TWO OLD COPS
AND ONE YOUNG MAN

 
The cops had 66% retirement pensions and hung around McDonald’s on Lake Shore Boulevard in North Collinwood. Mostly Slovenians. They were hard-pressed to find a Jew — besides me — to share stories with. These cops had worked with Jews back when Jews lived in the city.

Bill Tofant, a retired cop, said he had worked out every day at the “Yiddishe Meat Cutters Union,” a k a the YMCA. He said, “I can still run a mile at age 73 and can hold my own in fisticuffs, and I can turn my head to see if traffic is coming.”

Tofant said my Great Uncle Itchy Seiger would throw his arms around Bill every time he came into Seiger’s deli on East 118^th Street and Kinsman Road. “I couldn’t even spend a nickel in Seiger’s. I had corned beef, turkey, you name it.”

Tofant and fellow retried policeman Ray Lonchar ignored the sign in McDonald’s dining area: 30 Minute Time Limit While Consuming Food. The manager must enforce these rules. Your cooperation is appreciated. Tofant and Lonchar had known Botnick the pawnbroker — “a good sharp yidl.” Botnick got shot and killed in 1981 at his pawnshop at East 59^th Street and Euclid Avenue. I knew Botnick. My dad used to play tennis with Botnick. Lonchar said, “That was done by a jig. Three colored guys went in back and they stuck the place up, and the cameras were just installed. One guy had a horse pistol, yea-long, it stuck out like a sore thumb. It was a military weapon. They picked him up in Rolla, Missouri.”

There had been another Jewish pawnbroker, at East 79^th Street and Hough Avenue. “He would buy a stove [gun] that was red hot and smile,” Lonchar said.

There was Uncle Ben, too, at Woodland Avenue and East 55th Street. “He was kind of lax with his records, but he was good to our pawn unit,” Lonchar said.

When the cops ran out of Jew-lore, they segued to Italians, or even Lithuanians. Blacks — nope. “Shondor Birns [a Jewish gangster] — he had the colored in line,” Lonchar said. Birns had controlled the city’s numbers racket.

I patronized the Lake Shore Boulevard McD’s in the mid-1980s, during the dying days of white ethnicity. Back when cars had bumper stickers like “Thank God I’m Slovenian,” “Thank God I’m Irish” and “Thank God I’m Polish.”  Funny, I never saw a “Thank God I’m Jewish.”

The Lits (The Lithuanians) . . . They lived near Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church — very close to McDonald’s. Lonchar said, “DPs — I don’t care what nationally they are — they’ll eat nothing but soup for 20 years, three times a day, and save their money, and all of a sudden they buy apartment buildings, invest, and they start rolling. They found out that the streets of America didn’t have gold in them. They had to work for it.”

The Italians . . . with all their “goddamn Italian bullshit.” The Italians lived near Holy Redeemer Church, approximately two miles from McDonald’s. Tofant said, “One thing about Italians, they stick together. If you’re Italian, you’re better than me. You might be the dumbest SOB on two feet, a goddamn dunderhead, but just because you’re Italian, you’re it. The Irish get the way, too, around St. Patrick’s Day.”

The Poles . . . Tofant said, “There was one Polack, Frankie Schant, a safecracker. He bit the cheese and left an imprint. He bit the cheese at the grocery store and they matched his teeth marks. At Pick-N-Pay. And there was this South Side Polack who cut a wire, it was live, and he died.”

Slovenians . . . the best for last, here. Take Charlie Broeckel. (He might not have been Slovenian but the Slovenians claimed him.) Tofant said, “He had class. He went out to Laguna Beach, California, and did a bank heist there. Burned through seven mill worth of shit and negotiable papers. I knew him when he was 10 years old. He was a runner. He always found his way out. And you know what, his mother held a very respectable job. She was beyond reproach, nothing like a stumblebum or anything like that. They lived at 8815 St. Clair.”

Nail a historical plaque to that door!

—

I was doing research — and legwork — for a cop novel back then. (Unpublished novel.) I’ll  briefly quote the manuscript, if I can find it. Found . . .

“Stan Zupancic had a glazed turquoise ashtray contoured in the shape of a .44 magnum. His pencil holder was made from World War II antitank shells, and he used a bowie knife to open his mail. A young man, with a growth of brown curly hair that looked like a dead shrub, sat on the other side of the desk.”

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