Tommy Cahill on the left was my Dad's bookmaking partner. They took local action in the South Bronx, and did some work with some capo named Louie Dome up in Harlem. By the time Atari came out, they were no longer friends due to some large sum of money that got shifted around wrong. I think my Dad blamed Tommy, but I was never sure what had happened and I'm not gonna pretend that my Dad wasn't a fuck-up in his own right. There might have been a fight that needed to happen that never did, and instead of resolving the issue my Dad sat on it. Tommy Ryan on the other hand, was my Dad's friend from way back in the day, an original goofball (you can see it), and a good times kinda guy. I don't remember him at all, but my dad talked about him all the time. My dad's favorite pretzels were Rold Gold Pretzel Logs and every 500th log would invariably be bent or twisted and my dad would always say that these pretzels looked like Tommy Ryan's penis. He said that Tommy Ryan had to pee straight up in the air so he had to stand like 3 feet away from the urinal, which is how my dad explained away seeing Tommy's you-know-what in the first place. |