Great-uncle Bob would one day be shot-gunned down by gangsters in front of the speakeasy he was running at the time.  While Bob was a somewhat well known criminal element during the great depression/prohibition days in Cleveland, Ohio (yes, there were gangsters and speakeasies in Cleveland,) his brother – my grandfather – Max was only a taxi driver and occasional gambler.

            A year or two before Bob’s violent demise, however, he learned that Max had fallen in love, and was planning to marry a young woman named Sylvia.

            One day, Max’s fiancé was working at her job in an office in downtown Cleveland, when a group of thugs walked in.  I do not know whether either of these two gentlemen were hulking goons or slippery reptiles.  I do not know if any thug archetype represented these two, but I do know that they entered the office and informed Sylvia’s boss that it was time for Sylvia to go on a lunch break. 

            I also know that, in those days, when two thugs entered your office and told you that it’s time for Sylvia to go on a lunch break you sent Sylvia out to lunch.  And that is just what Sylvia’s boss did on that day.

            Escorted by the two (somehow intimidating) gentlemen, Sylvia was made to get into a car that was already waiting with the engine running.  She sat in the back seat with the thugs on either side of her, and a third driving them around the streets and back alleys of downtown Cleveland.  I do not know whether Sylvia bothered to ask her escorts where they were going, but I am quite sure that they did not tell her. 

            It also seems likely that Sylvia was terribly afraid, as anyone would have been.  Her fiancé’s brother’s reputation had not escaped her attention, and Sylvia was bright enough to know that this was very likely to be somehow connected to Bob.  But there was no way of knowing how.  Sylvia must have wondered if she was about to become a tragic story in the local paper meant as a message from some competitor of Bob’s.  Perhaps Bob himself had decided that he didn’t approve of his brother’s choice, and was objecting to the union in his own unequivocal way.  Would she be killed, beaten up, intimidated, or in some other unspeakable way disgraced?  I can only imagine that these were a small sample of the thoughts that passed through Sylvia’s mind.