Usual Monday Bupkis

I was wondering about the spelling of that word.  Bupkis.  Apparently it is Yiddish.  There are alternate spelling forms.  Bubkes, Bopkus, etc.

So, Hizzonor, Mayor-for-life Marion Barry has gone to his reward.  The man loomed large over my formative years, being the ONLY mayor I knew of, Washington DC being the urban area of which the suburbs I trod orbitted.  The man did not like the police and it showed in the short shrift he gave them.  When the crack epidemic hit, the police had been neglected for years already and that's how Barry became mayor of the Murder Capitol of the World there for a time.

His disdain for law enforcement may extend from an incident in his youth.  Barry was an activist, full of beans, when he came across the grandfather of my shooting buddy, Corky.  Words were exchanged between the future mayor, Corky's grandpa, and his partner, until Barry spit on them.  This was the 1960s.  A paddy wagon was summoned, the three entered the paddy wagon, Marion Barry got the starch taken out via a hickory shampoo, then was sent on his way.  As far as the police were concerned, the matter was resolved and order was maintained.  Marion Barry recalled the incident for far longer and never let it go.