Ah, the good old days! How many times have you heard that statement mentioned? About how many decades ago, all the Families were so much better off. How the Families were more secure, more cohesive and united, and how positions were more stable: Boss, Underboss, Captains, Soldiers… even Associates — that they had solid positions and established rackets that provided great incomes — literally making millionaires out of legions of street toughs.
So many young street guys thought to themselves. Yeah, it may be a bit dangerous, but if I play it smart and savvy, with my balls and brains, I’ll be fine!
How the crews worked liked well-oiled machines, not like today where there’s so much havoc. Skippers and button guys getting pinched and “rolling over” every two minutes. How there was more “structure”, organization, and how everything in general just worked better! How Omertà was sacred and adhered to! Crews bosses kept positions for decades! Guys all got along or sat down and worked it out!
Rarely did a guy get hit if he followed the rules! There was a lot more rackets and money to be made! Nobody got out of line for fear of getting “clipped,” and so on, and so on!
How you’d move up into solid position and be “buffered” from danger and protected because now you were a made “button guy” — and “insider!”
Not quite. I’m calling bullshit!
Because if we take a bit closer look and really evaluate things, and not blatantly accept mob history at face value, and not just gloss over the status quo, maybe reading about one or two mob guys lives, but step back and look at the whole mosaic, we begin to see that “mob life”, at any time in history that we choose to review, reveals to us that generally speaking, it sucked!
And “rarely” was “The Life” actually cracked up to be what people (mob guys and laypersons alike) portrayed or imagined it to be!
Lots of guys drank the Kool-Aid, believing all those tall tales, “hook, line, and sinker.” Many a generation went down the tubes that way!
Below is a quick chart I put together of the hierarchy for the Five Families and their basic chronology from 1931 through the present day. It shows the stability (or more like the instability) of various top “positions” — the three-man hierarchies!
