Courtesy of Uncle Ken's Lending Library, I was able to read Ehrenhalt's The Lost City. A good read, especially in its depiction of life in the mid-50s. It's showing its age though, having been written twenty years ago.
One name caught my eye: Roland Libonati. He was a state legislator, known for a photograph with Al Capone at a Cubs' game. You could say he had connections, and as a good Machine functionary he was elected to Congress.
I remember his name because I spent a week at a boy's summer camp that was run by the American Legion, in '58. The camp was a bare bones operation in Coloma, Wisconsin, lacking many amenities but fun for me nevertheless.
We were given a bunch of postcards, and we had to write a "thank you" type of message, saying what a swell time we were having, blah, blah, blah. The recipient? Roland Libonati. I have no idea why we had to do that, or why we had to send more than one to the same guy.
My father was not pleased when I told him about it...he said the guy was a crook. So, somewhere in the permanent record there could be some hand written thank you cards to an alleged crime figure, from the Old Dog as a young pup. This is the complete extent of my known criminal associations...
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