Ah, mobsters were part of the fabric of life in 1970s Milwaukee. Joseph P. Balistrieri, alleged Underboss of the Milwaukee crime family, owned a stately home on

Ah, mobsters were part of the fabric of life in 1970s Milwaukee. Joseph P. Balistrieri, alleged Underboss of the Milwaukee crime family, owned a stately home on the same block as my parents, a few blocks from the lakefront. An old lady (his mother?) answered the door when I went door-to-door offering snow shoveling services. She said no and was not very nice about it. An unmarked surveillance sedan was parked, idling all winter long, across the street from Atty. Balistrieri's home. The agents (presumably FBI) never smiled to the kids who waved. My parents joked to neighbors that we lived on the safest block in the city. It was all very normal. I ran a music newspaper in Milwaukee in the early 80s (the Express, still in business after all these years as the Shepherd Express). Our advertisers were bars and clubs. One club that wasn't very popular underwent extensive renovation frequently, changing themes from urban cowboy to disco to hard rock, and other club owners said it was a scheme to launder Las Vegas syndicate money. I went to sell advertising to the club owner and he memorably greeted me by saying, "You may be the apple of your mother's eye but you are nothing but a tiny speck of shit to me." After I established that my business partner was best friends in law school with the fiancee of his nephew the dentist and audaciously pitched a full-page ad, he amicably agreed to run a 1/8 page ad every month as long as I never bothered him again.