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What's significant about a lowly, throwaway date like Nov. 14. It's the week after Election Day. It's a few days after Veteran's Day, and it's sandwiched around a bunch of rather
mundane days.

Nov. 14 is Operation Room Nurse Day; Nov. 15 is National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day; Nov. 16 is Button Day; Nov. 17 is Take A Hike Day; Nov. 18 is Occult Day; Nov. 19 is Have A Bad Day Day; Nov. 20 is Absurdity Day.

It's a fitting line up because on Nov. 14, 1957, a watershed event in the history of organized crime in America took place at this large stone house in the tiny upstate New York town of Apalachin, a few miles west of Binghamton and a few miles north of Pennsylvania.

At a right angle to the road, the handsome house sits atop a sloping hill with a huge matching stone garage, rear patio, a barbecue pit and a guest house. In front of the garage is parking for up to 15 full-size cars. Forty-three years ago, scores of top Mafia luminaries -- fish out of water in this idyllic serenity -- were oblivious to the calamity that was about to befall them.

For more than a year, New York State Trooper Edgar Croswell had been keeping an eye on the owner of the sprawling 58-acre estate, Joseph Barbara. Sgt. Croswell had become suspicious of Barbara after he learned the identity of a house guest who gave cops phony identification after being pulled over for speeding. The speeder turned out to be notorious drug dealer Carmine Galante (left). When Croswell learned that other out-of-town criminals were also there in the Binghamton area, he stored it away for the next time.

As November 1957 rolled around, Croswell’s eyes were wide open when it came to the mysterious Barbara, whose secluded home provided privacy, but also allowed police to get close without being seen.

On Nov. 13, 1957, Croswell and his partner Vincent Vasisko learned that Barbara’s son was booking rooms at a nearby motel. They checked out Barbara’s home and spotted several out of state license plates. That night,

The next morning, even more cars had parked on the garage apron and adjoining field. As they were taking down the tags of the newly arrived cars, big, shiny, late-model Cadillacs and Lincolns, they were spotted and all hell broke loose. Nattily dressed men in dark suits, fedoras and pointy-toed shoes -- including a Dapper Don of the era, Joseph Bonanno (right) --dashed into the woods as others, including Vito Genovese (left), climbed into their cars and tried to speed away.

"If they stood still, nobody would have touched them," Vasisko recalled the other day in an interview with the Associated Press. "We would have just gone home."

But in the confusion, Croswell set up a road block at the base of the hill on the one road leaving Barbara’s estate. Any car trying to get to Route 17 would have to pass the roadblock. With reinforcements from surrounding town police departments, the troopers brought the occupants of the cars stopped at the road block and a dozen or so men seen running through the woods to the State Police Station at Vestal, a few miles away. Each man was asked to identify himself, but Croswell had no cause to fingerprint and photograph them.

"All the (police) cars had to do is patrol the roads," said Vasisko, now 74. "They had to come out sooner or later. You see a guy in a silk suit and a white fedora, you say, 'He doesn't belong in the woods!'"

Croswell quickly determined he had a group of ex-cons from around the nation, many with long arrest records. But authorities -- who knew little, if

The exact number of Mafiosi who were at Barbara’s house has never been determined. Since it was a national convention and several Mafia family delegates weren't among the detained, some may have slipped away before the roadblock was set up. Others may have been smart enough to remain at Barbara’s house until the cops left.

From informants and electronic surveillance, it has been well established that discussions about drug dealing and recent turmoil in New York topped the Apalachin agenda. The feds had begun cracking down on heroin smugglers -- Mafia bosses Joseph Bonanno and Vito Genovese, to name just two, were heavily involved -- and some mobsters felt the cash wasn't worth the heat. In New York, new bosses of two families, Genovese, who had been elevated to boss after the May, 1957 shooting of Frank Costello, (left) and Carlo Gambino, (right) who had become boss following the barbershop execution of Albert Anastasia a month earlier, were being introduced as new members of the Mafia's Commission.

Many gangsters, including Gambino, Joe Profaci (right) and Paul Castellano, (left) said they had gone to wish Barbara a speedy recovery from health problems he had. A notable exception was John Montana, who up until then, was known as an upstanding businessman from Buffalo. Montana said he had car problems while driving by the area and had stopped at the Barbara house looking for a mechanic. To his surprise, Barbara was hosting a convention of some sort which broke into panic when cops arrived. Looking to avoid the confusion, Montana went for a walk in the woods and was detained by police, a victim of innocent circumstances. For 26 years, his story was the most ludicrous explanation of anyone who was there.

Joe Bonanno wrested the title away in his 1983 autobiography, claiming he was opposed to the meeting, never planned to attend but had simply gone to the area to try discuss a number of issues with Stefano Magaddino, his cousin and Mafia Boss of Buffalo. They met in a small town near Apalachin. When the fiasco happened, two of his men were hunting in the area and accidentally drove across the Barbara property and nabbed by cops who wrongly thought they were his guests. One was carrying Bonanno's driver's license, and to make matters worse, had no identification of his own and was identified as Joe Bonanno. And that was why Bonanno was listed as an attendee of the Apalachin meeting. Right Joe!

The publicity that followed -- and the subsequent years of hearings and

When the story broke, Congressmen, Senators and other elected officials wanted to know who the men were and what they were doing. The FBI had little information, but to Hoover's chagrin, the rival Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs had piles of documents on many participants and they trotted it out at the various hearings and press conferences that followed.

Hoover reacted with characteristic anger and energy. He ordered a massive intelligence gathering operation -- the Top Hoodlum Program -- in each major city. Each resident agent in charge was to identify and provide information on the top ten hoods in his jurisdiction. The FBI's mob informant program, which decades later would result in a myriad of abuses and indiscretions, moved into high gear.

FBI agents began massive illegal bugging operations against mobsters in Chicago, Newark, Boston, Providence, San Francisco and Philadelphia. The electronic surveillance could not be used in court but it helped the FBI   understand who and what the American Mafia was all about. The public testimony of turncoat Joseph (Joe Cago) Valachi six years later reinforced what the FBI already knew. Who knows how things would have turned out if not for good old fashioned police work by Croswell and his crew.

Meanwhile, the Barbara estate remains largely the same as it did in the late 1950's. The vegetation has grown and a subdivision now covers the bottom of the hill and its slopes. Other houses have been built on the crest of the hill. But the stone garage and the field where a bunch of Detroit's luxury gas guzzlers were parked on the apron while their middle-aged owners ran through the woods are still intact. There is no sign, but if you're in the area and stop to ask, as a Gang Land researcher recently did, old-timers who were there in 1957 and young residents who weren't, will give you directions to Apalachin's "Mafia house."

Louis (Fat Lou) LaRasso, (left) one of two wiseguys who represented the Newark based Mafia family at Joe Barbara's house, was whacked in 1991 on orders from the family's 75-year-old current boss John Riggi, (right) according to the indictment.

The family's consigliere, Stefano Vitabile, 64, capo Philip Abramo, 55, and soldiers Gregory Rago, 41, and Louis (Louie Eggs) Consalvo, 43, allegedly plotted to kill LaRasso, whose body has never been found.

Some 43 years ago, LaRasso and Frank Majuri (left) were an odd couple when they attended the Apalachin convention -- the only two members of the New Jersey based family to travel to the tiny upstate town.

Both were underbosses that year. Majuri had been underboss the first few months of the year under prior leader, Phil Amari. LaRasso took the position under Nicholas Delmore, who took over the family in May, 1957, a few years before Simone (Sam The Plumber) DeCavalcante would take the helm.

Since Delmore, like Carlo Gambino and Vito Genovese, was a new boss, it seems odd that Delmore didn't show up to strut his stuff and odder yet, that he sent along his predecessor's underboss. Perhaps it was a show of family unity.

Meanwhile, Majuri's son, capo Charles Majuri, 59, (right) is charged with plotting to kill other DeCavalcantes, whose internal strife rivals that of the fictional New Jersey gangsters, "The Sopranos," the HBO television series that many DeCavalcantes believe is based on their real life activities.