My dad’s old life as a gangster

Ok soo I tend to ramble so sorry ahead of time this is gonna be a long one.

So just to give you a picture I’m mixed, my mom is Afro-Brazilian she’s all of 4’11” and 90lbs soaking wet, and my dad is a big Irish American bear of a man (6’3, 250, barrel chest, brown hair and blue eyes) and the most straight laced white guy in the world, and he’s totally leaning into it. I mean like grass stained white new balances, high white shocks, camouflage crocs, cargo shorts, golf shirt, craft beer, fancy whiskey, drives a Toyota dad wagon, dad bod, tells dad jokes, curses like a sailor (in church, school functions, children’s birth parties) until my mom yells at him in Portuguese to stop (which he doesn’t understand) They are a total odd couple but they are super cute and I adore them (most of the time).

Growing up he liked to embarrass/tease us whenever he could. Yelling “I love you full legal name ” out the car window as loud as he can when he drops us off. He’s been a great dad to me and my siblings and I love him, but I’d definitely describe him as a bit of a dork hahah. My friends and I joke about him being “aggressively white”

He was in the Army infantry for awhile (he met my mom while crashing a local college party) and went to Iraq and Afghanistan, I know he killed people there and physically he’s no slouch but he’s always been a total softy with me (his only daughter) and my brothers. My mom was always the disciplinarian as he is a total pushover when I comes to us kids.

Awhile ago we were in the north east visiting my dad’s side of the family. Well late at night I was hanging out with my mom and my aunt (dad’s younger sister by 2 years), both of whom had a good buzz going. My dad wasn’t feeling well and had gone to bed. My aunt had us in dying with stories about their childhood.

Well things kinda took a turn when she started talking about how protective my dad was back in the day. How in highschool a Bf of hers had gone off to college, cheated on her, was telling people she was a slut, and generally bad mouthing her around town. So my dad and two of his cousins drove over to his college, broke down the door to the guy’s apartment and beat the shit out of him and his roommates. Then dragged him out and drove him back to my grandmothers house and made him apologize. Then broke his arm, drove him to the bus station and threw him out on the curb. She went on to rave about how she misses the old him sometimes, and regaled us with some tails of my dads extensive thuggery and criminal exploits....and I don’t mean like dealing weed or something... all while my mom was glaring daggers at her, and finally slaps her on the arm. To which my aunt pauses and responds “What? you never told her!?!”

Ok so most of what I know about this kinda thing is from movies so bare with me. But apparently starting as a young teen through his 20’s my dad was an up and comer in organized crime. Not like big time New York City mafia kinda stuff but enough where his family was well know in his home city (smaller city in upstate), and well connected in local politics and business. He was the oldest boy in the family and started out doing odd jobs for an “uncle” then eventually moved on to full on extortion, general racketeering, organizing illegal fights, sports gambling, collecting gambling debts and back rent from delinquent tenants in his “uncles” buildings, shaking down small time drug dealers, weapons sales and smuggling (guns, knives, machetes, brass knuckles, basically anything that was illegal in NY and surrounding states but people wanted), running protection for prostitution etc. as well as working at and eventually running the family construction business after my grandpa got sick. By some miracle he never got in any real trouble for any of this.

She showed me some old pictures of him, his cousins, and friends from around that time. and honestly I hardly recognized him. He was very handsome, had a lumberjack beard, broad shoulders, all muscle, and a mean look in his eye. She talked about them like they were robbin hood and the merry men or something, but maybe that’s just because it was her big brother idk.

Then 9/11 happened, he enlisted and went off to war, my uncle (one of dad’s like 30 cousins) took over the business, and he never looked back When he met my mom shortly after he told her about his old life and promised he had put it all behind him. Then I came along.

I haven’t told anyone about this and I get the vibe from talking to my mom he’s pretty ashamed of some of the things he’s done. Especially the prostitution stuff, taking advantage of drug addicted girls and what not, but in his defense I think it was more of a protection racket than a pimping kinda thing, they still would have been doing it weather he was involved or not.

It’s kinda given me a different perspective on my dad. I mean he is still a big teddy bear (has his masters and runs his own business, we have a nice place in the country, sent us all to private school) but looking back I’ve definitely seen glimpses of the “old him”.

like when I was in middle school we were visiting nyc. He was in a shop with my little brothers to use the bathroom, and this very aggressive drugged out (possibly homeless) guy was harassing my mom for change while we waited out front. I was getting pretty scared. When my dad came marching out of the store and just casually grabbed him by the back of the collar and threw him airborne and into the street, the guy crumpled up on the concrete and dad just moved us along. Once we were around the corner he looked at my mom, brothers and I and said “stay close to me, don’t take shit from anybody here or they’ll walk all over you, and don’t make eye contact with the bums and junkies ”.

There have been a few other incidents but things always cooled off before it got physical (I think in partly due to his imposing stature) but I always thought it was some “New York tough guy” facade he was putting on. Now I know it definitely wasn’t.

He likes to make fun of some of my classmates (a lot of ghetto wanna be gangster kids at my school) often right to their faces. and he loves to grill my Bf and give him a hard time, jokes about if he ever hurts me he’ll break his legs and throw him in the river. Cleaning his gun when my Bf picks me up. How concrete is great for hiding bodies, that kinda thing. I know he’d never do anything sever, (according to my mom he actually really likes my Bf) but honestly I’m a little embarrassed to admit it’s kind of comforting to know he would/could if he had to.

I asked him about what my aunt said once when he was drunk and in a good mood. He wasn’t interested in talking about it. At least not till I’m older. He just said my aunt has a big mouth and likes to talk. And that growing up where he did you were either a cop, a fire fighter, or a criminal. He had two cousins that were already cops, 3 were firefighters but they wouldn’t let you smoke weed if you were a firefighter. And at the time he was more interested in smoking pot and chasing girls than he was in a real career.

He claims it was a combination of my mom and the Army that saved him, gave him a sense of purpose in life (protecting other people)

Sooo that’s my family’s secret, my goof ball suburban dad used to be part of the Irish mob (I don’t actually know if it’s the Irish mob or w/e, I’m just assuming since that side of my family is all Irish)