MOBS
A really big guy came in, with a sort of friendly look. (He had a face not given to friendly.) He was wearing a cheap gray suit with an obvious large bulge under his left armpit. He announced himself as ‘Xavier Saint’ from Chicago in a barely intelligible growl, and he was looking for the ‘boys’, Law and Fred.
My father and my uncle had unfortunate ties to the Saint Louis mob. I did not really understand this until I was in college, these were the days before ‘The Godfather’, and the Mafia always denied its own existence. Looking back, I can see a lot of indicators that others knew about us, but would never say anything out loud. It was considered quite natural that I would carry knives and guns as a teenager, I was scary, and the good kids stayed strictly away from me. On the up-side, I usually got away with my many brushes with the law, until, at least, the city hired a tee totaling Baptist police chief who was hell bent on making my life miserable. I will tell some stories about him another time.
Dad and Uncle Fred ran a coin operated machine business, Obermiller Brothers Amusement Company, in Columbia, Missouri, about 120 miles west of St. Louis. The business owned pinball machines and juke boxes, and later ran cigarette, candy and soda machines. They also had half interest in two taverns, the famous ‘Stables’ and the ‘Tiger Inn’. Obermiller Brothers came into being shortly after WWII. Dad worked in a bank after the war, but my uncle, who had served in the Pacific Theater in Australia learning the fine art of reaving, returned home to St. Louis with different plans. (Reaver: In the army, if you wanted something not readably available, you placed an order with your local reaver, who, for a price, would find it for you.)
Fred wasn’t married when he got home to Saint Louis, and immediately started dating. Fred, being army trained as a reaver, was looking for easy ways to get into business and make money. One of the girls he dated was Buster Wortman’s daughter. I am sure you never heard of Buster Wortman. Buster was a gangster, the boss of the St. Louis mob, also known as the German Mob. He lived in Collinsville, Illinois, in a house with a moat in a private cul-de-sac. Collinsville was a long drive for Fred who lived in Clayton at the time, but he must have thought it was worth it. He drove all the way to Collinsville to pick up the daughter, I don’t remember her name, parking on the street outside the cul-de-sac and walking in. This was a required procedure enforced by the boys who guarded Buster’s house. As he walked in, a bodyguard would walk up on either side. Fred would have to raise his shirt to show he wasn’t packing a gun, but otherwise, was never molested.
Fred dated the daughter for a year, fortunately not marrying her, and during that time became a favorite of Buster’s, earning Buster’s trust and learning his business – coin operated machines and juke joints. Buster owned the famous, or infamous, juke joint ‘The Paddock’ in East St. Louis, and spent most of his time there. Coin operated machines were a favorite of the mob people in the 1940’s. Booze was gone with prohibition, and a lot of them wanted nothing to do with drugs. The coin operated machines were a complete cash operation with absolutely no way of tracking income. An excellent way to launder gambling money. Fred liked the easy way to make money with pinball machines, jukeboxes, slot machines and juke-joints. He wanted to start his own operation, but he couldn’t do it in Saint Louis without permission from Buster, and Buster didn’t want any competition. Buster took care of all that territory through ‘Wortman’s Plaza Amusement Company’. Instead, he went to virgin territory, the college town Columbia, to meet with Dad. Columbia did not have any juke boxes or pinballs, and only a ‘colored’ dance hall. Fred convinced Dad to quit his bank teller’s job and follow the American dream of business ownership, much to my Mother’s dismay.
With machines obtained from Buster’s supply business, which in turn bought machines from and was franchised by Al Capone’s Chicago mob, Obermiller Brothers Amusement Company was launched in 1948, the year I was born. The business went well. In just a few years, Dad and Fred had owned a silent interest in the Stables, and in the Tiger Inn, well-known Columbia taverns or ‘juke joints’. We moved to a respectable middle class neighborhood in the west side of town and drove new Studebaker cars. We lived in a new house and even had a lake house. Dad’s business location was always called ‘The Shop’, and was always in a rundown dirty building. They never had a secretary or anyone that could look into the business income. But, they had lots of ‘locations’ – taverns and the like where pinball machines and jukeboxes were located – all over central Missouri. When they had problems from, say, Kansas City people, the Italians, help was called in from St. Louis.
Before they were made strictly illegal, Obermiller Brothers ran a string of one-armed bandits or slot machines. I still remember when the Sheriff, Sonny Fenton, closed down the slot machine business in Boone County. All the machines had to be stored in the basement of the Shop, then on Range Line Road. I used to play them for free after school. For another few years, the slots were rented to various clubs like the Lions and Shriners for party nights, but after a while they had to be destroyed. I remember when Sonny came to collect them with many apologies. I guess Columbia, and the whole country, was cleaning up.
When I was a kid I was kind of wild, and as a result was required to spend a lot of time traveling around with Dad and Uncle Fred to locations to collect money and fix machines. I preferred Uncle Fred. Fred was always in good with the bartenders. I would be assigned to open the various machines and dump the coins on the bar. Fred would then count the cash and split it 60-40 with the bartender. While counting and shooting the breeze, he would consume a couple of ‘high balls’, bourbon and 7 Up. I could have one if I wanted. In later years, after I started driving, I would travel around alone to locations to collect money, split it 60-40, and have a beer. The bartenders didn’t seem to have a problem with serving a minor beer, at least not this particular minor, but only when I was alone. They wouldn’t serve my friends.
When I turned 16, Dad sent me to St. Louis to pick up new pinball machines and jukeboxes. I considered this a great matter of trust. I was to pick up the machines at Gottlieb on the southeast corner of Washington and Pine. I had never driven to St. Louis, much less downtown St. Louis; this was an adventure. The building was easy enough to find. It just didn’t have any windows or doorknobs. I rang a buzzer next to the steel door, and a voice asked me to state my business. I did, and the voice told me I was expected and to leave the truck with the keys in it in front of a garage door at the side and go get some lunch at the monastery across the street. I came back in an hour and found the truck sitting outside with four machines on it. That was it. Never saw a soul. Never signed for a thing.
In all the years I worked for Dad and Fred, I never paid for a single pack of cigarettes, we all smoked then, or a gallon of gas. My salary was paid in coin, roles of quarters, and I just took what I needed. I never paid taxes and I always carried a money sack full of change, sometimes weighing a hundred pounds or more, in my car. For a couple of years before I graduated from the university, I even carried a .38 special in a shoulder holster. I still have this pistol. The City police and sheriff deputies all knew I carried a gun on collection days, but they never said a word.
Around 1967 or 68 the whole mob thing really came home to me. I was in the shop counting and rolling piles of dimes on a Saturday morning, something I did every Saturday morning. I collected money on Saturdays from Stephens College candy machines and some other routes. I was alone, but it was collection day and I was armed. A really big guy came in, with a sort of friendly look. (He had a face not given to friendly.) He was wearing a cheap gray suit with an obvious large bulge under his left armpit. He announced himself as ‘Xavier Saint’ from Chicago in a barely intelligible growl, and he was looking for the ‘boys’, Law and Fred. A little worried, I lied and told him I did not know where the ‘boys’ were. Still being sort of friendly, he said he would be in town a couple of days and would look them up later.
Dad showed up in 30 minutes and I gave him a heads up. He looked a little troubled but not unduly so, and told me he would take care of it. I guess he did since I never heard about Xavier Saint again. Two or three years later and I was off to Florida on my new career as a civil engineer. Not too long after I left Columbia, the Kansas City mafia under the guise of the ‘Canteen’ company (the vending company with no telephone number) started pressuring Dad to sell out to them. This went on for a while until some sort of arrangement was made, or perhaps because the casino mob war in Kansas City between the Gambino’s and Bonanno’s seriously disrupted Canteen. In any case, Uncle Fred retired and Dad sold out to a guy who had worked for us in the 60’s, and the Company became Midwest Vending. I never went to the new ‘shop’, which was indeed new and respectable. Not long after, Uncle Fred died, and then Dad followed him.
Much later, I found out that Buster Wortman had died in 1968. Apparently, his control over the coin operated machine business in his territory was diminished in his last years. The IRS had gone after him and managed to put him away for a while. The IRS had also gone after Dad and Fred about that time but they managed to survive. No doubt, the visit from the Chicago mobster was connected with the demise of Wortman. With Canteen busy trying to move into the territory, and Buster out of the picture, I suspect the Chicago mob just wasn’t interested anymore. Xavier was sent to tell the boys, Law and Fred, that they were on their own. In any case, for me, that chapter of my life was closed.
One weekend day in the late 80’s my second wife, a model, who has the looks of a gorgeous Italian, and I were at the Market in the River Quay in Kansas City doing some shopping. Now, without going into a history lesson, you should know the River Quay was for a long time run by the Kansas City Mafia. We pulled up to one of the Italian flower markets in our midnight blue Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. As we stopped, a couple of good looking young Italian men made some assumptions, ran over to open the doors, gave Cheryl a long stemmed rose, and escorted her into the building. As the Anglo driver, I was ignored.
Another time we pulled up to the Italian Gardens in downtown KC, a favorite eatery for the mafia bosses, in the same Cadillac. Two muscle bound young men with ominous bulges under their jackets strolled over and offered to park our car. These were not valets, and car parking was not a publicly offered feature of the restaurant, but since the car looked the part, and my wife looked the part, assumptions were made again. We loved getting wined and dined at the Italian Gardens and were saddened when it closed down a few years ago. It was a lot of fun watching the shady characters sitting at the corner tables.
Life is a lot slower these days, but I get a kick out my two boys. Listening to them talk, I am thinking maybe the tendency to mobsterism is genetic. They always want to ‘hit’ our business competitors or others that give us problems, or do other unsavory things to them. And, in spite of myself, those thoughts float unbidden into my mind sometimes, too.
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