Hello, Nate DeMayo, host and creator of the Memory Palace podcast. How are you?

I'm great, man. How are you?

I'm good. I wonder if we can start today by going to the club, the Club Baghdad. Take me there.

This is a nightclub that my grandfather and his brother owned in Cranston, Rhode Island, which is just over the

Providence border, just a mere 15 minutes away.

It was a nightclub that they owned from the late 30s up until the, just a little bit

after World War II.

At this nightclub, they would get sort of, you know, like second and third tier touring

acts.

You know, the bigger acts would go up to Boston or to Hartford or whatever,

but some people would stop here at the Club Baghdad.

A story that I tell my book is the origin story, you know,

of my mom's arm of the family tree, which is there was like the flu was going through

and a number of the showgirls took ill.

And he called up to a temp agency,

a showgirl temp agency, some sort of talent agency up in Boston and said, like, hey, I need a

couple of girls. We have a big Christmas show coming. Can you send some down? And my grandmother,

Barbara, was one of the showgirls that they sent down that night.

So my grandmother met my grandfather and fell in love under the Christmas lights of the

Club Baghdad won Christmas probably about in 1940.

And it seems like the Club Baghdad closed long before you were born you probably it seems like you didn't get

the chance to see it with your own eyes no i never did and it burned down um in the late 1940s

...