The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
233
No competing mill, no dam that would create a water supply to their competitors or ruin 
their own selling of water, was allowed to be built in their corner of Sicily. A powerful 
landowning baron once tried to erect his own mill strictly for his personal use. The mill 
was burned down. He called on the carabineri and higher authorities, who arrested three 
of the Bocchicchio Family. Even before the trial the manor house of the baron was 
torched. The indictment and accusations were withdrawn. A few months later one of the 
highest functionaries in the Italian government arrived in Sicily and tried to solve the 
chronic water shortage of that island by proposing a huge dam. Engineers arrived from 
Rome to do surveys while watched by grim natives, members of the Bocchicchio clan. 
Police flooded the area, housed in a specially built barracks. 
It looked like nothing could stop the dam from being built and supplies and equipment 
had actually been unloaded in Palermo. That was as far as they got. The Bocchicchios 
had contacted fellow Mafia chiefs and extracted agreements for their aid. The heavy 
equipment was sabotaged, the lighter equipment stolen. Mafia deputies in the Italian 
Parliament launched a bureaucratic counterattack against the planners. This went on for 
several years and in that time Mussolini came to power. The dictator decreed that the 
dam must be built. It was not. The dictator had known that the Mafia would be a threat to 
his regime, forming what amounted to a separate authority from his own. He gave full 
powers to a high police official, who promptly solved the problem by throwing everybody 
into jail or deporting them to penal work islands. In a few short years he had broken the 
power of the Mafia, simply by arbitrarily arresting anyone even suspected of being a 
mafioso. And so also brought ruin to a great many innocent families. 
The Bocchicchios had been rash enough to resort to force against this unlimited power. 
Half of the men were killed in armed combat, the other half deported to penal island 
colonies. There were only a handful left when arrangements were made for them to 
emigrate to America via the clandestine underground route of jumping ship through 
Canada. There were almost twenty immigrants and they settled in a small town not far 
from New York City, in the Hudson Valley, where by starting at the very bottom they 
worked their way up to owning a garbage hauling firm and their own trucks. They 
became prosperous because they had no competition. They had no competition 
because competitors found their trucks burned and sabotaged. One persistent fellow 
who undercut prices was found buried in the garbage he had picked up during the day, 
smothered to death. 
But as the men married, to Sicilian girls, needless to say, children came, and the 

---