I'm skeptical about some of the things we spend our money on now, our tax money.
That stealth bomber, that thing, the invisible plane, $2 billion for an invisible plane that
you can see.
Yeah, I wouldn't mind if they just showed you an empty field and like, hey, everybody,
it's the stealth bomber, you know?
Now I'm getting my money's worth, but they don't, they fly it over the Super Bowl, you
know?
They're like, look, it's the stealth bomber, I'm like, not invisible, you know, turn it
on.
Yeah, we would think for $2 billion, they could blink at one time for us, and then my friend
tells me, no, it's invisible to radar.
So we can bomb people as long as they're not looking up, which is tricky.
I guess we go in first and throw out a bunch of quarters, and then, you know, run, run,
run.
Thank you.
Good morning, 608 at WRGN Radio.
I'm Don Rose and I want to thank you for joining me on this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday morning.
I get so confused on the days.
I used to yell at my mother all the time.
I yell at her, but I used to say to her, come on, you're getting old.
You don't even know what day it is.
Here I am, folks.
I used to tell her to look at all the pills you take.
You take too many pills.
Here I am, folks.
Boy, you go to the doctor way too often.
Look at how many doctors you go to.
Here I am, folks.
Isn't it funny all the things we criticized our parents for?
Here we are.
What is show this morning?
It's just a couple of minutes from now.
We're going to talk to Brian Ewig, production specialist at Milwaukee PBS.
They have got a real super special coming on the 29th of the month.
It's an out-to-poet special, but alcoholines relationship to Wisconsin, especially the North Woods area.
Things you never knew before.
About Scarface himself.
We'll find out.
Brian joins us in just a few minutes.
Then at 7-0-6.
We've got our second candidate for the fourth automatic district breeze.
David Mack will be here in studio.
Okay, the forecast.
Rain today, highs near 37.
Clotty lows around 34 tonight.
Rain likely tomorrow with a high near 38.
Right now, cloudy and 35 degrees.
Doesn't that sound good?
38 degrees, 35 degrees, 37, 34.
That sounds like good numbers, don't they?
That's something else for you.
Next week we're going to be in the mid-40s, mid to upper 40s next week.
And that's something.
I didn't see that straight ahead.
But for everybody who's singing to hear people,
he winters over.
Thank goodness.
Remember the 24-inch blizzard we had on Groundhog Day in 2011.
So winters block revolver.
But this is a good sign.
I like this.
This is very good.
35 and cloudy right now.
All that ice we had yesterday on the sidewalk that slippery.
You could even see it.
It was just a very thin layer of ice.
When when Pippin was leaving it, Pippin McKelley was here.
From preservation.
We're seeing yesterday at eight o'clock.
She was leaving the building.
She said, you got to walk like a penguin when you are nice.
Lean forward.
And she's kind of right because what's the first thing that happens
when you slip on the ice?
She fall backwards.
She said, lean forward like a penguin.
And she's right.
I thought you meant slide on your belly on the sidewalk like a penguin.
You ever see the penguins on the ice?
They slide on their belly.
All right.
That's what I thought you was talking about.
She said, you got to do it like a penguin.
It means slide on your belly on the sidewalk.
I'll try that.
It was really bad.
I couldn't when I was leaving the building.
I could not walk on the sidewalk.
I had to walk across our lawn, which I'd like, you know, snow on it.
And I just, it was terrible.
Today, it's fine.
It's 35 degrees.
There's no ice out there.
So that's good.
Just wet.
People still drive like lunatics, though.
That hasn't changed for a night.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to do it.
People still drive like lunatics, though.
That hasn't changed for a night.
Okay.
Do you wake up itchy this morning?
Well, don't worry about it.
I'm going to live in Chicago.
Orkin just posted his 2024 list of the top cities for bed bugs.
Chicago number one, fourth year in a row.
The list is of the top 50 states using data on how many people had to call exterminated
for bed bugs over the past 12 months.
New York City number two, followed by Philadelphia, the Cleveland Akron, Ohio area.
Los Angeles, Detroit, Washington, D.C. in the Annapolis Charlotte and Champagne, Illinois.
Globally, Paris, the number one big bug, big bug.
I can't say it.
Bed bug hotspot in the world right now is Paris, France.
Hmm.
Now this is interesting.
I guess David Mack about this because he was a schoolteacher.
A middle school in North Carolina removed all of its bathroom mirrors because kids were going to the bathroom
and using the mirrors to film their TikTok videos.
Some were going to the bathroom up to nine times a day.
If one of my students was going nine times a day, I think I'd send him to the nurse and say something wrong here.
Nine times a day.
They took the mirrors out of the boys out of the men's room.
Oh, actually, I took them out of the bathrooms.
I don't say if it was girls or boys room.
I do say every asked Americans if they'd preferred job that they love or they paid a lot of money.
66% said they want a fun job, which makes sense when you think about it because you're going to spend one-third your life at your job eight hours a day.
So once you're an adult, that's one-third your life.
You might as well have a good time.
And that's why people say, well, my mother used to say to me, you're going to be a disc jockey all your life.
Is that what you're going to do with your life?
Yeah, mom, that's about the size of it because I didn't want to work for a living.
And although it's a very busy job, especially when I was program director here and, you know, at different stations, it's a lot of work.
It's busy, but it's fun work.
I mean, come on.
You sit and play music all day or talk all day.
I mean, how hard can that be?
Really?
Think about it.
More than 200 people in Florida had a birthday parade for a woman who had just turned 101.
Her name is Valeria Ryan.
And she's a war veteran, a World War II vet.
She joined the Navy and World War II and taught soldiers how to land bombs.
She told the report of the secret to her longevity, living 101, drink all the booze you can drink.
I guess she wouldn't know.
Royal Caribbean's new icon of the seas cruise ship is now the largest one in the world at 1,198 feet long.
It's got its newest cruise crew member to this month.
Well, I can't even speak this morning.
It's going to be tough.
Welcoming aboard a six month old golden retriever named Rover.
What do they think of that name?
It was named chief dog officer.
Rovers job to bring joy and happiness to a fellow crew and guests.
You better keep your eye on Rover, though.
I don't wanted to see something and jump overboard.
So just keep your eye on Rover.
Okay.
LinkedIn posted a list of red flags that the place you're applying to is a toxic workplace.
If the whole interview process is overly complicated, they're probably not too well organized.
If they can't tell you your exact job duties, you'll probably be wearing lots of hats.
If they keep saying, we're like family.
It's a sign they expect you to work long hours for the love of the company, not the money.
Okay.
Odd, but true.
Ryan Gosling, big, big, a list famous actor.
Got suspended from school in the first grade for throwing stick knives at other kids.
He claimed it was because he had just seen the movie first blood, the Rambo movie.
And said he thought we were all in the movie.
They get that kid help.
He turned that okay though.
A woman called 911 after her aunt texted, I'm having a heart attack.
If I got that text, I call 911 for an ambulance turns out she didn't mean it literally.
She'd been watching the Packers game over the weekend and she was just so stressed out.
Catch the game against the 49ers.
He said I'm having a heart attack.
I can't be texting that to people.
They take you literally.
This is a good news.
I guess a new study out of MIT has found that we may not lose our jobs to robots and AI anytime soon.
But probably down the line somewhere.
You know, I remember in radio when the first automation systems were coming around.
I'm just getting into radio when they had this really kind of lightweight animation stuff.
Look at it now.
You really don't need people like me anymore.
Well, you do if you're going to do talk radio.
But with music radio, you really don't need human beings there anymore.
It's getting everywhere.
The Wall Street Journal says the trick to a great marriage is, and I don't know if I agree with this one,
going on vacation without your significant other.
First of all, I don't know what I want to do that.
And I don't think my wife would want to go on vacation without me.
Maybe she would.
Maybe she wouldn't.
All right.
We're going to talk more about this in detail on Friday with Brent Hoffman.
And next week, too, because we have the movie mom coming in next week.
Did I mention that already?
Yeah.
The movie mom's going to be here next week.
Nell Minnow.
It's going to be on week from today.
A week from today.
Nell Minnow is going to be here.
She is the movie mom.
She's a movie reviewer online.
She's been doing it for years.
Those everything about movies goes to Con Film Festival goes all these events.
So the movie mom's going to be here.
But more than that, her dad is very famous.
Nell Minnow's dad was Newton Minnow.
Newton Minnow was appointed by President John Kennedy to be the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
Back in the, you know, early 60s.
And he coined the phrase TV is a vast wasteland.
That's still remembered today.
It's still taught.
And he passed away last year Newton Minnow.
But that's his daughter, Nell Minnow.
And she will be here on the air with us.
A week from today talking about all these awards shows coming up.
Because I believe this week or next week, they have the,
can't be a word nominees are coming out.
So yeah, we're going to look forward to that.
Anyway, the rassy nominees were announced.
These are the worst of the worst.
These are the pictures nominated for worst picture of the year.
The exorcist believer.
The expendables for all.
Let's see here.
We got the Meg to the trench.
Suzanne fury of the gods.
And Winnie the Pooh blood and honey for worst actor, Russell Crowe, Vin Diesel, Chris Evans,
Jason Statham and John Boyd.
John Boyd made a movie this year.
Who do?
Worst actors and the armist Megan Fox, Selma Hayek, Jennifer Lopez.
And this one surprised me.
Dame Helen Mirren.
She's nominated for worst actress.
And that's for the movie Shazam, Fury of the Gods.
What was she doing in that movie?
Helen, Dame Helen Mirren.
She's a great actress.
How did she get involved in the worst movie of the year?
Anyway, so, um, we'll talk about the rassy's with El Mino coming up next week.
And also this Friday with Brett Hoffman and Marcus theaters.
Okay, family wanted order 20 McDonald's chicken nuggets.
So they called DoorDash by accident 200 were delivered.
Now, I like chicken nuggets, but 200.
I wonder if they had a pay for all.
Because it was a mistake.
All right.
And quickly here, before we have a second,
Joe Biz News Director Norman Juison passed away the other day.
And the heat of the night, Moon struck the Thomas Crown affair fiddler on the roof on his great movies.
And Jurassic World 4 is in the works.
But this time, the writer of the original Jurassic Park was brought in.
All right.
We're talking Al Capone and Wisconsin coming up in just a few minutes.
Brian E. Wiggs going to be here is a production specialist for PBS,
here in Milwaukee, Channel stand in 36.
That's straight ahead.
WRJN, a civic media station,
hometown radio refreshed.
The sky sun shines, what a day to take a walk in the park.
I'll scream day, dream till the sky becomes a blanket of stars.
What a day for picking day.
At 620 at WRJN Radio, I'm Don Rose.
And I want to thank you for joining us here this morning.
Brian E. Wiggs here, production specialist for Milwaukee, PBS,
at channels 10 and 36.
In Milwaukee.
Hey, good morning, Brian.
Thanks for joining us here.
Hey, Don, thanks for having me.
Pleasure.
Special plates of my heart from Milwaukee, PBS.
I was the host of their Channel 10 auction for 37 years.
Wow.
Yeah.
I was a little before I was there.
That's before color TV was invented.
No, that was.
It was still color TV back then.
Yeah, I was a whipper snapper back then.
But yeah, 36 or 37 years.
I was with him.
Anyway, so Brian is here.
And you have a partner in this deal, Tracy Newman.
Yep.
And together you put together this documentary.
And it's about Al Capone, but not the stuff we know about Al Capone.
This is what we don't know about Al Capone.
It's his Wisconsin connection.
Now, I know a lot of the gangsters came to Wisconsin to get away from the law.
It was easy to get lost in the north woods of Wisconsin.
Dillinger was up there, a baby face Nelson.
They were all up there in northern Wisconsin.
But Al Capone was, and I wasn't aware of that.
I was aware about the others.
Because in Little Bohemia, you can have dinner at John Dillinger's hangout up there.
And I've got.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, and there's tails until the cow come home about all those gentlemen up in the north woods.
And so what's special about this documentary, what we actually found is a correspondence between a landowner up in the north woods and Al Capone.
Al Capone was trying to purchase land up in the north woods.
That never ended up happening, but what we ended up getting was these years of correspondence of a friendly correspondence between Al Capone and a land proprietor up in the north woods.
Along that, we've uncovered a series of images of Al Capone up in Winchester, Wisconsin, in those north woods,
goofing around with his friends hanging out with guns and being silly and having a good time.
What was he going to do in the north woods?
You know, it seems like he went up there initially for a vacation, fell in love with it and was looking to purchase property.
Maybe he was looking to purchase property elsewhere throughout the country.
You know, I don't know those things, but it seemed like he was trying to get away and have a good time and do some fishing and.
Retirement property.
Absolutely.
I could, but you know, I raised we're going around back then.
So yeah, you got to have something.
Now Al Capone, obviously noticed Scarface took over Chicago and some pretty rough stuff for the Al Capone.
He wound up moving to Florida and he wound up dying.
I think he didn't die at Alcatraz like the movie show.
Cots syphilis was something and died in Florida, I guess, but he's been trapped.
He's spent time at Alcatraz.
So was it Manitouish waters?
Is that where all this took place?
Yes.
So it's a little city just outside of Manitouish waters called Winchester, Wisconsin.
Actually, his brother Ralph Capone also in his later days moved up to the north woods to Mercer, Wisconsin, lived up there for probably about 30 years.
He was about the rest of his life up there on the bar and had quite a life in Mercer, Wisconsin.
So there's quite a connection between the Capone and the north woods that is very fascinating.
Where is Mercer?
Again, it's up in that Manitouish waters, Dillinger area with the little behemoths all up in that area.
All right.
Now, we don't think of Al Capone as sitting there writing letters to buy property.
Usually, you think you would just come in and take it, but I guess he was...
Yeah.
What are you going to say there?
Absolutely.
It's fascinating.
And what we do see, like I said, we see this personal friendship developed between these two people.
Where, at some point, Al Capone is saying, how is your son's baseball team?
I would like to be his manager.
He's a rocking horse for your son, offering all these gifts.
And so you really see this personal friendship developed through these years.
It's fascinating.
And, you know, I don't know if I want to be friends with Al Capone.
You know, let me tell you, you could take that information two different ways.
You could say, listen, I need this land.
And by the way, I saw your son's baseball team.
We wanted to think that happened to your son, what do we now?
So how much was the land you were going to sell me?
I'd just give it to him at that point.
I'd be terrified to deal with these people.
They're low life.
And they have no scruples.
They don't value life.
They don't value anything except what they want for themselves.
I would have nothing to do with them.
You know, and you're correct, probably, in that assumption.
But we ended up cracking down Babe Hawkinson, who is the granddaughter of this gentleman, Bill Sellett.
He was sending the letters to.
And you know, she had much of the same response that you're having right now.
But she heard the stories from her.
She heard very different stories from her mother and her grandmother.
And so there was quite a conflict there that she had to come to grips with the fact that, yes, her grandfather, you know, they let in people like Al Capone.
But at the same time, they also let Al Capone and his friends take their daughter out fishing.
Take their daughter out brother.
By herself.
Yeah.
And so there was a clear trust there.
And it was interesting.
There was no evidence that Bill Sellett, the gentleman he was corresponding with up north, was in any elicit activity.
He was a he was a land proprietor and seemed like a guy who kind of just knew how to get things done.
So there was just a friendship there.
And I don't think it was anything, you know, super suspicious.
I think it was just a friendship.
And it's like you said a very different side of him.
That's like having, you know, oh, sweetie, John Gotti is here.
Want to take his son out to fishing this afternoon.
John Gotti and a couple of guys in black suits are here.
And they say they want to play.
That's okay.
All right, John, just take it back by five o'clock this afternoon.
Who in their right mind would do something like that?
He had to know the reputation.
Now again, you got to remember they didn't have the media coverage like they have today.
Where everybody knew every, you know, today we know everybody's moved.
We know exactly when they're leaving now.
Back then they didn't.
They just had whatever was in the newspapers they had.
There was no TV.
There was radio, but I don't know about the North Woods.
How much radio they had up there.
But they had to know what a reputation he had because this was later on in life, right?
Of course.
Yeah.
So in fact, one of the letters in 1925, he wrote from Pennsylvania, penitentiary.
Well, he was locked up for a weapons charge.
So, yeah, there's no ambiguity there.
Sweetie, outcomponent says he's going to be on a prison Wednesday.
Can he come over for dinner Thursday?
I think it would be nice.
Welcome home to he can.
All right, Al.
Just when they let you out of prison, just come right over for dinner.
Who does this kind of stuff?
Now, did you speak to the landowner's granddaughter?
Yes.
You will see her in the documentary.
You really come to grip, again, like you said, with understanding how her grandparents could let someone like Al Capone into their house and trust him.
Unless you do it through fear.
I mean, what if he's...
I don't think Al Capone likes to hear the word no a lot.
That's just my guess.
Yeah.
You know, it seemed like he was a different person up in those Northwood.
It looked like he was truly looking to escape and just sufficient.
When is the documentary on, by the way?
It's the 29th?
Yeah.
So, it'll be on Monday.
There's an 8 o'clock and 930.
Oh, good.
I got to say this is...
There's twice on Channel 10.
Yeah, this is musty TV Channel 10 Monday at, which say, 9 and 1030?
8 o'clock?
At 930.
It's about to...
Hold on a second, Brian.
We got more to talk about Brian E. Wiggier from Milwaukee PBS.
We're talking about their new documentary, Al Capone and the North Woods of Wisconsin.
More coming up here at WRJN Radio.
All-town radio refresh because civic media station double.
That was a couple on the east side of Chicago, back in the USA, back in the bad old days.
In the heat of a summer night, in the land of the dollar bill.
When the town of Chicago died, when they talk about it still.
When I'm named Al Capone, I try to make that town his own.
And he called his gang to war.
Through the forces of the law, I heard my mom cry.
I heard a prayer the night Chicago died.
Brother, what a night it really was.
Brother, what a thought it really was.
Glory be.
I heard my mom cry.
I heard a prayer the night Chicago died.
Not too many top 40 hits based on the life of Al Capone, but we found one.
Brian E. Wigg is here now, production specialist from Milwaukee PBS.
We're talking about there.
Big special coming up Monday night at 8 and 9.30.
And it's going to be about Al Capone and the North Woods of Wisconsin.
And Brian, you put this together with Tracy Newman, right?
Yeah, of course.
And you know, behind every great production is great producer.
And you really was able to make all of my crazy wild ideas come to life.
So when I come to a recent idea that says, you know, why don't you give Diane Capone
his granddaughter recall?
She calls her up and makes that connection.
Now, would you find her?
You know what?
Is she on Facebook?
Tracy did some...
Again, that's part of being a great producer.
Tracy was able to track her down and made just cold, cold called Diane Capone.
How old is she?
She was in her 80s.
Or she is in her 80s, I should say.
Wow.
And so we went out to...
She's outside of Sacramento.
And we went out to Sacramento to meet her.
My favorite Diane Capone story is we got up...
We pulled out of the car and Diane came and greeted us at the door.
And she opened the door, looked at us, turned to her husband and goes,
Hey, Don, they're just kids.
They're not...
I think she was expecting someone a little older to be interested in this history.
So it was very funny.
You know, I took the tour in Chicago once, the Untouchables tour.
You ever take that tour?
I have not.
No.
It's a, it's a bus tour about all the crime spots in Chicago.
And they, they take you to this church with a bullet hole still on the side of the church
where they had a gun, but they gun down somebody.
You get to go to a banging flower shop where he, you know, the flower is for all.
They people rubbed out.
And if you go to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Chicago, that's where Al Capone is buried.
His whole family is buried there.
They have a big cemetery plot.
And people on his little gravestone in the ground, they put bottles of liquor, cigars,
things like that.
They shouldn't really honor this guy.
He was a real low life tarantula.
So they shouldn't honor him.
Right.
But he's right there.
And across from the Dino banger, the guy who these two guys couldn't get along, you know,
they tried to kill each other.
And not far from him is Sam G. and Conop, another mobster.
He's got a big, he's got a big muzzle Liam.
The interesting part about his is you can look into the muzzle Liam to the window.
And there's a picture of him and a woman.
And the woman is not his wife.
It's his mistress.
And that's the way it'll be for eternity in that muzzle.
Yeah.
So we wanted to be with you.
So the documentary focuses on the outdoorsman of Al Capone, the friendly Al Capone,
the one who wanted to retire in the Northwoods.
And by the way, you mentioned Manitouish waters every two months.
We have the editor and the founder of our Wisconsin magazine on.
And they're located in Manitouish waters.
I can ask if he knows about any of this stuff.
Oh, yeah.
This all came out pretty recently.
Again, this collection just came to Manitouish waters within the last few months.
So this is all pretty fresh.
Hmm.
So again, so what did Al Capone's daughter have to say about it?
I mean, did she remember her dad's days as being a gangster?
No.
Okay.
So Diane Capone is his granddaughter.
Oh, granddaughter.
Granddaughter.
I'm sorry.
Granddaughter.
The oldest living remaining granddaughter still alive.
And really the last one to have any sort of connection with him.
So her story is she was four years old when Al Capone passed away.
Oh, yeah.
So her memories of him are limited to being a grandfather.
And she does remember the day he died and she tells a great story about that.
But yeah.
So I'm sorry.
I lost my place.
Okay.
So when you spoke to her, does she have any pictures, photos, memorabilia of his days in, you know, in the days?
Yeah, she did.
And I'm sorry.
I remembered where I was.
So how she ended up gathering all this personal family history and images and photos and history
as her grandmother Al Capone's wife ended up living well into her 70s.
So there was another 30, 30 years there where Diane would sit with her and collect all of these stories and shot all this stuff down.
And again, Diane's another one that she was using her maiden name up until about last year.
She decided to write this book in a response to all the what she calls false narratives that were coming out of her grandfather's life.
So during COVID she ended up writing this book and really telling all the family history that has been shared in her family
through all these years.
Does she have any grandchildren or children herself?
She does.
Yes.
So there's great, great grandchildren running around.
Great, great, great.
Great grandchildren would be.
Yeah.
So the Capone line still goes on.
But their name wouldn't be Capone would be her married name, wouldn't it?
Yes.
It was her married name.
She did end up once she wrote the book, switching to Capone and giving herself that, you know, going by that name.
So she could tell these stories and have that kind of credibility there.
So yes, for most of her life, she was by her married name.
She said her neighbors didn't even know this history about her.
So there was a lot of, I could tell there was a lot of inner turmoil.
She didn't really want to, you know, growing up, she said the name Capone.
There was quite a lot of a lot of negative connotation to that.
So that's not something you flaunt around too much.
And what's really interesting, they never got him for any of the crimes he committed.
They got him for tax evasion.
They got him for tax evasion.
But what's interesting is, and so in one of these letters that Al Capone was writing back and forth,
up to Bill Sel in Manitwish Waters, in one of the letters Al Capone says, hey, Bill, you got any more of that moonshine.
I really like that moonshine you had.
Can you bring some down to Chicago, your friend L?
Again, that letter, that letter sat in a drawer for 70 years.
But what they said is that if that letter were revealed, you know, that would have been the missing piece to charge him on moonshining.
They would have had something tangible there to charge him with if they had that letter.
Yeah, but you don't, you need to get him on all the murders he was responsible for.
I mean, that's really what you want to get.
No, it doesn't really matter. He got put away.
Now, people want to realize, he was only 48 years old when he died.
He was not an old man. He was a young guy at 48.
But he caught some of us.
Yeah, he had some health issues for sure.
There was a lot going on there.
But again, Diane, she was very honest about his past, about what he had done.
And she was very honest that he was able to compartmentalize his life and kind of separate that family and business end of things.
You know, his actual crime spreesals ended at age 33.
I mean, he was not on top for that long.
It wasn't like John Gotti who had a big crime spree going into his older years.
And a lot of these crime figures you heard about in New York who were put away.
They were old men by that time.
But he was only 33 years old. He was a young guy.
He looked a lot older in the pictures to see him when he goes to prison.
But I love his nicknames. He's a nicknames.
He had Scarface, big owl, big boy, public enemy number one of my favorite one, Snorky.
I never heard that one before Snorky. I heard the others though.
Well, that's a good one. I should have said that to Diane after about that one.
Yeah. How did that get the name of Snorky?
You know, it's one of those things you probably didn't call him Scarface.
Now, they did mention here his brother Ralph.
You mentioned that he had Frank Capone. He had Richard James Hart was another brother of his.
He was only, it's funny. He was only in prison for 11 years.
That's not a lot of time. I mean, I watched Dateline and some of these people go to prison for like 30, 40 years for crimes.
And this guy only went for 11 years. They only got him for.
Yeah. And I think from what I've read and understand, I believe he was let out early due to health issues.
Yeah, it's syphilis. Yeah. So.
And he was dying. Yeah. He was the.
And the fact that his brain, he didn't even know who he was at the end.
He didn't know anybody around him. It was, you know, he was really out of it.
A lot of people think he's from Chicago. He's not. He's from New York City.
That's right. He didn't move to Chicago until his early 20s.
Well, look at the names. He was associated with Johnny Torio, the north side gang.
Holy Mack, well, do you think he would have set up a, of course, the same Valentine's Day mask here?
Would he set up a crime syndicate based out of northern Wisconsin?
You don't think that's what he was going to do. Do you?
No, no, I don't think so. And I think there was a lot of.
I think there was a lot of differences at the time between Wisconsin and Illinois.
I mean, you Illinois, there were so many other rackets that were going on at the time during Crowbish.
And there was prostitution. There was all the union rackets.
There was, there was so much good that the politicians were dirty.
There was so much going on there that you weren't seeing those kinds of things happening in Milwaukee at the time.
In Milwaukee at the time, you had these socialist mayors who did not describe to that kind of thing.
And so I think that's why you saw a lot of, you see a lot less violence.
You see a lot less racketeering going on in Milwaukee at that time.
Speaking about crime in the north woods, do you ever go to the restaurant in the little Bohemia?
You ever go up there?
Oh, of course. Yeah, we stopped by on the trip.
Yeah, you got to stop by there.
I had dinner there with my wife and we had the wild mushroom soup, which to this day I can still taste.
I thought it was most delicious food I ever had.
In there, you could take a tour of the.
It was a hotel, I guess, at the time.
They had just gotten done filming public enemy with Johnny Depp when we went up there.
They had a big sign going across the front of it, public enemy Johnny Depp.
And you can actually see the window.
They have it encased.
The window is encased in another window where the FBI had a shootout with Dillinger up there.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah. So it's, you can see where all the holes were.
And it said there was an innocent victim who was killed.
It's just a guy who was up there.
And he got shot and killed during this shootout with Dillinger.
So.
Yeah.
The Northwoods at that time was kind of a wild, wild place.
In the early 1900s, 1920s, it was all, it was all wood.
And then they cut over all that, it was all cut over land.
And then they sold all that land that people tried to, to farm that land.
But so that soil was just, was no good.
So, I mean, truly, moonshining at that time was, was it made to make business in these small communities?
Now this was during prohibition when you couldn't buy alcohol.
They government.
Correct.
They was called the Volstead Act.
And during the Volstead Act, you couldn't sell or manufacture any alcohol.
So these moonshiders.
And the reason I heard they got to name moonshine was because it was made at night during, you know, when the moon was shining.
And that's when they used to make it.
Do you really think a moonshine is being the southern part of the country?
Yeah, yeah, you certainly do.
But again, there's a lot of factors that, you know, you can't really jump into history and start with prohibition.
History needs context.
So what we ended up part of this project, what we ended up doing is creating a seven-part web series.
If you go to MilwaukeePBS.org.
And what that really does, it goes through the history of Milwaukee.
It's really why, why they're the Bruce City, why all these European ethnics came here.
How all that happened?
What was going on in the world at that time?
I think it's very important to understand why these prohibitionary laws came into place.
I mean, you look at a lot of US laws.
A lot of times they're reactionary.
So you take a look at what was happening at that time that would cause these things to happen.
And you know, it's funny.
Now it's easy to get to Northwood, Jen.
Nice paved highways, interstate highways taking you up.
Back then they didn't have that kind of travel.
It was tough to travel up north.
It was a long schlep to get up there.
Hold on a second, we're talking to Brian Ewig, production specialist, along with Tracy Newman,
on the new special coming up this Monday night at 8 o'clock and get it 930 Al Capone,
Prohibition and Wisconsin, premieres Monday, January 29th, 8 p.m.
and a rerun, right?
At 930 and on court.
Presentation.
That's right.
All right, so hold on.
More with Brian Ewig coming up at just a moment from Milwaukee PBS.
It's 649 at WRJN, Pacific Media Station, hometown radio refreshed.
All the inside of Chicago, back in the USA, back in the bad old days.
In the heat of a summer night, in the land of the dollar bill.
When the town of Chicago died, when they talk about it still.
When a man named Al Capone, but try to make that town his own.
And he called his gang to war with the forces of the law.
I heard my mom.
As far as I know, that is the only top 40 hit based on the life of Al Capone.
I don't think there's another one out there.
I think that's from 1974, paper lace, the night Chicago died.
Do you ever go to the spot of the, we're talking to Brian Ewig, by the way, from Milwaukee PBS.
Do you ever go to the spot in Chicago where the St. Valentine's Day massacre took place?
You know, I have not been there, no, but here there's quite a bit of history still there.
Yeah, it's nothing there now. It's just an empty area.
It's just they tore down whatever building was there.
It's just, but it was a cartage, cartage company with a, you know, carted garbage stuff away.
And so it's still there.
You can take a look at the spot.
You can go to all the crime spots.
So if I was to go to Northern Wisconsin, I wouldn't really see anything from Al Capone.
Because he never lived up there.
And he never wound up buying the land.
He never, he never ended up purchasing the land that, that he was looking at.
So he was looking, interesting story.
He was looking at a plot of land owned by a truck, the, the truck of family,
which that name in itself doesn't, doesn't ring any bells.
But that family ends up becoming the, that's part of the U-line family.
Oh, okay. In Milwaukee, yeah.
Yes.
Yep.
Well, good.
Well, there's quite a bit of connection to Milwaukee.
And, you know, like you said, it took a while to get up to those Northwoods.
So there's quite a few stops he made along the way.
It's not like he's doing that trip in three hours, four hours.
That's a, that's a half-day trip that he's making up there.
Vehicles are just becoming accessible at this time.
So.
Yeah, these were not, he was not driving an air-conditioned comfort going on.
They were kind of clunky.
You felt every bump on the road and cars overheated a lot.
And these things were tanks too.
These things were heavy and big.
Yeah.
All right. Here's my gangster story.
So I was working downtown in Milwaukee to radio station.
It was a holiday weekend.
I think it was more really weekend.
And the Milwaukee Public Library was directly across the street from the radio station.
I'm looking out the window.
And I see all these trucks parked outside on a holiday.
The library is closed.
And I notice all the windows are blacked out with tarp.
They have black tarp over all the windows.
But I could see flashes coming from there.
So I went over there after I got off my shift and I'm talking to some of the guys out there.
So what's going on in there?
Is they're filming the movie Dillinger with, who was the guy?
The guy from Miami Vice.
Don Johnson was a Dillinger.
And they were filming it at the Milwaukee Public Library.
And they used the lobby area as a bank.
And the shootout scene, you can see the flashes from all the pyro stuff going off.
I said, oh, that's what they're doing.
I want to cross this.
Be what the heck is going on at the library.
But yeah, there were filming Dillinger there.
I'm thinking about all the movies they made about Al Capone.
I think my favorite one was Rod Steiger playing Al Capone.
But there were many of them.
But I think he played in the most lunatic.
Then you had Robert De Niro with the baseball bat scene.
I bet mine is my top right there.
Yeah.
The Untouchables.
Yep.
My wife and I, there's a scene in the Untouchables where a baby carriage is going down the steps
at Union Station in Chicago.
And they do it in slow motion.
It's a takeoff on another movie that was made in back in the early.
That's the battleship of the tankin.
About to Potemkin where the babies say.
And there's a scene there where Kevin Koster guns down two mobsters on the step.
So my wife and I stood on that exact spot at Union Station and recreated the shootout scene.
And she's against the wall like she's dying from the bullets.
So it was that exact spot where they filmed it.
Oh, he's just like doing that.
But if you go on the Untouchables tour there, you get to see all this stuff.
Then you got to step by Mount Carmel Cemetery to see snorkies.
I like them now that I found that out snorkies resting spot.
The whole family's there.
It's one big giant monument.
Then they have the little ones and it says Alphonse Capone.
Isn't it funny?
Wow.
He spent his entire life intimidating, killing and blackmailing people, making lives miserable.
Although the people in Chicago like them.
And here he is buried with other gangsters in Mount Carmel Cemetery in peace.
They couldn't get along with them in life.
But in peace and death, they're going to get along just fine.
Now that's the thing about him.
He was the Robin Hood of Chicago.
They people loved him because he helped people during the Depression.
And they were hungry.
And he gave money to the food banks and everything.
Absolutely.
And that's kind of the story that Diane tells too is outside of the United States.
He has heralded it as a very kind man.
We did quite a few good things.
The Robin Hood, if you will.
A lot of people outside of the United States have that view on him.
Of course, you have so many great gangsters.
When I say great gangsters, great stories about gangsters.
You got Bonnie and Clyde during the Depression.
You got Frank Nitty.
You've got Babyface Nelson.
You got Dillinger and a Yakupon.
You don't see that much anymore.
They don't have a hold on you.
The last big boss, I think, was John Gotti.
I think he was the best.
The last big crime boss.
What do you say?
Yeah.
And like I was saying, I think, like you said, with all these tours,
I think there's still a fascination with that power,
that everything that comes with it.
And like you said, we don't see these guys in these roles anymore.
It might not be a bad thing necessarily.
But there's quite a bit of fascination with these tours.
And people are still interested to this day.
Now, I come from a town.
I come from a town called Massa Piqua in Long Island in New York.
And one of the people who lived about a half a mile from us
was Carlo Gambino, the Godfather himself.
That's where Arlen Brando played in the Godfather, Carlo Gambino.
He didn't use that name, obviously.
But he lived in Massa Piqua and he died in Massa Piqua as an old man
watching New York Yankees game on TV.
Went out with a, went out with a whimper.
But here's a guy at crime balls that Carlo, the Gambino crime family.
And he lived only about a half a mile from us.
I didn't know the guy.
I never met him.
And I probably didn't even know about it when I was a kid growing up there
that this guy was living right, you know, not down the block,
but close enough where I could take my bicycle over his house.
But anyway, don't forget, it's coming up this Monday night.
It's must see TV on my television eight o'clock with a,
a non-core at nine thirty on PBS channel 10 in Milwaukee
and on your cable systems.
I think it's 10 point one is I'm like that.
Brian Ewig and Tracy Newman examined the photographs
and correspondence to reveal a side of Al Capone in the north woods
that you probably never knew the Capone connection.
The name of the specialist called Al Capone Prohibition in Wisconsin.
I'm watching.
Hey, congratulations to you and Tracy Brian.
Thank you very much for coming in this morning.
You appreciate it.
Perfect. Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
I know everyone's going to watch.
Congratulations on that.
All right.
Thanks a bunch.
Hold on a second. Don't go anywhere.
All right. It's six fifty nine.
What do we have coming in at seven oh six?
Hold on a second. Let me think.
I had the name written down here a second.
Oh, David Maxx going to be here.
