September 1, 2014
Mitchell Berger, Esq.
Berger, Singerman
350 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33316

RE: Thanks a lot

Mr. Berger,

Thanks for ruining my Labor Day celebration.

I was a Teamster.

I personally paid dues to Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano at the local HQ on Bergenline Avenue in Union City, NJ. He was a remarkable guy who was known for 2 things: 1 – He was always good for a table of 10 at any decent charity dinner in Hudson County. The people who got the comped tickets were straight from the open call for a revival of “Guys and Dolls” and – 2- he gave new meaning to the term “Never take no for an answer”.

I negotiated with coals miners for 7 years.

The UMW tradition of coming up for lunch and putting 20 or 30 rounds into the side of the mountain was ongoing when I got there. If hand guns are ever banned in this country don’t worry about the South Bronx, Liberty City, or all of Chicago. Forget about “Boots on the Ground” in Iraq or Kafiristran. Harlan County, Kentucky and Herndon, West Virginia will be competing for the Charlton Heston “From my cold dead hands” award. Trust me.

I used to get empty mayonnaise jars filled with shine from my West Virginia miners. [There is a classic scene in John Ford’s “Fort Apache” involving Henry Fonda, Victor McLaglen and some confiscated, contrbandv whiskey. Since those 3 shared X Academy Awards it has to be good. Fonda asks McLaglen for his opinion of the whiskey. He takes a second drink while still grimacing from the first and says, “Well sir, it’s better than no whiskey at all”. After 3 decades its taste still astonishes my palate.]

I was going to kick back with some manatee sushi and some cheap red wine and think of the glory days of John Altgeld, Joe Hill, Samuel Gompers, Joe Yablonsky, Cesar Chavez, the SEIU thugs beating up old Black guys in wheelchairs, and the AFSCME goons telling the lady members of the Wisconsin legislature to go fuck themselves.

Then I read your blurb in the Sun Sentinel about the next Governor of Florida being able to have 4 low tides a day, to improve education by giving everyone a bachelor’s degree at birth, by doing away with both good and bad cholesterol by banning hogs and chocolate ice cream and by substituting Demerol and lidocaine with tofu, by introducing high speed public transit powered by excessive bovine and orvine eructations, and by guaranteeing the sanctity of our environment by giving manatees and alligators a preferential vote – no photo ID required.

You cite Winston Churchill, surely as famous a high school dropout as we have ever seen. Churchill was huge fan of Dr. Johnson – Samuel, not Lyndon. One of his great lines was “Such stupidity, sir, is not to be found in nature”.

To which I add, “Present company included”.

This note began life with one sentence:

On the 7th day I rested.

You are like the Sirens of yore. Irresistible.





Kevin Smith