Sunday is Valentine's Day and anybody else suffering from an overload of saccharine sentiments, that promise diabetes more assuredly than companionship, this weekend would do well to join me in remembering the true spirit of the "holiday". For my thoughts run red this time of year and it isn't because of any roses or candy.
On February 14, 1929, four men, two dressed as police and carrying shotguns, entered the garage of the S.M.C. Cartage Company in Chicago and lined the seven men inside up against the back wall. Then with seventy rounds of machine gun fire and two shotgun blasts they killed said men. The two dressed in civilian clothes exited the garage with their hands up while their accomplices, dressed as police, held guns on them for the march to their getaway car.
No one knows for sure who the shooters were, but most historians agree they belonged to, or were hired by, Al Capone's south side gang and that the intended target was north side boss George Clarence "Bugs" Moran. Moran's nickname was spawned from his volatile temper (he'd go bugs).
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre has come to represent the prohibition war in Chicago more than any other single act of violence and, eighty years later its legend, it is still grist for the mill of popular entertainment, (a prequel to the Brian De Palma, David Mamet collaboration The Untouchables is on its way - supposedly dealing with the event), and its alleged participants have passed into the realm of myth.
My prescription for curing your weekend blahs? Curl up with a heart-cooling tale of gangland's gilded age. Perhaps something from the The Godfather, himself, Mario Puzo? Or a true crime account of Al Capone or Egan's Rats, (the St. Louis gang who may have supplied gunmen on that day)? When you wish someone a happy Valentine's Day, this year, do it The Chicago Way.
