Wondering how I would lead into a story of a mistake I made in my column of Saturday, March 8 about Legs Diamond, Bert LaFountain, et al, a letter arrives from my friend Mark Wilson, solving that problem.

The mistake was my recalling a much-told story that Gabriels speakeasy owner Bert LaFountain met Lucky Luciano while serving time in Clinton prison in Dannemora. I guess researching too many gangster stories made me nervous. The original hearsay hand-me-down story was that Bert met Al Capone in Dannemora, not Lucky Luciano. Through further gangster research it seems that Al Capone was never in prison at Dannemora but did have a bootlegging route through here to Canada … also hearsay.

I don’t know how Bert managed to get this phone installed at his house but it was a payphone listed in the phone book as — “LaFountain Bert Gabriels Coin Box … 41-F11.”

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Driving a Hack/Taxi

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Mark writes:

“Your Legs Diamond Enterprise column Saturday, touching on the old Riverside Inn and your hacking days, [I drove taxi for John Brewster in 1948; he had two new Plymouth’s and the taxi stand was located which is now an empty lot next to Compass Printing] reminded me of the accompanying souvenir from 1929. Mary [our friend, Ms. Thill] and I discovered a stack of these promotional desk calendars above a covered basement beam twenty years ago and I’ve been meaning to send one to you ever since.

“You may be familiar with the colorful character Mert Drury who operated the livery stables at the Riverside Inn a century ago and built the Drury cottage on Bloomingdale Avenue [it’s the beautiful house at #52 with the stone facade] with its distinctive Tanzini-cobbled arches. He and his wife Bertha, daughter of Albert Otis, one of Paul Smith’s original guides, left Saranac Lake for Malone, from where he operated a taxicab company in both locations. Whoever squirreled away the calendars in our basement must’ve been a driver or local dispatcher.

“A search for ‘Mert Drury’ in nyshistoricnwspapers.org bridges Saranac Lake’s horse and automobile eras. His name appears more than once in the apocryphal story’s of Elmer Hix, the Bard of Skerry, penned by journo/county clerk/Franklin County Historian Roy G. Lafave.

“Checking my computer calendar just now, I learned that the days and dates of 1929 analog version will next sync up in 2030. Perhaps you and Ruth can stash it above a ceiling beam until then.” [Might that be on my 100th birthday, July 20, 2030]

“PS-Your March 4 Enterprise commentary may have saved the village as much as $20 million, which figures out to about $40,000 per word. Not bad for newspaper work.”