Tales From North Platte

Henry Hill

Not Henry Hill





Surely you've heard of this man. He's Henry, from Goodfellas. You know, the smooth one, the cool one. You surely also know that "Goodfellas" is based on Hills autobiography. He really was a gangster, and he really was a rat. He really was faced with the choice of either turning states evidence or facing the punishment he deserved for being an unreliable coke monkey. Well , the story doesn't end there. In fact, it probably ends in my hometown.

First of all, it must be said that Martin Scorsese could make a tapeworm look like the baddest mofo who has ever lived. Indeed, this is exactly what he has done.

Hill had been living in the open for a few years when he came to North Platte in 2004. All of his victims were either dead from old age or had killed each other long ago. In the past, their successors would have carried on the vendetta against rats. But the mob ain't what it used to be. So Henry Hill came to town as Henry Hill, very willing to let us know that he was Henry Hill. There was a new hotel opening up by the interstate. It was going to be a fairly upscale place, and they were thinking of opening an Italian restauraunt. Hill, of course, is an accomplished cook.
If you have visions of Hill breaking out in a cold sweat in his kitchen, thinking about how he has to unload the guns on his Philiadelphia connections, bringing his brother home from the hospital and what to do about the helicoptor tailing him while George Harrison blares in the background please stop. This is what Hill wants you to do. You have no idea what kind of whore this man is. We were starstruck, of course, and the man did make good food. The bar at this hotel was pretty decent too. It seemed that Hill had found a nice place to live out his days.

But there were incidents. There was a D.U.I. where his b.a.c. was something over .3. There were "domestic incidents" with his new wife. And, of course, there was the coke. Yes, that's right kids, he still has the same habit that landed everybody but himself in jail. He was caught at the town airport with both coke and meth. He got along well with the locals. I wish this was the end, but...

Hill has become a semi-regular on the Howard Stern show. Stern is apparantly enthralled by the story of an inept criminal taking a small town by storm. Who wouldn't be? One day Hill claimed that two men had drugged him at a North Platte bar, took him to the woods and raped him. There are reasons to doubt this story. For one, give us some fucking credit, this isn't Arkansas. For another thing, there is a video that Hill is trying to make money off of.

The restaurant is in some trouble now, with its chef routingly going to jail. The bar actually became a hot spot in the time since I moved to Lincoln. My friend Rick was running the place, and this band of people I used to know played there last October. But alas, the manager of the hotel started to micromanage Rick's affairs. She changed the beer orders so that there would be an equal number of Heiniken and Bud Light, and demanded that the place get less "rowdy." Rick quit, and the bar closed down 2 months ago due to no profits.

As for Henry, he got out of jail last month. Other then that, who the hell cares? If you want some decent marinara sauce, wisit "Sundaygravy.net"