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Sept 29, 1957: The LA Junior Chamber of Commerce held a mock funeral for “Smokey Joe” the backyard incinerator. City leaders had been after him for years as a scapegoat for the smog problem. Oh sure, they knew it wasn’t entirely his fault, but unlike the other suspects, cars for example, Smokey Joe was short, concrete, slow-moving.
LAT 10-1-57
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They’d already written his obituary, back in ’55. But Smokey Joe refused to go quietly. He told anybody who would listen that he was being set up by a powerful combustible-garbage collection racketeering syndicate. Over the next two years came allegations of corruption, bribery, blackjacking, guns, dire threats, mysterious witnesses who disappeared or were too scared to testify.
LAT 5-26-55
LAT 6-12-55
Mayor Poulson and the Board of Supervisors clashed over Smokey Joe. The Mayor didn’t like smog either, but he figures, maybe Smokey could just clean up his act a little. He accused one especially anti-Smokey supervisor, Herbert Legg, of trying to “blackjack” cities into killing off Smokey Joe in favor of trash collection systems pushed by Legg. Legg denied the charges.
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(Police Chief Parker, testifying at Mayor Poulson’s “investigation into alleged rubbish collection racketeering,” June 20, 1955).
But……in October 1955, garbage dump proprietor Andrew V. Hohn testified before the grand jury that he’d paid Legg’s field deputy George Turner two $5k bribes in exchange for 5 county garbage contracts, and that Legg later thanked him for the “package.” Turner, along with “refuse operator” Theodore Hamlin, was indicted on bribery charges. While Legg “admitted the existence of a vicious and ruthless monopoly in the garbage disposal business,” he denied any knowledge of bribery. In early 1956 Legg was brought up on perjury charges for lying to the grand jury. George Turner, who was to have been the prosecution’s key witness, eluded the process servers, and Legg was ultimately acquitted.
LAT 1-31-56
Turner and Hamlin came up for trial in March 1956, but the star witness for that case, Andrew V. Hohn, refused to testify, telling told the court gunman had broken into his house and threatened his family with death if he did. Without his testimony, the case collapsed.
LAT 3-19-56
Then there was the Assembly “Interim Committee on Governmental Efficiency & Economy,” who in May 1956 conducted a week-long probe into corruption in the Southland’s “garbage, rubbish and trash” industry. There were more allegations of bribes paid and citizens threatened, but nothing came of it except people who had been using the words “garbage,” “rubbish” and “trash” interchangeably learned that they were, in fact, three different things.
LAT 5-10-56
With Smokey Joe out of the way, homeowners wondered what to do with the corpse. The City recommended it be “bashed into small pieces with a sledgehammer and dropped into a five gallon can That way the remains could be carted away by municipal collectors on regular trash days.” (LAT 10-1-57). “In other words, pay my enemies to haul me off.” Smokey Joe really smoldered over that one.
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This guy had a better idea. Why not turn Smokey Joe into a barbeque? Haul out your breakfast nook table and a rubber air mattress, your newspaper and you’re living the California dream, smog-free, baby. Back in Ohio, they’re still shoveling snow off the ground…
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Some dames, though, couldn’t get over ol’ Joe that easily.
“What are you gonna do? Arrest me for smoking?”
***
And while some at city hall may have been breathing easier, scandals and inquires went on. Some people were starting to question why an incinerator been buried, not cremated. Others wondered why trash pickup was going to cost the city almost $1.5 million more than originally estimated. Then too, not everybody was happy about the willy-nillyness of L.A.’s garbage cans.
LAT 11-13-57
11-13-57
Plus, there was still smog…. But they couldn’t pin it on Smokey Joe this time.
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1958