Bootleggers Broke the Ku Klux Klan

            On Monday morning I had to wear dirty underwear during yoga and song practice because the day before that should have been a laundry day.

I finished working out the chords to “Di doo dah" by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through the song in both French and English. It's a bouncy little tune and it would be fun to play on a regular basis but the lyrics are not really up to my speed.

I find it hard to concentrate if a siren is approaching from a distance and so I often have to stop any writing or reading I’m doing until it has gone by.

I had nothing clean to put on for underwear while doing the laundry except for my leather jock strap. In some ways it’s more comfortable than regular underwear but the straps are a hassle to get straight again after I’ve peed.

The Laundromat was nearly empty. The attendant was the same East Asian guy as last time. After I put my clothes in the dryer he came up to me smiling and said, “It’s good! Half hour! You come back in half hour!”

After my laundry was done I had to mail my income report to Ontario Works and since I would only be gone for a couple of minutes I left my door wide open. When I came back my next-door neighbour commented about it, saying that we can trust each other in our building. I said I wouldn't have left my door open if I’d gone out for longer. He reminded me of when our landlord first bought our building and brought in a few Sri Lankan tenants. He said that Raja had learned his lesson and doesn’t rent to his countrymen anymore. Benji claims it’s because they are all thieves. Benji is a bit of a bigot.

I had a can of tuna with green salsa for lunch but had an upset stomach for a while when I woke up from my early afternoon siesta.

I felt better after doing some exercises and taking a bike ride. On my way up O’Hara I found a six-volume set of anime books about an insecure teenage girl who discovers she can transform into a heavenly being. It didn’t look that interesting to me and so I didn’t take them. The day before that on Maple Grove I’d found a drum shaped plastic container full of mostly toy sharks. I didn’t take any of those either. This time as I was going up Brock I saw a box of clothes in front of what used to be the Beer Store parking lot. They were a good quality of women’s clothing and one of the pieces looked like a sequined sari. I considered taking it to drape over something but it was a little too gaudy for my taste. Since I’d already ridden back and forth to the Laundromat three times and then to the mailbox and back, I only rode as far as Dufferin and Dundas, down to Dufferin to Queen and home.

            I worked on getting caught up on my journal but only finished my July 13^th post that night.

            I had a potato, broccoli, two drumsticks and gravy for dinner and watched an episode of The Untouchables.

            This 18^th story was the most badly directed one in the series so far. The story was also kind of clichéd, with an especially cartoonish villain. Charlie Byron, the mob boss in charge of the region of Southern Illinois known as “Little Egypt" is known as "The Major" because he was a major during WWI and still wears some of his uniform and also carries a riding crop which he sometimes uses to whip people. A federal agent named Cam is selected to infiltrate the Major’s organization. He gets a job in the coalmines and later starts a fight with a sheriff in a popular gangster bar that is owned by the Major. The Major is impressed and takes him on as a collector and driver. Since it would be too easy to be detected if Cam sends information to Eliot Ness by telephone, Cam uses carrier pigeons. Suddenly certain of the mob’s regular operations are being stifled and one of the major’s lieutenants suspects Cam. The Major dismisses Ed’s protests but Ed investigates on his own. He gets an attractive woman named Hazel to become Cam’s lover and to go through his pockets. All she discovers is that he has a receipt for pigeon feed. Ed goes to Cam’s place and discovers the pigeons. Hazel is told to feed Cam false information that will endanger his life and she does so but afterwards she realizes she’s fallen for him. The Major and his men catch her trying to call the police. There is a scene where one of the men grabs her by the throat. All we see after that is him standing with his arms extended and his hands out of sight while another man fires his gun to kill her. But where the man’s arms are pointing and where the gun is aimed are too far apart for the scene not to look fake. Later when Cam is caught by the Major he begins whipping him on his bed, but we see Cam fall to the floor and yet the Major is still standing upright and swinging the riding crop which would have been too short to reach the floor to strike him. Cam is saved at the last minute by the other Untouchables.

            Hazel was played by Susan Cummings, who was born in Germany. She is most famous for her role in the Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man” and for delivering the line, "It's a cookbook!”

            Charlie Byron is based on real life gangster Charlie Birger. He was a Russian Jew who came as a child with his family to St Louis. He did serve three years in the US army but was never a major and it was before WWI. After leaving the army he became a cowboy, a miner and then a saloonkeeper. He became a bootlegger during prohibition. This put him up against the local Ku Klux Klan because they supported prohibition. They considered the consumption of alcohol to be an un-American activity brought on by immigration. The federal government approved of the Klan’s vigilantism. They went from home to home, searching for alcohol and if it was found they would put the homeowners in Klan prisons. In Williamson County Illinois, politicians that supported the bootleggers were driven from office and replaced by Klansmen. Birger and the other bootleggers went to war with the Klan and succeeded in breaking it’s back in that county.

            Birger was mostly a bootlegger and protective of his hometown of Harrisburg. In fact he was also a vigilante who would protect shop owners from thieves. But cars were stolen to be used in his operations. Robbers were often found dead a few days later. The Birger gang fought a war with the Shelton gang for control of bootlegging in Harrisburg. Both sides even built homemade tanks and bombed each other with dynamite. The mayor of West City, Illinois was on the side of the Shelton gang and was assassinated by Birger’s men. Only Birger was hanged for the crime. He insisted on wearing a black hood because he didn’t want to be mistaken for a Klansman. He shook the hand of his hangman and his last words were either, “It’s a beautiful world" or "It's a beautiful day". He was the last man hanged in Illinois.