(Publisherâs Note: The 12-part series, âThe Children of Wheelingâs Mob Era,â will be re-published each evening over the next two weeks so those who missed some or all of the chapters will have another chance to read it. A collection of Steve Novotneyâs mob stories over the years will be released in book form this summer.)3Tales of a Tow Truck DriverShoe stores, jewelry stores, clothing stores, appliance stores, restaurants, hotels, office buildings, doctorâs offices, five-and-dimes, theatres, and bars. Lots and lots of bars.Once, that was an accurate description of downtown Wheeling, a business district that evolved into and out of its role as the Ohio Valleyâs mega metropolis where consumers could buy anything, eat anything, and wager on anything from college and pro football to horses and dogs and baseball and basketball.There was the Odyssey, the Chit Chat, the Elbow Room, The Office, Billyâs, the Brickhouse, Academy Billiards, the Club Tower, the Cork & Bottle, the Capitol Ballroom, the Sportsman, and the San Antone, and no one batted an eye at the Mobâs bookies, the backroom poker games, the spot sheets, or those little white envelopes passed along by bartenders with a patronâs change.âI went to the bars and one of the coolest ones was the Tin Pan Alley,â said Don Atkinson, a former Wheeling council member (2008-2016) who was an employee of Ace Garage for more than 40 years. âThat place had three floors with a different kind of music on each of the floors. There was country, jazz, and I think disco was on the top floor. The place was always jam-packed.Bill Kolibash was first hired by the federal government in Wheeling in 1973, and 10 years later he was appointed as the U.S. Attorney by then-President Ronald Reagan. Kolibash was the "quarterback" of the team that convicted Hankish on a plethora of RICO charges.âYou went down the alley from Market (Street) to go in, and the place was cool as hell. I remember Bill Liasâ big round booth being there because it was his restaurant (Zellerâs) before it was the bar and the owner (Jim Coyne) thought it was cool to have it there,â he recalled. âMan, it was loud and it was crazy, but it looked like just another regular business. But if you knew, you knew there was more to do than dance and drink. You knew what else you could do there.âFor decades, according to former U.S. Attorney Bill Kolibash, drug trafficking was one illegal activity Wheelingâs mobsters avoided until quaaludes and marijuana arrived in the 1970s and then cocaine came into play during the 1980s. The federal prosecutor, whose book âJustice Never Restsâ will be released in late January, included drug dealing as one of a plethora of indictments against gangster Paul âNo Legsâ Hankish in the October 1990 trial.âIt was slick as hell the way they did the cocaine (sales),â Atkinson remembered. âCoke was huge around in the 80âs but I was always scared of the stuff. But youâd see the buys take place and it wasnât just there. It was everywhere.âIâm not sure how the customer signaled that they wanted to buy the coke, but what the bartender would do is get the guyâs drink and when she gave him the drink and his change, there would be a little white envelope with the bills,â he described. âThe guy would just put it all in his pocket and walk away from the bar and that was it. So, they tried to be cool about it, but every single person in that bar knew what was going on just like they knew those girls in the alley were hookers and the guy at the end of the bar was the bookie.âAnd no one cared either.âLocal residents and visitors to downtown Wheeling frequented the alleys far more than they do today. (Photo by Tammy Kruse)Those Little CrocodilesHis mom was in the mob. Kinda-sorta.Kay Atkinson operated a tavern in the town of Triadelphia, a small settlement just outside Wheelingâs city limits that was comprised mostly of coal miners who once worked Valley Campâs pillared tunnels beneath the eastern portions of Ohio County. He doesnât remember the name of the bar, but Don does recall it was near where Bleifus Tire operates today. He remembers the tales she told, too.âI was young. Single digits, pretty much, she would tell us about âBig Billâ and what was happening to him. She said there was a lot of gambling, backroom card games, and things like that,â Atkinson recalled. âMy mom wasnât hiding anything; she wasnât whispering or anything. Iâd hear about âthis guy with the mobâ and âthat guy with the mob.ââWe heard about the car blowing up, too. Hankishâs Studebaker. And the word was Lias didnât like Hankish much so he tried to get rid of him. I know he never got arrested for it, but most people still think he got away with it,â he said. âI remember hearing about the mob all the time when I was growing up. Everybody knew about it. It was Wheeling.The majority of these buildings no longer stand in the city's downtown area, but when the Mob ruled Wheeling, they were very busy with customers on a daily basis. (Photo archived by the Ohio County Public Library)âItâs just what was happening in Wheeling back then. And no one cared.âHe doesnât remember his mother complaining. For that matter, he doesnât recall anyone complaining about the Wheeling Mob.âA lot of people just didnât talk about anything those guys were doing. But it was accepted. It was just a way of life in this town. People went to work, worked hard, and did their business. Some people avoided everything that was connected to the Mob, and some people didnât avoid them,â Atkinson said. âIf you wanted to make a bet or get whatever, you knew where to go. Hell, we were in Ronâs Value Center all the time when I got older, and we knew the place was filled with stolen stereos and necklaces and stuff like that.âWe all wore those IZOD shirts like the people at the country club, too. Our shirts didnât have the tags because I guess thatâs how the Mob hid it, but who cared? We had all the colors at Ace Garage because Ronnie Bris would always stop down because the Jacovettys owned the business and Vinnieâs uncle was involved with Lias,â he said. âSometimes Bris would stop at the garage with a bunch of steaks he got from somewhere and weâd buy some as long as they were frozen.âListen, some people avoided all that stuff like the plague, and they had their reasons. Because my mom ran that bar for âBig Billâ, I knew what was going on inside that place and all the others. It was just normal life in this town.âNot too many photos of the Palace Disco/Pirates Cove exist, but those who recall the businesses say there were a lot of lights on the corner of 23rd and Main streets.To Tow or Not to TowHe was a peacemaker, an enforcer, a bar owner, a sharp dresser, and Jesse Anderson intimidated when intimidation was needed. Anderson was one of the most trusted men in Hankishâs mob, and thatâs why he ran errands, delivered packages, communicated messages, and collected overdue debts for the Boss.Anderson was a tall, muscular black man who loved to dress in bright suits, matching hats, and shiny shoes, and he always waved from his fancy cars, too. Atkinson described Jesse as a flashy and friendly man who could be all about business when necessary, and thatâs why Andersonâs named appeared frequently in the federal RICO indictments published by The Intelligencer on October 3, 1989.Anderson, who owned the Playmate Lounge on Lind Street in East Wheeling, was murdered a few years later in Meigs County, Ohio.âOnce me and Jesse knew each other, we always got along,â said the long-time tow truck driver. âAnd I became friends with some of the other guys who worked for Hankish, too, and I remember Jesse well because he was one of Paulâs right-hand guys. I'll never forget, I had a car broke down in downtown Wheeling one day around lunchtime, and the car was in a parking place and I couldn't get it out.âJesse (Anderson) stopped and got out of his yellow Cadillac in this bright yellow suit, and he started helping me push the car out of the way ⌠and Iâm thinking about who he is the whole time and that I shouldnât make him mad,â Atkinson said. âI didnât have a problem with any of those guys, and I didnât want them to have a probem with me either. But Jesse was cool with me.âYa know, except for all the bad stuff he did, he was a pretty nice guy.âJust a couple of streets south of Ronâs Value Center were two mob-owned properties: a bar called the âPalace Discoâ that later became known as the âPirates Cove,â and the other was only known by the feds as 2244 Water Street because it was one of the largest and longest running brothels in the city.People parked everywhere and anywhere, and that kept Atkinson busy during his night shifts.âIt was all up to the police back then, and they knew who not to have towed. Back then, someone in my position didnât ask anyways. I mean, I knew who had what car, so I knew what was going on and I didnât think twice about it. People used to park all over the place so we cleared who we cleared and didnât get in any trouble.âThere were bars all over Wheeling and people used to park wherever they fit because of how crowded it was most weekends. There were biker bars, pool halls, the disco places, and there was a lot of live music in downtown, and people went out. People had a lot of fun around here back in those days.âThe Imperial Display company along Main Street offered a little bit of everything in their "Christmas store," including the most popular decorations for inside and outside the home. (Photo archived by James Thornton)Fun and GamesGeorgeâs Bar in Fulton used to serve the neighborhood boys mashed potatoes with brown or chicken gravy for lunch for just 25 cents. If a kid didnât have the quarter, George would add a little more just because.The boys would sit at the same bar with the few men who went to Georgeâs for the open-face lunch specials, and Atkinson recalls the chalkboards used for the big games and the point spreads. Georgeâs was down the street from hi shouse, but it wasnât the only bar in the neighborhood. âWeâd go there and up the street to the Swing Club when we were running around, and both bars ran numbers. They both had the pinball machines with men trying to get the highest score, and there were the other poker machines and stuff like that. Whatever was popular at the time, I guess,â he explained. âI was always told there was only one way to run a bar in Wheeling, and that was with Hankish in your pocket.âNo one blinked,â Atkinson said with eyes wide. âAs soon as me and my friends were 18 years old, we went out to all the bars and I donât remember someone approaching me about making a bet or anything like that. It was definitely kind of an unspoken thing, I guess, but if you wanted to bet, you could ask at the bar,â he remembered. âThatâs what guys did.âHankish wasnât a bar hopper once he became Boss after Lias was dead and buried in Greenwood Cemetery, but he had men like Anderson, a man named Jimmy Griffin, and people Atkinson referred to as âbag menâ who would âpickup and deliver.âFor many years in downtown Wheeling, local residents and visitors alike could count on this wonderful lighted display by Stone & Thomas.âThey were always brown paper bags, so they looked like lunches, I guess. And Jimmy was quiet. He wasnât loud like Jesse. You just knew to keep your head down when you saw Jimmy because we heard he took care of things when Paul needed it done,â he described. âHankish was out there. He was always out there, always around. I think he liked to be seen. He was the guy Lias couldnât kill and everyone knew that. He knew that. âMy wife (Gail) even cut the manâs hair. When she was done, sheâd have to go out to the car to wake up Jimmy so Jimmy could get Paul back in the car. I mean, Hankish didnât hide from anyone, thatâs for sure. It was the âCrazy 80âs,â Atkinson said. âSome said people came here from out of town for the âWheeling Feeling,â and I was never sure exactly what the âFeelingâ was because there was so much of everything. Whatever it was, it sure had people like (FBI agent) Tom Burgoyne looking for something all of the time.âBurgoyne was a Massachusetts native who was assigned to Wheeling in 1967, and once the Federal Bureau of Investigation was granted jurisdiction over cocaine sales, he was able to build a thick file on Hankish and his organization. Twenty years later, Burgoyne was a member of Kolibashâs criminal task force that surveilled all the moves made by Wheelingâs mob boss.âYou knew something was going on. You heard the feds were on them,â Atkinson said. âPeople were talking about the investigation getting pretty serious, and I had known Tom Burgoyne for a while by the time the trial took place. When I was a kid working at a Texaco gas station, he used to come there and he used a credit card with âFBIâ on it. He was cool as hell.âBut just like Hankish didnât hide, neither did Burgoyne. He was right out there in the open all the time,â he said. âMe and Tom became pretty good friends, and I think most people in Wheeling knew Tom more for what he did in the community and less as an FBI agent who helped bring down Hankish and his mob.âWheeling was a lot of fun until then.âGail and Donnie live in Wheeling and they love spoiling their two grandchildren.The Series:https://ledenews.com/the-children-of-wheelings-mob-era-the-prologuehttps://ledenews.com/the-children-of-wheelings-mob-era-betty-and-a-bombhttps://ledenews.com/the-children-of-wheelings-mob-era-hamm-the-newspaperman-vs-wheelings-mob-bosseshttps://ledenews.com/the-children-of-wheelings-mob-era-tales-of-a-tow-truck-driver/https://ledenews.com/the-children-of-wheelings-mob-era-eyes-on-ernies-esquire/https://ledenews.com/the-children-of-wheelings-mob-era-max-and-his-mob-bars/https://ledenews.com/the-children-of-wheelings-mob-era-the-cocaine-courier/https://ledenews.com/the-children-of-wheelings-mob-era-tom-burgoyne-g-man/https://ledenews.com/the-children-of-wheelings-mob-era-a-truck-stops-convicted-king/https://ledenews.com/the-children-of-wheelings-mob-era-a-daddy-his-daughter/https://ledenews.com/the-children-of-wheelings-mob-era-dickie-and-the-mahoff/(Authorâs Note: Each week Iâll be sharing a link to one of the chapters of my first âWheeling Mobâ series I wrote while serving as the founding editor-in-chief of Weelunk, a digital media site now owned and operated by Wheeling Heritage, a non-profit organization that promotes the history and heritage of the city of Wheeling.)https://weelunk.com/the-wheeling-mob-part-3
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