how my friend louie jr. got a name change and a bright future through a famous friend named frank:
HIS FATHER'S NAME WAS LOUIS ALONZO PASCO, WHO WAS SOMETIMES KNOWN AS...
HIS FATHER'S NAME WAS LOUIS ALONZO PASCO, WHO WAS SOMETIMES KNOWN AS...
LOUIE "THE DOME," A MAN REPUTED TO HAVE BEEN A GRADUATE NOT ONLY OF Joliet prison, but also the man who had ducked World War II by doing a crazy act for the draft board, which labeled him as "a rather inept constitutional psychopath."
He also happened to be the father of my best friend, Louie Jr., who had become star-struck with a singer by the name of Frank Sinatra, and Sinatra just happened to be an old acquaintance of his father Louie "The Dome," who had never been fond of "The Dome" moniker, which had been given when he went completely bald at the age of 15 and was still living in Hoboken, New Jersey; so one day he announced that henceforth, even if he had yet to become a father, he insisted that everyone refer to him simply as Louie Sr. And a father Louie Sr. soon became. It was a father-and-son relationship that was severely tested when Louie Jr. asked Louie Sr. if he could get tickets for a special engagement at a joint called Villa Venice northwest of Chicago, where Sinatra and Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. were preforming to honor the birthday another friend of Louie Sr. who happened to own the place, a fellow by the name of Salvatore Giancana.
All of this was very confusing to me when Louie Jr. informed me that he would like me to accompany him to the Chicago show, if he could get his father to buy the tickets and fund the airfare for the entire trip. So I went home and asked my Dad if that would be OK. He said, I don't know Mister Pasco other than seeing him at an occasional PTA meeting. Let me go have a talk with him. And when the crunch came two-weeks later, my Dad said, Do you know what Mister Pasco does for a living, Son? I replied, No, Sir, I don't. And my Dad said, The man's a full-fledged gangster. So I replied, I guess that means that I don't get to go, right? Needless to say, Louie Jr. was somewhat disappointed when I brought him the bad news. As was I. Apparently, it was on that very day that Louie Sr. was informed that he had been indicted and charged by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, who were about to revoke his license for crossing the border into Colorado and setting-up an illegal gambling casino in a town called Telluride which, up until that time, had only been known for its culture, heritage, and spectacular scenic beauty.
And when Louie Jr. was informed of the bad news, he gave a slight shrug and said to me, I don't know why, but Dad's always been attracted to gangsters. He likes them. He thinks they are funny. They seem to like him too. I guess that means that our Sinatra trip is not going to happen. A prediction which turned out to be true, since Louie Sr. was also informed the very next day that he also was going to be under a grand jury's investigation that was based in part on evidence introduced at his future trial by none other than the infamous gangster Sam Giancana, who was attempting to save his own skin when he testified that Louie Sr. and other individuals had received monies illegally from other friends of his who happened to reside in Havana, Cuba.
On the following Friday, at ten minutes after noon, Louie Sr. took his hat, his coat, knowing that his account was now frozen and he could not extract any money from his bank, he pulled out his wallet and looked into it, saw that it was almost empty, that it contained only money enough to get him where he wanted to go, returned the wallet to his pant pocket, took a pen and a piece of paper, wrote a brief note to his wife, left the house, went into the garage, revved up his vintage blue Buick Roadster, and began his journey to Niagara Falls, where he was about to enter Canada via the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge, with the intention of vanishing forever. But for a man on the lamb, Louie Sr. had one odd quirk: He would end-up writing a daily letter to his son about where he was and what he had been up to.
Later that afternoon at about 4 o'clock, his wife Mae read the note from Louie Sr., saw that he had taken most of the family pictures, and reached the conclusion that he was never coming back, so she took a job as a ticket taker at the Bluebird Theater on Colfax Avenue. Louie Jr. hung around on Detroit Street after finishing his day at East High School until Mae got off work at midnight, they then took the bus east on Colfax Avenue to Kearney Street, and walked home.
It was then that Louie Jr. took the proverbial Bull by the Horns. He went into his parent's bedroom about a month after Louie Sr. had made his final departure, opened the dresser drawer which once had belonged to his father, dug through what paperwork that was left, extracted a small piece of paper with a woman's name and telephone number on it, dialed the number and waited like the star-struck kid that he actually was for her to pick-up the phone. She happened to be the singer Phyllis McGuire of the McGuire Sisters, and her friendship with Frank Sinatra was well known. Louie Jr. told her who he was, she replied that she knew his father, and he explained that he was in a bit of a predicament, telling her that his father had gone off to Canada, leaving his mother and himself devoid of money. A check from Sinatra would arrive in the mail two weeks later.
Meanwhile, Louie Sr. was living in a rather seedy area of Toronto on Queen Street and getting $30 a week as a backup barkeep at The Black Hoof Bar on Dundas Street West; making ends meet by selling candy bars on the side. He settled at last in the third-floor-right apartment on Dufferin Street, sharing his two-room and bath with a guy by the name of "Lefty" O'Shay from South Chicago, who happened to be on the lamb, as well. "Lefty" had avoided the clutches of law enforcement in November of 1957, when he had been in attendance at a Mob conference in Appalachian, New York which had been surrounded by cops, and "Lefty" had flown-the-coop as fast as his feet and car could carry him. The friendship between them grew, due to the fact that they were both wanted men, and had to depend upon one another for comfort and friendship. For a long time, Louie Sr. and "Lefty" ruminated about how the two of them could make a little more money, and came up with what they both thought was a really nifty idea.
And while Louie Sr. and "Lefty" O'Shay were busy putting the final touches together on their plan to acquire quick-and-easy money; with the money provided by Frank Sinatra, Mae had purchased a beautiful Spanish-style home in the 900 block of Monaco Parkway, which one of the most beautiful areas of East Denver; Louie Jr. now had his college education fully funded, and he would later say that his reaching out to Phyllis McGuire on a whim had been one of the most instrumental changes of his entire life. He was fascinated that a man who had spent time with men like Franklin Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson, would take time to even notice him, much less send him money. So he wrote Sinatra a thank you note in longhand.
It was at about the same time as his son was writing a note to Frank Sinatra, that Louie Sr. and "Lefty" finalized their plan to rob either the branch of The Bank of Toronto located on Dufferin Street or Loblaws Grocery Store on Lower Jarvis Street. The first thing they did was hustle down to a gun shop on Dundas Street West to buy a really cheap handgun. The gun shop was tucked inside of a barbershop behind the barber's chair, and was hidden by a curtain. It happened to be owned by another criminal they both knew by the name of Tuck Henry. Tuck had fled to Canada at the end of World War Two on the day prior to the onset of his Court Martial for getting caught having a threesome with both a general's wife and his daughter, his only defense being that he was a tough, tender guy, who liked glamorous women and that most glamorous women seemed to be fond of him too. After purchasing a so-called Saturday Night Special from Tuck, Louie Sr. asked Tuck if he'd like to tag-along for the bank heist or the grocery store heist whenever he and "Lefty" had decided which one of the two would be the easiest to pull-off, and Tuck replied, Sure would. But could we make it on a Monday? It's the only day my barber shop is closed.
It was about a month after Louie Jr. had written his thank you note to Sinatra that he found himself inside of a cab after having landed at La Guardia Airport, heading through the rain toward a seedy time warp of a saloon at the Eighth Avenue end of 52nd Street in New York City. He told me that the long, dark bar was packed with college students from NYU and Columbia University; of all the Sinatra groupies, they were the most energetic. A maitre d' in a shiny tuxedo stood beside a red vewlvet rope that separated the back from the college kids in the front, and he smiled when he saw Louie Jr. coming his way: I'd know ya' anywhere, Kid. You look like you're Daddy, except you got hair. Mr. Sinatra is expecting you. Louie Jr. said he was nervous, his eyes moving past the empty tables in the left-hand corner against the wall. A man looked up from a booth and smiled at him. Hey, Kid, I'm Jilly Rizzo, I own this dump, he said, coming around the table with his right hand out. Louie Jr. mentioned to me that Jilly had one glass eye and that he wasn't certain whether Jilly was looking directly at him, that his eye had kind of a blurry look. Hey, Frank, he said , Louie "The Dome's" boy is here.
Grab a seat, Kid! Sinatra said brightly, half rising from the booth and shaking hands. Eat, drink, and be merry. It's on my dime, so order anything you want. Louie Jr. told me that Sinatra's blue eyes were the true focal point of Sinatra's face, and he felt like was able to peer all the way through them, and that the eyes had told him that he was fond of his father Louie "The Dome" because the two-of-them seemed to be similar in nature, and as the night rolled-on and Sinatra talked more, he saw that both men's eyes could either be filled at one moment with laughter or could become as opaque as cold-rolled steel. Louie Jr. said that the other men in the room were eating chop suey and watching a Jets game on a TV set; that Sinatra had introduced him to a comic named Pat Henry and Roone Arledge of ABC, a few other men and some young women. Sinatra was with a buxom blond model in a black dress. He didn't introduce her, so she got up and left.
It was then that Sinatra lit a Marlboro and sipped vodka. His eyes locked on Louie Jr. and he said, Let's talk about your future, Kid. OK? If you are willing to do what I am about to ask you to do, the first thing I would want you to do is legally change your name. Present company excluded, but even when the two of us were growing up in Hoboken, your Dad was never the brightest Kid on the block, maybe I'm doing this because he's dumb-as-an-ox but he's always been a good friend, and he's has gotten himself in a bit of a bind...
On that same evening, while Louie Jr. was still in New York sitting at a table with Frank Sinatra, I walked through the front door of our house on Jasmine Street and saw my Dad reading The Rocky Mountain News as he sat on the living room sofa, while my Mom was in the kitchen fixing dinner. Dad looked up and said, Do you remember your friend Louie's father, Son? There's an article about him in the newspaper. It seems that he and a couple of other men attempted to rob a grocery store at gunpoint in Toronto, Canada, and when Mister Pasco told the female clerk that he was holding her up, she smacked the pistol out of his hand with a half-eaten banana and the Security Guard stopped them as the three of them attempted to run out the door. All three of them are apparently wanted criminals and they are going to be extradited back to the States in order to stand trial for the crimes they committed here.
And so for more than an hour, on this rainy night in New York, Louie Jr. and Frank Sinatra sat in the back of a chauffeured-driven limousine and drove around the empty streets and Sinatra talked about Louie Jr.'s future. It wasn't an interview or anything like that, Louie Jr. told me when he got back to Denver; Sinatra just wanted to talk. The town has changed, Sinatra told Louie Jr. When I first came across that river, this was the greatest city in the whole goddamned world, he said, but it's like a busted-down hooker now. Which is why you got to go to college here and settle-back and get to know the town. That's what it's all about. You get to know the town you live-in, you get to know who in the hell you actually are. Are you up for that, Kid? After a while, the limousine pulled up in front of the Waldorf Astoria, where Sinatra had an apartment. He told the driver to take Louie Jr. back to the Plaza Hotel, where he had gotten him a room. We'll touch-base in the morning over brunch at the Oak Room, he said, and got out, walking fast, his head down, his hands deep in the pockets of his coat. And Louie Jr. told me that he remembered thinking that he looked extremely lonely for a man that was a legend.
Louie Jr. would go on to obtain a college degree at NYU in communications, move his mother to the City of New York, and become gainfully employed as a sportscaster for Roone Arledge at ABC, under a new name, of course...
...While his father, Louie Sr. idled away his remaining Earthly days in a New York Public Corrections Facility up in Attica, New York, making license plates with "Lefty" O'Shay and and Tuck Henry at his side...
He also happened to be the father of my best friend, Louie Jr., who had become star-struck with a singer by the name of Frank Sinatra, and Sinatra just happened to be an old acquaintance of his father Louie "The Dome," who had never been fond of "The Dome" moniker, which had been given when he went completely bald at the age of 15 and was still living in Hoboken, New Jersey; so one day he announced that henceforth, even if he had yet to become a father, he insisted that everyone refer to him simply as Louie Sr. And a father Louie Sr. soon became. It was a father-and-son relationship that was severely tested when Louie Jr. asked Louie Sr. if he could get tickets for a special engagement at a joint called Villa Venice northwest of Chicago, where Sinatra and Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. were preforming to honor the birthday another friend of Louie Sr. who happened to own the place, a fellow by the name of Salvatore Giancana.
All of this was very confusing to me when Louie Jr. informed me that he would like me to accompany him to the Chicago show, if he could get his father to buy the tickets and fund the airfare for the entire trip. So I went home and asked my Dad if that would be OK. He said, I don't know Mister Pasco other than seeing him at an occasional PTA meeting. Let me go have a talk with him. And when the crunch came two-weeks later, my Dad said, Do you know what Mister Pasco does for a living, Son? I replied, No, Sir, I don't. And my Dad said, The man's a full-fledged gangster. So I replied, I guess that means that I don't get to go, right? Needless to say, Louie Jr. was somewhat disappointed when I brought him the bad news. As was I. Apparently, it was on that very day that Louie Sr. was informed that he had been indicted and charged by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, who were about to revoke his license for crossing the border into Colorado and setting-up an illegal gambling casino in a town called Telluride which, up until that time, had only been known for its culture, heritage, and spectacular scenic beauty.
And when Louie Jr. was informed of the bad news, he gave a slight shrug and said to me, I don't know why, but Dad's always been attracted to gangsters. He likes them. He thinks they are funny. They seem to like him too. I guess that means that our Sinatra trip is not going to happen. A prediction which turned out to be true, since Louie Sr. was also informed the very next day that he also was going to be under a grand jury's investigation that was based in part on evidence introduced at his future trial by none other than the infamous gangster Sam Giancana, who was attempting to save his own skin when he testified that Louie Sr. and other individuals had received monies illegally from other friends of his who happened to reside in Havana, Cuba.
On the following Friday, at ten minutes after noon, Louie Sr. took his hat, his coat, knowing that his account was now frozen and he could not extract any money from his bank, he pulled out his wallet and looked into it, saw that it was almost empty, that it contained only money enough to get him where he wanted to go, returned the wallet to his pant pocket, took a pen and a piece of paper, wrote a brief note to his wife, left the house, went into the garage, revved up his vintage blue Buick Roadster, and began his journey to Niagara Falls, where he was about to enter Canada via the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge, with the intention of vanishing forever. But for a man on the lamb, Louie Sr. had one odd quirk: He would end-up writing a daily letter to his son about where he was and what he had been up to.
Later that afternoon at about 4 o'clock, his wife Mae read the note from Louie Sr., saw that he had taken most of the family pictures, and reached the conclusion that he was never coming back, so she took a job as a ticket taker at the Bluebird Theater on Colfax Avenue. Louie Jr. hung around on Detroit Street after finishing his day at East High School until Mae got off work at midnight, they then took the bus east on Colfax Avenue to Kearney Street, and walked home.
It was then that Louie Jr. took the proverbial Bull by the Horns. He went into his parent's bedroom about a month after Louie Sr. had made his final departure, opened the dresser drawer which once had belonged to his father, dug through what paperwork that was left, extracted a small piece of paper with a woman's name and telephone number on it, dialed the number and waited like the star-struck kid that he actually was for her to pick-up the phone. She happened to be the singer Phyllis McGuire of the McGuire Sisters, and her friendship with Frank Sinatra was well known. Louie Jr. told her who he was, she replied that she knew his father, and he explained that he was in a bit of a predicament, telling her that his father had gone off to Canada, leaving his mother and himself devoid of money. A check from Sinatra would arrive in the mail two weeks later.
Meanwhile, Louie Sr. was living in a rather seedy area of Toronto on Queen Street and getting $30 a week as a backup barkeep at The Black Hoof Bar on Dundas Street West; making ends meet by selling candy bars on the side. He settled at last in the third-floor-right apartment on Dufferin Street, sharing his two-room and bath with a guy by the name of "Lefty" O'Shay from South Chicago, who happened to be on the lamb, as well. "Lefty" had avoided the clutches of law enforcement in November of 1957, when he had been in attendance at a Mob conference in Appalachian, New York which had been surrounded by cops, and "Lefty" had flown-the-coop as fast as his feet and car could carry him. The friendship between them grew, due to the fact that they were both wanted men, and had to depend upon one another for comfort and friendship. For a long time, Louie Sr. and "Lefty" ruminated about how the two of them could make a little more money, and came up with what they both thought was a really nifty idea.
And while Louie Sr. and "Lefty" O'Shay were busy putting the final touches together on their plan to acquire quick-and-easy money; with the money provided by Frank Sinatra, Mae had purchased a beautiful Spanish-style home in the 900 block of Monaco Parkway, which one of the most beautiful areas of East Denver; Louie Jr. now had his college education fully funded, and he would later say that his reaching out to Phyllis McGuire on a whim had been one of the most instrumental changes of his entire life. He was fascinated that a man who had spent time with men like Franklin Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson, would take time to even notice him, much less send him money. So he wrote Sinatra a thank you note in longhand.
It was at about the same time as his son was writing a note to Frank Sinatra, that Louie Sr. and "Lefty" finalized their plan to rob either the branch of The Bank of Toronto located on Dufferin Street or Loblaws Grocery Store on Lower Jarvis Street. The first thing they did was hustle down to a gun shop on Dundas Street West to buy a really cheap handgun. The gun shop was tucked inside of a barbershop behind the barber's chair, and was hidden by a curtain. It happened to be owned by another criminal they both knew by the name of Tuck Henry. Tuck had fled to Canada at the end of World War Two on the day prior to the onset of his Court Martial for getting caught having a threesome with both a general's wife and his daughter, his only defense being that he was a tough, tender guy, who liked glamorous women and that most glamorous women seemed to be fond of him too. After purchasing a so-called Saturday Night Special from Tuck, Louie Sr. asked Tuck if he'd like to tag-along for the bank heist or the grocery store heist whenever he and "Lefty" had decided which one of the two would be the easiest to pull-off, and Tuck replied, Sure would. But could we make it on a Monday? It's the only day my barber shop is closed.
It was about a month after Louie Jr. had written his thank you note to Sinatra that he found himself inside of a cab after having landed at La Guardia Airport, heading through the rain toward a seedy time warp of a saloon at the Eighth Avenue end of 52nd Street in New York City. He told me that the long, dark bar was packed with college students from NYU and Columbia University; of all the Sinatra groupies, they were the most energetic. A maitre d' in a shiny tuxedo stood beside a red vewlvet rope that separated the back from the college kids in the front, and he smiled when he saw Louie Jr. coming his way: I'd know ya' anywhere, Kid. You look like you're Daddy, except you got hair. Mr. Sinatra is expecting you. Louie Jr. said he was nervous, his eyes moving past the empty tables in the left-hand corner against the wall. A man looked up from a booth and smiled at him. Hey, Kid, I'm Jilly Rizzo, I own this dump, he said, coming around the table with his right hand out. Louie Jr. mentioned to me that Jilly had one glass eye and that he wasn't certain whether Jilly was looking directly at him, that his eye had kind of a blurry look. Hey, Frank, he said , Louie "The Dome's" boy is here.
Grab a seat, Kid! Sinatra said brightly, half rising from the booth and shaking hands. Eat, drink, and be merry. It's on my dime, so order anything you want. Louie Jr. told me that Sinatra's blue eyes were the true focal point of Sinatra's face, and he felt like was able to peer all the way through them, and that the eyes had told him that he was fond of his father Louie "The Dome" because the two-of-them seemed to be similar in nature, and as the night rolled-on and Sinatra talked more, he saw that both men's eyes could either be filled at one moment with laughter or could become as opaque as cold-rolled steel. Louie Jr. said that the other men in the room were eating chop suey and watching a Jets game on a TV set; that Sinatra had introduced him to a comic named Pat Henry and Roone Arledge of ABC, a few other men and some young women. Sinatra was with a buxom blond model in a black dress. He didn't introduce her, so she got up and left.
It was then that Sinatra lit a Marlboro and sipped vodka. His eyes locked on Louie Jr. and he said, Let's talk about your future, Kid. OK? If you are willing to do what I am about to ask you to do, the first thing I would want you to do is legally change your name. Present company excluded, but even when the two of us were growing up in Hoboken, your Dad was never the brightest Kid on the block, maybe I'm doing this because he's dumb-as-an-ox but he's always been a good friend, and he's has gotten himself in a bit of a bind...
On that same evening, while Louie Jr. was still in New York sitting at a table with Frank Sinatra, I walked through the front door of our house on Jasmine Street and saw my Dad reading The Rocky Mountain News as he sat on the living room sofa, while my Mom was in the kitchen fixing dinner. Dad looked up and said, Do you remember your friend Louie's father, Son? There's an article about him in the newspaper. It seems that he and a couple of other men attempted to rob a grocery store at gunpoint in Toronto, Canada, and when Mister Pasco told the female clerk that he was holding her up, she smacked the pistol out of his hand with a half-eaten banana and the Security Guard stopped them as the three of them attempted to run out the door. All three of them are apparently wanted criminals and they are going to be extradited back to the States in order to stand trial for the crimes they committed here.
And so for more than an hour, on this rainy night in New York, Louie Jr. and Frank Sinatra sat in the back of a chauffeured-driven limousine and drove around the empty streets and Sinatra talked about Louie Jr.'s future. It wasn't an interview or anything like that, Louie Jr. told me when he got back to Denver; Sinatra just wanted to talk. The town has changed, Sinatra told Louie Jr. When I first came across that river, this was the greatest city in the whole goddamned world, he said, but it's like a busted-down hooker now. Which is why you got to go to college here and settle-back and get to know the town. That's what it's all about. You get to know the town you live-in, you get to know who in the hell you actually are. Are you up for that, Kid? After a while, the limousine pulled up in front of the Waldorf Astoria, where Sinatra had an apartment. He told the driver to take Louie Jr. back to the Plaza Hotel, where he had gotten him a room. We'll touch-base in the morning over brunch at the Oak Room, he said, and got out, walking fast, his head down, his hands deep in the pockets of his coat. And Louie Jr. told me that he remembered thinking that he looked extremely lonely for a man that was a legend.
Louie Jr. would go on to obtain a college degree at NYU in communications, move his mother to the City of New York, and become gainfully employed as a sportscaster for Roone Arledge at ABC, under a new name, of course...
...While his father, Louie Sr. idled away his remaining Earthly days in a New York Public Corrections Facility up in Attica, New York, making license plates with "Lefty" O'Shay and and Tuck Henry at his side...
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