Steven Cornelius was born and raised in Northeast Mississippi and is married to a beautiful, auburn haired second generation Irish woman with deep roots in Galway and Sligo. His love of books began at a very early age. When night fell on the farm and chores for the day were complete, he and his family sat around the fire and read until bedtime. Many of his childhood adventures are featured in his writing. He attended the University of Mississippi, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees while participating in Air Force ROTC. Steve completed more than thirty years Air Force service in the US and overseas. For the Distant Traveler Trilogy, he drew upon experiences and memories collected during assignments around the world. After retiring in 2015, Steve decided to get serious about a lifelong passion for writing. His most recent work has been published in Mississippi magazine (October 2022) and Louisiana Living (November 2022). He just finished a multicultural novel set in Cuba and Houston Texas featuring Hispanics as the main characters. Steve has written one hundred and five short stories collected in two volumes and posted stories on the Mississippi Folklore and True Appalachia webpages and has a following of more than 3,000 regular followers on each page.
Capone’s Hideaway in Mississippi
By Steven Cornelius
In 1699, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville sailed north through the Gulf of Mexico and arrived near the mouth of the Mississippi River, landing on Ship Island. Three days later, his four ship flotilla arrived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, establishing a colony and building Fort Maurepas, in the vicinity of present day Biloxi. The fort served as the first capital of French Louisiana and became a base of operations to continue exploring the eighty mile wide stretch of beach and swamp that make up the Mississippi Gulf Coast. [4] Easy access to the broad Gulf of Mexico and sparsely populated Mississippi Coast has always been a magnet for pirates, rogues and colorful characters. I had the Grande Chance (great good fortune) to live in Ocean Springs, Mississippi for three years in a newly built house situated within a small subdivision carved into a finger of dry ground crisscrossed by Heron bayou and a half dozen small unnamed narrow inlets, each meandering through broad salt marshes before emptying into the nutrient rich Mississippi Sound.
Our small neighborhood of tract houses was surrounded by a sprinkling of much older houses inhabited by equally old residents. As time went by, in the best southern tradition, I made an effort to meet and get to know our older neighbors, striking up budding friendships. There was one old guy who lived alone in what had once been a very elegant home surrounded by two hundred year old live oak trees, tendrils of Spanish moss hanging from every limb. His side yard sloped down to a stretch of marsh grass, alligator weed and bulrush before reaching a slow moving inlet that emptied into Davis Bayou. My neighbor had several fifty and sixties vintage cars scattered around his yard, and as a car nut, the beautiful old relics caught my eye.
I waited until the weather cooled down and one fall Saturday morning my son and I headed for the old man’s house to make an introduction and allow me to get a closer look at those cars. Taking a three year old along was a great way to break the ice. As we walked across his oyster shell strewn yard, I saw him leaning into the engine compartment of a dusty black 1963 Cadillac Deville, muttering as he poked and prodded at one thing and then another. As we approached, I hollered, “Hello…need some help?” He had his back to me and jumped at the sound of my voice, spinning around, a crescent wrench in his greasy right hand, scowling at me. A second later, the stocky balding old man spotted my blond haired toddler son grinning up at him and his scowl quickly transformed into a broad smile. He pointed a greasy index finger at the car and shook his head, “Vecchio pezzo di merda![1] It won’t start, and I need to pick up some groceries and run other errands.”
I didn’t know exactly what he’d called the car at the time, but it didn’t sound good. I was trained as a mechanic by my dad and walked up to the car and gave the filthy engine compartment a quick scan. I turned and looked at the white t-shirt clad old man with grease stained hands and shook my head. “You will need a few things to get the car started…more parts and tools than I see laying around here. The old man stood giving me an exasperated look; trying to size me up and decide if I was on the level and knew what I was talking about. To move things along, I reached out and shook his greasy right hand, offered a smile and introduced myself and my young son.
As we stood making small talk, I pointed west, “My son and I can drive you into town and visit while you complete necessary errands.” The old man rubbed his gray stubbled chin but didn’t answer. It took a little persuasion, but he finally agreed. After he disappeared inside to wash up and change clothes, we loaded into the family van and spent about two hours crisscrossing downtown Ocean Springs, stopping at one office and business or the other, all the while shooting the breeze. We started off with a safe topic, talking about the weather before moving on to his collection of fifties and sixties luxury cars and finally settling on the history of that part of the coast.
I admitted that my knowledge of that part of our state was sketchy at best, so my Italian American neighbor filled me in on a few amazing details. He was the third generation to live in that beautiful but tumble-down old house. My new friend was deep into telling me about how his family came to Ocean Springs from Chicago at the turn of the century as we passed an auto parts store. I quickly interrupted, “I’ll tune up your caddy if you’ll buy the parts.” He nodded and pointed to the NAPA store. I swerved into the parking lot and screeched to a stop. We approached the parts counter and I rattled off a long list of necessary parts. After my neighbor forked over a couple hundred dollars we lugged an arm full of parts and new battery outside, loading them into the back of my van and headed home. It took the rest of that Saturday and most of the next day to finish up.
As we worked late into a sun splashed October Sunday afternoon on the coast, he looked across the engine bay, brown eyes twinkling as he teased me, “I’ll bet you didn’t know that Al Capone had a place a bit further down Davis Bayou, less than a hundred yards from where we now stand.” I studied his weathered brown and creased face looking for a telltale giveaway, “You’re pulling my leg.” He laughed and shook his head, “Not even a little bit. My granddad and father used to take care of his place and run errands for him when he came down from Chicago.” I still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced, and I guess he could see the doubt on my face, so he motioned toward the road and started walking. We crossed the road and stood on the edge of the Capone property. The sprawling place lay on the western side of Davis Bayou. The massive mansion with a crumbling stucco finish was in serious need of repair.
We stood ten feet off Government Street as cars and trucks whizzed by, noisy and busy even for a Sunday afternoon. He waited for a break in the traffic and then pointed to what was left of a small boat house and decaying pier partially obscured by a copse of dark green alligator weed and bulrush, “You can’t see it, but there is a tunnel entrance hidden under the boathouse…or at least there once was. It’s probably collapsed on itself by now. Capone’s men kept a speedboat tied up to the pier right next to the end of the tunnel; a flight of stairs led from somewhere in the house through the tunnel and down to the speedboat. All that was part of Capone’s bug out plan. The smaller boat would take him on to a larger vessel anchored on the gulf side of Ship Island.” I was now all ears, “And your granddad and dad knew all this how? They were that close to Capone?”
The old man shrugged and smiled, “Just like Capone, we’re La Familia and before moving south, lived in Chicago.” The light bulb in my head slowly came on; this old guy’s granddad and father had almost certainly been part of Capone’s Chicago gang and relocated south during prohibition to help smuggle booze, cigarettes and other untaxed goods from freighters anchored fifty miles out in the gulf to customers all along that section of the Mississippi coast. There wasn’t anything else of interest to see on the outside of the place so we quickly stepped back across the road and returned to the shade of his front yard. I stayed uncharacteristically quiet while finishing the final touches on the old Cadillac and washed up after making sure it would start and run, before closing the hood.
As I gathered my tools, the old man stood beaming as he looked at the once bright red faded now to pink sedan. He was very pleased to have a working set of wheels, and offered, “Come see me any time. With a sweeping gesture across his side yard, he added, “You’re also welcome to look over any of these old cars whenever you’d like.” A few days later, I did walk around his yard, enjoying the deep shade created by massive live oak trees, their sun bleached limbs so close they seemed woven together. Unfortunately, the old Lincolns and Cadillac’s had sat too long in the salt air and were rusted beyond recovery.
I never did get a peek inside Capone’s hideaway, though the old man tried his best. By the late 1970s, the place had changed hands so many times any contacts the old man had were long gone, even the realtors that had sold and resold the place were strangers to him. So, we never got to look for the hidden door concealing a tunnel staircase down to Capone’s waiting speedboat or any other cool stuff gathering dust inside that grand old estate, shielded from nosy folks like me. A few years after the Air Force moved us to New Mexico, the original place was razed making room for a new equally large and over the top “casa” named Del Castle. Over time, as often happens, a series of owners allowed the place to slip into disrepair. Del Castle changed hands many times over the subsequent thirty years and was never restored to its former glory. The large home was torn down in 2007 and another estate eventually built on the site.
Here is a bit of history and two surviving photographs of Capone’s place (Casa Flores) gleaned from the Ocean Springs Archives. CASA FLORES-DEL CASTLE: 1925-2005, situated at 4010 Government Street. Of all the cottages and homes in the vicinity of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, the home of Fred E. Lee built on the Old Spanish Trail east of Ocean Springs, in 1925, has the most mystique. Anecdotal history relates that the Lee home was the local port of entry for contraband liquor during the Prohibition era years (1919-1933). The name of Alphonse Capone (1899-1947), the Chicago gangster, is often mentioned in these same allegations of illegal activities concerning spirituous liquors. Is it possible that Cuban vessels penetrating the blockade by US Revenue cutters in the Mississippi Sound landed rum and other alcoholic spirits on the shore of Davis Bayou in the shadows of the Lee home?
Casa Flores
(image circa 1925, from Randy Randazzo)
Del Castle
(north elevation-September 2004 by Ray L. Bellande)
Architectural description
Del Castle is a one story, rambling, stuccoed masonry, Spanish Eclectic Style building, which rests on a raised basement and is covered by side gable, terra cotta tiled roofs. The asymmetrical north (main) façade four bays wide divided into two blocks. The main entrance occupies the smaller, lightly recessed, one bay-wide western block. The side-lighted door is approached from the north by a monumental staircase and porch both of which are shaded by a pergola supported by Corinthian columns. The outer bays of the eastern bloc have paired square-headed casement openings on the basement level and paired round-arched floor length casement windows on the main floor. The latter openings have shaped muntins and are protected by wrought iron balconies. Very small, paired casement windows set high into the wall of the main floor occupy the center bay of the eastern bloc. A wing projects southwards from the rear of the entrance block and a carport occupies a section of the raised basement.(MDAH Report).
[1] Use Google Translate to learn what it means.
The Galway Review 