Hard Times - Part 8

His Al Pacino character - a contradiction entirely to his Gabriel Byrne side, was consistent with Frank in that “he did it his way”! The law be damned if it didn’t agree with his personal philosophies or politics. He declared often that the “average Joe” carried a lunch box and punched a clock. He was a man, for crying out loud, and a real man had to love what he did - even if it meant breaking an unfair law.

As a kid, he rolled marijuana cigarettes in the backroom of a grocery store, in between stocking the shelves. He got a newspaper route, and made deliveries containing small brown-paper packages rolled up in the classifieds to men with names like “Sam the Snake”, “Joey the Butcher”, and “Louie P”. He was paid handsomely with $20 bills slapped between poor-boy sandwiches from Joey the Butcher, or in a bar napkin next to the Coca-Colas that Sam the Snake served him. Louie P, the grocer, paid him his honest wages…and then some…

The young Earl never peeked at his “deliveries”. “Wouldn’t have been right. Wasn’t my business.” And Daddy wouldn’t let me call these men “mafia” - ever. “Businessmen, little girl. Just businessmen.”

He made friends as a kid with some “influential” New Orleans contacts who had fingers reaching around the United States. I asked Daddy once about how he got the job of bat boy for the New York Yanks, and he said, “Friends, little girl. Just friends.” When I was 18, I was arrested for not being able to prove I was old enough to be in a pub - but I was of legal age. I called my Daddy, and within minutes I was released. Friends, I guess…Just friends…