This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti by Victoria Gotti

kicked the old TV with all her might and watched it bounce down the ten or eleven steps. She left it at the foot of the second landing and yelled down to the landlady, “Try and watch the TV now!” When Dad came home later that night, he found the broken television wedged between the second and third floor of theapartment building. It took him five minutes to climb around it in order to get to our apartment on the sixth floor.
    Since few things upset my father more than seeing my mom distraught, Dad decided to go out and find her a color television the old-fashioned way: by paying for it.
    Well, sort of.
    He entered an all-night poker game, hoping his luck would change and he’d make some money. He did—nearly five hundred dollars. But instead of using it to buy fancy suits, or as a down payment on a new car, or even a security deposit for a nicer apartment to rent, he went out and bought Mom the biggest, most expensive color television he could find.
    Dellacroce, who’d been at the poker match, had been duly impressed with Dad’s success, which seemed fueled by equal parts luck and guts. Thus, Dellacroce often made unannounced visits to the Fulton Street Social Club. He wasn’t thrilled with the location or the way it was so run-down. After a few of these visits, the club’s headquarters was moved to a more discreet area in Ozone Park, Queens. The new club was a two-story building with a first-floor storefront; it was called the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, and was located near Kennedy Airport, in a small, close-knit neighborhood of Italian immigrants. The locals paid frequent visits to the social club; some were merely being cordial, while others understood the benefit of offering their respect to the new sheriff in town. If one had a gripe about something going on in the neighborhood, results were much more likely to be achieved by working through the social club than by going to the cops.
    It wasn’t long before the generous and eager-to-please John Gotti assumed the role of a modern-day Robin Hood in Ozone Park. When the law failed them, the locals often turned to Johnny Boy; if traditional justice was not forthcoming, then street justice would suffice. Ironically, the NYPD’s 106th Precinct headquarterswas just a few blocks away, but was of little assistance to the Italian immigrants, who were near the bottom rung of the social ladder, and absorbed nearly as much racism and hostility as the few African Americans who resided in the overwhelmingly white community.
    My father became a staunch advocate for the folks who lived near the new social club. If a man had a meddlesome neighbor, Dad stepped in and brokered the peace. If a few neighborhood punks had graffitied a storefront, Dad forced them to scrub it clean. And if a house was robbed or vandalized, Dad hunted down whoever was responsible and forced them to make restitution. Dad was no fool, and understood early on the importance of currying favor with the community. Just as he needed respect from the elders in his world to achieve his goals, he also needed support from the rank-and-file—the men and women who would do business in his neighborhood.
    Word of the new social club quickly spread. People came from up to ten miles away to meet their newly anointed street boss. Most of the people who dropped in were hoping for an audience with my father; if so inclined, he might be able to help them with some problem in their lives, whether personal or financial. No dispute was too small or too large; the boss had free reign to intervene. Often, as a sign of his gratitude, Dad also bought cases of groceries and expensive cuts of meats and distributed these goods to all the neighbors in Ozone Park. Aside from being generous and considerate, Dad also did his fair share of campaigning, which would help him later on as he rose up even higher in the life.
    There were perks to the position, of course. At holiday time, men from the neighborhood would express their gratitude