Friday, March 29, 2024 -
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‘O Jimmy, wherefore art thou?’

Reading the news of Jimmy Hoffa this week brought to mind that great Charles Dickens opening line concerning Ebenezer Scrooge’s erstwhile business partner: “Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.”

As is Jimmy Hoffa, we fully suppose.

Beyond that, however, lies a vast sea of question marks.

How was the fabled union boss, short, forceful, articulate and energetic, ushered into the hereafter, and by whom; and what was done with his earthly remains? All these remain stubborn mysteries.

They join the enigmas that have long surrounded Hoffa, even before his disappearance on July 30, 1975. How crooked was the Teamsters union which he led? How closely tied was Hoffa and other union bossmen to the Mafia? What really inspired his vitriolic hatred of Robert F. Kennedy, the attorney general who played relentless hound to Hoffa’s fleet-footed fox?

All of which brings us to this week’s news.

Authorities are digging up a field in Oakland Township, Mich., close to Detroit — the scene of Hoffa’s disappearance — in search of his body.

Again.

This search, triggered by comments from the son of a reputed Motor City crime boss, is only the latest. Previous percolations of the Hoffa legend have placed his corpus delicti in such colorful places as concrete pillars in the Meadowlands football stadium, inside a car sold as scrap metal, and “ground up in little pieces” and thrown into a Florida swamp.

So far at least, the Michigan field isn’t looking any less like a wild goose chase. The diggers have found a couple of concrete slabs, which seemed to verify the latest story, and a handful of animal bones.

But not Jimmy Hoffa’s.

Upon reflection, we’re not sure whether this is good or bad.

After all, how important is the ultimate fate of Jimmy Hoffa, 38 years after the fact? Virtually all of the political issues, legal questions, disputes and rumors of four decades ago are today, like old Marley, dead as a doornail.

As is, more than likely, the person who dispatched Hoffa.

Yet, mysteries fascinate.

We still wonder what happened to Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra way out there in the South Pacific. We still speculate whether there was a shooter on the grassy knoll in Dallas. We still contemplate whether Shakespeare was really Shakespeare.

We long for answers to these questions, and often spend millions of dollars seeking to provide them, yet are invariably disappointed when the answers are finally forthcoming, as in the identity of Deep Throat.

We rediscover that truth may indeed be stranger than fiction, but that fiction is almost always more fun.

We should just let poor old Jimmy Hoffa rest in peace in his unmarked grave, wherever it might be. We should let mysteries remain mysteries.

But, of course, we won’t.

Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News




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