’t too sure. I waited for a while to call Tommy with the good news, lest I might awake him and irritate him further.
Getting back to the people that frequented McCarthy’s, I did have some favorites. One in particular I really got on well with was the CEO of his own national company and I would have breakfast every weekday morning with him that he was in town and dinner on occasional evenings when his wife was not available. Another was the head of a union that would come in with his girlfriend every Saturday night for dinner. I really got to like both of them and would stop and talk to them during dinner. He was Italian and would show up every Saturday night in a white suit with a black shirt and a white tie. He had been injured before I met him when a bomb detonated in his car when he started it. Everyone had strict instructions to avoid any loud noises around him at all costs. As I struggle to think back now, there were a few dozen regulars who would always stop by either on their way to or from dinner to chat.
I will tell you one more thing, though: The last week or so before Christmas I would start working 12 hours a day. I would have to personally deliver “gifts” to Tommy’s “friends.” I would be given a list every morning and I would route it and have the clerks put it together and load the truck according to my route. The gifts ran from frozen turkeys to a couple of bottles of liquor to cases of liquor to fat envelopes. I tried to get Tommy and Jerry to let me use one of my drivers to do the deliveries but the answer was always the same; it had to be me. As time went by, the thought occurred to me more than once that the reason Tommy would only let me do the deliveries is that one witness is much easier to get rid of than two. I tried not to think about it.
Long before John Banner came up with his famous “I know nossing” line on Hogan’s Heroes, I adopted that philosophy. I delivered in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. St. Paul was particularly difficult for me because in addition to not knowing my way around the city, I had to set my watch back 50 years every time I went over there. (Sorry about that; a joke of that period).
But I can remember being over there at 9 pm one evening, looking for an address and getting caught in an intersection where two streets came together and from the intersection all routes out were up block long steep hills, which I could not get the delivery van up because of the snow and ice. After an hour of trying, I finally got out of there with a little creative and dangerous driving.
During my tenure at McCarthy’s, I pulled some thoughtless stunts that Tommy and Jerry could have really hammered me for. Like purchasing 25 cases of Jack Daniels without telling anyone, when the opportunity presented itself. I hadn’t been able to get 12 bottles of Jack Daniels from the distributor over the past 24 months. The money outlay had to be in the neighborhood of $2,000.00 just for the Jack; a significant amount of money in those days; but nary a word from Tommy and only a casual question from Jerry about why I had bought all of it. But I think even they were impressed that I was able to get my hands on that amount of Jack Daniels.
When the order came in, even the state distributor called me to find out how I had done that because according to them, they hadn’t seen 25 cases of Jack at one time in years. They even sent a special truck out just to deliver it. At the time, Jack Daniels’ surging popularity had caught the distillery by surprise and they were having major supply problems while they were expanding their distillery and aging more whiskey.
When it dawned on me what I had done, I got a little anxious and asked one of our customers, a very large wholesale distributor, if he would lend me a couple of new Skidoo’s so that I could build a display. He had them out the next day and we put them front and center in our showroom, climbing up each side of a mountain of Jack Daniels. It was an amazing experience. People would come by and stop and gaze through the window at all the Jack Daniels. Liquor store owners would come by to see if it was true. I was taking orders for Jack Daniels under the proviso that when I took the display down, I would call them so they could pick up their order. The Jack Daniels didn’t last too long after I took the display down and it went out at shelf price. After that, for some reason, I was able to get more Jack Daniels than I had been able to purchase before.
In another case, McCarthy’s had been serving Almaden wine for years. Inglenook, an estate bottled wine from California that I had become familiar with in Arizona came into the state. Distributors always tried to get new products into McCarthy’s because it gave them bragging rights which made it easier to get into other establishments. Trying to get a foothold, they offered McCarthy’s a fabulous deal on about 35 or 40 cases. Inglenook was a much better wine than Almaden at the time. So I unilaterally, and with little thought to potential consequences, decided to pour off the Almaden on the bar and go to Inglenook. Boy did I get hammered. The customers went into full rebellion. The first weekend that we offered it the waitresses lined up waiting for me to get to their upset customers. Now, like my bad check miscreant, I was sweating.
I ended up listening to their complaints and telling them I agree with them and if they order a bottle of Inglenook of their favorite variety, and they didn’t like it, to let me know and I would pay for it personally. As I walked out after talking to a half dozen angry customers, the only thing running through my head was what the hell was I thinking?
Fortunately for me, we had honorable customers, the Good Lord was looking after me and Inglenook really was as good as I said, which all conspired to keep me from having to buy even one bottle. Many stopped by that first night after dinner to thank me for putting them on to Inglenook.
The Second Generation:
I believe it was in very early 1968 that Tommy sold McCarthy’s to Stanford Clinton Sr. of
Chicago, who, I was told, was the senior partner of the law firm that represented the Teamsters Union in that city. McCarthy’s was now run by his son, Junior.
Unfortunately, Junior and I didn’t get on very well. He was a screamer also. The difference was that Jerry did it for effect and Junior was just out of control. On top of it, Junior was an abusive micromanager. His idea of being a successful manager appeared to be measured by his success in getting employees to work 3 hours extra every day without pay. At least it seemed like that to me.
I had begun to mature in my position and was not making the rash moves that Tommy and Jerry had allowed me to get away with; well…except for unilaterally doubling my salary after being continually blown off for 6 months by Junior. When he got back into town, it was a tantrum for the ages. Still, he didn’t fire me. A couple of weeks later, without warning, his dad showed up in my office and shut the door. He then chuckled and noted that it appeared that his son and I had words. I noted that his son had words; and that after his son ran out of words, I simply said that it appeared that he had two choices; he could live with it or fire me.
And then the old man sat down and got earnest with me and offered me a job of going on the road and acquiring and turning around failed restaurants for them. Just as I was getting revved up about the idea, the wheels came off the wagon when he mentioned that I would have to work directly for his son and train under him to become familiar with the food business. Having watched the son abuse the management trainees that he was already training, I told his dad that there was no way that I would subject myself to that. He said he fully understood my position and as he left, he turned and noted the brashness of my move to double my salary and then as he left, he gave me a smile and a thumbs up.
I would have liked to get to know him better.
The following January, I woke up one morning freezing and just decided I had had enough and came in and turned in my two week’s notice. I trained a new guy and was on my way back to Phoenix.
I did hear later that the Feds were looking into the sale; something about part of the purchase price being delivered to Tommy under the table.
It was the right move at the right time. I had been watching the deterioration of the business for the past year under Junior’s tutelage. The atmosphere seemed to have lost its warm, inviting ambience and taken on a hard edge. Again, maybe that was just me. Whether the deterioration was actually due to Junior is supposition on my part as I wasn’t around for the last year or two. I was told they closed the liquor store six months after I left. The store depended on the restaurant and bar for its customer base because it was too remote to be a neighborhood liquor store. The fact that they closed it did not reflect well on the health of the restaurant and bar business.
I do know that they had bought Busters in down town Minneapolis, which was an excellent bar, a year or two before and Junior had run it into bankruptcy. It appeared to me that we were on the same route; especially given the continuing string of complaints coming from our good customers.
In retrospect, and for reasons that I do not feel comfortable going into here, I still feel that Tommy could be a very dangerous guy. However, I suspect that some things are better left unsaid.
But I can’t say Tommy ever mistreated me although I never doubted that he was entirely capable of doing so. Nor was he even hard on me with the exception of the bad check. . But in that case he could have just been giving me an object lesson in problem solving. After all, I was a rube kid of 23 at that time and had a lot to learn. In thinking back, I don’t really believe that.
Actually, it probably was Jerry running interference for me that kept me operating under my own power, and for that, I will always be indebted to him. Tommy was not known for his patience.
Tommy was not an ignorant man; quite the opposite, in fact. He trusted Jerry implicitly and let him run McCarthy’s as he saw fit. The job that Jerry did warranted Tommy’s confidence. If things were going along fine, Tommy was not a man to interfere.
Perhaps the strongest impression I have of Tommy after all of these years was that he was an intensely private person. He struck me as the guy that never wanted to be in the limelight. He wanted to run things from behind the scenes. The fewer people that knew what he was doing the better he liked it.
I remember hearing stories about Kidd Cann back in the day and how flamboyant he was. That was not my impression of Tommy. Tommy was thoughtful and I suspect a good planner that didn’t make rash moves. I suspect that if Tommy ever had anyone killed, Tommy would see to it that the body would never reappear to come back to haunt him. It’s tough to have a murder without a body.
As I look back, I think, for whatever reason, Jerry and Tommy decided to give me my head and just keep an eye on me. They seldom, if ever interfered with what I was doing and as time went on, they appeared to feel comfortable enough with me that they just ignored the liquor end of the business and let me handle it. While I thought that was because they thought I was bright and they had great confidence in me, it later dawned on me that it could just as well have been that it was because I was Irish.
It was certainly an exciting time for a rube kid. Tommy and Jerry were bigger than life to me and I shall never forget them. However, what I shall be forever grateful and remember even more are the wonderful regular customers that I had the chance to meet and with which to interact.
The Clintons introduced me to business the Chicago way which I did not like too well. Still, as I noted above, I would have like to get better acquainted with the old man better. And I already knew Junior much better than I wished to.
C’est le guerre.
Glenn C. McArthur
July 2013