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"He Would've Been a Judge." Carmine De Sapio, the first Italo-American leader of Tammany Hall, understands only a few words of Italian (he recently sat next to an Italian diplomat at a dinner, listened politely for an hour, did not learn until later that he had accepted an invitation to visit Italy). He does not remember ever hearing his parents converse in Italian; quick-witted Marietta and hard-working Gerard De Sapio spoke English, tried to teach their son that he was an American, pure and simple. Between them, they established a solid little trucking business, came to own a stable of 14 horses. They lived in a comfortable if modest first-floor apartment, with their stables out back. De Sapio recalls the stablemen "often taking a short cut with the horses through the hall." Young Carmine helped out in the stables, brushed and curried the horses "until you could see your shadow in their coats," and entered them in the annual parade for work teams up Fifth Avenue (he won a blue ribbon at 13).
He had enduring qualities. As a boy he was quiet and reserved; he still is. He had no capacity then for making intimate friends; he still doesn't. He worked tirelessly; he still does. He helped keep the accounts for the De Sapio trucking firm, hustled new customers, many times was out on the docks at 3 a.m. on hauling jobs. He planned to be a lawyer, took pre-law courses at Fordham and attended night classes for a year at the Brooklyn Law School. But iritis, a chronic eye ailment that was the residue of an earlier bout with rheumatic fever, ended his schooling. (His mother still mourns his failure to become a lawyer, saying, "A solid thing. He would've been a judge by now.")
Experience with Frogs' Legs. Foreclosed from the law, De Sapio got into politics. "I never planned politics," he says. "You just find yourself in an environment. You get deeper and deeper. You get activated." As an activated young man De Sapio made himself useful around the Huron Club, long the Tammany stamping ground and ruling place of the Finn family, beginning with "Battery Dan" Finn, then his son, then his son's son, Sheriff Dan Finn. "I carried coal baskets around the neighborhood. I used to go down to the markets, let the merchants know it was the Democratic Party calling, and get them to give us turkeys to hand out to the voters." He ran errands for the district captain, chauffeured for Court Clerk Tommy O'Connell. Old Tommy once took Carmine to a restaurant and ordered frogs' legs, the first time De Sapio had ever heard that they could be eaten. Just as De Sapio took his first bite, O'Connell leaned over on his shoulder, dead of a heart attack.