Surprisingly unorganized /s

I would say ‘Nice try FBI’, but this was back when I was a child, so fuckit, here goes…

Back when I was only 7 years old (1989), living on a ~40 acre horse ranch/junkyard, my dad and his friend decided to teach me to drive a stick shift truck. Plenty of open space ya know, so yeah…

Anyways, dad’s friend literally told me to drive through the pond in the back end of the property. It was only a couple feet deep anyways, so it shouldn’t have been any big deal right?

Well, we did exactly that, drove through the pond, only for the truck tires to end up completely shredded. So like what the actual fuck?

Apparently I ran over a bucket to a bulldozer buried in the pond.

Well, as we came to find out later as time went on, the previous owner of the property had been stealing bulldozers and other county equipment, grinding off the serial numbers, repainting them, and selling them back to the county.

Yeah that caught up with him, I never actually met the previous property owner, but that motherfucker also had people removed from the gene pool if they reported him…

Fairly pleasant, TBH.

I worked for a summer camp specifically for kids from some particularly dicey neighborhoods. Every so often I had to go set up shop in those neighborhoods to meet with parents and whatnot. Some guys in a local gang came to talk to me, learned I was there to offer something helpful to their kids, and from then out made sure I and my car were safe whenever I had to be in the area.

Nice guys, at least in the capacity I knew them.

I grew up in a town where it was general knowledge that retired Italian mobsters retired to.

They made sure that town was clean, safe, and with very little crime. Chased out encroaching gangs and were generally an overall positive for the community.

Since they stopped retiring there a few years ago, the town has gone to shit.

A friend from primary school and his dad were in a biker gang. I was pretty close for a while, and saw some shit.

I was driving on I-70 and saw a member of an MC execute someone.

One of my dad’s friends is in a local chapter of the same MC.

I knew someone who lived in the same block as a well known motorcycle appreciation society. It was an incredibly clean and safe area. And the local dive bar was fun without a hint of shadiness or trouble. They did not shit where they ate.

When my girlfriend’s dad was a kid he was once paid very good money to help unload crates off a boat and not ask questions

Also, and even less directly relevant to my life, I live a couple blocks away from a very famous dead gangster’s old hideout. One of the members of the gang, who lived down the street from me, went on to have a fairly iconic role in a classic mob movie

I pay them monthly bills

I went on a ‘Business Enterprise’ programme back in the UK in the very early ‘90s. Basically it was how to run a business 101. Six sessions on different things: accounting, HR, etc. etc.

One of the other guys on the course turned out to be the son of the biggest coke dealer in the city.

He was a nice kid. By the end of the course a bunch of us had bonded and someone invited us all to a house party.

The son of the coke dealer turned up with a briefcase literally full of cocaine. That was a fucking awesome party, let me tell you.

I worked near a clubhouse which used to be a lot more publicly active, in a trade that used to skew a lot more “rough”.

I heard that they trafficked women and that they would come to the job site to “work”. There were people with serious drug problems who could not be let go because of their affiliation. This last one I find the hardest to believe for some reason but apparently people were pressured into buying t shirts? Like with the clubs name and logo. Seems strange.

Studied abroad, made some friends. One asked me to ride along to his work. His work wasn’t ahhh, ‘above board’ and he had pissed off his boss, so he took me along as insurance that he wouldn’t be treated badly as their govt would be very pissed to have a foreigner disappear as well. Holy smokes, that was an intensive language immersion experience.

When I was in the military we sometimes had to work with the US. CIA, navy, that sort of stuff. When it comes to crime, they are very organized. Especially war crimes are their specialty.

Once in Somalia a US sailing yacht was captured by pirates. A US destroyer intercepted and opened fire without warning. The yacht was completely perforated, covered in blood. The US crew, of which they knew they were alive, well and on board, and the Somali pirates were splashed open by .50 cal fire. And because they killed the US crew on the boat, they bombed a village as retaliation, claiming they were pirates while there was clear evidence there were only fishermen.

This is just an example of the many war crimes I’ve seen them do.

Alright, I’ll bite. I got a favor from the mafia once. I had bought a motorcycle and the seller gave me an unsigned title, un-notarized. There was a Curio shop on our street - these ancient men ran it, but never sold a Curio, they did sell cigarettes and ran card games in the back of the shop. I told one what happened and he says "ah, don’t worry baby, Sam is a notary! SAM! This young lady needs something notarized. " So they signed the guys name and notarized it.
“What do I owe you?” “Nothing, honey, we do this as a favor for you, yes?”

I’m sure they are long dead now, and the curio shop some hipster bar or something . In their heyday they ran numbers and took protection money but had settled down, but it was funny, their job was sort of - if they could do it for you, and you could pay for it in some way, they would. So of course Sam was their crooked notary. And technically I owe the Mafia a small favor still.

I’ve dealt with a number of these who were coming from north African countries. Their hash was good, reasonably priced, and they were friendly. What can I say 🤷