January 23, 2012 | Reviews

Herman “Soupy” Musgrave can usually be found on a subway car, bundled up in  dirty blankets, drinking Ripple, offering unhygienic tins of stew to baffled teenagers on lunch breaks from The Gap and alarming other passengers by starting small trash fires to warm himself by.

At 109 years of age, “Soupy” is America’s oldest boxcar hobo and while train-transit may have advanced over the years, Herman still gets a thrill out of riding the rolling  thunder, reliving the 1930’s and the glory days of railway bums.

We have a love of mass transport that goes all the way back to, well, a week ago when we hawked a monthly subway pass.

A few years back, while visiting all the cultural sites in Bessemer, Alabama (this is a bit misleading as there is only one cultural site of significance in Bessemer, Alabama and that’s a very historic sign  – since stolen and moved to another town, thereby contributing to its cultural significance) we heard a knock on the motel room door and there was a 100-year old Herman “Soupy” Musgrave asking if there were any odd jobs that needed doin’ in exchange for a hot meal (say, the beans pictured).

“Soupy” had of course outlived his capacity for useful work by about 40 years, but the front desk, who had grown unaccustomed to such visits in recent years, gladly led him in and fed him- not in the lobby, mind you, as that would be disrupting to paid guests, but by the dumpster.

It seemed the visit brought forth fond memories of the older locals – other itinerants who’d passed by, that they’d fed and indiscriminately slept with as teenagers.

We got to talking and stories he told could fill up countless pages (not here mind you, as our attention spans are limited): the romance of the rails, the beauty of wide-open America, the dysentery, the land-borne scurvy and the threats of constant murder and forcible sodomy from the other boxcar hobos are just a few of the gems Herman shared.

“Soupy” is a wanderer however, and it was impossible to keep him contented in the mock-boxcar constructed in a back yard by a Motel 6 handyman, that could not even reach the neighboring 7-Eleven without a wheel becoming dislodged.

He kept grumbling about “when this damn car is going down the line.”

It better be soon, as few live to reach their 111th year.

This is a list of the oldest verified people and here’s hoping they’re all eating Soupy’s dust before he bites it.

January 16, 2012 | Reviews

Gone are the days when unions focused mainly on keeping Jimmy Paycheck from stumbling into a blast furnace, or ensuring that a second opinion was sought whenever the phrase, “Yeah, that scaffolding’s probably safe” was uttered before a union-mandated three quarter hour cigarette break.

Usually, the best one can hope for out of a union boss is to be left alone as he goes about his business balancing the needs of his own wallet with those of the organized criminals to whom he is beholden.

Now, a new study looks at the one sector of the economy where they’ve really paid their dues (and not to unions) but could perhaps benefit from them.

Among New York City’s retail sector, where the customer is always right and attention must be paid to those  in over-sized jackets who waddle out the front door like penguins weighed down with loot -  only 30% receive health insurance through their jobs.

In the Bronx, the median hourly wage of $8/hr doesn’t even cover a pint in a nice bar (The newly-devised Shark Guy economic “cost of leisure” matrix)

Out of 400 + non-union respondents, according to the study’s author, “An extremely high number earn low wages that cannot even bring them to the federal poverty line”. Eerily, 70% of workers had completed some college or had earned a degree and only one fifth had a set work schedule each week, subsisting on 20 hours a week.

Striking a blow for the overworked, a Chicago woman fired for working during her lunch break, whose company had challenged her unemployment benefits on the grounds of insubordination, has won her court case.

The plaintiff, upon being told by a manager she needed a break,  replied that she had already punched out but “wanted to finish the extra work because she thought her break time was her own.” Fightin’ words.

The manager testified that they’d “asked her how she had taken a break when she remained sitting at the desk, answering phones and working on a spreadsheet.”