Sure, you could find a great deal, as auto executives lose their jobs and have to sell, and there are a lot of good golf courses up there, built, no doubt, to attract those same execs, and the weather can be very pleasant if you don't count black flies and mosquitoes. But -- and this is a big but -- you never know when a bunch of yahoos will show up on a Hoffa hunt.
This is an arcane sport in which teams of players, identifiable by their uniforms of black jackets with "FBI" in large letters on the back, drive cross-country in SUVs in pursuit of a large bulldozer. When they catch it, they stop and dig a big hole. If they don't find a body in the hole, they start over.
The holes are left for the disposition of whatever comes along, or as mosquito breeding grounds.
Hoffa hunting is a sport peculiar to Michigan, and its popularity increases in direct proportion to the nearness to the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, where, on a distant day in 1975, Mr. James R. Hoffa, former Teamsters president, former prison inmate, and former Nixon pardonee (What was he thinking?), vanished.
That this should have occurred was not then, nor is it now, viewed as any great loss to humanity.
Mr. Hoffa was, by most accounts, not a very nice person. His Teamsters Union was so infamous for crime and corruption that was ejected from the AFL-CIO, and he was pursued by the Justice Department, including the tenacious Bobby Kennedy when he was attorney general.
Convicted of bribery in 1967, Hoffa was pardoned by Nixon in 1971, with the proviso that he could not re-enter union politics. That, however, was exactly what he was attempting to do when he disappeared. The assumption is that his former associates didn't really want him back.
One might ask, though apparently no one has, "Why are we still looking for this guy?"
The fact that the search involves digging great holes in the ground would seem to indicate that the Feds believe Mr. Hoffa is dead. Otherwise, they would probably be looking in nursing homes, since he would presently be 92 years old.
In fact, though Hoffa hunting remains (no pun intended) centered on the Red Fox, it has taken some strange turns over the years. There have been reports that he is buried under home plate at Giants Stadium, (that should be easy to check out), in the Florida Everglades (alligators), a New Jersey landfill, and under various parts of the Interstate highway system.
Most of these locations were disclosed by former Hoffa cronies, usually in jail, looking for time off for good behavior. Since following their advice is a bit like the hounds using a map provided by the fox, it is not surprising that Mr. Hoffa has not been found. Oh, well, there are always the nursing homes.
The FBI has announced that the recent search on a Michigan farm cost about $500,000. This seems pretty low to me, considering the people and equipment involved. It probably doesn't include the Detroit police and dogs dragged in, or the 75,000-pound digging machine used to tear down a barn and excavate the four-inch concrete pad it stood on. Query: Does homeowner's insurance cover the replacement of a structure destroyed in the search for a body missing for 31 years?
Congressman Joe Knollenberg of Michigan has had the temerity to suggest that maybe all this isn't worth the expense. Watch out, the bulldozers may be headed for your yard next. Maybe, if you try really hard, you can think of some other way not to spend money.
The word leaking out of the FBI, and you have to look carefully to find it in the flood, is that the agent who finds Hoffa's body will make his bones, so to speak. He will achieve agency stardom, fame and promotion. This is why a bunch of guys who weren't even born when Hoffa disappeared are out digging holes. It gives a whole new meaning to "money pit."
If you're thinking of putting in a swimming pool, and you don't care about the workmanship or the possibility that your house may be torn down in the process, you might want to put out the word that Jimmy Hoffa is buried in your backyard. Then leave town for a few weeks. Or maybe, leave the country.
Fred Wolferman lives in Southern Pines. Contact him by e-mail at fwolferman@
sbcglobal.net.
