Dear Group, Today was a very full day for me and by11:30 tonight I was mentally pooped but not yet ready to go to bed-I'm a night owl, you know. So I figured I would just walk away from all the unfinished business at my computer and turn my attention elsewhere for a bit. And I turned it to a video tape recording that I had picked up this afternoon at the Town of Porter museum where Danny Schisler had left it for me. I thought it would entertain me somewhat until it was time for me to go up the stairs to bed. The video was of an oral history interview that Danny had with Henry ("Tony") Kulak of Youngstown recently. Danny does that sort of thing and he does it well-all in the name of preserving history. And Danny wanted me to critique the video for him and let him know what areas of interviewing I felt he needed to improve upon. So that's what I had planned to do for a short while late this evening. I have viewed other oral history video tapes that Danny has made and By George, I should have known better than to start watching another one of his at that hour! Danny may not be perfect in his techniques, but he sure gets fantastic stories out of people! I watched only a short segment of his interview with Tony but just picture this: Tony was born in 1917(?), lived on Third Street in Youngstown most of his life, went all through school in Youngstown and graduated from Youngstown High School in 1934. After graduation he knew that he had to go to work, it was during the Depression, but he managed to get hired by the Jeffords family who were commercial fisherman in the village and who also owned the old El Dorado Hotel on Main Street at the time. Tony's duties ranged from tending to the fishing nets to cleaning the spittoons in the hotel bar. His salary was $10.00 a week which included room and board. With Danny's prodding, Tony told of the Depression days and what was going on around Youngstown-in the winter the streets were plowed by a mule hitched to a snow plow-and it wasn't long before Tony brought up the subject of bootlegging whiskey around here. Before I knew it, Tony was telling the whole story about Frank Powley and his brother Charlie who were bootleggers. They brought the whiskey over from Canada at night and they had a few friends of theirs along the Niagara River bank along Main Street to watch out for Customs officials or any other patrol. On at lease one occasion Tony and his brother were down on the river shore tending to some fishing nets when Frank brought some smuggled goods to shore. Tony and his brother helped him haul the sacks up the bank. And Tony was also there when Frank eventually got caught. Note: Frank and Charlie Powley came from a highly respectable Youngstown family! (Frank was born 1895 and Charlie was born 1892) Where I turned off the video was when Tony started talking about another smuggler in Youngstown-Rupe Davis. Rupe had been caught smuggling Chinamen into the country and was sentenced to prison in Atlanta for one year. He was there at the same time that Al Capone was also imprisoned there! And that's when I knew that I couldn't watch any more of the video! I had started to watch it to quiet my mind down but by then I realized that my mind would never quiet down listening to all the stories that I know that Tony had to tell. And that's when I turned the TV off and returned to my computer to let you know how exciting the oral history of the quiet village of Youngstown can be!