On His Way to Prison

In Washington D.C. on a gloomy drizzly March day, Chuckie O'Brien drove his step-father, Jimmy Hoffa, to the federal building to surrender to the U.S. marshals.

 "There's going to be a mob of media folk at the front door," Chuckie warned. "Let me drive you around back." 

Jimmy refused. "I never ran away from anybody and I'll be damned if I'm gonna start now. Drive this son of a bitch right up to the front door."

There March 7, 1967, Jimmy faced microphones and cameras. 

Afterwards, marshals prepared him for his 192-mile trip to the federal penitentiary. 

They handcuffed his wrists, put him in the back seat of a dark blue Pontiac, and chained his legs to the floor. 

Jimmy tucked his raincoat over his chained hands and legs, to conceal his humiliation.

from:

THAT PUNK JIMMY HOFFA!

  I Watched My Dad Beat the Teamsters

             A Daughter's Memoir

              by Marilyn June Coffey

Publication Date: July 30 

the date Hoffa "disappeared"

Howl!

Most days I don't think about the 30 years I lived in New York City, but some days I do. Like today, when flying through my mailbox came HOWL, 2016! containing poems, rants, and essays on the election of Donald Trump.

I'm not sure that the 65 contributors that editor Trish MacEnulty pulled together for this amazing book are New Yorkers. Some I know aren't. But the book reeks of sharp big city talk from its opening entry by Elisa Albo, an avalanche listing of sexual traumas, to its last entry by Ron Yrabedra and his memory of a burned child. 

My favorite, of course, is the piece written by Carole Rosenthal, and not just because we've been friends since the Sixties when we both taught at Pratt Institute. Even then, I admired Carole's imaginative writing. 

Her HOWL piece has the longest title in the book: "IN DREAMS BEGIN RESPONSIBILITIES: POST-ELECTION SEQUEL 2016 (thanks for the reminder, Delmore Schwartz)". Why does Carole mention Schwartz? A gifted New York writer, Schwartz is known for his famous story, "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities."  

Carole's story opens one evening "lolling on a nubby sofa with friends." It sounds realistic, but not for long. She forgets where she is, "After the Presidential election, it's been hard to locate myself." And we tumble with her into a dream that conveys the confusion and conflicts she feels, as she tries to solve the mystery of where she is and why there are strangers living in her New York apartment now.

At the end of her dream, she finds herself in her apartment, her husband lying "open-mouthed, a fleck of spittle on the corner of his lips." 

A bright full moon almost sinks into the cliffs of the Palisades outside her window. "Yet I'm terrified," she writes. "I cannot un-dream reality." 

Reality, in this case, being the Trump world we now occupy. 

Outside, "the moon keeps sinking."

The Get-Hoffa Squad

A Chattanooga jury deliberated for five hours after government prosecutors tried Jimmy Hoffa and five-codefendants for fixing a jury. 

For weeks, a web of maneuvers and counter-maneuvers had entangled the trial. But Jimmy, never singled out by the prosecutor, concluded he was innocent.

Even so, Jimmy's lawyers worked hard. One hurled thirty pieces of silver at the prosecutors. Another cried, "The government's case is a foul and filthy frame-up designed by the 'Get-Hoffa Squad.'" 

Bobby Kennedy and his chief FBI investigator, Walter Sheridan, belonged to the Get-Hoffa Squad, located in Washington, D.C. 

Then on March 4, 1964, the jury found Jimmy guilty of two counts. When he heard, the color drained from his face.

Sheridan bolted out of the courtroom, located a phone, and called Bobby.

"Guilty—two counts! We made it!" Sheridan reported.

"Nice work," Bobby said. And invited Sheridan to a victory party at the Kennedy home.

from:

THAT PUNK JIMMY HOFFA!

  I Watched My Dad Beat the Teamsters

             A Daughter's Memoir

              by Marilyn June Coffey

Publication Date: July 30 

the date Hoffa "disappeared"

Chadron

Spent the weekend in Chadron, Nebraska, a town pushing 6,000 located way up in the northwest corner of the state. It's so far from Omaha that its clocks move by Mountain Time. 

 

Traveling by car, I enjoyed the way picturesque stripes of white snow decorated the brown hills. Our oxygen level thinned as the elevation rose higher and higher, all the way to 3,400 feet. For a moment I thought we'd detoured into Colorado.

Sold a few books, spoke a few lines at the Nebraska Writers' Guild's 6 Corners of Nebraska held in the local library. Dropped into a noisy restaurant called The Ridge, and there I ate the best 8-ounce sirloin I've ever tasted. Superbly cooked medium rare, its bright pink center pushed to the edge of red. Cutting that steak felt like cutting butter.

Early the next morning, I set out by foot, surrounded by dozens of churches, hundreds of houses, many big, almost all tidy. And heard thousands of voices trilling in the morning air. Some I recognized, the raucous bluejays, cantankerous crows, hard working woodpeckers, plus a swarm of sparrows, a peck of pigeons, gaggle of geese—and a solitary rooster!

Packing up the SUV at dusk, I stopped to watch a solid gold sunset, the blaze at its core lifting into long slices of pink and purple. Standing sentinel, spindly lines of winter trees raised their skinny arms and bony fingers stiff in the night air, as though they waited only a breeze to cast circles in the night for their coven.  

City Folks

In 1929, my twenty-two-year-old Dad sat on Joe Howard's farm house porch with a half-dozen neighbors shucking corn. Joe turned to a neighbor. "I know its a bumper crop, but how we going to get it from here to Omaha?"

"Beats me, Joe. Didn't you take it last year?"

"I did." Husks rattled as Joe tore them off. "But I can't spare the time this year. Get up before dawn, drive until dusk, get to that burg at night, city folks crawling all around. Take a hotel for safety, get up before dawn, drive until dusk." 

Dad tilted his head to one side. "Did you see city folks everywhere you looked?"

"Ain't you ever been to Omaha?" Joe's face lit up. 

Dad shook his head and grabbed another ear of corn.

"Tell you what," Joe said, "I'll loan you my truck if you haul this corn to Omaha for us."

Dad beamed, grabbed Joe's hand and shook it.

He didn't know it,of course, but that hand shake took Dad one move closer to squaring off with Jimmy Hoffa.

from:

THAT PUNK JIMMY HOFFA!

  I Watched My Dad Beat the Teamsters

             A Daughter's Memoir

              by Marilyn June Coffey

Publication Date: July 30 

the date Hoffa "disappeared

Ten Times

Teresa's Statue

 

(Photo by Teresa's granddaughter Theresa Rosell Mason)

Teresa's Statue

I sometimes poo-poo that old saying: "A picture is worth a thousand words." Who knows how long that idea's been around: since 1911 claim Americans. But England calls the precept older—and theirs. As for  China? Its old saying is ten times ours: "A picture is worth TEN thousand words."

When I saw this photograph of the Teresa Martin statue in Concordia, Kansas, I doffed my hat to the Chinese. Although I hadn't seen Teresa for fifteen years and had never seen her as a child, she leaped out of her statue and wrapped herself, once more, around my heart.

Teresa must be in her element in Concordia, participating in yet another Orphan Train Reunion. She'll be surrounded by statues of orphan train riders in nearby LeDuc Memorial, Britt's Fountain and Gifts, and the Concordia American Legion. Among the statues: Father Paul Fangman. The National Orphan Train Complex, unveiled his image February 23.

Teresa, I know, would remember Father Fangman, who had celebrated Mass at her first Orphan Train Reunion in 1964. Here's what I wrote about that:

"Teresa didn't know he was an orphan, but he was. People in Raeville, an unincorporated village, took him. A skinny little man, Father Fangman didn't talk long, although he said he was born Jewish but raised Catholic. Teresa stirred. She wondered how he knew he was Jewish. The priest seemed nervous. He shook a lot and rushed through his words. Mostly he spoke about how he never tried to find his folks. Teresa wondered if he thought he should. Those who knew him seemed to love him. They called him Father Paulie." (from Mail-Order Kid by Marilyn June Coffey)

Father Paulie, indeed, laughed when he discovered he had been born Jewish. He found out when he was a lifelong Catholic and dedicated Catholic Priest. Teresa, later, would discover her Jewish heritage. This must have been frequent in New York where the best place to leave an unwanted baby was the New York Foundling Hospital, founded by Catholics.

written for:

a JoLt of CoFFeY 

 An Intermittent Newsletter

by Marilyn June Coffey

The author of:

A Cretan Cycle: "A single, sharp, funny story in verse" retells the Minotaur's myth 

Great Plains Patchwork: A lyric tale of the "wondrous strange" great plains

JackJack & JuneBug: A steamy, poignant love story (with Jack Loscutoff)

Mail-Order Kid: A popular biography of Teresa Martin, an orphan train rider

Marcella: A controversial, internationally published coming-of-age novel

Mas - tur - ba - tion: A rollicking tract on a "quite inexhaustible" subject

Pricksongs: A libidinous collection of tart poems from the turbulent sixties

That Punk Jimmy Hoffa: A memoir depicts how Coffey's father beat Hoffa

The Battle of Orleans: A documentary about a hotly disputed Marcella reading 

Thieves, Rascals & Sore Losers: Details the dirty deals that helped settle Nebraska

& publisher of Jack Loscutoff's latest books:

Aunt Gussie's Socks: A Russian-American based memoir (in fact and fiction)

A Line of Shorts: The breezy short stories and holy satires of an awesome wordsmith

Buy Coffey's & Loscutoff's books: 

from www.marilyncoffey.net  or  www.jackloscutoff.com  or  http://amazon.com/

Want to get off this mailing list? 

Reply and write REMOVE in the subject line.

Warm wishes,

Marilyn

Marilyn June Coffey

Barney

He weighed 325 pounds, used his girth to bump people into place in picket lines and to bounce offending taxicabs into the river. 

He ate gargantuan meals, paying $15 to $30 each ($136 to $272 in 2017 dollars). 

And he drove a brand-new, bright red Cadillac convertible, a gift. On the front seat lay a shotgun, cleaned, primed and ready to go. A sign on the back bumper read "Clergy" to avoid tickets. 

His name was Robert B. "Barney" Baker and he was Hoffa's toughest hoodlum, a twice-convicted thug, once a prizefighter, a strong-arm man on New York docks, a bouncer. 

Hoffa sent Barney to Alma to organize my father's Coffey's Transfer.

Dad and Barney argued.

"You know you need signatures from fifty-one per cent of my men," Dad said, "before you can claim to represent them legally."

"Dat don matter." Barney shrugged. "Hoffa sez weeze gonna organize yooze from the top down." The huge thug drew a line with his forefinger from his forehead to his belly as though he had filleted a trout.

from:

THAT PUNK JIMMY HOFFA!

  I Watched My Dad Beat the Teamsters

             A Daughter's Memoir

              by Marilyn June Coffey

Publication Date: July 30 

the date Hoffa "disappeared"