Given the middle name Riddle sixty-two years before his nation-stumping disappearance, James Hoffa was born on Valentines Day in 1913 in Brazil. Not that Brazil – Hoffa’s Brazil was southwest of Indianapolis where his dad was “a poor coal miner”. Not to be confused with all those wealthy coal miners we hear so much about.
His penchant for Bossiness began at the age of twenty when he organized a strike of “swampers” – the fellas who unload strawberries from Michigan delivery trucks.
Backed by mafia pals such as Tommy Lucchese, Johnny “Dio” Dioguardi, and Sam Giancana, Hoffa became president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1957. In return the Mafioso looked for small favors, such as truckloads of Union money dumped into their bank accounts.
This worried those handsome Kennedy brothers, whose own family was prosperous thanks to their grandfather’s successful liquor business. Because we all know that business isn’t corrupt in the least. Bobby Kennedy tirelessly pursued Hoffa for his brother John until finally in 1964 Hoffa was convicted of attempted bribery of a grand juror and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. This is the informative FBI explanation:
But President Nixon released Hoffa only four years into his sentence with the promise that Hoffa delay participating in Union activities for ten years. Turns out he would wait a lot longer.
On steamy July 30, 1975 Hoffa went to the innocent Machus Red Fox Restaurant to have innocent tuna salad sandwiches with his two innocent mafia leader friends, Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone and Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano. Is there anyone in the mob whose name isn’t Tony? But like so many women, Hoffa was stood up – he was last seen placing calls from the pay phone adjacent to the restaurant along the lines of “6 p.m. came and went… 6:15 came and went… 6:30 came and went – I can’t believe you’re treating me like this! Don’t you know how much it hurts?”
And then Hoffa disappeared. The dash of this Pontiac Grand Ville, parked in the restaurant’s lot, may have been the last thing he ever saw.
So where did he end up? Some say he was buried beneath the turf at Giants Stadium. Others think he was fed to a wood chipper and later to hogs. Still others believe he was placed in the trunk of a car that was later squashed in a car compactor. Or mixed with concrete and used in construction, or dissolved in an acid tank used to re-chrome bumpers! Or, um, stuck under a barn on Hidden Dreams Farm in Michigan. Who is he, the Wicked Witch of the East? I’ll give ya a Hidden Dream!
