Valentine’s Day Massacre

       That time of year is here again - the time between the holidays at the end of the winter when we are encouraged yet again to buy and consume. As if Halloween,  Thanksgiving and Christmas hadn't been high jacked enough by the retail industry, they added another holiday so people could buy heart shaped boxes and cards just for good measure.

Of course if you haven't noticed by now, I'm talking about Valentine's Day.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's not all bad.

      After all, how could I come to judge a holiday that exists to bring us closer together? It's a time for us to put our differences aside and learn a lesson from our mistakes in the past. Let me share with you my favorite St. Valentine's day story: it lives in infamy as a story of treachery, criminality, back-stabbing and deception.

        There was a time in Chicago when two feuding families kept the city on edge. These two families were not the clans of star-crossed lovers, and this city was no Verona.  These "families" were not related in the traditional sense; instead, they shared a common business interest in a very valuable commodity at the time - hard liquor.  

        The year was 1929, and, due to the national prohibition of alcohol, hard liquor was becoming hard to come by. Al Capone and George "Bugs" Moran both sought sole control of the illegal distribution of the booze, which led to a "disagreement" between these two men's gangs.

       After several assassination attempts back and forth, things came to a boiling point. Bugs Moran (who then pioneered the now famous "drive-by shooting" technique) had his gang make several attempts on the lives of the Capone gang, and now Al Capone decided to take revenge.

      The date is Valentine's day, 1929. The Moran gang is being led into a warehouse with the promises of a new shipment of booze that was high-jacked by another gang at a cheap price.

      This was the first step of the deception. Next, four members of the Capone gang entered in behind them, two dressed as cops and the others dressed in suits and ties. The Moran gang were ordered up against the wall, and thinking that they were dealing with the police, they obliged.

      The men dressed as policemen then let out a torrent of bullets from their Tommy-guns that tore the men apart. Then fake policemen led their associates out of the warehouse at gunpoint, in the most ingenious part of the scheme.

      Onlookers now assumed that the police had been involved from the beginning and there was no more immediate danger. Then men who perpetrated this massacre escaped and were never caught or held accountable.

       Except for Al Capone himself, who was later indicted on tax evasion. So how can we take lessons from this tragedy and apply them to our love lives?

      Well, for starters, you should always be with someone who you can trust. The sort of person that you would follow into a darkened warehouse.

       Second, you should always be with someone who you don't think will deceive you. If you think there is a possibility that this person that you are interested in might dress up like a policeman and try to trick you, then they might not be "the one."

      And third, don't date anyone who you think might be in the business of stealing, selling, distributing and manufacturing illegal inebriants.

      Now that alcohol is legal again this is less of a problem, but if you have a suspicion that this new love interest of yours might be analogous to an antiquated concept of a prohibition era boot legging crime lord: "check please!"

     Warning signs may be things like sub-machine guns in musical instrument cases, fedora hats, a fondness for cigars or a tendency to punctuate sentences with monosyllabic queries like "see?"

    Have fun this Valentine's Day, and stay out of trouble, you big palookas.