Today is the birthday of Al Capone, one of the most notorious gangsters in American history. The lower east side of Lake Michigan, where I grew up, is lined with huge sand dunes, some of them so large they have names, like Mount Tom. And the rumor I grew up hearing is that Capone's hideout was a secret spot in those dunes. I never saw it, but I do have a connection to the Chicago mafia. When I was six, and my sister was twelve, my mother started taking us to piano lessons with Mrs. Graw . Mrs. Graw was an older woman who lived in a little house in the next town, and she taught piano lessons in her living room. Once a week, we went to see her. I would sit on the couch with my mother while my sister had her 30-minute lesson, and then we would switch places, and I would play Turkey In the Straw and Three Blind Mice with two hands. Mrs. Graw had a black dog of some kind that liked to lay under the piano bench and lick himself, so that during the rests you would hear that sloppy, wet...