My great-uncle Bob had other unscrupulous interests beyond the trafficking of then-illegal alcoholic beverages.  Bob participated in a proud organization; organized to represent the skilled hands that work glass for society’s benefit.  In other words, Bob dabbled in working with the glazers union.

            It was, as I have already hinted, the Great Depression.  We are told that times were tough.  Work was scarce.

            But Bob had a plan.

            He gathered a handful of glass-handling brethren to a secret place, perhaps his own speakeasy.  There he got them drunk by all standards of inebriation.  Filled to the brim with liquid courage and shepherded by Bob, the party moved to the vicinity of the warehouse of Cleveland’s own May Company Department Store.

            What happened next was indisputably a crime; an act of textbook thuggery and vandalism.  But, in my mind, it is inescapably beautiful.  I can see the men, huddled together against cold, dark and sobriety, hunkering down to gather their stones.  I can see the arms and hands of the skilled tradesmen, like palm trees waving in the night.  Back for the wind-up.  Forth for the pitch.  Back for the wind-up.  Forth for the pitch – casting their first and second stones at the work of glazers before them; bouncing stones against walls of the warehouse and occasionally managing a lucky strike:  Smashing the windows, opening the warehouse to fresh air and opportunity.

*          *          *

            The plan was elegant in its simplicity; its straight-forward thinking.

            The glazers needed work.  That meant making windows.  No one – including the May Company – was going to contract new windows while they had perfectly good old windows.  It was the Great Depression, after all.  Belts had to be tightened.

            But if the windows of, say, a warehouse were broken (“I couldn’t guess who, officer.  Probably some of those rough kids you see running about these days.  Crazy times,”)…why, then a durable company, like – just as an example – the May Company, would simply have to get new windows installed.

            And who better to make these new windows than Bob’s good friends, the Glazers union?

            But the joke was on Bob.

            The May Company executives knew, suspected or just didn’t want to throw good money after bad; and subject themselves again to the whimsy of those rough kids one saw running about those days (crazy times!)  They decided it best to board up the windows rather than create fragile-shiny targets for the next flying stones.

            I suspect they were happy to give out the work.  It was the Great Depression after all.  Times were tough.  Work was scarce.  Surely there would be some grateful families with fathers in the carpenters union.