| 24 May 2006 Hoffa Cupcakes The consensus is hardening. Al Gore was right all along. Global Warming is a reality, and even old curmudgeons like myself are climbing on the Green Bandwagon, just as the cost of oil is making it possible for private entrepreneurs to proliferate technologies that could save us. Columnist Thomas Freidman thinks that there may be a “million Manhattan projects” happening out there, now that the price of oil has soared to $70 a barrel. That is good news, and could be the launch pad for a technological revolution that will help the nation bridge from the American Century to what ever the next one will be. So it came as no surprise that it remains unseasonably cold. There was frost out in the distant suburbs, and even at Big Pink I shivered at the computer so hard that I could not type. I closed the windows and turned up the heat, but got no relief. The building had gone to chill water in the system. We are now in air conditioning season, regardless of the temperature. Frigid air blew from the convector. So I put on a couple of sweaters on a fine day in May. You can't say that Mother Nature doesn't have a highly developed sense of irony. Much better than mine. I was quivering when I heard that the Senate Intelligence Committee had reported out favorably on the nomination of General Hayden to head the CIA. The Administration's gambit to defuse the NSA wiretapping controversy appears to have been successful. The key is who is put forward as the person to replace the General in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. If it is another member of the fruit-juice-and-cookie branch of the Intelligence Community, another diplomat, it will be interesting. Then the lines will be drawn between the new intelligence bureaucracy and the implacable Department of Defense. The possible collection of millions of phone calls has been dwarfed by the scandal at the VA, which is, of course, much worse than initially reported. Revelations about the theft of the personal information of thirty million veterans now appears to include home addresses, and the social security numbers of next-of-kin. What's more, the VA delayed notification of the compromise for nearly three weeks. The employee who borrowed the data appears to be missing, though the Department says officially that missing employees is not unusual there. And nothing else except the computer and the data appeared to have been stolen in the break-in. I was fuming about that, since it brought back all the other investigations we have suffered, the drip-drip-drip of information that includes stained dresses from The Gap and tape across a garage exit door at the Watergate. Further than that, actually, back to the day in 1975 when the 1960s died with Jimmy Hoffa. Charles “Chuckie” O'Brien said he had been hauling around a forty pound tuna filet in the Mercury he borrowed from Tony Jack's Giacalone's son, which accounted for the bloodstains in the car. Jimmy has been back in the news, which he does when word of one of his burials sites surfaces. He has been around in death as much as anyone alive. He is under the end-zone in Giants Stadium in New Jersey, where Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano said he was playing cards the day Jimmy disappeared. Or under one of Detroit's barren interstates that bisect bulldozed neighborhoods, where Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone said he was at the health club. Tony Pro was a “made man” from the Genovese Crime Family, for which we have a certain nostalgia through The Sopranos these days. The criminals that came after them were so much more brutal than the jolly Italians. Some say it was disco that ended the '60s. I say it was Jimmy's disappearance. He had gone to jail after a long fight with Robert Kennedy, who was the Attorney General. He spent five years up the river before being pardoned by Richard Nixon. Released just before Christmas in 1971, he was determined to regain his position and influence in the Teamsters, arguably the most powerful of the great unions of the day. The mob connection to the Teamsters was over the pension fund, which they used as a personal slush-fund. Jimmy had done his best to set things up for his return. He picked amiable Frank Fitzsimmons to keep the seat warm as President, but the mob liked Frank's pliancy, and so did Mr. Nixon. It was determined that Jimmy was an inconvenience. He should have stayed retired. Jimmy's latest burial site is in rural Milford, near Detroit, where Rolland McMaster owned the Hidden Dreams horse farm. Actually, I don't know how rural it is these days. The urban sprawl is probably lapping the edges of the farms with 7-11's. But it would be logical to head that way. The restaurant where Jimmy disappeared was the Machus Red Fox, which was erected on the site of Ted's Drive-In, way out in the country in Bloomfield Township. In the 1950s, Dad would pile us in the back of the Nash Metropolitan to drive out there, past Oakland Country Club where they play the US Open Folf Tournament every few years. We would feast on hamburger and fries. The catsup came in little foil packages, which was quite a novelty. Food is a certain unifying factor in all this, like the luncheon appointment that was not kept, and the hearty Italian cookery that sustained the mob through the investigation. A local bakery in Milford is selling Jimmy Hoffa cupcakes, which feature a frosting as dark as earth with a green plastic hand stuck in the top, as though it was reaching out. Jimmy's earthly remains are supposed to be wrapped in a carpet, and buried under a stable on the farm. The FBI has erected a tent for the horses, and are prepared to demolish the stable this week to look under the foundations. I hope they find him. I need some closure on the whole 1960s thing. Maybe finding Jimmy at last would help do it. I just hope they find a good home for the horses. They didn't do anything wrong. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |