[dcs_p]Mob Blog: My Summer With Jimmy Hoffa, June 18, 2013[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
I was fourteen the summer Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. Before his disappearance I knew of him … vaguely. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, and only the tone-deaf or very young had never heard of Jimmy Hoffa. I’d heard the name on television and seen it in the newspapers, but it held no significance for me. It was background noise. After all, I was fourteen, and it was summer.[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
Like Coleman Young and Walter Reuther, Hoffa was mentioned in adult conversations and on the evening news. This was the seventies, and we didn’t have the twenty-four hour news cycle that we do today, but I’d heard enough to know that Jimmy Hoffa was a bigshot.[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
Then one morning I came downstairs for breakfast, and my mother said, “Jimmy Hoffa’s missing.”[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
It was big news. I didn’t quite understand it. No one had ever really explained to me what the Teamsters were, although the Teamsters and UAW were code words for those boring news cycles I regularly tuned out. But now my mother explained the details to the best of her ability. As I understood it, there was no great mystery. Everyone assumed that Jimmy Hoffa had been taken by the men who’d given him his power—the mob.[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
Now someone had to explain to me what the mafia was and how it operated. But I was confused, particularly since I was hearing the surnames of family friends and acquaintances on the evening news. Familiar names, more familiar than Hoffa’s had ever been.[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
Eventually, the Hoffa story dragged on, and the rest, as they say, is history. But I’m bringing this story to you today because the FBI is digging again in Oakland County. It’s the third or fourth dig in recent years, and it’s the lead story on the local news. Naturally, I understand everything a whole lot better now.[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
Hearing the details of Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance again, with flashes of photo’s of the Machus Red Fox, which is now an Andiamo’s—a local restaurant chain that my husband and I occasionally frequent, brings to mind that late summer of my youth when world events crept in and left a defining moment, in much the same way Nixon and Watergate had marked an earlier summer.[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
For me, it’s a bit nostalgic. Those seventies summers were gorgeous, the days when I knew leisure untouched by work or responsibility. For the Hoffa family it was the beginning of a long, lingering nightmare.[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
For all the media hype accompanying this latest dig, I’m skeptical. A farmer who raised livestock on the property claims he buried dead pigs on the land so the FBI may turn up a few bones. I’m sure they’ll know if they’re human or not.[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
So the dig continues today, with the media and a crowd of spectators watching from a distance.[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
If they find Jimmy Hoffa’s body, you’ll know. It will be all over the news for days and weeks to come. And then I’ll have another summer of Hoffa.[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
Patricia Bellomo is the author of the crime and mob fiction novels, Louie Morelli’s Mistress, Stella di Mare, and Louie Morelli’s Daughter. Patricia lives in the Detroit area with her husband, Vince, travelling frequently to South Florida and less frequently to New Orleans, the settings for her novels.[/dcs_p][dcs_p]
Books available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Also available in digital format for all e-readers. Available on AmazonUK & AmazonEU.
