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assumption of power, they shared everything. They particularly shared a common revulsion - that insult on Italian immigrants that the prohibition, no matter how it was packaged, represented. Immigrants drank. Not Americans. Outlaw their wine, outlaw them. Tell Italians that they can't drink wine? Oh, really? Why don't you tell birds to fly upside down? The oppressori ignoranti who passed that law knew that it was, in fact, a line in the dirt. Italians, with no history of pacifism, love such lines. It identifies precisely who is the enemy. To Italians, enemies are like vitamins. A culture, too established by centuries of history, slapped in the face by an illegality to human nature, an illegality which they could not grasp nor accept, slapped back. That impact sent a wave as it landed in a deep sea of shared universal animosity. They were not alone. America hates arrogance and arrogance had reared its head, once again, as law. Arrogant people love rules. And this was, after all, a nation of laws - not men. Oh yeah. Right. And do we suppose that those laws make the men? Well, actually, yeah, some do. Big time. Some unmake them as well. Prohibition was doomed but empires were built in the dirt on both sides of the line. Later, with prohibition lifted, many of the jointly possessed diversifications of the two men went on to yield greater fortunes and ominous levels of power - power in a context of family loyalties with recognized boundaries and duties. We think of such people as lawless. They're not. They live by more rules and deadlier consequences than any of us. They are just not our rules, not carved in stone, nor clay, but on flesh. One cannot conceive of an etiquette book for mobsters. But for sure the content is there. You could lay out the certainty of where one man stands in relation to another at a gathering better than where the extra dessert spoon goes at his place setting. There was no sneaking by, going unobserved, running a red light with no cop around. Broken