The Irish Mob

Irish are Spaniards Who Got Lost in the Mist

I went out with the Irish mob when I was young, at least what was left of it. My fellow publishing scoundrel Hunter Thompson died in 2005, my Tenderloin uncle Jimmie Mitchell went out in '07— and of course he shot his brother Art quite a few years back— that was an occasion when we all thought it would be the other way around. 

My mother, Betty Jo, gave this to her mother, Agnes, in 1930, two years before her death of pneumonia, after her fifth birth

Bob Callahan died in 2008, and I only learned of his passing by accident, while reading a biography from one of his favorite New York dames, Tex Guinan. She was the Prohibition raconteur who famously said, long before another Irish actor named W.C. Fields made it popular: “Never give a sucker an even break.” The Irish are what make American English great.

Callahan memorialized Tex in his book, The Big Book of Irish American Culture, which I read like a prayerbook after his untimely departure. I use it as a family history guide to understan…