On my second day in Eastern Kentucky, I ate an Arbyâ??s roast beef sandwich that tasted like a wet brown paper towel. That was lunch on the trail of the long-dead nightclub owner they called the Big Jew.
The Big Jew used to have a dancehall near the Cumberland Gap, with slot machines and liquor and a manager with a revolver hidden inside her suit. The Big Jewâ??s dad was called the Old Colonel, and sounds like a character from a Bob Dylan ballad: He wore a diamond stick pin and had a cousin named Jack Zuta, a Chicago pimp who some Illinois do-gooders named Public Enemy No. 8 in 1930. (Al Capone, who may have had Zuta killed, was No. 1.) The Old Colonel was mayor of Middlesboro, Kentucky, in the 1930s, but he got indicted for corruption and only served a single term.
Read Full Article »