E.H. "Boss" Crump

Translator's note: weed wacker is what Americans call wippersnippers.

I believe "weed whacker" is a brand name that's been Kleenex'd so publications still use other terms for the generic item

so now its illegal to share poppers with my friends?

No gods no mayors: come for the items, stay for the mayor

can a write in and tell you about my dad who is great actually he's had a big win lately.

No God's, No Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor s

“Items Thermidor” is beautiful

Ok, I'm going to need some disambiguation. Do you mean that Sam is your Paul Shaffer or do you mean he's your Paul Schäfer? There is a stark difference there.

god please do an episode about my bitch dad

While listening to this ep I had a mental image of a young mayor, confused by the changes happening in his body, small change appearing in his socks, smelly sweat under his sash, feeling the powerful urge to settle into a hall

desperately need a good plural noun for gimps. a binding of gimps? a chain of gimps?

Oh no! If you get a Sam on KJB he might get 009'ed. How horrible.

All of this leather talk and no one brought up Buzz Bissinger, a weird old WASP journalist who couldn’t deal with having various overlapping fetishes until it ruined him financially https://www.gq.com/story/buzz-bissinger-shopaholic-gucci-addiction AND is currently engaged in hostile ghostwriter drama with former mayor John Fetterman

when I hear about a politician who really likes quiet and cleanliness I immediately slam the big Johnny Gentle from Infinite Jest button

honestly surprised you guys didnt get into the baby theft stuff

My brain beat Nova to an RTS joke, the estrogen is working :D

Speaking of the dollop, You three as guests on the dollops newspaper spin off “the past times” would make my decade. They’ve never had any trans guests

The gun was jumped on when Randell is being impeached. The vote is Friday. I don't expect a correction on next week's pod, but there better be an update, Riley. Side note. London, KY is home to one of the largest if not the largest truck stops in the US. It also is know as the stolen car parts capitol of the US due to the Dixie Mafia and its proximity to I 75, which is the major north-south highway serving the Midwest and and the eastern edges of Kentucky and Tennesse, along with northwestern Georgia and all the way to Florida.

listen the way people drive there are worse ways to conceptualize memphis than “swamp mad max”

Hearing you guys say "weed eater" when people in the south pronounce it "wee-deeter" was fucking with my brain.

Yes Riley, "gimp suits" usually have feet/socks (sometimes attached, sometimes separate), but often yes we usually have boots on too. Also the suits are usually rubber, not leather. Source: gimp.

Been reading a lot about Tennessee in this time. Crump's influence didn't start and end at Memphis, because of the sheer quantity of votes he had at his command (Shelby County and the surrounding black rural counties would often vote by big margins for his chosen candidates) he was often able to unilaterally pick statewide Democratic nominees. He had a lot of sway with machines in rural East Tennessee as well, having made personal connections with the Biggses in Polk County and the Cantrells in McMinn County (two of the most infamously fraudulent and violent political rings of the era), and machine candidates would often win Shelby County and the machine provinces in the east. One of the few figures who could really match up to Crump in ambition and political sophistication was Gordon Browning, whom Crump reluctantly supported as governor in 1936 but they had a huge falling-out, partly over Crump refusing to cross Kenneth McKellar. When Browning came back in 1948 for governor, Crump had this to say about him in the local newspaper: "I have said before, and I repeat it now, that in the art galleries of Paris there are twenty-seven pictures of Judas Iscariot--none look alike but all resemble Gordon Browning; that neither his head, heart, nor hand can be trusted; that he would milk his neighbor's cow through a crack in the fence; that, of the two hundred and six bones in his body there isn't one that is genuine; that his heart has beaten over two billion times without a single sincere beat." Pretty harsh stuff! No wonder Crump was so determined to get Frank Clement to beat him in 52. Also wanted to mention that Crump supported Strom Thurmond in 1948, and it's very visible in Thurmond winning Shelby County and a nearby black-belt county while eating shit everywhere else

OMG I’m so glad it was finally Boss Crump’s turn! I was born and raised in another small Mississippi town just south of Memphis, and I heard about this dude from my dad constantly! Dad never had the good details - I know he would’ve mentioned the gimp suits if he’d known about them! - but he did his best with pre-internet gossip. Worth mentioning: every single gimp pawn yall mentioned has a major street named after him 😅

listen, like any podcast listener, i try to keep the parasocial appreciation in check but every week at least one of you just tells a story that is so endearing it’s really difficult to remain professional. (this week it’s nova and the parcel simulator game).

How dare you slander the best bioshock game. Delta is the best metal dad and loves all his daughters

When it comes to gimp suits it depends if they have covered the feet or not if it's a leather gimp suit you wouldn't have it going over your feet but you'd probably wear some big boots if it was a latex one sometimes they have socks made out of latex that have individual toes but it really does depend on the gimsuit hope that answers your question

when you mentioned the wrong house raid in retaliation for stolen property i realized i had heard about this whole situation before but hadn't put it together with Weddle https://youtu.be/Su2Wou1C0aU?si=erMo7ePwnU4TpBWQ

We all know the first Leatherman was the famous 19th century vagabond. Do some fact checking before making these kind of claims.

I legitmately thought the political cartoon had to be an edited anti-meme where the captions were replaced with literal descriptions. I don't know who the bachelors are, but given the time I'd imagine the baby hospital is a proto-nicu full of the new invention of incubators. Famously the inventor of them funded their operation by showcasing them in shops on midways (also since letting parents see their hospitalized kids wasn't really a thing yet, this also let parents keep an eye on them). Random people pay to see unusually small babies and there was more publicity for promoting like public health funding. I guess Memphis didn't have any midways so they had to use some kind of faternal organizationt to fund it instead.

Municipal meeting minutes include: "Items thermindor, Don’t left click on me dude, Eric Items, Wet bads, Consider the Gimp’s Foot, Sim City 1930, and The Tennessee Leather Authority." Reading this makes me feel like I'm having a stroke, or when you would accidentally land on one of those SEO hijacking sites that were just a massive wall of seemingly random text.

I’ve always referred to string trimmers as “weed whackers” but I’ve heard people call them “weed eaters” fairly often

Being a parcel today would be tough, but being a parcel in, like, 1920 would SUCK. You get stuffed into a canvas mail sack and thrown out the window of a speeding passenger train onto an iron hook.

“boss crump” sounds like one of those overwrought nicknames bluesky liberals use for donald trump

Quick question prompted by me saying out loud "this is the Memphis Augustus" are consuls of the roman republic mayor's?

Completely blindsided by the unknown (to me) backstory to Memphis Blues by W.C. Handy

Weed whacker !

A guy called Boss Crump dressed head to toe in leather sounds like a rogue trader era Ork Warboss

That's the most mayor-looking mfer I've ever seen. That is the platonic ideal of a Mayor

Hobart Buttery is of course distantly related to the famed architect Alison Postalwaithe-Buttery, inventor of the Buttery Staircase.

Darlings, Cory Doctorow is very much On Board... https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/02/act-locally/

Plack Blague is who you have to elect to get the leather oval office

Wow so this guy really did have WC Handy looking down over him.

I can’t speak for London (Kentucky or England), but in eastern Texas it’s a weed eater.

Point of order, Sam cut in three bars and the first three beats of the fourth bar hospital food. This instance of municipal bloat has been noted

is it just me or does shipping yourself in the mail feel sorta kink-adjacent

Given current events, have you considered doing an episode on Joko Widodo - former mayor of Surakarta turned president of Indonesia who was called the "little Suharto" for using the army against protestors?

The Heeyaah Experience - Are you Experienced *guitar riffs*

I'm still halfway through, have you done 'fine hand stitched leather mayor sash' yet?

CRUMP! Tennessee MENTIONED!

Yea, crump on it🧎‍♀️

how exacly was i not meant to immediatey click on the notification containing the name ‘EH Crump’