Where for Art Thou, Jimmy Hoffa?

Jimmy Riddle Hoffa. The name itself practically oozes mystery. Goopey, gelatinous mystery. Where did he come from? Where is he now? What happened between him coming here and him being wherever he is now? And what's with the kooky middle name?

James Riddle Hoffa, Sr. was born in Brazil in the nineteen tens. Several years later he was spotted in Indiana wearing a fake mustache. Experts are at a loss to explain how a boy of seven made the trek halfway around the globe, other than to say this: Hoffa was one tough bastard. Rumor has it that he holed up in the pancreas of a longshoreman as an infant, traveling the world over before bursting from the man's chest when he was ripe. This reportedly happened during a poker game, and few in attendance were left untouched by the experience, or the splattering gut juices. Asked to comment on the larval Hoffa, poker player Lefty Sanchez was heard to comment: "Sheeeeyit!"

Hoffa came to prominence as a grade-schooler in Indiana, where he organized a Student Union at the age of eight and brought the elementary school to its knees, effectively bringing an end to book-learnin' in the state of Indiana forever. It was an especially sweet victory for Hoffa, who had been demoralized when the Sibling Union he formed with his brother Tom and sister Nancy was crushed when management brought in scab siblings in the form of his newborn twin brothers Maxwell and Chuckie Hoffa.

Jimmy Hoffa dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen after a violent altercation when strikebreakers attempted to teach the class arithmetic. He went to work as a loading ramp at a local grocery warehouse, and eventually worked his way up to dolly, making thirteen cents a day. These were solid wages during the depression, and few dared complain about the working conditions for fear of losing their jobs. The ownership did as it pleased, and often fired men for parting their hair in the middle or spelling their names with a "D".

Workers toiled in thirteen-hour shifts, but were only paid for three hours a day, since the owners refused to pay for walking time and counted breathing as taking a break. Tensions finally came to a head when the owners fired five men for inhaling too much of the warehouse's oxygen, and the young Hoffa took this opportunity to form a worker's union. He was already well known among the workers for having formed several unions during this first three weeks at the warehouse, including the Left-Handed-Man's Union and the Guys-Waiting-In-Line-For-Gas-401. But this was to be Hoffa's most serious union yet, and he rose to the challenge admirably. Hoffa made the union stick and before long the warehouse owners caved and provided the workers with a coffee can to urinate in, ending years of pissing in each other's pockets. It was a major victory for organized labor and a telling harbinger of things to come.

Before long, Hoffa had convinced workers at several neighboring warehouses and dog tracks to join his union, which he was calling the Teamsters Union because he never learned to write that good. Hoffa spent the next several years traveling around the country, getting anyone and everyone to join his union if they weren't in it already, or to join again under a fake name if they were. Within a decade, the Teamsters had 8.7 billion members, which was impressive both because Hoffa had enlisted everyone himself, and also because that figure was nearly double the world's population at the time. No one was sure how many of those members were deceased, imaginary or canine, but the numbers spoke for themselves and business owners practically shit concern when Hoffa mentioned the word "strike." This was mainly because they also belonged to the union and were tired of getting splinters from carrying around picket signs all the time.

Everything was fantastic for Hoffa until he was arrested in 1967 and charged with trying to unionize the Mafia, and keeping the entire $1.9 billion Teamsters Pension Fund under a mattress in his house. Hoffa was sentenced to ten years in prison, and was forced to defer the Teamsters Presidency to his protégée, Frank Fitzsimmons. In 1971, then-President Richard M. Nixon, a three-time Teamster himself (also under the names Michard N. Rixon and Bobo Freelove) granted Hoffa a pardon, under the condition that he would stop trying to unionize the Nixon family.

Hoffa made a bid to regain control of the Teamsters Union upon his release, running on the platform of needing to double-unionize the union members to protect them from the tyranny and unfair practices of the Teamsters Union itself. One day in 1975, Hoffa was invited to a meeting with a Teamsters official and a local mob boss to explain what the hell he was talking about, and he was never seen again.

Local police and federal investigators were confident they would find Hoffa's body before long, since it was very likely he had unionized his kidnappers during his disappearance and finding them would be a simple matter of searching the records for a Kidnappers 299 Union. Unfortunately these efforts proved to be fruitless, and neither Hoffa's body nor his assailants were located in the next 25 years.

Rumors abounded following Hoffa's disappearance, and over the years several theories have developed explaining Hoffa's whereabouts. Law enforcement agencies believe Hoffa was kidnapped and killed by the Mafia, who were concerned that by regaining control of the Teamsters Union, Hoffa would succeed in unionizing the Mafia and then nobody would ever get killed. But few can agree on where Hoffa's body ended up.

Some believe his body can be found buried under the end zone at Giants Stadium, or they point to the Giants' "Take Home a Chunk-o-Hoffa" promotional give-away from during their 1976 season. Others believe Hoffa's body was cemented into the walls of an L.A. nightclub, or a parking garage that was built in Michigan the year he disappeared. Still others believe his body was shot into space using a gigantic catapult operated by Don Knotts, though law enforcement officials have been reluctant to endorse this theory.

But where, you ask, did Jimmy Hoffa's body really end up?

Ever eat a Slim Jim? Now don't ever let me hear you say that the Mafia doesn't have a sense of humor.

Who Put the Bomp in the Bomp-Ba-Bomp-Ba-Bomp?
It's a question that I get asked on a nearly daily basis, and understandably: just what in the hell was wrong with American music in the 1950's? History has it that the 1960's were the decade of recreational and experimental drug use, citing such... (4/1/02)

Make Mine Nougat
It's a question that has boggled the bungs of humanity for well over sixty years, and that routinely keeps schoolchildren up on sleepless nights, dooming them to academic lousiness. You may have even blown a couple grand on a research grant... (3/18/02)

Let the Games Begin
There's nothing quite like a global controversy to really bring an Olympic Games to the next level. Every Games worth its wound full of salt has at least one memorable knee-whacking or equestrian sex scandal to its name. This year the brouhaha has... (3/4/02)