September 1917. France. He’s flying a SPAD S.VII, a part of the fighter group known as the Lafayette Escadrille. Four bombers and 16 Fokkers identified. A Furbal ensues. [1]
The SPAD S.VII
The Chattahoochee River’s highest headwaters emerge from a tiny spring a-way up in the Blue Ridge range of the Appalachian Mountains in north-eastern Georgia, along the Appalachian Trail. From there, the river grows as it meanders, turning muddier and ever more sluggish.
It winds southwest, becoming the largest river in Georgia. It joins the Flint River near the Florida border. Downstream of that confluence, it’s called the Apalachicola. (I like saying that name.) That river creeps down to the Gulf of Mexico, forming the time zone boundary between Eastern and Central as it flows through Florida’s Panhandle. [2]
Far upstream, the Chattahoochee wanders through the northwest suburbs of Atlanta before slithering more westward, eventually forming part of the natural border between Georgia and Alabama. In Columbus, Georgia—not far from FDR’s Warm Springs—the Chattahoochee separates that city from the much smaller Phenix City, Alabama.
It was there, in Columbus, on October 12, 1895, that Eugene James Bullard was born, the 7th of 10 children, to William Bullard (who had been a slave) and Josephine Thomas, who was of mixed black and Muscogee Creek Amerindian ancestry. [some say October 6]
Dropping out of a cloud he catches a Fokker unawares and squares up behind it. He fires. Then again. Debris of wing fabric. The prey begins descending rapidly, nearly lifeless, unable to keep altitude. He chases it, across enemy lines, diving to confirm the kill.
Growing up in some of the worst Jim Crow years was difficult – traumatic – for young Eugene. He was heavily influenced by his father, who carried a strong opinion that, despite their circumstances, Blacks must maintain dignity and self-respect. At age 8 young Eugene witnessed a mob of drunken whites try to lynch his father, a sight and experience that affected him deeply… and forever.
His dad also told of his children about places like France (which had banned slavery in 1818) where blacks were treated the same as whites.
As Eugene would later write: “My father had told me about France, where a man was judged by his merit, not the color of his skin. And that was where I wanted to go.”
Young Eugene fledged quite early. Yearning for freedom, he ran away at age 11 after completing the 5th grade – the end of his formal education. No, he didn’t’ quite join the circus, or go to France. At least not right away. He joined a traveling group of Roma, [3] “touring” Georgia as a sort of traveling road show, the “Gypsy” clan, who called themselves “Stanleys”, also told him about the Black/White racial equality they’d seen in Britain (which outlawed slavery in 1833). [4]
Suddenly he hears whop!-whop!-whop! Then again. Again. He’s taking fire. Bullets. So many bullets whizzing. The taut muslin fabric of his wings are perforated. Then … a series of metallic “twang” sounds. Rounds striking the SPAD’s engine — it almost immediately begins backfiring, sputtering, and spewing black smoke.
Always with Europe on his mind, he made his way to the Atlantic Coast, taking odd jobs, even winning races as a horse jockey. He made his way to Virginia. There in Norfolk, in 1912, he managed to stowaway on a German steamship, the Marta Russ, bound for Hamburg. The route included a stop in Aberdeen, Scotland. That’s where Eugene disembarked.
He was pleasantly surprised to learn what he’d heard was true. He wasn’t seen as a Black man, he was seen, and accepted, simply as a US American. He was eager to get active and fit in.
He joined a boxing club. He worked in Vaudeville-style shows, performing in a Black troupe called the “Freedman Pickaninnies.” They drew guffaws and laughs with slapstick acts and insights into US culture, especially racism. As a boxer, he spent time training with Aaron Brown, AKA the Dixie Kid, who had taken his great career to Europe. Eugene became a very good boxer, eventually going on tour to fight in places like Paris.
Ahhh, Paris. That was his goal all along: France. He would stay there. He’d be French. He even changed his middle name to Jacques.
He’s over enemy lines. He turns his gasping SPAD, limping along, back toward the French lines. To relative safety. He scans the ground to get his bearings. Then — the engine quits. Completely. Rapidly losing altitude. Looking, looking. There! An open muddy field. Perhaps a hundred yards wide. … In No-man’s land. Going down. [5]
Proudly wearing the Croix de Guerre
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, triggered a chain reaction of catastrophic decisions and ultimatums, fueled by reckless nationalism, that led to the Great War—later called World War I.
Eugene volunteered for the French Foreign Legion. He first saw combat with the 1st Moroccan Division. After heavy losses, the unit was folded into others, and Eugene was reassigned to the 170th Infantry Regiment. There, he earned the nickname “The Black Swallow of Death.” The regiment’s symbol was a swallow; he was Black; and he had proven himself highly effective in battle. [6]
At the Battle of Verdun in 1916, Bullard was seriously injured when a shell exploded nearby. He lost most of his teeth and had a gaping shrapnel wound in his thigh. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre. In recovery several doctors told him he’d never walk again.
He heard, but didn’t listen.
The Croix de Guerre
Knowing his leg injury would make infantry service impossible, he set a new goal: join the French Air Corps. [7]
He applied. Based on his battle record, he was accepted. In November,1916, after his recovery and rehab, he entered the Aéronautique Militaire. Eugene Bullard was now on his path to become the first Black fighter pilot in history.
He completed flight training in the summer of 1917. He flew his first combat mission on September 8.
In No Man’s Land. Bullets zipping over his head, buzzing around him. He scrambles from the wreckage into a conveniently nearby shell crater. Wet. Alone. Dusk comes. He shivers. Then Darkness. Cold. An eerie silence settles over No-man’s Land.
In the stillness he hears faint noises. Voices? Is that French? Yes – French! His pupils are wide. A group of soldiers with horses is coming his way to recover the SPAD. Leading them is, coincidentally, his own aircraft mechanic. The horses lug the crippled plane to the forest line. And, they rescue Bullard.
Bullard flew at least 20 combat missions from September to November (some say 22, and others even up to 29) with 2 very likely kills (not confirmed; he and others saw the targets in a “death spiral” but were unable to witness impact). His first kill led to he, himself, getting shot down … as noted here.
Despite his successes his flying career ended abruptly when a French officer insulted him and, after a brief verbal exchange, challenged him to a fight. Bad idea. Bullard’s boxing skills quickly ended the tête-à-tête — but the win cost him his wings. He was immediately dismissed from the Air Corps and reassigned to the 170th Regiment for non-combat duties.
Now fully French, Bullard remained after the Armistice. He boxed professionally. He helped found, then outright own, a nightclub: Le Grand Duc. [9] He became a jazz band drummer – leading to friendships with both Josephine Baker and Louie Armstrong. [8]
Also fluent in German, Bullard was recruited as a spy in the late 1930s. Nazis often visited his club, assuming he posed no threat. Meanwhile, he quietly gathered intel in plain sight.
May 10, 1940. Nazis sweep through the Netherlands and Belgium, then turn to cut off Paris from the coast. France is desperate. Forty-three-year-old Eugene Bullard joins the French 51st Infantry in its futile defense of Orleans, 80 miles southwest of Paris. It’s a important location, lying at a strategic point on the Loire River. [10]
Again, he’s seriously wounded. It’s time to go.
As France fell, Bullard fled with his two daughters and settled in New York. There, no one knew of his heroic past. He didn’t bother to tell them. He lived in relative anonymity for the rest of his life, working various jobs until he eventually got a steady and good paying one: an elevator operator at Rockefeller Center. [11]
August 27, 1949. A concert in Peekskill, NY to benefit the Civil Rights Congress. Attendees, nearly all Black, were viciously attacked by a white mob – among them members of Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion and even local and state law enforcement officials. Eugene Bullard was among many dozen severely beaten with baseball bats and rocks.
In October, 1961 Bullard had just turned 66 years old. After a life of facing war, racism, injury, and obscurity, he faced his final battle: stomach cancer. Father Time is undefeated. On the 12th day of the month this hero, the Black Swallow of Death, “slipped the surly bonds of Earth.”
Bullard statue, Warner Robins Museum of Aviation
Afterward:
Eugene Jacques Bullard is buried in the French War Veterans’ section of Flushing Cemetery, in Queens. He received a total of 14 decorations and medals from the French Government. His friend Louis Armstrong rests nearby.
Posthumous recognition:
Bullard’s plaque at the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame
1989: part of the inaugural class of the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame.
1994: commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Air Force.
2019: Statue of Bullard unveiled at the Warner Robins Museum of Aviation, GA
2022: Inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, in Dayton, OH.
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
Footnotes and such:
[1] The SPAD S.VII C.1 was the first in a series of single-seat biplane fighter aircraft produced by Société Pour L’Aviation et ses Dérivés (SPAD) during the First World War.
The Lafayette Escadrille was part of the French Airforce made up largely of US American volunteers. It was named for the US Revolutionary war hero, the Marquis de Lafayette, a young French nobleman who volunteered to serve with General Washington.
Furbal – fighter pilot term for a sky full of fighters from each belligerent, each plane maneuvering aggressively trying to shoot down the others’ planes. I imagine they looked like chaos from both the ground and the air.
[2] Only one country calls it the “Gulf of ‘murica.” So, Mexico it shall be here. I do have international readers.
[3] Formerly more commonly called “gypies”; this term is considered pejorative and impolite. Many Roma (also Travelers) had come to the New World via the UK, many sent over just sent to get rid of them.
[4] Not for blacks, but there was prejudice against the Roma. The traveling Roma: in that sense it sort of WAS like joining the circus. Read about Roma Traveling road shows.
[5] No-man’s land: in WWI western front vernacular, the area between the front-line trenches of each side, esp. between the French and/or English lines and the German lines.
[6] Looks like Bullard probably had to wait until October, when he was old enough to voluntarily commit to this.
He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his service with the 170th in Verdun
[7] There were at least 750,000 casualties in the Battle of Verdun. Some say up to one million. Among these were 300,000 combat deaths.
[8] Josephine Baker is a very, very interesting historical figure, indeed. And worthy of her own bio-graphical “strong woman” essay. Her life’s path was not dissimilar to Bullard’s. Originally US American, bigotry and racism drove her to settle in France after her experiences in Paris during a tour. There she was a highly accepted and respected performer. She worked in the French Resistance and the Red Cross during WW2, thereby also earning the Croix de Guerre.
[9] The Grand Duke
[10] Orleans, famed for Joan d’Arc liberating it during the 100 Years War, was used by Nazis as a transportation, communication and logistics hub until it was liberated in August, 1944 – more than 3 months after the D-Day at Normandy.
France signed an armistice with the Nazis on June 22. Total capitulation.
[11] Eugene Bullard married in France to an exquisite well-bred woman from a family of high society. They got along well and had two daughters. Unfortunately their backgrounds were just too different and the marriage failed. She relinquished custody to him. Good thing. One shudders to think of what could have happened to two young mixed-race girls when Nazi lads laid their eyes upon them.
When we US Americans [1] think of food and the Thanksgiving holiday, the vast majority will first think of turkey. Not far down the list many will also have cranberry sauce. A joke in our family is that Lime Jello-mold is still missing, but that’s a family joke for another essay.
Of the 103 colonists who arrived at Plymouth in 1620, only 53 survived until the following fall. In celebration of a healthy harvest, and their own survival, the first Thanksgiving of Europeans on the new continent was held in early November, 1621. Little more is known, but two surviving accounts by Puritans state that the ceremony was celebrated with the local native Wampanoags.
For 12,000 years the Wampanoags had dwelt along the northeast coastal areas of the current USA, mostly in what is today the states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
They developed great local knowledge, shared by oral tradition over 100s of generations. This included knowledge of all the native plants, and how to use them. Among them were cranberries.
Land of the Wampanoags. New England Massachusetts and Rhode Island
The cranberry bush is rugged. It thrives in harsh, cool conditions, often near the sea, especially in acidic, sandy and salty soils. They do well in, and near, marshy bogs.
It seems quite likely to this author that cranberries were present at this “first” Thanksgiving. But not cranberry sauce. Wait about 300 years.
We really enjoy the fruit at our house. Well, actually, we like the dried and sweetened product called “craisins.” Cranberries themselves are naturally tart, hence the sweetening. In addition to noshing on a handful from time to time, I add them to salads and even breakfast, either on yogurt or on cereals (my wife makes an awesome Muesli, but I sometimes throw a few in).
Our Colorado grandson, a frequent visitor, knows right where they are. One of his first destinations upon arrival is usually the pantry and shelf where we keep them. He’ll eat a pound if we let him. When we remember, we keep the pantry locked when he’s coming over. [2]
The Wampanoag had many recipes with cranberries, including pemmican, a high-calorie mixture of fat, protein and dried fruits that kept well over the winter, and on hunting expeditions. They were also used for dyeing.
Cranberry harvest season is late summer and early autumn. Pemmican was prepared before winter, and dyeing was done during winter. The berries are packed with nutrients and offer numerous health benefits. They contain antioxidants, flavonoids, and phenolic acids, which help prevent urinary tract infections. They support cardiovascular health and regulate the immune system. Cranberries have also been shown to have anti-cancer properties, promote dental health, and support gut health. And shown to reduce LDL cholesterol. Eat more cranberries!
New Jersey Climate Areas
Cranberries are also native to the nearby coastal and pine barrens regions of New Jersey. It’s on the cooler end of the temperate climates. This climate has matches in southern Quebec on out to the ocean, and parts of Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. The plant is also native to Quebec, but are now grown most prolifically in those 3 “non-native” states. In fact, most are now grown in the Badger State.
US-Americans consume 400 million pounds of cranberries each year. Twenty percent are eaten during Thanksgiving week.
On December 7, 1864, Elizabeth Fee, a first-generation US-American, was born to Irish immigrants John and Mary (O’Hagen) Fee in New York. It’s not hard to imagine they came across as a consequence of the great potato famines in the years 1845-51. And also because of the atrocious treatment of the Irish by the ruling imperialistic Brits. [3]
Elizabeth was the last of Mary and John’s three children, after James and Martha, 2 and 5 years older, respectively. Martha, as we’ll see, went on to play a large role in Elizabeth’s life. Elizabeth’s siblings were born in New Jersey, which would go on to be their life-long home. I am not sure why Elizabeth was born in New York. [4]
We first find the family documented in 1860, in Bordentown, NJ. John is a “Laborer” with a net worth of $100. The family’s residence was here for many years.
We find no further family information until 1880. And, even then, Elizabeth remains elusive; still no record of her. Only Martha, who worked as a house maid servant in Freehold, NJ. She soon thereafter married Frank Howard Bills, a watchmaker, in 1881. They settled in Bordentown, NJ. A son, Enoch arrived in 1883. Enoch was Frank’s father’s name.
For genealogists and researchers (like me) 1890 was an empty year & 1896 was a very sad year. The US 1890 census records were destroyed in 1896 when a fire swept through the Commerce Building. ☹
Starting in 1900 Elizabeth finally shows up in records, and regularly. Usually as a dressmaker or dress designer, and always living with her sister, Martha. At one point she is listed as Designer/ Women’s Garments.
Dressmaking (seamstress) and watchmaking (and repairs) were pretty big deals in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. Textiles was a huge industry at the time in the US, and all manners of talent were required. The industrial age evolved to bring the era of precise time keeping. Economies ran on production and consumption; production and transportation of goods ran on ever tighter time schedules. This was before the widespread use of wristwatches, which, at the time, were considered rather a novelty item and only for women. Pocket watches were the norm.
We find Elizabeth again in 1905 (then going by “Lizzie”, but not for long) and 1915. She also appears in 1910 and ’20. Occupation: dressmaker. [NJ census, and US census]
Late in the first decade of the 20th century, Enoch – Elizabeth’s nephew and housemate, both living with her sister Martha in Bordentown – began growing blueberries over near New Egypt, NJ, along the fertile fields of Ocean County. As such, he and his aunt Elizabeth also became aware of the commercial potential of growing cranberries near there. By 1911 Elizabeth had acquired a large acreage of promising cranberry land nearby. Thus she began her great cranberry enterprise.
Cranberries do not need a bog to thrive. They grow along the mossy edges of moist woods, meadows, creeks, rivers and swamps. They even can be found growing in sand dunes near the beach. They tend to prefer sandy soils and certainly acidic soil.
After some early success selling cranberries, around 1912 Elizabeth started experimenting with making cranberry jellies. One reason given is that she wanted to develop a product to extend the selling/buying season throughout the year. Her special recipe eventually became the sauce we know well and associate with Thanksgiving.
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Other local cranberry growers were doing well and experimenting with the fruit; among them were Marcus Urann and John Makepeace. Urann also experimented with jellies and developed a process for canning the product.
In 1912, Elizabeth hit on the idea of using “reject” imperfect berries to make her jelly. Experimenting with berry concoctions of secret local ingredients, and sugar, she soon had it perfected.
From approximately 1910 to 1920, Martha’s husband, Frank Bills, is generally not living with his family. He may have first left to find better employment. First, he’s 20 or 30 miles away, in New Egypt, occupation: Cranberry Grower. Later, he’s living near New Egypt, out in the unincorporated parts of the county; occupation: laborer on his “own farm.” We deduce the operation has grown quite large and the family – at least Frank and Enoch – have completely committed to Elizabeth’s business. Enoch, still living with his mom Martha, sometimes working as a “structural engineer” with Newton AK Bugbee, in Trenton.
“She was so impressed with her creation that she took a few cases of it to Philadelphia to find an investor to buy and sell her sauce. However, no investors saw her, and because she didn’t want to carry the crates of sauce back to New Egypt, she left them there. By the time she returned to New Egypt, a phone call was waiting for her to inform her that an investor tasted her sauce and loved it and made an order of 500 cases. So, she got to cooking. She bought up all surplus berries from local cranberry bogs, and eventually had to relocate out of her kitchen and into an old chicken coop…” — https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC61Q5D.
Around 1913 the three big cranberry growers – Elizabeth, Makepeace and Urann – began collaborating, mostly sharing ideas on growing, jellies and marketing. Informal posts on the web suggest Makepeace was, or had been, in business with an Albert Westbrook Lee, a haberdasher of Trenton, NJ; he’d recently lost his wife, Mary, in 1910.
In any case, a relationship developed between Elizabeth and Albert; they were wed February 14, 1914 (Valentine’s Day). Albert was some 8 years older. Sadly, he passed away just 14 months later, April 23, 1915. She never remarried.
National “Eat a Cranberry Day” is November 23. Right before Thanksgiving!
As she progressed with her jellies, working in New Egypt, NJ, she renamed her company Bog Sauce.
All three collaborators were running their own businesses, Elizabeth (now Lee) soon again changed hers to Bog Sweets Cranberry Sauce. Urann occasionally operated as Ocean Spray Cranberries. Each had large and expanding operations.
Enoch also endured a very short marriage. On July 24, 1917 he wed Emma Rogers Cowperthwait of Medford, NJ, shortly after registering for the draft. (US entered WWI in April that year). Very sadly, Emma passed away on November 24, that same year. Coincidentally just 2 days after Thanksgiving Day.
According to the South Florida Reporter (March 23, 2024) … “canned cranberry sauce got its start in 1912 when cranberry growers Marcus L. Urann and Elizabeth Lee started working together to create a jellied sauce, which was concocted by boiling bruised berries from the bog. (say that 3 times fast, <BBBB>)”
Trucks deliver the good for the co-op, Cranberry Canners, Inc
In 1930 the three formally united, forming a cooperative called Cranberry Canners, Inc. From the name (Canners) we deduce that they were likely big into cranberry sauce. Along the timeline, the product name was changed from jelly to sauce.
Almost immediately upon joining together, the 3 began joint work on developing and marketing cranberry juice. Under a law passed by the New Jersey State Legislature in 2022, Cranberry Juice is the official state drink. The same law declared that Elizabeth Fee is the inventor of cranberry sauce.
In this sense, a co-op is owned by its members and operated for their benefit. In an economic sense, they’ll cooperate on any, up to all, aspects of the business. Procurement, processing, delivery, marketing, fundraising.
I have an ancestral line from a wine making valley some 25 km east of Stuttgart. They were in what was effectively a community cooperative. They shared equipment to press the grapes, ferment and age the wine, and get the wine to the market town of Feuerbach, just outside Stuttgart’s northern border. [Now consumed by Stuttgart, thus losing any physical manifestation of its legacy].
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After starting as “at school” (1900 census), Enoch’s occupation flips back-and-forth from “draughtsman” to a “structural engineer” and “contractor “, then finally just “cranberries.” I surmise he’s drafting and building additional cranberry processing plants. The colorized photo suggests they were enormous. (Draughtsman is an older USA spelling of Draftsman; also still used by the British).
Although cranberries need not be grown in bogs, this does make them easier to harvest. Because of this Cranberry “fields” are often flooded at harvest time to make an artificial bog. Elizabeth invented devices for harvesting and processing her cranberries.
Plant #3, Elizabeth Lee’s Cranberry Canners
The four (Elizabeth, Makepeace, Urann and nephew Enoch) formed the co-op’s leadership. Elizabeth was the operations vice president; Enoch ran the processing facilities.
In 1959 the cooperative changed its name to Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. Over the decades they’ve recruited new members from among cranberry growers in Wisconsin, Washington and Oregon states. They built processing plants there, too. Although cranberries are native to the US Northeast, far more Ocean Spray cranberries are grown in those states than in New Jersey and Massachusetts.
The cooperative now has over 1,000 members, growers of both cranberries and grapefruit, including in Canada.
Curious factoid about the name. Urann had used the “Ocean Spray” name briefly before, in the 1910s, and was attached to the image of “Ocean Spray.” Although he was two years into technical retirement by 1959, his encouragement led to the name change. However, the name’s trademark was owned by a fish company in Oregon. Ocean Spray bought the name.
Elizabeth Lee was the first treasurer of a local military support organization, The National Security League of Bordentown, beginning with the US entry into World War I. Often providing care packages to sailors. The port of Camden was nearby, with its naval shipbuilding enterprise. Many embarked to go “over there” from Camden, including the original battleship New Jersey which was in port there at least once.
“Born Tart. Raised Bold” TM, motto of Ocean Spray.
Applies to many strong women. Elizabeth Fee Lee as well.
Elizabeth Lee, probably early 1930s
Through the 1930s Elizabeth’s role in the operation slowly dwindled, although she remained vice-president because of her decades of experience in the business. She did very well financially; she had a “palatial summer home” on the coast, in Sea Girt.
She passed away April 22, 1942, at her sister Martha’s house after a brief illness, age 77. She was Roman Catholic. Not surprising at 100% Irish. She was interred at St Mary’s Cemetery in her longtime hometown of Bordentown after a private Requiem Mass at St Mary’s church.
Up until now she’s mostly only remembered as the Cranberry Queen. I’ve tried to add some meat to the skeletal remains of what memory there is of her. A remarkable woman, who “made her bones” after arriving in her middle age.
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
Some notes:
[1] From the recent re-naming of the body of water formerly known as Gulf of Mexico, I am now trying to use “America” to refer to the 2 continents stretching from Tierra del Fuego and the Straits of Magellan, to well above the Arctic Circle. The country formerly commonly referred to as simply “America” is now some variation of USA, as appropriate. In the opening lines I used US-America.
[3] Likely he arrived aboard the SS Hancock in New York, September 21, 1850. “United States, Famine Irish Passenger Index, 1846-1851”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KDXT-3NJ : Fri Feb 14 23:38:06 UTC 2025), Entry for John Fee, 21 Sep 1850.
And Mary arrived November 11, that year aboard the Princeton
[4] Likely the family made a stay in NY, perhaps with relatives for a spell, to get through some financial or health hardships.
[5] Enoch wed Emma Rogers Cowperthwait, July 24, 1917. Shortly after registering for the draft, earlier that month. Sadly, Emma passed away, November 24, that same year. Finding no other records, I presume he never remarried.
Sources/bibliography. Mostly old census data and newspapers. Also: Find A Grave. And found stuff on a few random sites, like Reddit threads, and even a couple of Facebook pages. Familysearch.org (LDS) has gobs of data, and it’s free, but Elizabeth Lee isn’t found in many places in the records. And they have not yet scanned all records. The Library of Congress, also free, has tons of newspapers (and other stuff), but filtering through them is not easy. Newspapers.com has easier searching tools, but not as many as the LoC and it’s quite expensive.
General family timeline and references
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Martha Fee born (Elizabeth’s Sister), March 24, 1857, parents John and Mary, [“New Jersey, Births and Christenings, 1660-1980”, , FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FZQZ-R9Z : 18 January 2020), Martha Fee, 1857.]
Martha born 1858, per soc sec data
Fee and Bills families locations, US Census 1860 {no good access to 1870 census data yet}
Martha and Frank Bills locations, US Census 1880
Martha marries Frank Howard Bills, New Holly News
Enoch Franklin Bills born, July 23, 1882, various, FindAGrave
Sisters Martha and Elizabeth living with 3 kids in Bordentown, 1885 New Jersey census, Frank living as boarder in Trenton
1890 census – sadly destroyed in the US Commerce Department building fire, 1896
Enoch Bills is a boarder in Brooklyn, NY, with occupation Architect/Drafter, 1905 New York state census
Elizabeth Fee is living with sister Martha in Bordentown, NJ 1905 census
All together in Bordentown, still Frank is gone; Martha’s son William shows up (9), 1910 US Census
Elizabeth weds Albert Westbrook Lee, Feb 18, 1914, Mount Holly News
Albert W Lee passes away, July, 1915, Find a Grave and FamilySearch.org
Enoch registers for draft, July 23, 1917, US Draft Registration Records
Enoch weds Emma Rogers Cowperthwait, July 24, 1917, New Holly News
Emma Lee (nee Cowperthwait) passes away, November 24, 1917, New Holly News
Enoch selected for jury duty until end of December, December 10, 1917, New Holly News
All living together, even Frank is not missing, Occupations: Elizabeth, Cranberry Bog, Enoch, Manufacturing, Frank, Cranberries, US Census, 1930
Enoch Franklin Bills passes away, February 21, 1966, US GeneologyBank Historical newspaper Obituaries
Elizabeth is an extremely enigmatic person. When I came across a very brief account of her success, I thought “here’s a great strong-woman essay just waiting to be written.” I thought this would be a simple essay/biopic, like many others. Get some facts, make her an interesting person, and pound it out.
No. In fact, there’s only one extant picture of her. Scarce details scattered in odd corners. Was she a tomboy? Did she face adversity? Yes, she married at a mature age, and her husband soon died. What else? Romances? Travels? Just about nothing.
The historical societies of New Egypt, NJ and Ocean County (where she rose to fame and fortune) had nothing except very, very top level info. They told me simply: “She was a very private person.”
Almost all info herein was mined from hundreds of records and newspapers of that era. Scads of internet sites, but they simply repeated the same meager info.
Stunning how much census records and official records like birth, marriage and death turned up completely empty on her. Even her maiden name and parents were very difficult to find.
Note: AI is not to be trusted in these situations. You’ll get poor info and blind alleys.
Nonetheless, I was able to scrape together just enough to complete this bio-essay. I’ve sent a shorter version of this – strictly bio, no humor, no Amerindians, no grandsons, no cranberries – to the Ocean County Historical Society.
Death Announcement Camden Morning Post, sadly WordPress imports are lossy and I can’t figure out how to fix it.
She even cheated a bit on her gravestone, 1865, not 1864.
Found this in the Mount Holly News, February 24, 1914. Mount Holly is about 5 miles from Bordentown.
Wedding announcement, Mount Holly News
Elizabeth serving on National Security League
Mount Holly News, April 9, 1918. It is interesting that Rev Charles Malloy was also on the committee. He had married Elizabeth and Albert Lee just a few years before.
“That’s the $64,000 question!” This once-common expression, now used primarily by oldies (like me), was a response to a challenging query or conundrum. Its origins trace back to a wildly popular 1950s game show, The $64,000 Question, wherein contestants answered increasingly difficult questions, doubling their winnings with each correct answer. The ultimate reward? Of course, a grand prize of $64,000.
Television game shows have been a standard component of American TV since its earliest days. The genre began with simple question-and-answer formats like Quiz Kids and Truth or Consequences, which included live studio excitement. The quiz show format hit a golden era in the ‘50s. Such shows grew popular, with their “reality” feel which showcased wits, knowledge and cash.
The $64,000 Question was enormously popular from the get-go. Starting at 10PM Eastern Time on Thursday nights, the following cultural statistics dropped dramitically on Thursday evenings: movie theater attendance, other shows’ ratings, crime, car crashes, and long-distance phone calls. Within a year sponsor Revlon had tripled its sales.
However, the genre faced a major hit from scandal when it was revealed that parts of some episodes were rigged. This led to a decline in popularity. The Revson brothers, Charles and Joseph, who had co-founded the Revlon cosmetics company that sponsored $64,000 became very involved in influencing production of the shows, especially Charles. Answers were sometimes provided a priori to some contestants deemed to have “audience appeal” … perhaps based on Nielson Ratings, which began in 1950.
The scandals led to congressional hearings, damage to all game show viewership, and strict regulations. [1]
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Joyce Diane Bauer – born in Brooklyn, NY, on October 29, 1927 – was the eldest of two daughters born to Jewish parents, both lawyers: Morris K. Bauer and Estelle Rapport. They had hoped for a boy – the name Joseph had been selected. “Joyce” would do. She was raised by her highly intelligent parents without any regard to her gender. With highly accomplished parents, and libraries of books and literature in the house, the expectation of high achievement was implicit: tacit, yet plain to perceive.
Joyce grew up not merely highly intelligent, but ambitious and blessed with a knack for psychology. At 14 or 15 she founded and ran her own ballet school; the first few months were free of charge. Then they would pay to continue. Young Joyce would spin stories through those months, dropping a bit of the plot at each session. At the end of the free-trial the stories had reached such a point of excitement that they encouraged students to continue … and pay tuition.
She graduated high school shortly after turning 16, then earned degrees at Cornell and Columbia: double BS degrees in Economics and Psychology at Cornell, then a MA and a PhD in Psychology at Columbia.
At 21 years-old Joyce Bauer married a young 23-year newly-minted doctor with a very modest income, as he toiled through his internship. She’d be married to Milton Brothers MD for 40 years, until his passing from cancer.
When a daughter, Lisa, arrived in 1957 they were again somewhat financially pressed. Game shows with cash awards were popular, so, she took a swing at landing on $64,000 Question.
Dr Joyce Brothers, America’s psychologist
Clearly bright, with a calm, cheery demeanor, she was selected to compete after rounds of interviews and scoring 100% on a timed, 50 question test of broad general knowledge.
There was one question per week after reaching $4,000 in a single show (or perhaps two shows). [2] Winnings doubled each week, or they could bail with what they had (like Who wants to be aMillionaire). If they succeeded at $4,000, then that amount was guaranteed until their run ended (also like Millionaire), limiting the risk of attempting difficult questions.
In screening, contestants were required to list subject areas in which they were knowledgeable in a questionnaire. She listed psychology and home economics. Per game rules, these would be avoided. Charles Revson, co-founder of Revlon which sponsored the show, often meddled in the show’s production. If he didn’t like a contestant, he pushed for tougher questions. Joyce should get sports. Not any sport. Pick a sport not in the news every day, every week. Boxing.
Her husband, Dr Brothers, however, was a boxing fan. She thought boxing would fine. It was agreed.
Joyce was essentially totally ignorant of boxing. A complete blank.
She spent the three months before her appearance studying every possible aspect of the pugnacious sport. She had access to 20 volumes of boxing history, and her husband’s years of “The Ring” magazine.
She memorized it all. ALL. The rules. The competitors. The champions. The challengers. The knockouts, the TKOs, the judges’ decisions. The locations and dates and result of all important matches. Joyce could digest and retain mountains of facts.
Joyce zoomed easily to the $16,000 level. Charles Revson did not like her. He wanted her eliminated. A boxing historian and expert, Nat Fleischer, was recruited to devise the questions for this round. [3] She was given four questions, each requiring her to name the referees of four famous boxing matches. No one — No one — expected her to get even one correct, let alone ALL four. She did. Start about 12:05 here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqhxN9a8OCg.
When she won the $64,000 grand prize on October 27, 1957, giving the final correct answer to the question (of three that day) “What is Sugar Ray Robinson’s record as a professional?”, she become quite famous.
The show had recently expanded its top award to $128K. So, after winning the title amount, she returned and did indeed attain the $128,000 maximum winnings.
Dr Joyce Brothers parlayed all of this into an extraordinary career, including, most prominently, as the nation’s de facto national psychologist.
She wrote and was consulted for decades on psychology for all sorts of things. She wrote columns. 40 years for Good Housekeeping, and about the same for her syndicated column, which was carried by 300 newspapers. She wrote several books. She was on TV often, sharing advice for all, including nearly 100 appearances with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, with whom she developed a warm friendship. From the Today Show, to Good Morning America and even Conan, she appeared in many popular shows, offering her well-reasoned, practical and informed advice.
She also hosted more than a few TV shows herself, The Dr. Joyce Brothers Show, Consult Dr. Brothers, Tell Me, Dr. Brothers, Ask Dr. Brothers, and Living Easy with Dr. Joyce Brothers. Here she covered a wide range of topics, such as looking at the future of American football, and the psychology of: football, women’s ever-changing clothing styles, HIV & AIDS, and the rise of school shootings. She made psychology interesting and available.
In one on-air live episode she helped a depressed caller avoid suicide by engaging him for 30-minutes until help arrived.
Sugar Ray Robinson, the best boxer of all time
In March, 1958 she was, famously, the first female on-air broadcaster for a boxing match. Working for CBS, she contributed color commentary in a big show-down between Carmen Basilio II and Sugar Ray Robinson at Chicago Stadium. It was highly watched, a brutal 15-round battle, as Sugar Ray re-gained the Middleweight crown Basilo, who had taken it from him the year before. Her esteem rose even higher. [4]
Coincidentally (ironically?) her $64,000 answer had been about Robinson.
It would be far too lengthy to touch on all of her remarkable achievements.
Dr Joyce Bauer Brothers outlasted her husband by 24 years, passing in 2013, age 85.
“Love comes when manipulation stops and you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you.”
― Dr. Joyce Brothers
Barbara Anne Hall was born, in Butler, western Pennsylvania on March 12, 1933, also the eldest of two daughters, to Jack and Dorothy Hall.
Raised in nearby Bethel Hill, a few minutes south of Pittsburgh, Barbara took an early liking to the arts in general, and acting in particular. Her parents were totally supportive. She studied briefly at Pittsburgh Playhouse and later earned a degree at Carnegie Institute of Technology in drama.
She was working as a show-girl in a short-lived revival of the Ziegfeld Follies at the Winter Garden Theater when she and fellow show-girls applied to be on $64,000.
She had previously performed at the very high end night club Copacabana, where she danced with many famous personalities. Even today she says that dancing with Fred Astaire is one of the brightest highlights of her life. The Ziegfeld Follies productions also had her appear with famous stars of that era. [5]
Barbara also scored 100% on the general knowledge test. Perky, clearly bright, engaging, and possessing a stage-presence, she was accepted to appear as a contestant, also in 1957. Even though, with common gender stereotyping of the era, many of the staff were skeptical of a show-girl’s intelligence.
[I suspect that she and the others were actually approached by $64,000 to compete … all of the Ziegfeld ladies were attractive with stage presence.]
She was given difficult topics to choose from; she agreed to Shakespeare. Although she’d studied drama, the bard from Stratford-upon-Avon was not at all in her wheelhouse. Drama is a wide field; Shakespeare is both very wide and very deep. She spent months studying the creations and life of the greatest Elizabethan writer.
The brilliant Barbara Hall, of course, won the Grand Prize. She provided the final $64,000 correct answer on June 25, 1957 (coincidentally my parents’ 2nd anniversary … wonder if they watched as I slept?) — just as the Follies Revival ended, forever, as it turns out.
Trivia: Ed Sullivan was an on-and-off guest host that summer – the regular host, Ed March, was off shooting a movie – and it was Sullivan who asked Barbara Hall the $64K questions.
As $128K was now the top prize, she returned the following week, earning another $32,000. However, she missed the next week for another $32K. Nonetheless, $96,000 was an awful lot of money in 1957.
This greatly eased her financial situation. This might have partially led to her marriage to Lucien Verdoux-Feldon in 1958, a freelance photographer in portraits, often associated with shows and show personalities. Details are scant, but he was likely shooting at the Copa, Winter Garden, and/or the $64,000 studio.
Like all winners, Barbara became quite famous, and as an attractive lady, this suggested a boost to her hoped for acting career. But it took awhile.
Minor modeling assignments, and one-off bit parts in several TV serials, including Flipper, Man from U.N.C.L.E, and 12 O’clock High kept her career alive, but not really thriving.
As an advertising model, she made quite an impression in the 1960s with a TV ad for Top Brass men’s hair products. Stretched out casually and seductively on a tiger skin, pitching with a Kathleen Turner-type sexy voice, she got a lot of attention. This time, some big-time attention.
Spotted by scouts for a new TV comedy, she was cast in her career’s most iconic role as Agent 99 (no name ever given to her character) on the comedy spy show Get Smart, created by the teamwork of the brilliant Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.
The show ran from 1965-1970, opening in September, 1965 immediately after the inaugural show of I Dream of Jeannie. I’m not sure she ever really she escaped the typecast of Agent-99 on a goofy spy show: the smart, svelte and stylish female co-star in a show otherwise full of nitwits and half-wits. Well, she was always smart and stylish, everywhere she went. [6]
She went on to appear in many TV shows and movies, including numerous appearances on popular comedy variety shows like The Dean Martin Show, The Carol Burnett Show, and even Rowen and Martin’s Laugh-In. And, coming full circle, The Ed Sullivan Show.
She also won two Emmys for her performances in Get Smart. In a sort of reunion of note, Barbara Feldon co-starred with Jeannie’s Barbara Eden (the “genie” in Jeannie) in the quirky rom-coms A House Is Not a Home (1964), and The Lonely Guy (1984). I’d say both were rather typecast, as they played, again, the smart, good looking, sensible women who provided wisdom and calmness in humorous chaotic scenes.
Long cherished by all who saw her perform, now age 91, her life is quiet, very personal, with some writings. She stopped film appearances in 2006, ending with the mystery-comedy Last Request.
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Barbara’s husband, Lucien, turned out to be an abusive alcoholic. That marriage ended after 12 childless years. She had a 12-year relationship soon thereafter with Burt (aka Cary) Nodella, 9 years her elder, who produced 47 episodes of Get Smart.
“There’s not a day when somebody doesn’t smile and say, ‘Oh, you’re Agent 99!’ I like being in a world that regards me in a friendly way.” — Barbara Feldon, interview with Toby Kahn, 1983.
Barbara Anne Hall Feldon and Joyce Diane Bauer Brothers – two highly intelligent, beloved, revered, respected and successful women who share a remarkable coincidence: winners of the $64,000 grand prize (roughly $700,000 today). In the end, Hall-Feldon at $96,000 and Brothers at $128,000 … that’s over a million bucks equivalent in today’s dollars, each.
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Overall, there were only 11 top winners in the 4 years that $64,000 ran (1955-58, inclusive), and only 3 were women (Dot McCullock was the 3rd). Several of these 11 were tarnished by the scandal, later admitting to investigators and congress that they’d been provided some answers a priori. Both Brothers and Feldon vehemently denied being involved (Brothers breaking down in tears during questioning); producers later verified their innocence in testimony.
These two women were the first to win such a substantial amount on national television, making them trailblazers in a time when quiz shows were dominated by male contestants and hosts.
The $64,000 show was terminated in November, 1958; the other Revlon sponsored show, the more scandalous Twenty-One, sponsored by Geritol (by Pharmaceuticals, Inc), was canceled a month earlier.
Joe Girard (c) 2024
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Footnotes:
[1] A smaller part of the scandal was that contestants were coached on how to act and give answers so as to heighten the drama. Brothers and Hall-Feldon both admitted to receiving this coaching, although Hall-Feldon, as a performer in both drama and stage shows, probably needed much less.
[2] My research suggests that contestants answered six questions valued at $64, $128, $256, $512, $1,000 and $2,000 before advancing to the “one question per week” levels, beginning at $4,000
[3] Fleischer was the editor in chief of The Ring magazine.
[5] Ziegfeld Follies: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/culture-magazines/ziegfeld-follies
[5a] Winter Garden Theater was a very high-end theater in the center of NYC’s Broadway theater district. For example, Roberts’ and Berstein’s forever famous West Side Story opened there that year, 1957.
[6] I Dream of Jeannie became famous for allowing, for the first time ever, a woman’s navel to be shown (regularly) on TV. Eden’s eye-catching beauty, curvaceous figure, exposed belly button, and penchant for addressing the lead male character, Anthony Nelson, as “Master” probably did a lot to draw males into the audience of this otherwise ridiculous show.
Non-footnoted notes:
In another coincidence, Dr Brothers was also a frequent guest on The Ed Sullivan Show. Probably, more often than Feldon.
The Revsons were co-founders of Revlon with chemist Charles Lachman. So, the name Revlon, with an “L” for Lachman instead of “S” was a nod to his participation. Charles was largely the businessman in the group, with Joseph (and later another brother Martin) and Lachman focusing on product development and manufacturing. Perhaps not coincidently, all were Jewish.Sponsoring both Twenty-One and $64,000 was considered a gamble. The ultimate goal, of course, was to sell cosmetics. There was concern that black and white broadcasting would not deliver the desired result. Charles Revson, the more business-oriented of the team, took the chance.
As both Brothers and Hall (Feldon) appeared in mid-1957, I am presuming that this was a conscious attempt to attract and appease audiences. Bright women appearing, often doing well, especially nice-looking, would increase attention from both genders.
Geritol/Pharmaceuticals was also investigated for faulty advertising claims in 1957-58
Feldon, as 99, on set for Get Smart, not gonna get any success holding a pistol that way. Probably hurt yourself. Maybe that was the point. ‘Twas a supremely goofy show.
Victor Jules Bergeron, Jr (1902-1984) was quite the entrepreneur. Always from San Francisco, he grew up in a food and service family. His father, Victor Jules Sr, was a longtime waiter at the very high end restaurant in San Francisco’s famous and historic Fairmont Hotel.
Hotel Fairmont, circa 1930s, built 1905-7
In 1934 Victor Junior founded a restaurant with $500 he had borrowed. He called in Hinky Dinks. There he developed his own version of South Seas food and creative “beach” drinks. He used a lot of rum. It was located across the street from a small discount grocery store his parents had spun up. The restaurant had tiki torches and faux grass “roofs” and Polynesian themed meals to sell a relaxed atmosphere image: clever marketing. [1]
In promoting the south Pacific/Polynesian theme, he started the rumor – and encouraged it to circulate – that his missing leg had years before become a shark’s meal. In reality, he suffered from a congenital condition that required amputation when he was only 6. He’d never been in the tiki realms.
The model caught on and he soon renamed the restaurants “Trader Vic’s”. Riding a wave of South Pacific themed popularity, he expanded to dozens of restaurants over the decades. The name Trader Vic came from his wife Esther, who couldn’t help but notice his habit of trading restaurant meals and drinks in exchange for restaurant supplies and services.
He’s credited with inventing the sunny warm beach umbrella drink, the MaiTai. [A contemporary and competitor, Donn Beach who ran the similarly themed Beachcomber restaurants, also claims this title. Vic’s was birthed shortly after Beachcomber, so perhaps a copycat].
Brothers Karl and Theodore, were born in the heavily industrial city of Essen, Ruhr district, Germany, in 1920 and 1922 respectively, to Anna and Karl Albrecht, Sr. [2] The cloudy history of Karl Sr says that he had lung issues, perhaps black lung, from working in coal mines, or asthma from working in a bakery. In any case, he and Anna needed income and founded a small discount grocery store in Essen, in 1913, largely run by Anna. The business operated on tight cash flow efficiency, with Walmart-like just-in-time inventory and low-cost procurement, to sell at the lowest prices possible.
Albrecht family grocery store, 1930s
During the difficult depression era ‘30s, Anna applied for and obtained a liquor license. This helped augment grocery sales. It’s a good business, as it’s said: people drink when they’re happy, and when they’re down. The ‘30s was a down decade for all.
After the brothers returned from WWII service – one emerging from a prisoner of war camp, the other with a serious leg wound – they took over running the small family grocery store. In 1948 they fully inherited the business.
They continued the practice of thrift, efficiency, brutal cost cutting and tight cash flow controls to build an ever more profitable business. They called it Albrecht Discount. This logo says Karl Albrecht Groceries, I reckon named after their father.
Albrecht logo, ~1948-60
The goal of high efficiency drove the design of their small grocery stores as they expanded. Laid out in a short simple and intuitive track through the store: get in, get stuff, few selections, pay, get out. Limited product selection, just the basics, but good quality. At low cost. Easy to find and get to, yet usually in low-cost locations. It was hugely successful.
Joe Coulombe is one of those successful entrepreneurs whose name and story have been somewhat forgotten. Born in 1930 in San Diego, he began his career working with Rexall, which ran a huge national chain of drugstores, mostly franchised. In 1957, at management request, he started a chain of six discount groceries in the LA area, which were called Pronto Markets. They wanted to challenge 7-Eleven. Tall order. That didn’t quite work out, and, after several years, Rexall told Coulombe to liquidate them. [3]
It looked like Joe had no future with the company. He felt he had failed in Proto Markets, and once they were sold, then what? Joe went on a Caribbean soul-searching vacation to spend time musing about what to do. Was his Rexall career over?
When he returned to California he did indeed liquidate the stores. Financed with loans, he sold the stores to himself. He was now not just in the discount grocery business, he was in deep. He and his family had invested thousands of hours in researching the local grocery scene, including market research of neighborhoods.
Coloumbe noted that Beachcomber and Trader Vic’s, competing to see whose knock-off style of a Polynesian “feel” could be more outlandishly over-the-top, were still a rage. People were looking for a special, out-of-the-ordinary experience in dining. Why not grocery shopping too?
That was something Joe could follow. First he renamed the stores to Trader Joe’s, blatantly aping Vic’s name. Then he copied the Polynesian concept. Wild shirts, décor, unusual specialty products, the whole feel: you’re not in LA anymore, you’re out experiencing the world, and many of our products have special names too!
He stocked his stores with just a fraction of the products as larger grocers did, but they were higher end and had a feel of the exotic. Shopping was an adventure. A simple layout, yes, but surprises and treats could be found anywhere. A customer could feel special without spending much. Shopping became an experience. Often heard: “Look what I found at Trader Joe’s!!” Many of the products were inexpensive: remember Two Buck Chuck? Not bad either.
Cheap eggs, super cheap brie cheese and wines, (mostly) healthy foods. Stores in locations with upper middle- to upper-class customers. It was genius.
Later in life Joe called it “Equal parts gourmet shop, discount warehouse and Tiki trading post.”
By the late 1970s Trader Joe’s was growing quickly, there were dozens of profitable stores in select markets. It was expanding and it had a bright future. It became a target.
By 1960 Albrecht Discount operated some 300 stores across Germany, with total sales of DM90 million annually (about $375 million USD, or $4 billion USD in 2024). It was beginning to expand across Europe.
The Aldi “equator” … Austria is Süd, but goes by Hofer.
But then the brothers had a serious difference of opinion on a business matter. Younger brother Theo thought they should start selling cigarettes; Karl strongly disagreed. So, they split the business, each taking about one-half of West Germany, north and south; Theo would own and run cigarette selling stores in the north, Karl non-tobacco stores in the south. They operated their stores with the same proven model but ran them separately. One sold cigarettes, the other not. The only noticeable difference. [Karl was not anti-smoking; he thought cancer sticks would attract shop lifters].
In 1962 they changed the name of the entire enterprise to Aldi, short for Albrecht Diskont (discount). Finally, in 1966, they separated legally. Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd. Another brotherly “divorce”. Nonetheless, they remained on good terms, and each business continued to prosper.
Trader Vic’s and the tiki party ambiance and experience
Trader Vic’s still exists, but it’s rather small after reaching a low ebb in 1960s. The Tiki fad kind of faded and the locations became less desirable. It shrank to almost nothing and almost faded away completely, but it’s back up to 25 locations worldwide, only 3 in the US: the original in Oakland, Atlanta and Hollywood. [some say 18, whatever] [4]
Trader Joe’s indeed became a juicy target. In 1979 Theo Albrecht, of Aldi Nord, personally bought Joe Coulombe out for a nifty nickel. As it was a private sale, the price was not disclosed. Coulombe and his family lived very, very well on that sale. He participated in running the company until 1988. He passed in 2020. Trader Joe’s is now owned and operated by Aldi Nord, and no longer a separate possession of the Theo Albrecht family.
Both companies continue the business model of providing a unique shopping experience with both basic and specialty products. I noticed once that they had their own beer line (actually several, and wines too) called Joe Handler. I got a chuckle. Händler is German for Trader.
Aldi in America (part of Germany’s Aldi Süd) is the fastest growing grocery merchant in America, now at over 2,100 stores. In 2023 they bought Winn-Dixie and Harvey’s, southern grocers. The “A” is popping up more and more, it seems.
Worldwide Aldi Süd operates over 1,800 stores outside the US, with monopolies (within “Aldi world”) in Australia, Ireland and Italy. In the US Aldi Nord has over 550 stores (Trader Joe’s), plus the entire ALDI markets in Poland, France and Spain.
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[2] Heavily industrial. Essen was the home of Krupp Steel Works for centuries. Merged/bought out by Thyssen, now going by Thyssen-Krupp. The family business and history is deeply documented in William Manchester’s “The Arms of Krupp.”
[3] Rexall drug stores. The name means King of All. I remember seeing them all over and in many cities and towns as a kid. As noted they eventually branched out into many areas, even owing Tupperware for a while. I can’t remember the last time I saw one. Maybe that’s from overextending. It’s now owned by a Canadian company, McKesson Canaday, and most stores, apparently, are in Canada.
[4] For a cheesy faux jungle, water, central American or Mexican experience one can go to the recently reopened Casa Bonita, in Lakewood Colorado, just west of the Denver city line. Recently purchased, updated and restored by the creators of South Park.
Authors Notes:
A feature of German shopping Aldi brought to the US – a feature I quite like: one must insert a quarter to release a shopping cart from the cart area. It remains in the cart while shopping and is returned when the cart’s returned to the coral. I’ve thought for a long time that people who take the time to return their cart to a cart corral or even to the store are of a higher echelon of human beings. It’s 1 euro or 50 euro cents in Germany. As carrying coins in the US is growing out of fashion, one can get a cart token from inside the store. Someday we’ll get dollar coins that people actually use. One can also purchase dummy quarters that attach to a key chain.
Most Aldi stores in Germany have a small central section with deeply discounted random stuff, from sweaters to toasters to blankets … I presume what they find at factory closeouts, or going-out-of-business sales. It’s commonly referred to as “the Aisle of Shame.”
These three stories, sort of connected, are segments within a very interesting book I’ve read, Benjamin Loor’s “The Secret Life of Groceries.”
October 14, 1800, on a plantation near Savannah, Georgia: a boy named Jourdan is born to a slave woman named Judith. His father was a white man, whose identity was not recorded and, in fact, may not ever have been known. By law, this made the boy the slave property of his mother’s owner.
Savannah, GA
At this time Florida was again a territory of the Spanish Empire. As a Catholic nation, Florida was a “mostly” a free land: one of the destinations of the first underground railroads. [1]
Many slaves escaped there and formed their own communities of freemen, some near St Augustine, some 180 miles away from Savannah. Judith and her boy, Jourdan, did not.
In November 1813, the adolescent Jourdan and his mother were bought by Jean Chaumette, a slave trader. He transported them to New Orleans, Louisiana (a US state only since 1812). In June 1814 they were sold to Lt. John Noble (US Army 7th Regiment).
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Part of French culture and heritage, New Orleans had been part of “slave territory”, and remained that way, as part of the American south, into statehood; although many free people of color dwelt there. [2]
The United States was embroiled in war with Britain: the War of 1812. Recently acquired New Orleans lay in a highly leveraged position: for shipping, controlling the mighty Mississippi, and for defense. Surely a juicy target to national enemies. And it seemed vulnerable.
Painting of mulatto boy, early 19th century. William Henry Hunt
Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but I’m imagining this was a per-arranged sale, thus sparing Jourdan and Judith the ignominy of going to the market square where slaves were displayed on pedestals, their health and virtues promoted, and then auctioned to the highest bidder. Either way, the experience must have been terrifying. But perhaps they were inured: just another shame that life had imposed upon them.
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The status of New Orleans — and the entire Louisiana Territory — had recently experienced a series of dramatic geopolitical changes. Initially claimed by France as “New France,” the territory then fell under Spanish control as “New Spain.” Near the end of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763, known in America as the French and Indian War), France still held significant claims and settlements in the region, evident from place names that survive today, such as Saint Louis, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Louisiana — unmistakably French.
As it became clear that England would win the war, France secretly transferred the Louisiana territory to Spain, another Catholic nation. Shortly later, in the Treaty of Paris (1763) which ended the war, England permitted Spain to claim this vast landmass as compensation, unaware that Spain had already secured it through the secret transfer.
[Spain had joined late in the war on France’s side, although too late to change the outcome. This alliance cost Spain its claim to Florida.]
In another secret treaty (San Ildefonso, 1800), Spain, under pressure from Napoleon, ceded the Louisiana Territory back to France. In return, Spain received lands in Italy that Napoleonic France had conquered and a promise of peace.
Napoleon soon abandoned his New World ambitions, and the United States famously purchased the entire Louisiana Territory in 1803, an area spanning over 800,000 square miles (more than 2.1 million square kilometers—larger than two-thirds of all Western European countries combined). The official transfer in the northern Louisiana capital, Saint Louis, occurred in March 1804, while New Orleans, the southern capital, was transferred in December 1803.
Time line highlights
1673 – Pierre Joliet (Zholee-ay) and Father Jacques Marquette explore much of the Mississippi, canoeing from Montreal, French Canada
1682 – La Salle, traveled down the Mississippi, claiming it for France
1680-1700 France claims the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, establishing trading posts throughout the region.
1762 – Louisiana Territory to Spain
1763 – French land between Appalachians and the Mississippi are transferred to Britain – spoils of war. (And French Canada)
1783 – Land from Appalachians to the Mississippi added to US (US war of independence)
1800 – Louisiana transferred back to France
1800 – Jordan Noble Born
1803 – Louisiana sold to the US
1804 – Final transfer of Louisiana, March, in Saint Louis
1812-1815 War of 1812
1815 – Battle of New Orleans
1821 – Jordan Noble freed
Louisiana Purchase 1803, “Natural Earth and Portland State University”, 15 states eventually came from the territory. Dot on right is Savannah.
The American War for Independence (1775-1781) did not resolve all tensions with Britain. Suspicion and hostility simmered before erupting into another conflict. The British interfered with trade, forced American sailors into service in the British navy, and allied with Native tribes to thwart U.S. expansion and commerce.
As war loomed, the fledgling U.S. began eyeing British-controlled Upper and Lower Canada as potential territory to expand into. (British colonies: there were more than 13). That ambition failed.
Noble put Jourdan and Judith into service helping 7th Regiment officers in New Orleans with basic duties. By accounts, Noble was kindly, and officers generally regarded them well.
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In 1814, Napoleon was defeated, captured, and exiled for the first time. His disastrous 1812-13 invasion of Russia resulted in near complete annihilation of his Grande Armée. A grand coalition, led by Britain, easily subdued Napoleon. [3] Britain could now turn its full attention to the conflict in North America. They intended to hit the Americans at a critical location where it was weak – a location from where they could control nearly the entire interior of the US, from the Appalachians to the Rockies.
In anticipation, beginning on December 1, 1814, General Andrew Jackson marched his force of 1,500 men, mostly Tennessee Volunteers, to defend New Orleans, arriving in early January 1814. Ironically, the Treaty of Ghent had already been signed on December 24, 1814, effectively ending the war, but the news had yet to reach the U.S. and be ratified by the Senate. That happened in February. [Battle of New Orleans, by Johnny Horton]
Nevertheless, one can be sure Britain would have kept New Orleans, the key to the Mississippi – the entrance to the great fertile American mid-section, if they took it. The treaty had not been formalized yet, and they’d surely have asked for re-negotiations.
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Jackson’s 1,500 troops were not nearly enough. He needed the inhabitants of New Orleans to help defend the city. The British were coming, with reports confirming their forces massing along the coast near the mouth of the Pearl River, some 20 miles away. A skirmish had already occurred on December 23, resulting in casualties on both sides.
With little time and limited manpower, Jackson imposed martial law, requiring able bodied whites, Creoles, enslaved and free Blacks to fight. All firearms must be brought to the defense. Aristocrats, American Indians and even the famous pirate, Jean Lafitte signed on. Many residents didn’t yet truly identify as Americans. Most joined willingly: they recognized the dangers of British monarchical rule and joined the defense. [4] Over 4,000 civilian-soldiers in all.
Although only fourteen-years-old Jourdan Noble signed on, though not required to do so (my assumption). It is likely that during this enlistment, Jourdan adopted a last name, taking that of his master, Noble, and possibly adjusting the spelling of his first name to “Jordan.”
Jordan was assigned as a drummer for the military forces. It is believed that Louis Roquer, a drum major from a New Orleans garrison, mentored Jordan and taught him the fundamentals of military drumming.
Jordan’s drum marched them all to Chalmette, 7 miles downstream. Jordan beat his drum vigorously throughout the battle, a relatively short battle indeed: about two hours. Shocked by such a vigorous defense presented by the citizens, slaves and military (their intelligence had predicted little or no defense) the Redcoats were thoroughly routed.
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Jordan’s snare drum, from the Battle of New Orleans
Andrew Jackson emerged as a national hero, a major step on his path to the presidency 14 years later. The remarkable speed with which he assembled a coordinated army of volunteer soldiers, rag tag civilians, slaves, American Indians and pirates, along with the thoroughness of the preparations and complete victory, solidified his status. Think about it: So many different types of cultures, backgrounds, ethnicities, and even languages coming together. Coordinating a defense against the world’s most powerful nation, winning a major battle that significantly affected the future – all accomplished in just a few weeks. That’s remarkable. America was filled with pride.
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But young Jordan Noble was a hero too! The brave little drummer boy — a mulatto slave —who beat his drum all the way from New Orleans to the battle ground, and throughout the Queen City’s defense.
As the day of battle approached, Jordan’s drum woke the troops with reveille and signaled the end of each day. His drumming entertained and maintained a steady rhythm as soldiers and civilians built fortifications, prepared gunpowder, and readied their muskets and rifles.
On January 8, 1815, as the opposing armies mustered into formations across the Chalmette fields, his familiar drumbeat provided encouragement. One army in brilliant red matching uniforms, the other in whatever clothing they could find as they thought appropriate. Jordan beat out General Jackson’s orders to troops, his thumping resounding above the great noises of the clash!
Oh God how that boy could beat the drum, hour after hour, day after day, and throughout the decisive victorious battle!
Jordan was returned to duty, still a slave, at the military garrison.
It was 1817. Lieutenant John Noble lay near death. He transferred ownership of Jordan and Judith to his friend and cohort, Major Alexander White, of Jackson’s 7th Regiment. Both had been severely wounded in the initial skirmish on December 23, 1814, and from there they had formed an enduring friendship.
White eventually fell into financial ruin, and in 1821, his estate was liquidated. Judith and Jordan were sold to John Reed, another local military figure. Reed was an intriguing man who faced his own trials, including 50 lashes and imprisonment for desertion. A staunch abolitionist from Rhode Island, his beliefs and experiences fostered a compassionate empathy for enslaved people.
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Reed provided Jordan with significant freedoms and opportunities. Jordan studied music, of course drumming, gained an education, started a military career, married, and began a family. Extant records suggest that Reed retained legal ownership of Jordan to protect him. Reed gave Noble freedoms — freedom to pursue a full life, and soon freed him from slavery.
A 1880s postcard photo depicts an elderly Jordan Noble. Courtesy: Historic New Orleans Collections, 58-101-l.3
This all gave Jordan purpose. He continued drumming throughout his life, serving in the Seminole War, the Mexican War, and even during the Civil War (on both sides!) He drummed for the people of New Orleans, led parades, and became a beloved cultural figure. Every year, on the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, he and his drum led Black veterans through the streets of The Crescent City.
Jordan Noble became both a war hero and a cultural icon in New Orleans. The tradition of people of color, Creoles, and Cajuns marching through the city to the lively beat of music can be traced back to him.
Noble passed away on June 20, 1890. He is buried in New Orleans, at Saint Louis Cemetery #2.
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Every time a child beats something with a stick, plunks a keyboard, hums a tune, or plucks a string … magic can happen.
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Note: I have to say that the presence of Native American Indians has been largely overlooked in history, and, here, by your humble author. All of land mentioned was already settled by many Indian Nations. It’s an oft overlooked black mark.
[1] Originally Spanish (not counting native Americans) Florida fell under British rule from 1763-1784 as a consequence of the Seven Years War. It was later returned to Spain in exchange for the Bahamas.
[2] Louisiana territory had been a Spanish possession from 1763 to 1800. Slavery was allowed here, but I’m not sure how extensive it was. Many blacks settled in New Orleans and were regarded as Free Men of Color.
[3] A large coalition indeed, including: Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, and several German states (Germany was not a country until 1871)
[4] They’d been under French and Spanish rule for a long time, and had yet to adapt to being part of the US.
New Orleans is just a very feet above sea level. Thus, graves are above ground (to keep caskets from floating to the surface). Here is an image of the plaque that is mounted before Noble’s grave. And a photo of the wall that contains his grave.
It reads
Jordan B Noble, “Old Jordan” (1800-1890), Drummer, Veteran of Four American Wars
“On the memorable plains of Chalmette the rattle of his drum was heard amidst the din of battle”
Daily Picayune, June 21, 1890.
Jordan Noble was born in Georgia, October 14, 1800. an emancipated slave, he served a combined 9 years and 9 months in service to the country. At age 14, he served in the Battle of New Orleans (1815) under General Andrew Jackson as Drummer Boy – the only person of color in the United States 7th Regiment. His drumming was described as a “guidepost for the Americans in the hell of fire” and he received a personal compliment from General Jackson. He later served in the Everglades of Florida (1817) and in the Mexican-American War as musician of the First Regiment of Louisiana Volunteers (1847).
He was frequently called on to recreate his drum roll at events around the city. In 1854, he drummed the reveille at a commemoration of the Battle of New Orleans held at the St Charles Theater. In 1863, during the Civil War, he organized a Black command under General Benjamin Butler. In 1864, he was a platform guest in Congo Square during the city’s Emancipation Celebration. In 186, he was the Fourth District Representative for the Abraham Lincoln memorial service in Congo Square. In 1876, he was presented the national badge of the Veterans of the Mexican-American War and granted full membership in the Society. In 1884, he beat his drums at the Worlds Fair in New Orleans. He died on June 20, 1890, at home on Dryades St. between Seventh and Eighth Streets and was survived by three children.
[August 13] 1860, the woman known as Annie Oakley is born. That wasn’t her real name, of course. The famous sharpshooter’s name at birth was Phoebe Ann Mosey.
Annie was nothing if not talented. “At 30 paces she could split a playing card held edge-on,” one commentator notes, “she hit dimes tossed into the air, she shot cigarettes from her husband’s lips, and, a playing card being thrown into the air, she riddled it before it touched the ground.”
She could even fire over her shoulder, using only a hand-held mirror.
Nevertheless, there was more to Annie than sharpshooting. “The incredible woman who called herself Annie Oakley,” her biographer writes, “overcame poverty, prejudice, physical setbacks, and her own inner shyness to become a star shooter and a durable legend.”
Promo in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=605409
Trouble began early. Annie’s father passed away unexpectedly, leaving his wife behind with seven children under the age of 15. [Note: she was the 5th] The family was barely getting by before. Now it was worse.
Annie must have been tough. At age 6, she was already helping to put food on the dinner table: She began by setting traps for small game, but then she moved on to using her father’s rifle. He’d taught her to shoot game through the head, leaving most of the meat untouched. She got it done.
Her efforts helped, but it still wasn’t enough. Annie was sent to Darke County Infirmary, where she earned money sewing or patching inmates’ clothing. Then matters took a turn for the worse.
A man arrived one day, claiming that his wife needed help watching an infant. Would Annie do it? He promised 50 cents a week, plus time to go to school.
Annie later called him a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “I was held a prisoner,” she said of this time. “They would not let me go.” Annie worked in harsh conditions. Once, she was forced out into the snow because she fell asleep while darning socks. “I was slowly freezing to death,” Annie recalled. “So I got down on my little knees, looked toward God’s clear sky, and tried to pray. But my lips were frozen stiff and there was no sound.”
She barely survived.
Annie hung on, believing that her mother was receiving her 50 cent salary. She lasted for nearly two years before she ran away.
Annie was loved at home, but she was still an extra mouth to feed. Thus, she was soon back at the infirmary. She worked hard, but she was also happier than she’d been in a while. She’d escaped the “wolf” family. She was finally learning to read and write—and she even earned a raise. But her homesickness couldn’t be kept at bay. She decided to return and help her mother “build a little home.” She invested in traps, powder, and shot. She began trapping and shooting small game.
Annie late 1880s
She was quite good at it. Not only was she able to supply her mother’s dinner table with food, but she also had enough left over to supply a local shopkeeper. Annie’s business thrived, and she saved enough to pay off her mother’s mortgage. “Oh, how my heart leaped with joy,” Annie later remembered.
Little did Annie know it, but her life was about to change—again. The exact date is disputed, but at about age 15, Annie appeared in a shooting match with Frank Butler, an accomplished shooter who sometimes offered a challenge to local champions.
Annie won, of course. She hit 25 targets to Frank’s 24, which earned her a $50 prize. More importantly, she’d met the man who would become her husband and her future partner in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.
Naturally, the story of Annie Oakley’s rise to fame is a story for another day. 😉
Editor’s notes: Add’l text and images. First image from Tara Ross’ website.
She was born in rural Ohio, near the Indiana state line. There is a stone plaque mounted there. Her grave site and a marker can be found at https://tinyurl.com/googlocator [40.31790873573885, -84.4723223225884 ]
She was badly injured while traveling in a Wild West Show train in a head-on collision in October 1901. Asleep at the time, she was dumped into a swamp and presumed dead for a while. Her injuries included partial paralysis [mostly healed after FIVE spinal surgeries]. She retired from the Wild West Show, but later returned to competition and demonstrations. And continued to set records and amaze.
She spent these latter decades promoting women’s rights, the use of women in active military and gun training for women – believing strongly that women should have full access to personal protection and safety.
She and Frank were childless. Some presume this was due a childhood or young adult illness; others suggest it was due to their dedication to her career. Nonetheless, no descendants.
Her ashes are interred alongside her husband’s (Frank Butler) in rural western Ohio. Some 16 miles north of Greenville near Versailles, in Brock Cemetery. [map: Brock Cemetery]
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Ballads tell stories. Often there are stories behind such stories.
Most boomers and the older among us will quickly recognize this 1971 song. It’s a narrative ballad, exposing a cycle of despair, hypocrisy, ostracism, and the shady underbelly of society. But it’s so-o-o well done. Many can still sing it today. If you haven’t heard it in a while, or ever, here’s the studio version (sorry if it becomes an earworm): Gypsys Tramps & Thieves.
I surmise that all such people can identify the young, talented and enchanting 24-year-old woman who performed it. The song itself is widely regarded as her signature song (although, later in her career, she made little secret of her contempt for it, singing it live only with lexical excisions).
Whatever the version, it begins eerily. And briskly – at 171 beats per minute, brisk for any ballad The original studio version begins with a few bars of mystical, even whimsical, sounding strings: a synthesizer emulating a sort of folksy fiddle, a bit harpsichord-ish, with a snare jumping in to emphasize the pace, and what sounds – to me – like some tambourines joining. A good job of setting the mood for a “Travelin’ Show.”
The bulk of the song is set in A-minor. [7] Minor keys are often used to set a mood of sadness. That mood is appropriate.
Cher and others have recorded several versions. Herein, I refer to Cher’s original studio recording.
BPM: Compare to some ballads of that era like Bonnie and Clyde (106 bpm, George Fame) If You Could Read My Mind (123 bpm, Lightfoot) She’s Gone (139, Hall & Oates) and Ode to Billy Joe (120, Bobbie Gentry) <link in song name to song review>
Cherilyn Sarkisian was born in El Centro [1], California on May 20, 1946. Her parents were young – around 20. Her father, John Sarkisian, of full Armenian ancestry (the -ian surname ending is a giveaway clue), worked as a truck driver. Her mother Georgia (born Georgia Crouch), only briefly married to John, was of English and German ancestry – lore has it she even had a splash of Cherokee descent. Thus, Cherilyn’s beguiling skin tone: a sense of the exotic. but something you can’t quite identify.
Georgia herself was born to a 13-yeal old mother in rural Kensett, Arkansas in 1926; and her mom was married young and several times, part a life of poverty and constant moving.
Cherilyn was 10 months old when her parents split. Her dad had serious drinking and gambling problems. Her mom, Georgia, a woman of high energy and curiosity, had many interests. She’d won contests of beauty and talent since she was a child. She was also a capable singer and song writer. Her dad had taught her music: singing and piano. How they ended up in El Centro is anyone’s guess. I found no reason. [5]
Georgia took Cherilyn away from the somewhat famous town of El Centro [at ~40 feet below sea level, probably the lowest elevation of any US city over 1,000 inhabitants; site of the first well measured earthquake, (1940) ]. They settled in Los Angeles, some 200 miles northwest of El Centro.
There Georgia worked on her own music and acting career while working various part time jobs. Through several of her mom’s failed marriages Cherilyn was moved across California and the southwest. She spent long periods in an orphanage when her mom was too ill, too broke, or too busy to care for her. Many times, she spent long periods with her maternal grandparents, who substantially raised her. These were difficult times for the young family, often close to destitution.
In 1961 it’s back to SoCal where Georgia wed Gilbert LaPierre. He adopted 15-year-old Cherilyn, and her younger half-sister, Georgann. Now going legally as Cheryl LaPiere, the girl now had the financial support to attend a private school, Montclair College Preparatory School. Here, she really took to performing – both acting and music. She was, in the words of all who knew her then, exceptional.
[LaPiere was Georgia’s 4th marriage. Cher’s half-sister Georgann, 5 years younger, was born to Georgia and her 3rd husband, John Southall. Georgann was also adopted by LaPiere. Georgia wed 7 times in all, to six different men, re-marrying Sarkasian for a cup of coffee in 1964].
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The 1st verse is a rich opening.
I was born in the wagon of a travelin’ show
My mama used to dance for the money they’d throw
Papa would do whatever he could
Preach a little gospel
Sell a couple bottles of Doctor Good
Travelin’ show. In line number one we’re told of a “Travelin’ Show.” This confirmation suggested by the title informs that we are to hear of a roaming “gypsies.”
Now referred to as Travelers, Romani or Roma, they usually drifted around, from place-to-place where they were generally neither welcomed nor appreciated, trying to eke out a living on whatever they could acquire – legally, or, if necessary, not. Many still do. [The term “gypsy” is now regarded as pejorative, and has been for quite a few decades. I’ll try to use this term only in the context of the song itself.]
With the synthesized show-fiddle, perhaps some harpsichord, accordion, and a calliope-like sound sprinkled in, we get the feeling of a show, … a traveling road show.
Mama danced, almost certainly exhibiting increasing exotic sexuality and progressing states of deshabille as the dance proceeds, thus coaxing the men to throw coins at her in lusty appreciation. Kinda yuck.
Preach a little Gospel. Travelers were adept at picking up local cultures, such as how to give a good fire-and-brimstone sermon in the deep south. Christian missionaries were active among the Romani, particularly in the US – and especially so in the south – hence they developed a sufficient grasp of how to implement that form of communication.
Doctor Good. Probably a variation of a mostly traditional cultural “homemade” Roma medicine of various ingredients. Some of which, if not all, probably had health benefit. Roma were known to use Juniper berries. Horrible tasting, they often rubbed it on their gums. This helped manage scurvy, both as prophylactic and as treatment, and generally keeping their mouths healthy.
As a “medicine” to non-Roma it was probably this juniper juice mixed with Gypsy Juice … and a good dose of distilled liquor. Easy enough to make. The horrible tastes (juniper + un-aged/un-barreled spirits) sort of canceled out, especially when mixed with ingredients like pureed spinach, celery, carrot, fruit juices, and honey.
Sometimes juices from soaking chopped garlic cloves in white vinegar were added. Possible further additions were sage, lemon zest, rose petals, calendula, rosemary … whatever was available and generally healthy, or at least benign. This mixing of ingredients had the “benefit” of making the “medicine” taste different from place to place, among various Roma groups, and as each band moved to new areas. [3]
[1] Some aficionados of music from that era may recall the line in Elton John’s Your Song (1970),
wherein he wonders: “If I a sculptor, no, or a man who makes potions in a travelin’ show.“
We hear the chorus for the first time. We sense a raw emotion – Sorrow? Worry? Revulsion? Loathing? She races into:
“Gypsies, tramps, and thieves!”
We’d hear it from the people of the town
They’d call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves.
But every night all the men would come around …
And lay their money down.
Lay their money down. This is clearly more than a casual suggestion of prostitution.
Chorus: Mama? You? One shudders to think ….
Not even to the 2nd verse yet, and we’re into hypocrisy and sex.
Romani peoples. Originating in northern India (and perhaps in or near Afghanistan), they were exiled. First heading to NW China around the end of the first millennium, they wandered westward across Asia. Always in caravans of families – a custom they carried into the west, even to the US – they reached Constantinople (~50 years before it became Istanbul) around 1400 AD, crossed the Bosporus, and arrived in Romania in the 15th century.
As in their original homeland, they were seldom, if ever, welcomed. And they were not welcomed in Romania. Maltreated and even enslaved, they were eventually freed and encouraged to leave. Spreading out across to central and western Europe, they were soon enough in most European countries. Any goodwill upon their arrival was always followed by rejection. They couldn’t or wouldn’t fit in culturally and were eventually regarded as thieves and scammers: perhaps many were. It’s tough to get by in lands where your type is not at all welcome. Waves of plague had swept humanity from China to Europe since the mid-14th century. People learned to be wary of wandering strangers, especially those from strange lands.
[It’s a mere coincidence that the group’s name Romani – or Roma – seems to match with their misperceived European origin in Romania. It’s simply a variation of the original Sanskrit language root, Rom (or Dom), meaning “man.” Romani is the feminine form of the noun. The term “gypsy” stems from a common misconception that they originated in Egypt.]
For the most part, they continued their traditional caravan traveling, and never quite getting acceptance wherever they went. Starting in Britain they picked up the name Travelers.
Not a lot of space in a travelin’ van
Europeans, especially the colonial powers like Portugal, began exporting Romani to the new world as slave labor. Much of Europe has had “anti-gypsy” laws at some point. And then there’s the mass exterminations of them by Nazi Germany 1933-1945. Shamefully, President Sarkozy deported them from France in 2010 – mostly to Bulgaria and Romania. All this and more encouraged many Romani to migrate to the US, particularly in the mid-19th century. Their reception there was mostly more of the same.
Los Angeles provided Cherilyn an excellent setting for beginning and growing her career. With her mother Georgia’s musical background (she appeared on several national shows and was a night club singer, composed songs, getting national recognition for “Honky Tonk Woman”). Cherilyn had the setting, the genes, the background, and maternal encouragement to begin an entertainment career.
Her mom had begun getting bit acting parts on TV and in movies – and was able to get some roles for her daughter, too.
At age 16 she left home and moved in with a friend. She took acting classes while working small club jobs and beating the pavement looking for entertainment jobs. That’s how she met Salvatore (Sonny) Bono. She was still just 16. He was an assistant to record producer Phil Spector at the time. Cherilyn’s talent and drive were apparent; he worked his contacts for her. She sang back-up vocals for several famous Spector groups’ recordings, including big hits: the Ronettes’ “Be my Baby” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’”.
When Cherilyn’s friend moved out, stretching her thin finances too far, Bono agreed to take her in as his “housekeeper.”
Sonny & Cher 1971, funny angle, Sonnty at 5′-5″, was about 3″ shorter than Cher.
Perfectly able to perform solo – Sonny wanted her to do just that – but she was just a teenager and still suffered from stage fright; she’d only sing with Sonny. Their relationship turned romantic; they wed in the autumn of ’64. She was 18. Sonny was 29 and already once-divorced. Their first hit together was “I got you Babe” (to me always associated with the movie Groundhog Day). That’s when Cheryl/Cherilyn LaPiere became simply “Cher.” When they sang together it was clear that Cher was far superior to Sonny. To me at least.
They quickly rose to fame. Their unique chemistry – musically, in appearance and in personality – captured the public’s imagination. They performed as “Sonny & Cher” with a type of soft pop in singles and albums. But America’s tastes were changing rapidly, and around 1970 their popularity ebbed. So did their personal lives.
Cher began pursuing a personal career. Although they often still worked together, this grew less frequent as their lives diverged. [Their variety and comedy show, The Sonny & Cher Show, which promoted her rapidly growing solo singing career, ran from 1971-74]. They divorced in 1975.
Picked up a boy just south of Mobile.
Gave him a ride, filled him with a hot meal.
I was sixteen, he was twenty-one;
Rode with us to Memphis,
Papa woulda shot him if he knew what he’d done
What is south of Mobile (Alabama)? Isn’t that the ocean, the Gulf of Mexico? Wrong. Mobile is some 15 miles up north from the “mouth” of Mobile Bay. Along the banks of the Bay, particularly on the west, are some areas of open space and parks that could host a “traveling show.” A bit filled in nowadays with development, I’m thinking that in the ‘50s or so (where I tend to place this story historically, but could be earlier) it was quite open.
She’s 16 and probably knows very, very little about life outsider her Traveler community. So much to learn. And those funky hormones.
Why would a 21-year old lad be leaving the area? On the lam? Legal issues? Pregnant girlfriend? Evicted by his family? Military AWOL? In any case, by hooking up with Travelers he was probably venturing far out of his element. And taking a chance. He was desperate. They fed him and transported him north. What good fortune. He pressed his luck.
Papa woulda shot him. I take this literally. It seems quite likely that Travelers, particularly in the deep south, would have firearms. No one really liked the Roma or having them around. Any issues with locals that lead to malicious actions? The law would look away. They themselves, as Roma, were their own first, last and only line of defense.
The song returns to the chorus, but it’s no relief. Rejection, hypocrisy and prostitution. Oy.
1970. Cher’s career was waning too soon. She was too talented and ambitious to allow this. Yet, major changes had to come.
Why? 1960s America. As the decade drew to its conclusion, America grew ever more edgy, in music, sex, drugs, rock-and-roll. First JFK, then MLK Jr, followed shortly by RFK. Viet Nam. Cold War. Race riots. Sit-ins. Social justice rallies. Kent State, May 1970. “Edgy” isn’t strong enough. Prickly? Restless? Even Cantankerous? Confrontational?
Cher, with Sonny, sought a new path, a new direction. Seeing the need to leave their soft “I got you Babe” and “The Beat Goes On” image, and set out on her own, she hooked up with song writer Bob Stone and producer “Snuff” Garrett. They proposed a new and restless approach that fit Cher and the era. It clicked.
Edgy? Stone was a sound engineer and composer for Frank Zappa and his son, Dweezil.
Result? “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves” was the feature song, and also the name of her first album, released on January 1, 1971. (Originally the album was to be named “Cher”; she changed it to the song title when was clear it would be a huge hit). Near as I can tell it was just a fantastic job all around. The lyrics? Captivating. Memorable. The production? Amazing. The mix of instrument sounds, the tempo changes, the key change, all impeccably intertwined. And the vocal delivery? Absolutely stellar. This one had to have taken a very long time to get right. Even today, over 50 years later, when you hear the music, you think of Cher. When you hear her voice, you think of the music. Her charisma and character come right through your speakers; they enchant you and grab you: listen to me!
The bridge. The tempo slows, yet the arrangement still gives us something of a carnival feel, or … like a traveling show. A key change to C-major suggests a mood change, and, here in the bridge, it sounds a bit more reflective. It’s a nuanced twist, part of telling a story that is emotionally complex.
Here, Cher’s ability to drop to a deeper voice provides a dramatic inside view of the story.
I never had schoolin’ but he taught me well
With his smooth southern style.
Three months later I’m a gal in trouble
And I haven’t seen him for a while, ..
I haven’t seen him for a while.
As a Romani child, of course, she had no schooling. The lad is trying to teach her. How to read? About the world? Language? Literature? Arithmetic? Doesn’t matter. The lass is enchanted: he has a “smooth southern style.” A romance ensues.
At three months she’s “showing.” The lad grows fearful. Pa has that shotgun, and I’m sure he’s seen it. He’s on the run again. She hasn’t seen him for a while. And never will again.
And here we get a subtle hint that the girl is still enamored with him, with her memory of him and the experience – even though this story is probably told much later. You can detect a slight moaning “o-oh” at the beginning and at the ending of the last line in the bridge. She misses him still. She still has feelings for him. She’s still a bit in love. And perhaps that’s why the bridge is in a major key.
The 1971 album and song rocketed to national attention and the top of the charts. Cher’s new style, with a new team of writer/producer of Bob Stone and Snuff Garrett, was electric.
Garrett was influenced early and mixed with a radio DJ career, produced dozens of songs, the edgy types, including, later, Cher’s Half Breed and Dark Lady, and Vickie Lawrence’s The Night the Lights went out in Georgia, and many for Bobby Vee and for Gary Lewis and the Playboys.
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The final verse. The cycle continues.
She was born in the wagon of a travelin’ show.
Her mama had to dance for the money they’d throw.
Grandpa’d do whatever he could,
Preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of Doctor Good
Even a casual level of attention shows that it’s not a repeat of the first verse. How much changed?
Line 1 is rather obvious. With one word change we are back on the story’s track. The narrator/lass bears a daughter, at 16 or 17 years-old. The baby girl is born in a wagon – the same wagon of the same traveling show that the narrator herself was born in. The narrator has become the infant girl’s mother, strongly implying the baby – born in the same wagon – is destined to inherit the narrator’s circumstance in a repeating cycle. Just as she – the narrator – has become her own mother.
Dance for money, grandpa selling a concoction of Feel Good. Peeling back the onion now ….
In the very first verse we heard “my mama used to dance …” Now, later, with the narrator as the mother, it’s “her mama had to dance …” [6]
Two things.
One: the last verse, like the first, is also told in the past tense. Thus, this narrative could have occurred quite far into the future, well past “papa woulda shot him…”
Two: I do suspect the last verse is being told much later. Why? There is a difference between “had to dance” and “used to dance.” “Had to” implies that the dancing is imperative – it must be done to get enough money to survive. In verse 1 it’s only “used to dance.” Previously the dancing was optional, perhaps to generate a few extra dollars for auxiliary needs. The family financial situation has now deteriorated further. And here it’s HAD; that part of her life seems to be over.
The choice of “had” vs “has” suggests that she might even now be a woman decades beyond “I was 16.” She’s looking back at her life, musing about things as she remembers them: after all of the traveling, all the family crises, all the men coming around at night, and all the dancing is over. It’s all behind her now.
Or maybe she left the show traveling life, or was kicked out. Maybe she went on the lam, like the 21-year-old boy. The book is about to close, and the enigmatic story leaves us in mystery.
Oops, now it’s grandpa. So “papa,” has become “grandpa.” OK. If mama (the woman narrator) is now dancing for money … ewwww … where is the mama of verse 1? Why isn’t she now grandma? Did she not fit in this verse, or, as I gather here, she is no longer part of the story. Women travelers lived, on average, 10-15 years fewer than their menfolk. And men didn’t very live long either. Life was hard.
This last verse may be referring to a period in the past, but a couple of years after “papa woulda shot him” – the new young mama is now healthy enough, and – ahem – attractive enough, to dance for money and probably entertain the men who came around at night to “throw their money down.”
Overall the near duplication of the first verse is compelling. The clan of travelers, and this family, are stuck in a loop. Around the loop are despair, isolation, cultural rejection, hypocrisy, prostitution, strip teases, travel, travel, travel, eking out a living, sex without love, children born to struggling families.
Edgy, catchy, vibrant, quick and supremely performed, it is also one of the most emotional, gloomy and disturbing songs of my generation.
The use of the term “gypsy” was already considered pejorative by 1970. It was, and remains, a controversial choice for a title. The lyrics themselves show that each word was carefully selected. It’s no accident; the team intended to use “gypsy”. Some research suggests it was chosen in order to play upon the negative connotations the word still carries to today. These people weren’t simply wanderers; they were shunned – looked down upon with disdain. [the formal plural of gypsy is gypsies. I’m not sure why they all agreed on the ungrammatical Gypsys for the title. Perhaps to convey a sense that the story is told by an uneducated person?]
“Gypsys” was so successful that Stone and Garrett continued to write and produce Cher’s songs for over a decade. It was the top charting song for both Stone’s and Garrett’s career. [On the other side, Stone also wrote #1 country song Are Your Happy Baby?]
Cher’s and Sonny’s marriage ended in 1975. They remained somewhat close, mostly just professionally. But, it couldn’t last and they went their separate ways. He had helped her in her early career, and she was grateful. To me, at least, Cher needed to move past Sonny. It was the right time. [Sonny died in a violent ski accident in January, 1998. Cher gave a eulogy. He had entered politics and risen to be the mayor of Palm Springs, then a US congressman]
Cher 1975
Cher continued to be extremely popular and went on to successes in both theater and cinema. She has achieved a sort of Triple Crown: she’s won an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy. That’s pretty dang amazing.
Now, at 78 she’s still performing live and drawing crowds in Las Vegas. Her tours have very heavy schedules, evidence of her enduring popularity and energy.
Cher drew from her own life’s experiences in her performance of Gypsys. You can feel the emotion coming through her delivery. She came from a very chaotic youth, peppered with poverty, a string of broken homes, and constantly moving from place to place. She had little formal education. She had (likely) her earliest romantic encounter at 16. And not unlike her own mother’s youth, and her grandmother’s youth, bearing children while still young (not 13 or 19, but at 21). Cher broke a generational cycle of poverty, rejection, and despair. From a hardscrabble youth – the lives of her shoes often extended by holding them together with rubber bands – Cher took her talents, her ambition, her dreams, her energy, her drive, and her opportunities to reach stardom.
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] El Centro, perhaps best known for the very first digitally well-recorded and documented earthquake in 1940. The data were used to design CA buildings for decades. Other states too. Also, it’s likely the lowest elevation of US municipalities at -42 feet. It’s experienced many more shakes quite recently, although not very violent, but perhaps a portent of more and stronger earthshakes to come.
[2] Roma or Romani: somewhere near the end of the first millennium the Romani peoples were exiled from west India. Ethnically and culturally different they were not accepted. Whether cast out or of their own volition they left. Migrating ever westward, never fitting in, they moved through Persia, the Middle East and into Europe in the 14th century. Persecuted and shunned everywhere they went, locals gave them pejorative names, including “gypsy.” In their native language, which is traceable to Sanskrit, “Rom” means man, or person. Roma, or Romai, is the name they prefer for themselves: People. They spread over Europe, from the Balkans to the channel, and to England. Roma began coming to the New World in the 17th and 18th centuries, at first often as slaves (Portugal and France). Due to ever increasing social maltreatment and economic hurdles, many found ways to emigrate in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some countries, like England, sent many across the ocean as way to get rid of undesirables.
[3] Doctor Good: plenty of things would have been available, and healthy. Options would have included juniper berries. This bitterness could be smothered with honey, pureed spinach, celery, carrots, minced garlic, sage, citrus zest, rose petals and rosemary. Even calendula which has been brought to the Americas. With such options, various versions of Doctor Good would taste and smell different from one traveling show to another. They were probably healthy and with a little “kick” made consumers “feel good.”
[4] Georgia went by Georgia Holt the last 4 or 5 decades of her life. Holt was the surname of her last husband. She also had an interesting life, as you had probably guessed. Many sources on-line.
[5] Some rumors have it that Sarkasian and a quite pregnant Georgia were passing through El Centro when baby Cherilyn decided it was time for her debut appearance. And they stayed there.
[6] The last verse is as quick-paced as the rest. The storyteller seems even a bit more breathless. But it sure sounds as if there might be a slight “error”. The official lyrics say “her mama had to dance.” But Cher seems to sing “my mama had to dance.” Surely the production team noticed it, if it’s there… and opted to keep it. If so, perhaps they thought it conveyed a moment of confusion, caused by the overwhelming emotion from re-visiting a painful story – the storyteller blends her own story with her child’s. Or, perhaps they were running out of studio time.
[7] Key changes in songs are common. Changes of perspective, mood, …
Consider the Drive-Thru. Probably no other phenomenon is more directly connected to three American cultural love affairs of the second half of the 20th century.
Love of the automobile;
Love for speed; and
Love of convenience.
The “restaurant” concept of the Drive-Thru directly evolved from the Drive-In, and both were probably started in the 1920s by a chain of Texas restaurants called “Pig Stand.” (and here). Like the Drive-Thru, the Drive-In restaurant was built to provide speed and accommodate cars and laziness, er, ah, convenience: waiters and waitresses, carhops, would zip back-and-forth from cars with orders, then return to the customers in their cars with the food orders, often on roller-skates. The tasks of getting to and from cars – for taking and delivering of orders – required extra staff and time. Changing from Drive-In to Drive-Thru reduced the employee count … and was faster.
Pig Stand – probably the first drive-thru
Fast Food became even faster. Pig Stand moved west to the LA-area where the drive-in and drive-thu ideas were picked up by In-n-Out Burger. That was followed by McDonald’s, Jack-in-the-Box, and … well, the rest is history. Drive-Thru is ubiquitous in the food serving industry. [* With current trends, using the Drive-Thru at Mickie-D’s might be your best chance to interact with an actual person; however, you still have to keep your butt in the car]
But it’s not just restaurants that provide fast Drive-Thru service. It’s been applied for uses both common and unusual. We can use Drive-Thru at a bank, to get coffee, liquor, covid and flu inoculations and testing. In some locales you can vote via Drive-Thru. There are also Drive-Thru legal, wedding and funeral services. (although these are often labeled Drive-Through, not Thru.)
The market evolves to meet the demand of the consumer.
Starbucks Drive Thru (no hyphen) in Collingwood, Ontario
I wondered a bunch about the Drive-Thru lately. Near our residence are two franchises that serve chicken in different ways. Both are extremely popular. So popular, in fact, that the concepts of “quick and convenient” are almost completely lost; their Drive-Thru queues are almost always so long that they back up beyond the drive-thru access lanes and out into the street. With such demand I question whether it’s even economical for the customer. Still, it’s convenient and virus safe: patrons don’t leave their cars.
I also wondered why it is acceptable to spell it “thru” and not the standard “through.” It has been spelled that way from the beginning (“convenience”) of the drive-thru, and it’s been used so dominantly that “Thru” (as in: Drive-Thru) is now the AP Style accepted form (although fuddy-duddies like Webster still prefer “through”).
[The spelling of “through” is obviously awkward – especially for non-native English speakers – and has a twisted history. I’m considering going with “thru” for everything, even as a self-confessed traditionalist. In fact, “thru” is much closer to the original spelling, and obviously more phonetically correct.]
I further wonder if our preference for convenience and driving-thru contributes to our nation’s embarrassing weight issues. 42% of US adults are obese; 20% of adolescents. During the Covid-19 lock-downs the U.S. obesity rate went up 3%.
Still, I want to touch on the Drive-Through as well. That is: why do we Americans – with our fascinations with cars, speed and convenience – simply Drive-Through those larger states with many straight-line boundaries – in Flyover Country? Have we convinced ourselves that they are boring? Have nothing to offer? Are simply in the way? In the way of our accustomed speed and convenience?
“Oh, you actually drove to Chicago? Wow, how long did it take?”
“About 14 hours. There was a little construction along the way.”
“Must have been annoying. Last summer we made it in only 12 hours. Just stopped to pee and get gas.”
We hear quite often that Kansas, for example, is flat and boring. Simply not true on both counts. Kansas has many rivers flowing thru it. One is very significant: the Arkansas River (which does not rhyme with “Kansas River”). All these flow downhill and generally from west-to-east, away from the Rocky Mountains and into the great Mississippi-Missouri river system. And, as they each trace their own paths, they must be separated by hills and ridges. So, obviously Kansas is not flat. Chicago? Now that’s flat.
This many rivers shows that Kansas is full of hills, ridges and valleys
Kansas is only the 8th flattest state in the US, significantly outranked in the flatness scale by the likes of Florida, Louisiana and Illinois. [Astounding, but Colorado, with its impressive spine of Rocky Mountains is the 26th most flat state – owing largely to its huge expanse of prairie grasslands that comprise the eastern one-third of its land]
Kansas? Boring? Plenty of history and sites, if one is curious and takes some time to not simply “Drive-Through.” With a clever play on words, Kansas bills itself as “The Land of Ahs.”
Learn about the life and times of one of the 20th century’s important leaders. In Concordia visit the National Orphan Train Museum; learn about the hundreds of thousands of youths from east-coast squalor who grew up in clean air and agricultural villages. About a steam ship that took off along America’s great inland highway (the Missouri river) with many tons of goods.
Vice-President Charles Curtis, 1929-33, Kansan and Full Kaw Nation American Native, first person of color in a US executive office.
___________________________________________
In 1856 the “side wheeler” riverboat SS Arabia embarked from Kansas City to make an ordinary river run, laden with over 200 tons of goods for the growing cities of Omaha and Council Bluffs. 200 tons is a lot. It included elegant chinaware. Utensils. Nails. Champagne. Evening gowns and night gowns. Pickles. You name it, it was on the Arabia.
Upriver, where the Missouri forms the boundary between Kansas and Missouri,it hit a snag, reports were it was a sycamore tree. Not uncommon. Hundreds of river boats sank on America’s inland highways in the 19th century … along the Ohio, the Mississippi and others, as well as the Missouri.
The Arabia sank quickly into the mud with no loss of life. Just those 200 tons. Over the decades the river changed course and the Arabia, some 50 feet deep, ended up in a corn field over ½ mile from the river. Four adventurers heard about the Arabia and set out to find her in 1987. In 4-1/2 months they found her. They then succeeded in recovering nearly all of the product and a few parts of the boat (engine and bow) and turned it all into a simply amazing private museum located in downtown Kansas City (Missouri).
A boy, the 3rd of seven born to his parents, was brought up in a small agricultural plains’ city “on the wrong side of the railroad tracks” in Abilene, Kansas. His mother, a strong anti-war Mennonite, made sure he learned how to do a few things for himself before moving on in life: cook, sew, play piano, dance. His life’s path took him to the US Military Academy. The path also led him to San Antonio, Texas, where he met a lass also from the heartland. Her family had since moved to Denver, Colorado and thus started a great love story and one of the most perfect power marriages in history. He not only fell in love, but he also fell in love with Colorado.
You can learn all this and much, much more by visiting the boyhood home and the library of Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower: the man who led the Allied forces to victory in Africa and Europe, and served two-terms as president while keeping the cold war “cold”, ending the Korean War, greatly reducing the size of our military and its expense, handling the press with cool blather, sending the military (101st Airborne) to integrate Little Rock Central High, while ignoring much advice to use nuclear weapons.
Boyhood home of Ike. On same grounds is the Eisenhower Library. Takes and entire afternoon to fully enjoy.
On a single afternoon side trip through Kansas, you can see the monument at the geographic center of the 48 contiguous United States (near Lebanon, Kansas); learn about the transport of hundreds of thousands of destitute and orphaned youth to rural America from the 1850s to the 1920s at the National Orphan Train Museum in Concordia; and even stop to see the world’s largest ball of twine in Cawker City.
Flyover Country has even become a vacation destination, especially since the Covid lockdowns. Whether “driving through” or settling in one spot for a few days, you’ll find a lot to see and do, if you take the time.
A different side trip and you can see and experience the streets of Dodge City, the setting for Gunsmoke, one of the most successful TV shows in American history. Then “get the heck out of Dodge”, while recalling that one of the show’s most enduring characters, Doc Adams, was based on the Kansas doctor, Samuel Crumbine. He’s the first to promote flyswatters to kill flies in order to hinder the spread of disease (until him they were simply perceived as a mild nuisance); and many other public health movements to fight tuberculosis. Can you believe we used (shared) public drinking cups until Crumbine preached against it?
Speaking of Ike, get off the main road (I-80) in Iowa just a bit and head to the town of Boone, to see where Mamie (with the bangs), the most perfect wife possible for him, was born. Although “I like Ike” was a popular saying in the ‘50s, everyone loved Mamie. Near Boone you can also learn of the heroism of a teen lass named Kate Shelley, and see the New Kate Shelley Bridge.
In central Missouri, wander a few miles off I-70 to the small town of Fulton to learn about another great leader of the 20th century. In 1946 he gave a speech at a small college there; a speech from whence we got the term “Iron Curtain.” The term was so important during the Cold War decades, that the school, Westminster College, built a museum honoring the man and his visit. That man was Winston Churchill. It’s now the country’s National Churchill Museum.
Stirring stuff in fly-over country. There’s just a bit more space between all the sites than we’d like. Not convenient or fast. But fulfilling.
I hope that our cultural cravings for speed and convenience in both food and in travel have not become metaphoric for how we live our lives. Are we racing from point to point? Eager for professional advancement? To get to the next meeting, or soccer game, or community meeting? Everything on the clock? Even on vacations we tend to fill the day’s schedules full of things to do, see, eat. Rush, rush, rush.
I recommend taking the road less traveled and going a little slower, as often as possible. How? By simply not “driving-through” our lives, and instead by following the very old admonishment to “Take time to stop and smell the roses”, which is, in fact suppose, a metaphor itself (and a very good one). Setting aside time in your life to enjoy and appreciate things small and large that are not connected to achievement and success has been shown to be very healthy.
Take some time. Go into the restaurant and meet some people, including the ones serving you. They have lives and interests too. Get off the main highway at the next roadside attraction; or just plan on going to visit a few. Life is wonderfully full of special moments to enjoy if we’re not simply “Driving-thru” and “Driving-Through.”
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
Author’s notes (footnotes follow):
[1] Kansas is named for the Kaw Nation. (Which also goes by Kanza).
The 2022 mid-term election cycle brought some interesting results. I mentioned a while back that I’d take a look at those results, with the perspective of hindsight and some data. I’m here to deliver. There’s a little math. And some commentary.
In 2020 the nation conducted a nationwide census. Based on those numbers all legislative and congressional district boundaries were redrawn. [Well, not all. A few states have only one Congressional seat]. These boundaries last 10 years, until the next census. There’s usually a lot kvetching when states roll out their maps. So that’s my main goal here: to objectively assess the district boundaries. How well are the voters’ desires reflected? Or, how badly are things gerrymandered?
A preliminary statement of the obvious. Gerrymandering does not affect presidential elections, or US Senate elections, nor any statewide election, such as Governor.
On a national level, it only affects the lower house of Congress: the House of Representatives. [It also affects states’ legislative districts, but that’s outside this essay’s purview.]
With that out of the way, let’s start at the very top level of the 2022 nationwide results.
Of just over 107 million votes cast for Congressional Representatives on November 6, 2022: 47.41% were for Democratic candidates; 51.56% went for Republicans; 0.54% for Libertarians; and 0.50% for sundry candidates of other parties.
When all the smoke had cleared and the dust settled, the final makeup was 213 Democrats and 222 Republicans. Or 49.0% to Democrats, and 51.0% to Republicans. Overall, I assess this to be a very fair representation of the nation’s intent. That’s overall. There are some incongruent results on a more granular — state-by-state — level.
First, some caveats.
(1) Some states, most notably California and Washington, only permit two candidates on the November ballot. [Each state does have their own election rules]. In six California races there were two Democrats, and no Republicans on the ballot.
(2) Across all states there were 35 uncontested races in November. In those, the unrepresented party obviously received zero votes (there are always a handful of 3rd party write-in votes). Of these, 23 had only one Republican candidate, and 12 a Democrat. [The Washington Post, and others, contend that this cost Democrats the national vote — as if that matters. But there’s a reason no one opposed the single candidate: everyone knew the candidate was sacrificial and would garner few votes. Case dismissed].
The upshot of the caveats is that the November vote tallies can’t precisely reflect voters’ intentions by using simple ratios — at least with respect to parties they favored — as some voters were not able to cast a vote for a candidate of a party they preferred. Accepting that this puts some noise in the data … we forge ahead. Nothing is perfect.
[So, for the top level, I assess that the allocation of seats by party tracked the electorate’s preference amazingly close. Much closer than I’d expected. See? I’m wrong sometimes.]
Applying the same algorithm* as in my essay Mr. Gerry, I found the following the states to be the most egregious in mis-representing the voters’ intentions in the allocation of CD seats by party. {* see afterthoughts, below}.
________________________
State
Bias
Favoring
California
8
DEM
Illinois
5
DEM
Massachusetts
3
DEM
Connecticut
2
DEM
Florida
2
REP
Georgia
2
REP
Indiana
2
REP
Iowa
2
REP
Maryland
2
DEM
New Jersey
2
DEM
Ohio
2
REP
Oklahoma
2
REP
Tennessee
2
REP
Washington
2
DEM
Wisconsin
2
REP
________________________
On net, summing the entire table for all 50 states, the nationwide results of the election compared to my “fair” model show a +2 bias for Democrats, a -1 for Republicans and a -1 for Libertarians.
(Libertarians lost a possible seat in Texas in 2022. Per 2020 presidential CA vote results, where minor party candidates received votes, and per my model, Greens and Libertarians would have received a seat. However, the CA November election run-off model eliminated all 3rd parties).
The two states with the largest biases, CA and IL, were predictable. Each has many Congressional Districts (53 and 17), and statewide they are overwhelmingly governed by one party.
Illinois, entire state CD map
The absence of Texas on the list (38 CDs and mostly led by one party), and often pointed to as an example of extreme gerrymandering, is somewhat of a surprise. Observers have long bemoaned their districting map, including the esteemed Brennan Center on the current map. They make some good points. But Texas awarded 13 of its 38 seats (34.2%) to the minority party; statewide the Dem candidates garnered 34.7% of all votes cast. A pretty good match. The bias in TX turned out Dem +0, Rep +1, Libertarian -1. Is there some gerrymandering in Texas? Almost assuredly (see Brennan), but you wouldn’t notice by the bottom-line statewide results. In fact, the Texas results are so very close to the actual statewide tallies that one could argue that all the districts which appear gerrymandered are made that way to get a good balance in the result. [1]
Also, a bit unexpectedly, New York is not on the most-biased list (it came in at +1 Dem). Republicans won 11 of New York’s 26 seats, or 42.3%. Statewide Republican candidates received 41.5%. A fair result. [2] [yeah, yeah, George Santos, I know]
I suppose one could use these results as a sort of proxy to determine how much any one state might be gerrymandering. That’s a tough call more than you’d think. Another proxy might be the bias as a percentage of any state’s total CDs. For example, if a state has 6 CDs and statewide votes suggest a 3-3 split, but it ends up 5-1, then that’s a mis-allocation of 2 out of 6, or 33%.
Judged this way (for states with 3 or more CDs) the top mis-assigners are:
Iowa 50%;
at 40% are Connecticut and Oklahoma;
at 33% we have New Mexico and Massachusetts.
Illinois comes in at 29.4%.
And a few at 25%: Arkansas, Kansas, Maryland, Nevada, Utah, Wisconsin.
As most in the list have only a few CDs, it’s difficult to determine a consistent gerrymandered bias. California, even with its large overall +8 Dem bias, is only 15% off, since it’s so large. In the largest states on this list, Illinois and Maryland, maps are mixed on suggesting any strong bias in district boundaries.
Illinois CD 13
I don’t want to dig too much into the states. There are 50 of them, and that would take quite a while. Maybe later. But Illinois, the land of my birth, and the Cook County Political Machine, piqued my interest. How could the “Land of Lincoln” lose a seat and then get even more imbalanced? [OK, OK, I know. Richard “Boss” Daley has been dead a long time, and his machine has all but expired — but still: Cook County]. From the 100,000 foot level, the Illinois map (above) looks pretty even handed … with two exceptions (CD 13 and 17). At a more granular level, some other stats stand out: there are 11 total CDs in and near Cook County (Chicago). All 11 went to one party, as did CDs 13 and 17.
I’ve discussed some other states before. Maryland’s districts look much more reasonable since the recent redistricting. Which goes to show that unbalanced results can result even when no gerrymandering is apparent from gazing at the CD boundaries.
Illinois CD 17
Some states have recently taken district boundary drawing out of the hands of (often very partisan) legislatures. Supposedly independent commissions drew the boundary lines. It looks like mixed results. In a few (Colorado, Michigan) the results turned out exactly fair. In others (Arizona, California, Washington and even New York’s first cut) missed the mark by non-negligible amounts. Which shows how difficult the task might be: both choosing fair “independent” teams and then actually drawing fair lines. [3]
A few years ago I wrote about racism in America. Yes, there’s racism. Of course. Undeniable. It’s horrible. It’s repugnant. Yet it’s not as bad as we are led to believe. Look where we’ve come in 60 years. Same with many things. Bad things aren’t as bad as we often think; and good things aren’t as good (or lasting) as we like to think. I submit it’s the same with gerrymandering — or at least with CD boundaries drawn so that voters’ interests aren’t fairly represented.
In 2022 the results look to much more fairly represent citizen’s intent than I thought when my research began a few months ago. Maybe we just sort of got lucky with most bias effects more or less canceling out. People will continue to kvetch, no matter what. I tried.
Weirdly drawn boundaries aren’t in and of themselves evidence of such unfairness. And clean looking boundaries are no guarantee against it.
Look to the numbers first. Look fishy? Then look at CD shapes. Double sniff test. Top level and at most state levels the results this time around were pretty fair. Demographics change, and we are “stuck” with these boundaries until the 2032 elections. Maybe I’ll be around then to reflect on how well the boundaries held up in representation fairness.
I am cautiously optimistic that, with states trending toward independent commissions to draw the lines and with state courts growing more willing to strike down blatantly unfair lines, we’ll continue to trend to even more fairness in the decades ahead. [4]
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
Notes on my election fairness model below, after all footnotes and maps.
[1] California and Illinois lost one CD each due to the re-apportionment after the 2020 census. Texas gained 2 CDs. Sometimes people “vote with their feet.”
[2] the New York legislature submitted a CD map whose boundaries that were deemed a “brazen gamble” by the New York Times. In fact, they were ridiculous. These were judged to be unconstitutional by the state’s supreme court. A court appointed ‘special master’ drew a set of much more competitive (and fair, based on results) districts.
[3] Both Washington and New York allow the state legislature to override the independent commission suggestions. In New York, they did; and failed, as mentioned. In Washington, the commission failed to submit a map by the required deadline. It was drawn, just not submitted. A bookkeeping fiasco. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that the commission’s map, even though submitted late, shall be accepted. It’s impossible to call it a gerrymander, even though, based on statewide party vote tallies, the results would be different by 2 CDs.
[3a] The CD map of Massachusetts looks relatively benign. Yet it yielded a
Massachusetts CD map not ugly, still results in 9-0 “split”
9-0 split, all for one party, despite any fairness models which would suggest 6-3, or at worst, 7-2. [see below]
[4] The US Supreme Court has declined to take cases of unfair CD boundaries. This, they assert, is a problem for the states to sort out.
Maryland CD map; not nearly as contorted as before. But yields the same bias as before. I ragged on Maryland before for the insane CD shapes. They fixed the shapes, but not the bias.
[5] Afterthought: a reasonable way to address the representation fairness issue is to add more resolution to the districts by drastically increasing the number of Congressional Districts (and seats). The number of representatives has remained essentially unchanged going back to our nation’s beginning (it’s grown only as states were added).
In 1900 each District had an average of 191,000 residents. In 2020 that grew to 761,000. It’s absolutely impossible to draw districts completely fairly when they each must have the same number of residents (in the same state) when there are so few CDs allocated.
I don’t know (or really care) if the chamber can hold more than 435 people. I assume so, as joint sessions get an extra 100 in there. Plus, many many representatives are not in the chamber for most sessions.
Notes on Joe’s CD election model: My model explained, by example.
Suppose a state has 10 CD seats to assign. Party A gets 52.1%, Party B 43.1%, Party C 4.1% and the rest 0.7%. We begin by multiplying the percentage for each party by the number of seats available. Then we strip off fractions, using only whole integer numbers.
A) 52.1% x 10 = 5.21
B) 43.1% x 10 = 4.31
C) 4.1% x 10 = 0.41
Round 1: Party A gets 5 seats. B gets 4. That’s 9, there is one seat left over.
In our simple example 10% equals one full seat.
Subtract away from A and B what has already been awarded.
A is left with 2.1%, B with 3.1% and C is still at 4.1%. So, C gets the final seat.
Repeat until all seats are awarded. So, in our example, if any further seats remain, C then loses its 4.1% (it’s been assigned a seat). And the next seat, if available, would go to B. (3.1% > 2.1%).
It’s simple, elegant, easy to apply and – this year anyway – seems to have given a pretty good unbiased look at the results. (My assessment on how “unbiased” it is, well — that’s probably biased). Also, it’s not all that different than how the states are allotted CDs to begin with.
We’re in the midst of a Midwest driving tour, currently in Saint Louis for the February meeting of the 1904 Worlds Fair Society. On the way here we made a combined Dust Bowl/Wizard of Oz tour. We visited several small towns historically in the center of the worst of the Dust Bowl. We visited local museums and historic buildings; all had reference to the Dust Bowl, and wings set aside for that dark decade. One town has the “Dorothy House”; another has a Wizard of Oz museum – appropriately both in Kansas.
In Boise City, OK (they pronounce it Boyz) the museum on the north edge of town was much more interesting than we expected. There we came across two displays (not Dust Bowl related) that really captured my interest. I share them here. The first is a long tapestry that looks vaguely like a kitchen skirt. The second is the story (part true, part imaginative and fanciful) behind an American flag rescued during World War II.
The principal use of grandma’s apron was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few and because it was easier to wash aprons than dresses; and aprons required less material. But along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.
It was wonderful for drying children’s tears, and, on occasion, was even used for cleaning dirty ears .
From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched chicks to be finished in the warming oven.
When company came those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids. And when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arm.
Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot oven and stove. Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.
From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls. In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.
When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.
Grandma’s skirt, found in Cimmaron Heritage Center, Boise City, OK
When dinner was ready, grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and men folk knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that ‘old-time apron’ that served so many purposes.
They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron. But I don’t think I ever caught anything from an apron – but love ……….
– Author unknown
[I searched online to find an author. No luck, but I did find it in quite a few places. There are several versions of this poem – all largely the same. This is a tad shorter than most: it gets the point across with fewer verses.]
Guest “entry” #2 – “Little Jack” Johnson — [First paragraph by museum curators]
American Flag in Humble Surroundings
This is the story of an American flag, made from what was apparently a table cloth and other materials available in the humble home of some Belgian woman. The flag, coming into the hands of “Little Jack” Johnson after the Ardennes breakthrough was wiped out by American forces, was sent with other European war souvenirs to his parents, Mr. & Mrs John C. Johnson here, and have been placed on display at the First State Bank. Jack’s story of the flag follows: [1,2]
“The town of Bastogne will live in the minds of every man wearing the uniform of our country because of the many acts of cruelty performed there by the Nazis during the short-lived Ardennes breakthrough. Although Bastogne is the better known, the nearby village of Houffalize suffered more heavily in the terrific fighting that went on in this territory. There is not a single building left standing intact and most of the inhabitants were killed in cold blood. It was between these two villages in Belgium that I recovered this homemade American flag, filled with holes caused by bullets, and flak and covered with mud, blood and parts of human bodies surrounded by the stench that arises from the field of battle.
“What was the story of the flag? I’ll never know the entire story, but by filling in the parts I heard from war weary villagers, it was one of joy and sadness.
“The Belgian people had long awaited the coming of their liberators. Some woman, working in secrecy, as hope welled up inside her heart, using the scanty materials that she could salvage, prepared this flag with which to welcome the American soldiers.
“At last the great day arrived and as the tank columns came into view, the flag was taken from its secret hiding place and proudly displayed in front of this home that was filled with joy at being released from the yoke of the Germans. [3] Each day, with the rising sun, the flag would be hung to fly in the sunshine of freedom.
“Then came the black cloud that filled all hearts with fear and sorrow – the Germans were coming back with their threats of death and cruelty. The great Nazi onrush could not be stopped in time, and they rolled once again into the village from which they had been driven. A group of arrogant, swaggering German soldiers pulled the flag from its place and crushed it to the ground. But, true to its great tradition, it would not stay crushed to earth, but would rise again to fly in greater glory; the Americans returned with a new hatred and venom in their hearts.
“Hurling new and more powerful missiles of destruction they slaughtered those who dared to defile the flag. Huge bombs fell from the skies and tanks lumbered in to retake the village. Once again the people were under the protection of a great nation. But this flag was not to fly again as I found it still on the ground. Nearby I saw sights so gruesome that they made me sick. Boots still filled with feet, the bodies blown to bits, blouses still containing bits of flesh and hand; there was a head.
American Flag found near end of Battle of the Bulge, near Bastogne.
“Yes, it made me sick, but with a sickness that made me happy and proud, because they were the ones who had wanted to crush our own homes and kill our loved ones, as they had done in this little village.
“This flag would never again fly in a liberated country; it finds its final resting place in America, the country it so proudly represented.”
— by John C. “Little Jack” Johnson, year unknown
Joe G: Thanks for reading.
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] The Ardennes breakthrough is better known as The Battle of the Bulge, Dec 16, 1944 to mid-January.
[2] There is still a First State Bank near the center of Boise City, OK. So I presume that Mr Johnson was from Boise City, and the flag was donated to the museum (Cimarron Heritage Center) at some point. The museum is in a house donated by the Cox family, which was designed by Bruce Goff, a direct protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright. It was built in 1949.
[3] Belgium was 1st liberated in September, 1944
I have found records of a John C Johnson, born in 1918, from Boise City, OK to a John C Johnson. Also born in Ok and a mother, Nettie, born in Nebraska. [A few sources say Dec 1917 …]
He enlisted in January, 1941. 1yr college, occupation: bookkeeper/cashier.
In 1950 John C Johnson, married, no children, is shown as living in Boise City, OK, in census data as a bank cashier. Which sort of fits with the First State Bank.
It appears he passed, March 7, 2003. Sorry that I didn’t start my historical obsession sooner, and thus, never got to meet him.
John C Johnson, Jr, Main cemetery, Boise City, OK
As John Johnson is a very common name I had to stop my search after a few hours. So much to sift through. It is the same man.
Random Droppings: Looking Back, Looking at Now, Looking Forward
Now, for something completely different (sorry Monty).
Looking Back.
First, a shout out to reader Dave R for suggesting that the title to my last blog/essay could have been: “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Hair*(*But Were Afraid to Ask) – sorry Woody.” That’s brilliant. Thanks Dave.
Some readers did respond regarding the embedded cultural references in that essay. For closure, here they are.
“Sadly, Mr Lupner was born without a spine.” This from a series of Saturday Night Live (SNL) skits, circa late ‘70s, starring Bill Murray and Gilda Radner (RIP ☹ ) … sample skit here.
“Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” A line said several times by the king in “The King and I”, a musical; composed by the famous team of Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein (lyrics) [RIP 2x]
“Curiouser and curiouser”; a line uttered by Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written by Charles Dodgson (RIP) under the nom de plume Lewis Carroll.
“Any way the wind blows”; a line both sung and whispered in Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, mostly written by – and fantastically sung by – Freddie Mercury (RIP). It came out in 1974. Normally, it would have been considered excessively long be a hit, at 6 minutes duration; nonetheless, it became a huge hit and still a standard at parties and receptions as they reach their raucous crescendos. Also, a great karaoke song.
“Fred Astaire got no hair” and other rhymes about hair are taken from George Carlin’s (RIP) recited poem Hair. Sometime in the ‘70s. [Sample Carlin Hair Stand up act]
Gershwin Bros, George (L) and Ira (R) [Born Jacob and Israel Gershovitz]
Thanksgiving weekend. Although brief, it took me a while, in fits and starts, to complete this piece, so I’m a bit late. Still within the 4-day break: after Black Friday and before Cyber Monday.
What are you thankful for? Comment! My own list is long. At the top is my wife and her health. Somewhere in the list is you all, my readers, whether frequent or sporadic readers and commenters. Some are words of approbation, others of cogitation, some offer edits and improvements, or other tangents I could have flown off on (as if I need more temptation on tangents to drift away upon).
Thanksgiving mealtime! What makes mashed potatoes great? What is your secret ingredient? Chives? Cream cheese? Grated cheese can make it great. I think it’s butter. Butter makes everything better.
I was surprised to be reminded in my newsfeed last week that yams and sweet potatoes are nowhere near the same, neither genetically nor in taste, although the names are often used interchangeably. And sweet potatoes are not potatoes at all. In fact, my brilliant wife conducted an experiment a few decades ago that I had forgotten. She had all the kids visiting for Thanksgiving compare the tastes of them. [BTW: sweet potatoes make the best fries. Just sayin’.]
Found online … lightly edited …
Color: Sweeties are orange. But not all potatoes are white.
Myth: A sweet potato is an orange potato. Fact: Even though both the potato and sweet potato originated in Central & South America, they are actually not at all closely related. They come from different botanical families. Potatoes are in the nightshade family; sweet potatoes from the morning glory family.
Myth: Sweet potatoes are yams. Fact: Yams and sweet potatoes are not the same vegetable, and they have different tastes. Back in the 1930s, “yams” was used as a marketing term for sweet potatoes and, still to this day, you find the two mislabeled in stores. They’re also from different families; yams come from the same family as grasses (!).
Details, details
To make things a bit more complicated, Garnet Yams are not yams at all; they’re sweet potatoes. [read all about it]
You say potato. I say … Yams? “I yam what I yam.”
I’m glad this essay comes out after Thanksgiving, so you wouldn’t be tempted to bore your festivity guests with such trivia. But, hey!, it’s better than politics, right?
Looking forward
I have notes for some upcoming essays, so here’s a heads up on what to look for. No promises that any will get finished or released. Mostly a matter of finding time to pull them all together and polish them off. And staying focused.
These are not necessarily in order.
A look back at the recent election. This will be through the lens of the topic addressed in my essay Mr Gerry. Since the census was just completed in 2020, districts re-drawn in 2021, and elections based on those districts in 2022, I thought it would be interesting to see how “fairly” the districts were drawn by a mathematical model. (I put fair in quotes, since as adults we know the world is seldom fair, and fair is in the eyes of the beholder). I’m waiting until all the congressional races are decided.
Like the Gershwins (Ira and George) mentioned above, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some famous brothers in history. This will probably be a trilogy, or more, to keep each reading session reasonably digestible in one sitting. As a side note, I think it’s interesting that fraternity (as well as sorority) are definitely Latin-based. And the words for brother and sister in Italian – clearly Latin-based – are fratello and sorella. We call such groups on college campuses by these Latin names, but we also call their “community” Greek Life, and the groups are known by Greek letters
I have notes on an essay on some fruits and the history of a famous American family. The task, as always, is to be interesting, relatively brief, and with several interwoven threads.
And I’m always prone to just march off on some new topic that pops into mind. Or a topic that a reader might suggest. Perhaps you!
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
More cultural references.
1) Everything You Wanted to Know … A spoof on the hilarious 1972 movie Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* (*But were Afraid to Ask), an anthology in 7 parts, screenplay written by, directed by and (in at least 2 segments) starring Woody Allen … including one wherein he plays a sperm. Wonderfully distasteful.
2) Let’s call the whole thing off. Written in 1937 by George and Ira Gershwin for the movie of the same year “Shall we Dance” … with a title like that of course it’s starring Astaire and Rogers.
3) Potatoe: Vice President Dan Quayle famously erroneously corrected an elementary student who had correctly spelled it potato, while visiting a 6th grade classroom. [video here]
4) I yam what I yam. One of several regular expressions of cartoon character Popeye (The Sailor Man); here (8 sec) and here (full length cartoon, 3 min, titled I yam what I yam) , for starters. Oh my gosh, the (unbelievable racist) crap we watched for entertainment as kids.
5) Of course, the first: Now for something completely different. That’s a Monty Python line. Google it yourself. Insanely goofy and funny.
Abraham Lincoln,
quoting Jesus of Nazareth,
June 1858 speech accepting his party’s nomination for Senator of Illinois, 1958
Lincoln, pre- beard
Set within a glacially-crafted landscape, as is Part 2’s Waubeka (which is a scant 50 miles southeast) one finds our third and final small community of this trilogy: the hamlet of Ripon. As with the communities of Parts I and II of this trilogy, Ripon sits alongside a trustworthy clean source of flowing water: Silver Creek.
Driving to Ripon from any direction, whatever the season, one is mesmerized by the views of fields reaching to the horizon, over subtle ground bulges that pass as rolling hills.
Such drives can be exercises in boredom or awe, depending on point of view. The country-side landscape surrounding Ripon certainly looks bucolic; that’s deceptive: whether it’s crops, livestock or dairy, Ag life is hard.
In mid- to late summer the fertile expanse stretches ever onward, bedecked with maturing crops, interrupted only by the occasional farmhouse, an array of grain silos or a dairy farm. Trees are sporadic, and usually betray some feature of the land.
Betrayal: A woven garland of trees, sidling and twisting along, betrays a creek in a hidden draw. A hedge of trees: a property or acreage boundary. A sparse grove scattered across a small area: a farmhouse.
Most acreage is corn, but there’s also plenty of soybean and cattle fodder, such as the legume, alfalfa, and hay bearing grasses.
The landscape can be equally mesmerizing the rest of the year, too. In winter some crop rotation is needed for soil health and protection; that’s mostly winter wheat, planted in early fall so that germination happens before the first deep freeze. But many of the endless fields simply lie in slumber, carpeted under innumerable 6-sided crystals of white moisture through the weeks, as calendars are flipped from November to March. [1]
The first white settlers arrived in the area in 1844, from New York, via Sheboygan. Inspired by the writings of French philosopher Charles Fourier, they intended to build a utopian agrarian socialist commune, withdrawing from the developing American dog-eat-dog culture. They chose well: glacially blessed fertile and moist prairie land, at the confluence of the smaller Crystal Creek with Silver Creek. These idealists called their settlement Ceresco, after Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture.
There are few secrets when it comes to great places to settle. Soon after the Ceresco settlement, David Mapes, also originally from New York, arrived. Finding the setting as a potentially commercially attractive site, he envisioned a community adjacent to Ceresco, just spitting distance to its east (especially with the prevailing westerlies).
Mapes soon entered into an agreement with the owner of this large swath of land along Spring Creek – a chap named John Horner – for the development of a city there. Horner decided the new community should be named Ripon, after his ancestors’ hometown, Ripon, in England’s North Yorkshire County. As Mapes also had ancestry from England, there was no objection.
Before long Mapes had completed a dam on Silver Creek. This was significant. The dam enabled the creek to power a mill. The dam also formed a large pond. Both the mill and the pond promoted commercial and community development. The mill would grind grist into meal. By virtue of Ripon’s trustworthy long, deep, cold winters, the pond provided ice. The ice was harvested in early spring. Thence it was stored in ice houses and cellars, insulated under layers of hay and sawdust. Through the warmer months it was used to chill and preserve foodstuffs, dairy products, and beer. Such was life before refrigeration. At least there was cold beer.
Within a very few years Ripon was thriving. It was growing. Over those same few years, many in the Ceresco commune began struggling with the idealistic concepts and practices required for total collectivism. As land values increased many wished to sell out. Some found a way to do that. Many became Forty-niners and drifted away to follow the Siren call of gold and fortune. Ceresco was absorbed into Ripon.
“[The Confederacy’s] foundations are laid, and its cornerstone rests upon the great truth: that the negro is not equal to the white man; and that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth”
Alexander Stephens,
Vice-President CSA,
Cornerstone Speech, 1861
Alexander Hamilton Stephens, VP of the Confederate States of America
Things were neither mesmerizing, nor beautiful, nor bucolic in America in these, the fledgling years for Ripon and much of America’s heartland. The issue of slavery was about to rend the nation asunder. [edited later: OK Lee Webb, and cotton tariffs].
In the supposed “two-party system” America sorely lacked a strong second party. The Democrats had held sway from Jefferson (1800) until 1840. In the ‘30s a new party, the Whigs, coalesced around a single notion: presidents (as exemplified by Andy Jackson, often described as a jackass — a label he gladly accepted) were too powerful. Beyond that notion — that Jackson was a jackass (which later became the Democratic symbol, a donkey) and too powerful as an executive — the Whigs were little more than a loosely cobbled-together coalition.
In 1840, with William Henry Harrison, the Whigs finally wrested the White House from the Democrats. But WHH promptly died, only a month in office, leaving the office to Tyler (“too!”). Sadly, he had strong “states’ rights” leanings, and, thus, implicitly, pro-slavery inclinations. Harrison’s only major policy initiative was to re-create a national bank (which had been scuttled by Jackson); but when it passed Congress it was vetoed by Tyler. The US financial system would remain fragile.
Thus, with Harrison’s passing and Tyler’s ascendence, the Whig fracture began – which soon led to their demise. They did win one more presidential election, in 1848, with Zach Taylor (probably a good general and poor politician), but he also died in office. Fillmore inherited the presidency. He was in practice pro-slavery (signing the horrific Fugitive Slave Act and denying that the government had any power to end slavery). He was, of course hated by northern Whigs. The party’s factions drifted irreversibly apart. Totally useless, it soon died.
In the 1850s the Democrats, were also split over slavery; the significant factions all favored maintaining slavery. Oversimplified? Sure. Some wanted to expand it to new territories, and others wanted the new territories (which would inevitably become states) to decide for themselves. Across the factions they agreed with the Whig, Fillmore: the federal government had no authority to end the awful institution. Whatever the national policy: slavery should remain forever in the South.
It was dire times for both abolitionists and those who wanted to stop the expansion of slavery. In 1853, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, powered by a Democrat coalition, was thundering down the pike. To Anti-Slavers and Abolitionists alike, the Act effectively promoted slavery, allowing new territories and states to decide the slavery issue themselves (of course, just white males could decide).
It was awful legislation – literally atrocious – and it was surely going to pass. It was in blatant defiance of the Missouri Compromise (1820) which allowed the eponymous state to enter the nation as a “slave state” provided Maine could enter as a “free state”, and that no state west of the Mississippi and north of 36.5 degrees could ever be a slave state (the border between Oklahoma! and Kansas is 36.5 degrees). [2] The Kansas-Nebraska Act tore that compromise to shreds.
Motivated by the distress of this approaching human rights disaster, groups began to coalesce around anti-slavery and abolitionist points of view – from limiting slavery, to upholding the Missouri Compromise, to totally abolishing slavery. These people were remnants of the former Whig party, dispirited members of other parties, and various abolitionist groups. The groups started meeting informally across America’s upper Midwest. A nationwide strategy was needed. A new political party was needed.
Ripon’s Little White Schoolhouse
At one such meeting, on March 20, 1854, in a little white schoolhouse in the modest, small and new settlement of Ripon, 34 such representatives declared themselves a new political party, committed to ending slavery, beginning with fighting its expansion into western territories and states, and ultimately to the universal abolition of the ghastly institution of slavery. That day, the Republican Party had its first meeting, and it came into existence. It happened first in Ripon.
Note: several Mid-west cities also claim to be the birthplace of the Republican Party, including Jackson, Michigan. Ripon is widely accepted by historians as the site of its founding and first meeting.
The fledgling party lacked sufficient firepower to successfully contest the 1856 presidential election, selecting John Frémont as their nominee. Frémont finished a respectable second, ahead of Millard Fillmore (a candidate in ’52, heir to Taylor, and last of the Whigs) who nicked off a few electoral votes and finished third. The Electoral College winner was the feckless James Buchanan (who won despite capturing only 45% of the popular vote, but more than any other candidate). Buchanan, a Pennsylvanian, had pro-southern and pro-slavery sympathies. Thus, he led both the nation and his Democratic party to cataclysmic and complete fracture.
The rest is history, as they say. In 1860 the Republicans, at a very contentious national convention in Chicago, eventually nominated a self-educated railroad lawyer as their presidential candidate. That man was Abraham “Honest Abe” Lincoln. Their political opponents, the Democratic party, split over how to handle the “issue” of slavery – although, as stated, all favored keeping slavery – and nominated two candidates.
Lincoln defeated the fractured Democrats, represented by Douglas and Breckenridge [3], as well as a fourth candidate, Bell [4]. Lincoln won the presidency, even though fewer than 40% of all voters chose him (this time: thank you, Electoral College).
[It’s worth noting that Lincoln won the party nomination and presidency on a modest non-provocative platform of keeping the country united and preventing the expansion of slavery — but not ending slavery. That final position was forced upon him (see Stephens’ quote, above). A position he gladly and openly accepted after the 1862 battle at Antietam, when he crafted the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln’s positions in the 1860 election campaign were nearly identical to Douglas’. However, Lincoln had no known a priori southern or slavery sympathies: see quote atop this essay.]
Splitting the party and the nation was so devastating to Democrats that only one person from that party won a presidential election from 1856 to 1912 — that was Grover Cleveland (albeit, elected twice). His party ran him out on a rail in 1896, in no small part because he believed that a sustainable healthy economy depended on a strong currency. (See W.J. Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech, 1896). He was the last of the successful Bourbon Democrats.*
*[It was a Republican split, in 1912, that finally led to this reversal of fates]
Stephen Douglas, representing the northern Democrat faction for president in 1860, had recently defeated Lincoln in 1858 for the Illinois Senate seat after the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. Breckinridge of Kentucky, very pro-slavery, represented the southern Democrats. Bell, from Tennessee, was of the new and short-lived Constitution Party, which, although pro-slavery, was unwilling to leave the Union over the issue. All 4 candidates received electoral votes.
“ … a nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to proposition that all men are created equal.”
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States,
quoting The Declaration of Independence,
November 1864 speech
dedicating the Gettysburg battlefield and cemetery
One of last photos, perhaps last, of Lincoln
And here I risk losing some readers. So be it. Like many others, I see parallels to the 1850s. The country and one major party stand on the precipice of complete rupture. Many talk openly of armed conflict. The fracture lines are evident. The Republican Party, born in honor and strife in a little white schoolhouse in Ripon nearly 170 years ago, has brought itself to the brink of its own fracture, and contributed plenty to the current widening fissures in this country.
God bless us all.
“Real peace comes from learning to understand the perspective of others. When that opportunity comes, harden not your hearts.” – my mash up of several different quotes.
Final Epilog
Three important firsts. You readers have probably noticed a few similarities across these three stories of “firsts.”
The setting of small towns and small schoolhouses.
The importance of water to early US settlements
I have, heretofore, omitted which of the 50 United States in which each of these three communities lie — Hudson, Waubeka and Ripon. But with a bit of geography knowledge, you’ve figured out that the three “firsts” happened in the verdant and Great State of Wisconsin, land of my youth — as fertile for my mind as it is to its splendid agriculture production, from crops to dairy.
The lay of the land and development of commerce for each community was explored. As was how each place received its name.
Finally, despite good starts and good intentions, each of these three significant “firsts” have ended up in our contemporary times with controversy and contentiousness.
Be well. Be the person your mother would want you to be.
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] I was sorely tempted to contrive a few twisted lines as a Hat Tip to Robert Frost’s classic and timeless composition. Joe-twisted they follow:
“Whose woods and fields these are, I do not know.
His house is prob’ly in Ripon though.
I don’t think it would be so queer,
to stop without a farmhouse near,
to watch his woods (and fields) fill up with snow,
the darkest evening of the year.”
I’m wondering who among my erudite readers might respond to this poetic tangent. Alas, I left it all out, for “I have promises to keep, and miles to go, before I sleep… and miles to go before I sleep.”
Thomas Nast, prolific cartoonist, born in Landau, Germany, gave us cartoon versions of the Rep Elephant, the Dem Donkey as well as the jolly round Santa Clause
[2] technically: any new state that came from the Louisiana Purchase, not new states west of the Mississippi River.
[3] the city of Breckenridge Colorado was named for Breckinridge. A spelling tweak was made when it became clear that he was very pro-slavery. The “i” was simply switched to “e”; same pronunciation. “Breck” had once been US Vice-president.
[4] Bell represented a party that was mostly constitutionally conservative and southern
[5] NAST: ELECTION, 1876 “The Elephant Walks Around” – And the “Still Hunt” is Nearly Over. ‘ Cartoon by Thomas Nast, 1876, showing the Republican party trampling the Democratic candidates Samuel J. Tilden (right) and Thomas Hendricks (left), while John Morrissey walks away. Nast gave us our current versions of the elephant and donkey as political mascots. As well as the big fat jolly Santa Claus dressed in red.
Good start on history of Ripon: https://ripon1854.com/about-us/
riponhistory.org/contact
And the demise of Ceresco: http://www.uwosh.edu/oldarchives/NHD/ceresco/demise.html
“You’re a grand old flag, you’re a high-flying flag …”
US Flag — 1959 to present
Prologue. Waubeka: lay of the land
The languid Milwaukee River begins as a set of mild-mannered creeks amongst some “highlands” formed by a “range” of moraine hills. These hills constitute a small divide, between Lake Winnebago’s watershed and the river’s own. Several river branches and creeks soon join in, most from the same highlands. When enough creeks have linked up, it has graduated to a real “river.” Thence it begins meandering on a very twisty path – apparently aimlessly, like a band of nomads, or like one of my essays ?. It plods many dozens of miles through Kettle-Moraine country, collecting other creeks along the way. Twenty miles from its mouth it finally turns right and commits to a generally southward flow, albeit with a few jogs. Finally, in downtown Milwaukee, it joins two other rivers and makes a sudden hard left turn just before it disgorges into Lake Michigan.
Typical Midwest rolling moraine country
Ice sheets of at least four glaciation periods have covered much of North America over the current Ice Age. Each period lasted tens of thousands of years. The last – which ended about 11 thousand years ago – covered all of Canada, and much of the upper Midwest. The ice sheets were one to two miles deep. Cartographical features remain, large and small. The most obvious are lakes, including the Great Lakes. Many subtler topographic features include:
modern river paths,
moraines (hills),
kettles (depressions),
and till plains (fine glacial deposits). [2]
Lying alongside this lazy river – ‘twixt two of its last big bends, 30 miles upstream from its mouth – one can still find the tiny and humble settlement of Waubeka. The community remains unincorporated, its population still just a few hundred.
Waubeka was first settled by Europeans in the 1840s. Its name comes from a local Amerindian — Waubeka (Anglos’ best phonetic Anglicization: Wau-BEH’-kah) — who was Chief of the Potawatomi tribe that remained in the area after White-man’s settlement. [note: my pronunciation may not quite coincide with locals]
The region was once thickly forested: beech, cedars, pines, oaks, maples, larch, and black walnut, to name several. All grew well in the humid continental climate, and the rich glacial till soil. A beaver population prospered among the many placid brooks. Thick forests provided ample timber for these industrious builders – the largest rodents in North America – to build dams and lodges.[3]
In time, the land was settled – or maybe “exploited.” Endless groves were substantially cleared by felling on an ambitious scale. Some timber was floated downstream for use elsewhere, but the river’s nature (slow, twisty, with occasional “rapids” and dams) precluded much of that. Some was used for construction, and much simply burned — either for heat, or just to get rid of it. Most of the beaver were harvested, too, although by then the beaver pelt rage was winding down; but they were considered pests, since their dams created large ponds where they’d otherwise not exist.
The cleared-out land has produced an impressive agricultural yield ever since. [4] Soon after this initial clearing out, Waubeka had its own dam to power a grain mill.
Agriculture still supports much of the economy around Waubeka. The hamlet itself is now slowly — grudgingly — changing. Bits of commerce and refugees are wafting north away from Milwaukee’s gravitational pull. But little Waubeka still retains much of the “agricultural-small-community-keep-it-simple” feel it had 150 years ago, when our protagonist came of age there.
“… Forever in peace may you wave. You’re the emblem of
the land I love, The home of the free and the brave…”
Bernard Cigrand was born in tiny rural Waubeka, in October 1866. He was the seventh of eight children born to Susanna and Nicholas Cigrand (one died in infancy in 1859). Census data show Nicholas was a blacksmith and, for a while, hotelier. Susanna is listed as housekeeper — quite a task I imagine with 7 kids in a remote community. Nicholas and Susanna were immigrants from Luxembourg. [Although Nicholas’ US naturalization record from 1858 says he was born in “Holland.”] [5]
In 1885 young Bernard was finishing his first year of teaching the school children of the area at a salary of $40/month. He was young, only 18. Classes were held in the community’s small school (of course, small) called Stoney Hill School. Born and raised in Waubeka, he was considered qualified to teach by virtue of his high school diploma, times being what they were, and especially — as a local boy — he was well-known to be bright and trustworthy. Very young teachers in small remote communities were not uncommon at the time.
Bernard Cigrand, himself (looks like a wedding picture)
Bright, yes. After another year of teaching in Waubeka, Cigrand was accepted to dental school in Chicago. [6]
Upon dental school graduation Cigrand practiced dentistry in northern Illinois, starting in Chicago while also teaching at the dental school there. He set up a longtime practice in Aurora, IL, while residing in nearby Batavia, along the Fox River.
But before Cigrand’s pursuit of dentistry, while teaching in that small schoolhouse in Waubeka, he did something that started a national movement — one that is remembered to this day.
Monday morning, the 15th of June 1885, started out as usual for young Bernard. He opened the schoolhouse and opened its windows to allow a draft — humid warm June days are often oppressive. He went out to the hand-powered water pump and filled a watercooler – likely a Red Wing Stoneware ceramic cooler, or water ‘bubbler’ – thus securing his students’ hydration for the day. The cooler would be placed on a table in the back of the room. Then he did something quite new. Cigrand put a 38-star American flag on his desk. His reason? To begin promoting understanding of, appreciation for, and respect for the flag: its history, symbolism, significance, and its power to unify the many ethnic groups immigrating to America. (He himself was a first generation American.)
38-star flag, 1877-1890
A year passed. The end of his second, and final, year teaching in Waubeka. On Monday the 14th, Cigrand did the same thing. He set out a flag. He started talking about it, and he invited the students to talk too.
What a great idea! Word got out. The flag was a local hit. A movement was started. Flag Day, a day to honor the flag. Cigrand made it a personal mission. Even after dental school he continued promoting Flag Day.
And he had opportunity to do just that. Cigrand was well-traveled as Dean of the Chicago Dental School and attended conferences in that role where he spoke of the Flag and the need of having a national Flag Day. He contributed to several Chicago papers and gave lectures on the significance of the flag.
The idea continued to spread. Schools and towns and cities across the country started honoring the Stars and Stripes every June 14th, as the number of stars increased to 48 over the following three decades. Of course, since 1959, the grand old flag now displays 50 stars.
June 14th was the de facto Flag Day long before President Woodrow declared it so, in 1916. Congress then made it official (although it’s not a federal holiday) via legislation in 1949 – and President Truman signed it.
We “fly the flag” at our house on special days, Flag Day among them.
“ … should auld acquaintance be forgot, Keep your eye on the grand old flag.”[7]
Epilogue
Of course, America being America, the nation’s flag — like Little Free Libraries — has become contentious. I really don’t want to spend much time on this sad aspect. With full knowledge and acceptance that our country has many, many warts and blemishes from shameful historic acts, I prefer to focus on its positive aspects: historically, currently and in the future. To focus on the positives the flag symbolizes: such as human dignity, responsibilities, liberties, and unity.
Dignity and unity are possible because of E pluribus unum. In many we are one. All men are created equal, with the right to pursue happiness. Equal protection under the law. Fundamental rights encompassed by the Constitution’s Amendments. A country willing to spill its blood and spend its treasure for freedoms at home and abroad.
The flag is a focus of controversy? Really? Can’t we all just get along? Do it for the children; for the school children.
On August 1, 1889 Bernard Cigrand married Alice Crispe. She had migrated to Chicago from rural Michigan, near Kalamazoo. She bore him three sons and three daughters. Among them, Elroy (b. 1895) also went on to be a doctor of dentistry, DDS.
Cigrand is a very uncommon surname. As there are a few scattered across the area, especially in upstate Illinois, near Batavia, I would not be surprised if many – or if all – are descendants of Bernard and his brother Peter.
Bernard had a sudden heart attack and passed away in 1932, aged 65. He is buried near his home, just outside Aurora, Illinois, along the Fox River. Buried nearby are his wife, Alice, and five of their children. [8]
“…Oh, say does that Star Spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?”
Stoney Hill School in Waubeka has been fully restored to a fine condition.
Stony Hill School house, modern
Flag Day ceremonies are held there annually.
The main street through Waubeka is called “Cigrand Drive.” There is also a “Cigrand Court” in Batavia, near his longtime home and final resting place.
If wishes made dreams come true, then mine would be that all citizens appreciate their nation’s flag, pausing often (and before assigning blame) to consider and respect the symbolism of what’s good, beautiful and hopeful within their country. In other words, be at least a little bit like Bernard Cigrand, DDS.
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[1] Languid, indeed. Over its 100+ mile length the river’s elevation drops just over 500 feet. Much of that near its headwaters
[2] Technically we are currently in an ice age era, which has lasted about 2.6 million years, part of larger ice age that has lasted about 30 million years.
Some glaciation fingerprints referenced above:
[3] A feel for how the region looked pre-European settlement can be gained by visiting the nearby North Branch of the Kettle Moraine State Forest. Beaver populations in the region are now protected as well (although can still be pest-like). Near Waubeka is a city actually named Beaver Dam.
[4] Thanks to glacial till much Midwest soil is among the most fertile on the planet. Positioned upon land that’s ever-so-gently sloped it’s very conducive to agribusiness, both crops and on-the-hoof.
[5] Luxembourg’s status and its sovereignty were in flux through much of the 19th century. At the time of Nicholas’ birth, the Prussians, the Dutch, and even in some regard the Austrians, laid claim to parts of the duchy. At one point the Belgians claimed all of it. I was surprised to learn that regions of the duchy speak an offshoot dialect of French called d’Oïl. This could explain the “Frenchy” looking surname.
[6] Chicago had only a few years before been catastrophically burned (1871) and then picked up the nickname “Windy City” (1876). It’s not particularly windy, and the nickname’s origins probably come from its propensity for spewing “hot air.” Politicians and local business leaders were promoting Chicago and its rapid phoenix-like recovery from the fire. The name stuck when journalists in rival cities used the nickname to describe the zealous windbags and gasbags who lived there. This was envy: the city was known for its large, and growing wealth due to its hub as a financial, commercial and transit center.
[7] Song lyrics extracted from chorus to “You’re a Grand Old Flag”, by George M Cohan, who was born on July 4, 1878 (hence his famous lines in Yankee Doodle Boy: “[I’m] a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the 4th of July.”)
[8] Four children died in young adulthood, including, Bernard (not a Jr) who went young in 1925 at 35. These might have contributed to father Bernard’s passing in 1932. Wife Alice passed in 1962, age 92.
Notes and extras.
At right and below: extent of Midwest ice sheets in current ice ag
Laurentide Ice Extent in modern USA
e phase (yes, we are in the inter-glacial period of an ice age, called the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation age), mostly the Laurentide ice sheets. Note that basically all of current Canada and much of the Pacific Northwest were also covered, the NW by the Cordilleran Ice Sheet.
______________________
Cigrand’s tombstone, Riverside Cemetery, Montgomery, Illinois (quite near Batavia)
Lying along the left bank of the St Croix River, just across from Minnesota, the population of the small city of Hudson has nearly doubled in the past two decades — now population 14,000 — from its beginnings as a tiny settlement in the mid-19th century. I suspect much of this recent growth is spillover from the Twin Cities, which straddle the Mississippi, about 20 miles due west. It’s now even considered part of the Minneapolis-St Paul Metropolitan Statistical Area for demographics and census data.
For decades aspects of the lumber industry supported its citizens, from logging, to mills, to transport. Most of its present-day commerce is tourism, supporting both domestic and commercial travel as a stop-over along Interstate-94, and as a Twin Cities “bedroom community.”
Hudson was originally called Willow River, when it was first settled in 1840. In 1852, after a previous re-naming, the city’s first mayor Alfred D. Gray successfully petitioned to change the name to “Hudson”, as the bluffs along the river reminded him of the Hudson River in his native New York.
With the city’s long history of remoteness and small population, rare indeed is the modern individual who can name a single notable person from Hudson, let alone a famous one. There is one name that more than a few recognize, but the tally is not abundant. He could be famous; he should be famous. Perhaps, some day, he will be famous. His name is Todd Bol.
Born near St Paul, Bol mostly grew up in Stillwater, Minnesota, graduating high school there. Stillwater is also very small, just a handful of miles upstream from Hudson, but on the river’s right bank.
Todd Bol, of Hudson on the St Croix
After high school Bol then earned two bachelor’s degrees consecutively, in sociology and psychology, at a state university some 25 miles southeast of Stillwater, across the St Croix, in Riverside.
After university, his professional career originally followed that of his mother— a longtime teacher and bibliophile. He taught school in some small, even far-flung, hamlets in eastern Minnesota. Todd Bol also seized upon his mother’s passion for books and reading.
Eventually Bol left teaching and became a serial entrepreneur. He founded or help found companies, then moving on to others. He got involved in health care and nursing. One Bol company trained nurses in advanced care, and another, a foundation, provided scholarships for advanced nursing candidates.
Free now to change his domestic setting, Bol settled in relaxed Hudson, across the St Croix. He had left Minnesota, this time for good, as things turned out.
The 2008-9 financial crisis took a toll on Bol, now in his 50s. He found himself unemployed and with no nearby prospects befitting a person of his creativity and energy. Moping around, his wife suggested he take up some hobbies, starting with Do-it-Yourself home improvement projects. “And you can start by replacing the old garage door.”
Mission accomplished; Bol’s attention turned to the pile of old wood that used to be the door. Much was recoverable, still usable, and in fine condition. Bol could not bring himself to throw it all out.
What to do with that scrap wood?
Little Free Library, #1 (I think)
His entrepreneurial mind struck upon a way to connect himself to his mother, and to honor her, via this old wood. He conceived and constructed a miniature one-room red schoolhouse, complete with belfry, a few feet wide and tall — built from that scrap wood. And about a foot in depth, front to back. It had glass in its front doors so that one could peer through to see its contents. He mounted it to a post, which he then planted securely in the earth — in his front yard — accessible from the street.
What could be seen through those glass- paned doors?
Books! Todd Bol filled the miniature schoolhouse with books. It was the first Little Free Library (sometimes called Little Neighborhood Library), or LFL.
Within a few years the idea spread wildly. Cute little miniature buildings with books popped up in neighborhoods, parks, resorts, squares. Want a book? Take a book. Got a book? Leave a book.
The idea caught on and, well you probably know the rest of the story, if not the details. Here are a few. Rewinding a bit, soon after that first LFL, Bol met Rick Brooks, who worked at the state’s flagship University as an outreach program manager. Excited by the Bol’s idea, they teamed up to promote community development via LPLs. It became their passion; a project inspired by Andrew Carnegie’s library endowment [synopsis here], which funded construction of nearly 1,700 libraries in small to mid-sized towns across the country. [some say 2,500].
They soon blew past that number. There are now well over 100,000 LFLs in the world. Well, at least that many registered with the Little Free Library Organization, a non-profit that sprang up to support LPL growth and “builders.” There might be more. They have an app to help desperate bookless readers locate LPLs (but seems most effective in the US), as long as the LPL builder/owner registers with the organization.
Alice Kravitz, notorious nosy busybody, from the “Bewitched” TV series
LFLs are in all 50 states, 108 (and counting) countries. There is one at the south pole, and another in Siberia. Bol’s realized dream spans the globe, east to west and south to north.
LFLs were an advantageous societal feature during the Covid lockdowns, as libraries across the country closed indefinitely. Local residents put non-perishable food in many LFLs; others, hurt by the hard times, took the nourishment.
Hard to believe then, but not surprising (this is America, after all) that LFLs became contentious in many locales. The world is full of Gladys Kravitz-types — nosy busybodies, nannies, and nitpickers. Every neighborhood seems to have at least one. After all: LFLs violated all kinds of local codes, ordinances and HOA bylaws. Then sprang up those who would ban books, from the Left and the Right. Some even feared the effects of competition with brick-and-mortar libraries. [1] (Sigh.)
This was one reason for the existence of LittleFreeLibrary.org: provide advice on how to deal with busybodies and HOAs, and legal advice on how to fight city hall … and win.
Sadly, Bol was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2018. He passed quickly, age 62 [Twin Cities Star Tribune Obit], leaving the world with a great gift, a legacy, and an awesome tribute to his mom.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] A partial list of books banned in America, in various school districts, library districts and municipalities.
The Supreme Court has certainly received a lot of attention lately: hearings, pending decisions, leaked drafts and partisan splits. We tend to focus a lot on partisan splits, but 9-0 unanimous decisions occur more often than 5-4 and 6-3. And those are just announced decisions. I suspect they are also quite common on procedural things, like which cases to hear.
Shertoff proposed flag
Last week the Court announced a 9-0 decision on an interesting case, Shertleff v Boston. Quickly: Shertoff was a free speech case in which a citizen (Shertleff) was denied flying a Christian flag (red cross on blue patch with white background) on one of three masts at the Boston city hall. The city had never denied such a one-day request before. But the court considers such facts not so much as the law. [1]
Regarding the law, the court has always bent over backward to protect free speech. And the right to have that free speech heard – or, in this case, seen. It’s not the first time Boston and the area has been so severely spanked by SCOTUS on speech.
In 1993 the Irish Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Group of Boston (GLIB) wanted to participate in the St Patrick’s Day parade. They were denied (although not by the city, rather by an independent organization running the parade). GLIB sued and Hurley v Irish-GLIB, Inc went to the highest court. These things usually take a while to wend through the court system. The court decided again, in 1995 and unanimously 9-0, that free speech gets pole position. Gays et al must be allowed to march in public parades.
Another unusual 9-0 decision came in 2014 in McCullen v Coakley. A Massachusetts law was passed in 2007 mandating an anti-protest “buffer zone” around entrances to abortion clinics – even if that buffer extended to public areas like sidewalks. Protestors sued. Free speech won unanimously, again. The whole law was stricken.
In every case above the most progressively liberal and conservative justices united to rule in favor of the most liberal interpretations of free speech, even if it went against their personal social principles in the specific cases.
This even applies to burning the flag, see Johnson v Texas, decided in 1989. Although narrowly decided at 5-4, it’s interesting that conservative-leaning Kennedy and most-conservative Scalia voted with the majority to permit flag burning. [Kind off odd, as the specific flag burning incident was a protest against Ronald Reagan, done just outside the Republican convention of 1984 — and by 1989, when the case was finally decided, Reagan had recently appointed Justice Anthony Kennedy].
Not long after Johnson, above, the court heard a very similar case. In response to Johnson Congress quickly passed the Flag Protection Act, which prohibited flag desecration and mistreatment. They basically dared the courts to take up the issue again.
This got to SCOTUS quickly, dying a 5-4 death in 1990, in United States v. Eichman. Again, with conservatives Scalia and Kennedy concurring: flag burning is speech. Speech is protected.
Antonin Scalia, SCOTUS Judge 1986-2016
Years later Judge Antonin Scalia stood by his votes. “If I were king, I would not allow people to go around burning the American flag. However, we have a First Amendment, which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged…”
Scalia’s reference to the First Amendment to the Constitution gives us a good chance to review this very important part of the US Constitution.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
One thing that’s interesting right from the start is that this Amendment, as written, is directed at “Congress” — not to the states, or to the state legislatures, or to city governments. Yet the Supreme Court, and lower courts by precedence, have determined for a long time that these rights (religion, speech, press, assembly) are so very important that they apply to all branches of government.
These rights are indeed important. Let’s consider Freedom of the Press. This points to just one reason why I personally did not really react much to the great fear-stoking regarding the tenures of, let’s say, our last two presidents: Obama and Trump. What’s that you say? Because they were pummeled and attacked by the press, and cartoonists, daily. None of those publications or voices were silenced, arrested, or “disappeared” by a government response. We can extend this to the many anti-this and pro-that demonstrations that happened during each presidency. Free press and free speech all. [Presidential claims of “fake news” and a bible walk to St John’s notwithstanding].
Freedom of the press is so important it should cause us to consider how contemporary events would have played out if such a valuable and cherished freedom truly existed in, say, China and Russia.
Would there be an atrocity-filled war in Ukraine right now if Russia had such a court-protected freedom? How might the Covid pandemic have played out if China had freedom of the press? Reporters Without Borders (RSF) rates China 175th and Russia 155th (out of 180) in the world in Press Freedom.
By way of comparison, the US gets an overall top-grade score of “Good”, and “Satisfactory”, but still comes in at only 42nd, per RSF. Saying the “US is better than most” is not anything like saying “Russia and China are better than North Korea” (dead last). They are so very low because of authoritarian government interference and censoring. Although we (the US and much of Western Europe) can do better, we are in pretty good standing regarding press freedom.
In absolute freedom of speech, the US does rank #1 in the world (World Economic Forum rankings). [2]
“I disapprove of what you have to say, but I defend your right to say it” has long been a maxim of US law and principals. [3] Recent Rasmussen polls regularly show over 80% of Americans believe free speech is more important than offending someone, and prefer it to giving government control of speech content. [Caveat, among younger Americans this number is dwindling.]
In reviewing the RSF’s Free Press evaluation criteria the US seems to lose ground for a variety of non-government reasons: there are far fewer jobs for investigative journalism than there used to be; many writers self-censor; much media fails to fairly present alternative views. [4] It’s all related and these conditions continue to morph. All-in-all, these topics are very large kebabs to skewer. As is Free Speech, in the context of, say, Twitter and Elon Musk. I’ll leave those for others to tackle.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
Footnotes below. Acknowledgements to recent articles by Jeff Jacoby (Boston Globe) and The Economist for stimulating the thoughts that led to this essay.
[2] This is supported by a 2015 Pew Research poll,here. By 2021, the US has dropped into a virtual tie with Norway and Denmark for #1 [link], which apparently has more to do with Americans’ perception of free speech than actual government or private censoring.
[3] This quote is often attributed to Voltaire, 18th century French philosopher and strong proponent of civil liberties. It’s actually probably best attributed Evelyn Beatrice Hall, an early 20th century biographer of Voltaire, trying to capture Voltaire’s philosophy.
Reporters without Borders 2021 World Map, hard to believe Russia is red, not black. But this was before Ukraine.
White (score 0-15) relates to a Good Situation.
Yellow (score 15-25) reflects a Satisfactory Situation.
Orange (score 25-35) represents a Problematic Situation.
Red (score 35-55) represents a Difficult Situation
Black (score 55-100) represents a Very Serious Situation
It’s almost St Valentine’s Day, February 14th, hereinafter called “the day.” This year the day somewhat coincidently comes one day after the Super Bowl. Don’t allow that extravaganza to make you forget your sweetheart and cherished ones.
The coincidence is because the “big game” is occurring about a week later this year than most others in recent history. That’s because the NFL, like other professional leagues – in their never-ending quest for money – has decided to add a 17th game to each team’s schedule. [Don’t even get me started on the NBA and their addiction to China’s money, see here, here, here, and many others.].
The day is often annotated with flowers, candies, dates, proposals, photos, notes and cards with images of Cupid, the cards and notes often signed off with XOXO.
Less often are references to the massacre of that day and name, administered in the Lincoln Park neighborhood in north Chicago, in 1929. Lore has it that the gore can be attributed – directly or indirectly – to Prohibition.
Who was St Valentine? Historians and theologians disagree on just how and why to connect said saint to this romantic date, mostly because there were three Saint Valentines – all three were martyrs, executed by the Roman emperor.
St Valentine, 3rd Century
The most likely story is that of a Saint Valentinus (ca 225-270 CE). He was a priest in what would be modern day Italy. He was sympathetic to the romantic inclinations of young men who were serving in the Roman military. The Emperor, Claudius II, believed that single men made better warriors. As Valentinus knew that love knows no bounds, he married the smitten men to their beloved sweethearts clandestinely. He might have believed that this helped keep them more chaste when far away from home. His secret was eventually discovered; he was beaten, tortured and beheaded.
The day? Whether legend or truth, or perhaps related to one of the other “Valentines”, the day of Cupid and putting love and loyalty on the calendar this particular day, is that it is presumably the date of his execution. At least in the west; in eastern Christianity it falls on July 6th.
Or, the day could be related to the Roman celebration of Lupercalia, which by Christian times, had evolved into something of a pre-spring fertility festival. Lupercalia was celebrated around the Ides of Februarius, which was regarded as the last month of the year for ceremonial purposes. Should we mention that fertility and “love” are related? Early Christians were pretty good at appropriating the dates of existing rituals to help with conversions and make proselytes feel more “at home.”
Linguists might notice the “Lup” in Lupercalia and wonder if there is a wolf involved.
Well, there is a wolf involved. Historically, going back a few centuries BCE, the party festivities were to honor Lupa, the she-wolf who nursed and nurtured Romulus and Remus – the mythical founders of Rome.
[By the way, I’m pretty sure that Valentine’s Day has nothing to do with the urban slang meaning for she-wolf, which is “promiscuous woman”, or worse: “prostitute.”]
And Cupid? The cute chubby fellow who adorns so many cards? He’s the Roman god of passionate love and physical attraction. He’s that cherubic and precocious imp who shoots arrows that, upon hitting their human target, provoke physical and emotional feelings: in short, uncontrollable desire. In one mythologic tale he accidently shoots himself, and thus he himself must suffer the ordeal of love. How apropos.
Modern Day Cupid
Cupid, like many Roman Gods, was “stolen” from the Greeks, whose name for the corresponding god was “Eros”. Eros to Greeks meant the same as what Cupid was the god of: passionate physical love. Romans’ Latin even stole the very word Eros: from which we get the English words erotic, eroticism, erogenous and the like. Etymologically, eros is both the Latin and Greek word for physical, passionate, sexual love.
One might wonder why Cupid, a god who can rule over one of mankind’s strongest emotions, is most often depicted as a winged, tubby little pre-pubescent lad. Why not a strong muscular figure? This transition seems to have pre-dated Christianity and even the Roman adoption of Eros as Cupid.
Wings? Well, he is a god, so the wings make sense, I suppose. But better is the line of thought that people who fall in love are “flighty.”
A flabby whiskerless boy? With a little bow and arrow? He is a mere boy because, like youth, love can be so very irrational. The mighty physique of early Eros was replaced with a bow and arrow to show he still had power.
Speaking of eros, eroticism and such. In Christian tradition, there are four types of Love (most languages, like English, don’t have enough words for this rich domain of emotions). One is Eros, which is the special intimacy that exists between wife and husband. Two of the other three are Agape and Charity. I forget the 4th.
Anyhow, that’s a bit of a path to near to the end of this essay and the end of any Valentine’s Card, where you might find XOXO. [This is also inscribed at the end of notes, or, nowadays, within text messages]. We all know this means hugs and kisses – or kisses and hugs – right?
Until recently I’ve always had this backward, thinking that O meant kiss (looks like a mouth to me) and X is the hug (looks like 2 arms crossing). But no, ‘tis ‘tother way ‘round.
Seems as though the X comes from the time not so long ago when most people were illiterate but were required to sign a legal form or document. So, they wrote just “X.” They could have made any symbol, but the first letter in the Greek word for Christ is χ. That’s Chi, which looks like an X. (Pronounced “K-eye”, or “kai”). The symbol was meant, in effect, as attesting before Christ the Lord that your “signature” was a true testament: a sacred vow. Then, to establish validity, they then kissed the X – as in “sealed with a kiss.” That might be legend, but it’s as good as any other explanation.
Speaking of the Greek letter χ, it is near the end of the Greek alphabet. The way the coronavirus is mutating, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of the chi-variant before this is over.
Back to XOXO. As for O in the XOXO script, it’s a “hug” because it’s supposed to be two sets of a pair of arms, each individual pair forming a semi-circle. Linked together, they form a full circle. Looking down from above, it’s two people in full hug, – well, the arms form a distorted loop, or circle. And, if the arms make a circle, which symbolizes true love – no beginning and no end, they’re like a wedding ring. Another legend has it that many Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated into America were also illiterate. Upon entry they also had to sign documents. Seeing Christians mark their documents with an X, they went the opposite way and used O. Which offsets the X, but doesn’t convey quite the same thing as hugs and kisses.
Despite all the above—the legends, the myths, the lore and the gore, the guesses and the tangents – this much is true: February 14th is Valentine’s Day. And – truth – it’s as good a day as any to show special people in your life just how important they are. Card or note? Sure. Sign it “Love”, mark it with an X, an O, or an XOXO. And we’re not playing tic-tack-toe here.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
In military terminology, a countersign is a word, phrase or signal that must be given to allow passage beyond anyone at a secure post, such as a sentry. Usually, it is agreed upon a priori. For example, in Normandy, on the beaches and on the cliffs, on D-Day, June, 1944, the password response to “flash” was “thunder.” Sometimes it was more fluid, even impromptu, especially if a leak was suspected. So, it was often based on contemporary culture: (approacher) Pass please. (sentry) Yankees Centerfielder. (approacher) DiMaggio. (sentry) Come through. [1]
Well, my REI winter holiday shopping catalog just arrived, packed with other assorted postal bombardments we are prone to receiving in our mailboxes in this current pre-Christmas season.
REI. That brings back more than a few autobiographical memories, and I suppose that’s as good a reason as any to trigger the dance of my fingers across my keyboard to tap out an essay that’s been brewing since the first days of the ‘round the country road trip we took in October.
Vintage REI logo. I couldn’t find one from either the very early days, or a good modern one.
REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc) is a retailer of high-end sporting and outdoor adventure equipment. It’s organized as a cooperative. It originated in Seattle and has since spread to 138 stores around the country.
I became aware of REI when I first moved to Seattle, in 1980, fresh out of grad school – and fresh out of money. I mean broke. I literally had zero dollars and zero cents. Just a Chevron credit card and – for some reason, maybe since I had just earned an engineering graduate degree – an American Express Card. On my cross-country trip from Nashville to Seattle I stopped in Denver for a few days; my dad loaned me $200 cash so I could put down a deposit on an apartment. As I was about to pull away he asked if I had any money. None. None? He handed me the cash. We hugged. He cried. It was the first time I ever saw him cry. And that was it. (I spent part of it to get into Yellowstone National Park on the way to the Great Pacific Northwest).
There is a rush you get after being completely broke, thinking Hamburger Helper and Chunky Soup on toast are great meals, and then cashing fat paychecks for a few months. [Also, after those few months, a collection agency found me, as a result of my “disappearance” after leaving Nashville. I was able to resolve that with my newfound wealth]. [2]
One of the places where I splashed cash was REI, in downtown Seattle, taking up much of an entire city block at 11th and Pine. At the time it might have still been the only REI store in the entire country, even though it was founded in 1938. I think that was still the original location. I soon bought a membership in the Co-op and have maintained it all these years – that’s why I still get catalogs. And rebates.
Old REI patch. I guess people stitched these onto their backpacks and jackets. Vintage.
All the equipment was (and is) top notch. I finally had money for needed (or wanted) equipment. Winter was approaching, so at first for skiing. Poles, skis, boots, parkas, gloves, goggles, ski pants, scarves. Then shoes for running (New Balance) and boots for hiking the Cascade Mountains (Raichle).
In spring as “better” weather approached, I bought some summer gear, including high-end golf shoes (Foot Joy), baseball shoes, and a camping lantern, made by Coleman. [“Better” is definitely a relative term in the Pacific Northwest. Let’s just say it rained less and the sun came out a couple hours a day]
Although I didn’t get the golf and baseball shoes at REI, I did get the Coleman Lantern there. What a brilliant device. Not just brilliantly bright, but simply brilliant.
William Coffin Coleman (he usually went by “WC”) was born May 21, 1870 in Chatham, NY. Chatham is about halfway between the Massachusetts state line and the Hudson River. That’s about 6 miles east of Kinderhook, NY, home of the US’s 8th President, Martin Van Buren, who often went by “Old Kinderhook”, or “OK” for short. Soon after, in 1871, while WC was still a suckling infant, the family moved to the far southeast corner of Kansas to homestead, getting their own land to work into a home and to farm. The long arduous journey was made partly by train, and partly by covered wagon.
The brutally violent and bloody wars in the plains between Native Americans and the US Army were still underway. It took some gumption and bravery to undertake the long transfer of residence.
Details on Coleman’s life before fame are a bit skimpy, sketchy and inconsistent. Here’s what I found and have decided upon.
Apparently, Coleman had at least two brothers, as there is reference to them helping with some funding some decades later. Unfortunately, the Colemans’ father passed away when young William was only 11. He helped his mother run the farm and found odd work, mostly as a salesman of small merchandise. He continued selling things – both travelling and in stores – and was able to eventually get a job for a while as a schoolteacher after completing a degree in nearby Emporia, at the Kansas State Teacher’s College (now Emporia State University).
He was also Superintendent of Schools in the Blue Rapids (KS) school district for a while. Then, it seems, he changed the direction of his professional intentions and attended Law School at the University of Kansas. Always short on money, yet always a good salesman, Coleman sold typewriters as a traveling salesman to pay the bills and tuition. As money got tighter, he was soon doing more traveling and selling than he was studying law.
Much of the following is Coleman Company lore, but I’m sure there is much truth in it.
One fateful evening in the mid-1890s, while on a typewriter selling tour, Coleman found himself in the hard-scrabble, dusty, dirty, pavement-free coal mining town of Brockton, Alabama. There, in a drug or department store window, he saw a lantern shining brightly. He’d never seen anything like it.
It burned gasoline, fed to its combustion under pressure. He immediately changed from selling typewriters to selling lanterns for the Irby-Gilliland Company, maker of the lanterns, out of Memphis, TN. But first he had to buy the rights to sell the lantern, from the Irby family; the only region he could afford that was near home was in Oklahoma. I can’t find the value, but guessing around $500.
Oh, and Coleman, already long absent, finally dropped out of law school.
Originally sales went poorly. Turns out many customers had already experienced unsatisfactory results, despite the lantern’s brilliance, as the fuel delivery clogged with carbon deposits, and could not be easily cleaned. Word had gotten around.
Coleman was already in for the $500, probably some it a loan from the Irbys and his farming brothers. Not about to give up, he hit upon some clever ideas here. First, he began leasing the lanterns for a small sum, instead of selling them. He absorbed the risk of lantern failure, and replaced them if/when they failed. He could then refurbish and re-lease them. This changed his product flow nicely. Now with promising cash flow, his brothers invested further in his lantern sales and leasing business as well. Second, with some cash available Coleman could afford to start tinkering with the design in his home until it was virtually flawless.
Until then lanterns were largely dull, wasteful and dangerous. Dull because the light came from the flame. Wasteful because much of the energy of combustion went to heat, not light. And dangerous since the flow of fuel (usually kerosene) was either by wicking up, or gravity drip down, and hence the fuel source reservoir could be accessed by flame, especially in the event of a tipping or dropping accident. Think Mrs O’Leary and the cow in the shed, Chicago, 1871.
WC Coleman: inventor, tinkerer, entrepreneur, marketer and businessman extraordinaire.
The gas lantern – especially with Coleman’s improvements – solved all those problems. Instead of a wick, Coleman’s lanterns had a “mantle” which glowed, especially when treated with special chemicals (including, at the time, thorium – yikes!). The gasoline burned just hot enough to get the mantle’s chemical coatings to glow. And even though it burned pure gasoline it was much safer, since no flame could reach the gasoline reservoir when accidentally tipped over. In fact, Coleman soon made his lanterns so rugged that they wouldn’t even break when dropped or tipped over (I can attest to all of this. However, never, never try to get the campfire to burn more brightly by pouring Coleman’s special white gasoline directly onto the fire. I can attest to this too. 151 rum is much safer).
Replacing the special mantle occasionally was the only maintenance required.
Coleman bought all the rights to the pressure-fed gasoline lantern from the Irby family. It’s been purported that this might have cost him a further $3,000. This was also achieved by a loan from the Irbys and his brothers — what Coleman often called “the best sale I ever made.” Implementing his improvements, he started a manufacturing facility in Wichita, Kansas, moved his family there, and began selling the soon wildly popular Coleman Lantern. In a time of scarce electrical lighting, and pale gas or oil lighting, his lanterns were enormously popular.
Pretty much everyone knew of the popular Coleman Lantern. He soon applied the pressure fed gasoline concept to make conveniently portable cooking stoves as well.
Legend has it that cattlemen in Colorado once saw a lantern burning so brightly, miles away up in the Rocky Mountain Foothills, that they were sure they had discovered a new star.
Green single mantle Coleman Lantern, vintage 1945.
In times of military engagement, especially when infantry personnel of one army are likely to come in contact with – or even infiltrate the lines of – the personnel of another army, the use of passcodes and countersigns becomes very important. This happened to great extent in much of World War II.
In the Asian and Pacific theaters, Japanese intelligence kept spies and infiltrators up to date on American expressions and culture. Still, this posed little problem, as the US quickly learned to use passcodes and contrasigns like “Lolla-Palooza”, and “Lolli Pop”, words full of Ls. Our Asian allies, the Chinese, could usually pronounce the L. For Japanese the “L” sound was virtually impossible; even when pronounced as “L” it was so awkward that, either way, like R or L, it was a give-away.
On the other hand, it was much more difficult with our European enemy, the Germans. It’s well known that German infiltrators and imposters in US uniforms could and did cause much confusion with “false intelligence” about where nearby towns, roads and other divisions lay. This occurred especially during the Battle of the Bulge, December, 1944. Enough Germans spoke near flawless English, able to produce both American and British accents, that it was quite a dilemma. Many had been educated in America or Britain. And, they were up-to-date on much of American culture.
[It’s a strong probability that more Americans were conversant to fluent in German than the other way around. Many GIs were first generation Germans, who grew up speaking German and often stayed in touch with family in Germany until the war. More than a few of them were Jews who had fled Germany just a few years before. It’s also a bit ironic that FDR, then president of the US, was quite conversational in German as well, since he traveled there often — yearly it is said — with his wealthy parents as a youth, and even attended school there at least one year].
There were other problems in Europe too. Over-reliance on modern American culture for security sometimes led to costly, if not funny, mistakes. For example, on Dec 21, 1944, during “the Bulge” US MP’s and sentries were alerted to the possibility of a German disguised as Brigadier General Bruce Clarke.[3] Well, Clarke himself soon approached a checkpoint and was queried as to whether the Chicago Cubs played in the National League or the American League. Not a baseball fan, and pressed for an answer, Clarke guessed American (incorrectly) and subsequently spent several frustrating hours in detainment. [The “intelligence” that Clarke, and other officers, were being impersonated might well have been counterintelligence supplied by clever Germans].
One thing the Germans did not know of American culture was the superb performance and popularity of the Coleman Lantern. In fact, these were used throughout the military. So, it came to be that the perfect and indecipherable security countersign/passcode combination was to respond “Coleman” to the challenge query “Lantern.”
WC Coleman lived long enough to learn of and enjoy this quirk of history. He was once elected mayor of Wichita, choosing to only serve one term. He lived until 1957, still engaged in running his company, as an octogenarian. He’s buried in his adopted hometown of Wichita and has a plaque on the Wichita Walk of Fame, in City Center.
Although the family lost controlling interest in the company long ago, the Coleman® line of outdoor products is highly respected, even today. The lanterns remain popular, although the mantles are doped with safer chemicals [Extremely low voltage LEDs threaten to quash them soon]. The stoves are still popular with outdoor enthusiasts. Coleman has expanded in the camping paraphernalia area to include almost everything outdoor: tents, sleeping bags, jackets, vests, collapsible chairs (some with drink holders, beer-sized), tables, boots, and coolers. And much more. All of it is high end and highly regarded. “Coleman” means “quality.” Of course, much of it is available at REI, where everything is high-end, at all 138 locations. Most products are available – naturally, it’s 2021 – on Amazon. Next day delivery.
Wishing you all a pleasant and happy shopping and holiday season.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] DiMaggio left baseball to serve in the military, 1943-45, returning afterward to many All-Star seasons. But everyone knew he was the Yankee center fielder. The most popular baseball player in America, at the time, even when he wasn’t playing.
[2] Hamburger Helper by Betty Crocker. If you had it, it meant you had meat. HH stretched meat to more meals. Chunky Soup, by Campbell, was thick soup with chewy hunks of meat and veggies. Kind of a splurge, but we always got that (and the beef for HH) on sale.
“… Do not go gentle into that good night.
… Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
– Dylan Thomas
I still have a dear friend since childhood. We’ve been friends and stayed in touch for nearly six decades now, although he lives over 1,000 miles away. We’ve visited a few times, but most contact is through a news-blurb he publishes via email nearly daily. It contains the day-to-day comings and goings of his life and thoughts: everything from health, to work, to mundane errands, to weather, to politics, and, of course, his grandchildren. [1]
Sometimes he talks about the daily newspaper: what’s in it?; is it on time?; or is it wrapped in plastic for possible rain? (precipitation is a big deal in Arizona.) We share a sense of old-fashioned desire for the tactile experience here: we both like to get an actual newspaper, with ink, holding and folding it with that enjoyable crinkle of the paper as we manipulate the pages.
He recently divulged that his wife also enjoys the hardcopy newspaper, but for different reasons than he. Whereas he checks weather, sports, local and national news (usually in that order, I have deduced), she goes right to the obituaries, and often limits her perusals to those.
Although they live in fairly good-sized city (now about 60,000, even though the municipality is younger than each of us), they live neither in, nor even near, any major metropolitan area. Therefore, between the two of them, they know a majority of the long-time residents of the region. So, it’s a way to get news, I suppose. Mostly, I think, she doesn’t want to learn weeks or months later that a close acquaintance or long-lost friend has gone “into that good night.”
I’ve confessed before on this site that I like to wander through cemeteries.[3] My digital photo album has pics of the final resting places of people both known and unknown to me. The headstones with carved letters, the family plots, the funerary art: all suggest stories. The details of those final resting places – withered bouquets, trampled grass, cracked stones with the weathered letters of names and epitaphs, two dates with a dash between them , or a few tiny pebbles perched upon a tombstone – are the outlines of those stories; our imaginations are challenged to fill in the rest.
Another confession. Like my friend’s wife, I also peruse the obituaries, especially on Sundays. The Sunday paper usually has a collection of obits from the previous week. Here I can check to see how many are younger than I am. Weird? I suppose. Sometimes I get a catch in my breath when I see a name I know. A full week when every Reaper’s Visit is to harvest someone older than I is a good sign. Such weeks grow ever fewer. When the deceased are younger, I am often amazed at what full lives they lived and how very accomplished they were – I can’t help but feel a bit small and wasteful of my own time and talents in comparison. Few have gone gently into that good night.
This morning’s Sunday paper brought some very sad news from Houston, Texas. “Crowd Surge Kills at least 8 at Houston Music Festival.” Evidently hundreds, perhaps thousands, pushed up against the stage during a performance by rapper Travis Scott. Never heard of him until now. All of those who perished were young, aged only 14 to 27. Many more are in hospital.
This is not a unique occurrence. Human crowd behavior is bewildering; it’s even a scientific area of study. It’s almost like we’re grasshoppers: a few of us hanging around is no big deal, interesting and a bit ugly up close, but once we get into huge crowds we change – chemically, hormonally, pheromonally, irrationally – and any behavior, whether destructive or otherwise, becomes acceptable. Are we like locusts?
Cute grasshopper, not so pretty in real life, especially as part of locust swarm
I am but a poor ignorant grasshopper, yet yearning for wisdom, as in the series Kung Fu. I simply don’t understand it. Twice I have been caught in such crazed crowd situations. Even though I am not normally claustrophobic, my instinct both times was to simply get away and go against the throngs. Rather like a rat, squeezing myself out from a collapsed building.
Once was at a Summerfest concert, along Lake Michigan, in the summer of ’73 or ’74. [2] One of the featured acts was the Doobie Brothers, already famous by this time. With anticipation of the big act, the crowd grew in size and rowdiness through each of the warm-up acts. I guess half the audience was stoned. There were no chairs or benches, just blankets and people on grass. By the end of the last warm-up group, there was no space left at all. Thousands of people, shoulder-to-shoulder, most pushing this way and that to get a better view of the stage. The more pushing there was, the more pushing and yelling ensued. Most wanted to get closer to the stage. Some yelling was for the Doobs to finally get their butts on stage, some yelling at other attendees for pushing so much.
With the sweet smell of colitis floating through the air my companion and I grew a bit fearful and decided to leave. At this point our going against the flow was still possible – the space we evacuated was quickly consumed by the grateful pushers.
I learned the next day that a riot occurred shortly after we left. Concert attendees pushed so hard on the stage that it collapsed. As I recall there were no fatalities or serious injuries. I don’t think the Doobies even made it onto the stage, although I wondered later if the roadies could salvage the equipment they were setting up.
The other time was about 15 years ago when I attended the Phoenix Open, a regular PGA Tour® event held annually in early February. It had been for some time, and is still today, regarded as the loudest, rowdiest, rudest, drunkest and (for many) the most fun of all PGA events, which are usually very quiet and reserved affairs. [Of course there’s always yelling at any event when a fan favorite is making a run, but that’s after the shot is struck, or the putt is holed].
Rowdy crowd at Phoenix Open
As a result of this reputation, the Phoenix Open is usually the most attended of all PGA events. The big day is usually Saturday; often around 200,000 in attendance. If you think golf is a game of manners, politeness, and properly behaved respectful fans who remain quiet during preparation and execution of a golf shot, you’ve not seen or attended the Waste Management Open (ironic name), the current moniker of the Phoenix Open.
Continuous hoots, jeers and cheers are common, especially on the 16th hole. On the 17th too. It’s not uncommon for this behavior to spill over to other holes, as ethanol fueled fans seek other views. To be honest, I’d be surprised if many attendees even witness two shots during the day they are there.
On this particular Saturday I was attending “alone”, with about 180,000 strangers, and I just couldn’t take the heat (even though only early February) and obnoxious crowd behavior. Mid-afternoon I went “against the flow” toward the exit, only to find I was not alone. Not even close. A vast throng of patrons had also decided to depart early.
In their (lack of) wisdom, the tournament officials set it up so that the main exits from the golf course had to weave through large merchandise tents, like cattle channeled through a feedlot. In the tents were booths of many sizes and types, selling tournament memorabilia and golf paraphernalia of all sorts. Most of the thousands of people just wanted to get out; but just enough people stopped at booths to shop that they impeded – in fact stopped – the entire flow of foot-traffic.
We simply stopped moving. I had no interest in golf hats or visors, shirts, slacks, balls or ball markers. People pushed upon me. I then pushed against others. It got hotter and hotter in the tent (it’s Phoenix). Fresh air was non-existent. After 10 minutes or so people started shouting: hey, let’s get moving. This was anger. This was locust swarm behavior.
In a flash of panic-motivated brilliance I hit upon an idea. I pushed to the edge of the dammed-up motionless river of people and crashed through the barrier of a display booth. I was then able to dash about 50-75 yards, going from booth to booth, sometimes crashing through the tables and banners that separated the display booths, until I was within a few yards of the exit.
Some people saw my successful tactic and followed. I’m pretty sure more than one display area was out-of-commission for a while.
Once out of the tent and at the event exit, I essentially cut-the-line for cell phone retrieval, since everyone else was back on the golf course, stuck in the big tent, or behind me weaving through display booths. [Back then cell phones were not permitted on the tournament grounds; you checked your phone upon entry and retrieved it when leaving with a unique chit.] I ran to my car. I’m not sure what happened thereafter. No deaths, but I wouldn’t be surprised if ambulances showed up. The shouting, screaming, pushing, threats and hyperventilating was scary. Humans.
I simply don’t understand crowd behavior. Whether it’s F Joe Biden, Let’s Go Brandon, or crushing people to death at concerts, at soccer matches or during a Hajj, … or putting crass bumper stickers on your car because you just know that everyone in your community thinks the same way you do. These are things that reasonable sane people wouldn’t normally do. It’s like our brains flip to Locust-mode when we are in crowds.
Houston and crowd deaths. When people die young like this, they don’t go gently. They’ve not had the opportunity to rage against the dying of their own light. To tell their story.
Live your life! Rage now! Soon enough, the sun sets over the horizon. Live full, so that, as the Kung Fu teacher said: “Death has had no victory, grasshopper.’
The poet Dylan Thomas himself, whom I quoted to begin this essay and alluded to throughout, managed an impressive life and obituary, despite resting his bones forever, barely aged 39.
Grasshopper’s master teacher, from Kung Fu
As always, my best wishes for you. And avoid crazed crowds.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] I’ve written about Kevin a few times in this blog and other blogs. A few I can recall are here, here and here.
[3] I’ve written about my fascination with cemeteries here and death here, among other times, which I cannot find right now. My mom wrote this nice piece.
Finally, here is Dylan Thomas’s poem:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953. The years are close together, but his “dash” contained a full life.
old addage, together with …”and one sparrow does not a Summer make”
Last year about this time I slipped into a pattern of writing on themes related – more or less – to the coronavirus pandemic. You can refresh your memory here, here, here, and here. Usually, it was as a means to address other topics, or a tangential reach from some other theme, as per my customary rambling style.
[Can’t believe it’s been a year since that excrement hit the modern electrical convenience. Like a major flood, we’ll be cleaning up for a long time.]
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” (attributed to Mark Twain). Well, here we go again. This year I seem to have slipped into a similar pattern of essays related to the months of the year, as seen here and here.
It’s early March. Last weekend the temperatures in my hometown along the Colorado Front Range hit 66 on Saturday and 71 on Sunday. Took advantage with a long bike ride and long walk. That does not mean Spring has sprung? Oh, no, no, no. This is Colorado. One robin and all that. The white stuff will return, with chilly winds soon enough. March and April: I’ve learned to address these as “the big tease.” This weather cycle spins and teases – taunting us – often until Mother’s Day. Sometimes beyond.
March, like January and much of our Western culture, has its etymological roots in pre-Christian pagan culture, notwithstanding March’s enduring connection to St Patrick.
March is intensely connected to St Patrick in America and Ireland
Before getting onto March, and its sibling eponym[1] Tuesday, I’ll back up. What is “pagan” and paganism? Well, it’s not unlike a weed. What is a weed? A simple working definition is: a weed is any plant you don’t want. Similarly, paganism is any religion you don’t understand or practice.
Well, that’s a bit oversimplified, but it works well enough.
Once Christianity became the universal (i.e. catholic) religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century CE, after the ascendency of Constantine, many rural parts of the empire clung to and languished in polytheistic and ancient religious practices. The word “pagan” has roots in old Latin meaning “rural”. And as Christians became more dominant, they used this word (pagan) as a pejorative to describe those whose religious practice did not “fit in.” In modern jargon, they were effectively calling them “rednecks.” Generally, “pagan” has evolved and is now a word used to describe followers of non-standard (i.e. non-western-style) religions, as well as pre-Judeo-Christian theologies and practices. Often, they are either poly-theistic and/or animalistic practices.
Back to March, ancient “pagans”, and pre-Christian Rome. As mentioned earlier, March was originally considered the first month of the year (we see this obviously in the extant names of September through December). Romans named this month after their god of war: Martius. Why? Well, no one went to wage war in the winter; that would be crazy: the weather was terrible, and all the paths, fields and roads were muddy, or snow covered. March brought spring, followed by summer: the seasons of martial campaigning. Think about that: a whole month given to thinking about, preparing for, planning, and beginning to wage war! How pagan!
March’s weekday “twin” is Tuesday. We can see the similarity in Latin’s descendant languages for this day: Spanish (Martes), Italian (Martedì), French (Mardi), and Romanian (Marţi). Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago many celebrated Mardi Gras? Fat Tuesday? The day before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent?
I have no idea why the English or long-ago Teutons copied the Romance cultures and named “Tiu’s Day” after an ancient pagan god of war. Maybe they coincidentally decided to name the 2nd day of the week just as they did the month such right before the weather gets nice. Although, as a side thought, it gets pleasant much later in those more northern regions than it does in Italy.
Perhaps a renaming is in order. Sunday surely comes directly from the Germanic/Dutch (Sonntag, Zondag); but, do we worship the sun? Or the moon for that matter (Monday)? Sunday has been literally renamed the Lord’s Day in some other western tongues (Spanish: Domingo, Italian: Domenica, Portuguese: Domingo, Romanian: Duminică). I have no idea why the Frenchies call it Dimanche. Anyone? Bueller?
St Joseph, the Carpenter (AKA San Giuseppe). The feast of St Joseph (Mar 19) is much celebrated by Italians and those with Italian ancestry
Perhaps in this time of wokeness and canceling, it’s best to just let sleeping dogs lie. If we were to consider re-naming March, Tuesday and Sunday – whatever could we all possibly agree upon? And what would we cancel next?
May the beauty and promise of spring be upon all of you soon. Have a happy and safe St Patrick’s Day and St Joseph’s Day.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] Eponym is sort of the inverse of a namesake. If St Joseph were my namesake (likely guess), then I am his eponym. March and Tuesday have the same namesake, thus they are eponyms of the same thing: the god of war.
“There! That’s the one!” A celebrated famous movie director and producer is shouting at his television. He’s also famously morbidly obese. He’s watching NBC’s Today Show, when up comes a commercial for a diet nourishment drink, one of scores of Ultra-Slim-Fast-type products of the day.
But he’s never been interested in dieting or health. He is one of the 20th century’s great story tellers and film makers. He’s been looking for someone. Someone special. And now he’s captivated by the lithe and pretty blond pitching the diet drink. She has the beauty, the poise, the elegance, and the charm to play the characters in some films he’s been itching to make. She’s the one.
You’re never too old to change.
I’ve been biting my fingernails since my earliest memories. My parents tried every way possible to help me stop. It’s such a disgusting habit in several ways. If nothing else, it’s atrocious hygiene; and people will – unconsciously or not – often judge your character poorly for it. And it looks terrible.
Nancy and Sluggo. Famous cartoon characters since 1938
But I couldn’t stop. As Sluggo said to Nancy when asked about it: “But they’re so convenient. They’re right at my fingertips!”
I worked for a few decades with a fellow who gnawed his nails constantly. Way worse than even me. Every digit’s nail bitten right down to the quick. Catch him thinking about work stuff (another aerospace engineer) and his saliva covered fingers were jammed into his mouth.
“Well”, I could tell myself, “at least I’m not that bad.”
But, I did even disgust myself.
I tried many times to quit. Eventually, about 10 years ago, I started making great improvement and finally was able to cut back to almost never.
But a new problem arose. When nails grow long, they crack and split. Then what? Back to biting? I never replaced nail biting with a proper new habit, which – one would naturally think – would be to regularly trim my nails. So, even though I’ve mostly quit biting, my nails still look like a mess, as I will nervously pick at the splits and cracks, or maybe trim them with my teeth, or resort to a deep gash with clippers to remove the nick.
Nails, Nails, everywhere
During the 2007-2009 economic recession, I found myself looking at what was going on in brick-and-mortar businesses. Who’s closing? Who’s staying open? What businesses are resilient? I’ve been doing this ever since.
Typical Salon Sign, for the ubiquitous Nail Salon in most metro areas
One curious thing that I noticed is that our urban and suburban areas are absolutely loaded with Nail Salons. They are everywhere. Even now, I can’t help but scan strip malls and shopping centers to find the almost-always-present *NAILS* marquee signs. Usually in neon.
One reason, I suppose, is that people (mostly ladies) like to have very nice looking nails. I appreciate that. It’s a fairly inexpensive splurge (for most) that allows them to feel good about themselves, a bit feminine, and attractive. Any more reasons?
Go inside a nail salon and … wait!!, I don’t go in those. Maybe I should. Probably could use a good manicure occasionally (but no fake nails for me).
Anyhow …. look inside and you’ll very likely observe that the professional manicurists are Asian ladies. And if they are Asian, they are almost certainly Vietnamese ladies. [Yes, I’ve peered in the windows, and peeked through the doors to verify this. I usually don’t get pleasant looks in return.]
Tippi
Nathalie Kay Hedren was born in 1930, in New Ulm, Minnesota, the second child (and daughter) to first generation immigrants. New Ulm, probably with the closest hospital, is about 10 miles from her first hometown, the tiny hamlet of Lafayette, lying in the fertile south-central breadbasket of Minnesota. There, in Lafayette, her Swedish father ran a small general store. She was small and precocious, so her father called her “Tippi”, Swedish for “little girl”, or “sweetheart.” Tippi: The nickname stuck for life.
When Tippi was four, the family moved to Minneapolis, probably because of the impact of the great recession on her father’s farmer-customers. Genetically blessed with good looks, naturally blonde hair and bright hazel eyes, Tippi started appearing in local fashion shows and advertisements in the Twin City area when just a lass. When she was 16 her parents sought a gentler climate, as her father’s health was slipping. Upper Midwest winters will do that. They settled in San Diego, where she finished high school.
She then began studying art, at Pasadena City College, and also developed an interest in modeling. Soon, her good-looks, grace and aplomb would take her to New York. And on to a very successful decade in modeling. Over those years her face (and lean figure) graced the covers of Life, The Saturday Evening Post, McCall’s, Glamour and other magazines.
A failed marriage and one child later (she is actress Melanie Griffith’s mother), Tippi was back in southern California, making commercials for various brands, including Sego, a meal-replacement drink of only 225 calories. Thin was “in”, even then.
Tippi Hedren, in opening scenes in “The Birds”
The Find
Alfred Hitchcock’s wife and film-making partner, Imelda Staunton, noticed her first. A brilliant blond, on a diet drink commercial. She knew “Hitch” was looking for another blond to cast in a movie he was hoping to make. And she knew he had an eye for beauties, especially blonds, and putting them in terrifying situations; as in Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest) and Janet Leigh (Psycho).
Hitchcock profile and silhouette. Used on his two TV series, both called “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”
An interview was set up. That paved the way to screenings. Hedren was no actress. But she worked very hard on her lines, which were generally from earlier Hitchcock hits. She impressed him with her determination; plus she had grace and class. Hitchcock intended to make her a star. He’d be her coach.
Tippi’s career
Hedren starred in the 1963 thriller “The Birds”, generally regarded as a top Hitchcock classic. Hedren went on to make one more movie with Hitchcock: the not-so-popular “Marnie” (1964, with Sean Connery) which was met with mixed critical reviews. Then they had a falling out (lots there, maybe watch the movie “The Girl”, a Hedren/Hitchcock biopic). [1]
And this reminds you of ….?
She then floated in-and-out of acting the next few decades, mostly spot appearances on several TV series. She appeared with her daughter in an ’80s Hitchcock TV episode. Nothing so significant as “The Birds.” But she had developed new interests along the way.
The late 1960s found her in Africa for filming. There she became enchanted by exotic cats and she grew concerned about their exploitation and mistreatment. Inspired to act, in the early 1970s, Hedren began what would become a mission for the rest of her life: working with wildlife charities to assist in the rescue and protection of such beautiful animals. Land was bought north of Los Angeles to establish the Shambala Preserve as a wild feline sanctuary. Later, she established the Roar Foundation to further support this charitable activity. In fact, she lives at Shambala now, aged 90, with her beloved big cats.
Refugees
For the United States, the Vietnam war ended in 1973, when the treaty known as the Paris Peace Accord was signed in January. Although the US was out, the war continued. Treaty or not, North Vietnam bore down on South Vietnam. The South’s capital, Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), fell in April, 1975.
Fearing for the fate of so many who had been loyal to South Vietnam and the US, the US government evacuated over 130,000 refugees and brought them to the United States. They were put in camps around the country: to be fed, clothed, and trained for employment and integration into the US society and economy.
Hedren was moved to act. She visited the first non-military camp for refugees, Hope Village, near Weimar, CA, along I-80 in the foothills about 40 miles outside Sacramento. This was a humanitarian visit to encourage them and find a way to help. She came with typists and seamstresses, hoping to find careers the refugee women could connect with. [2]
Now 45, Hedren was still a strikingly beautiful blond. At 5’-5”, she was tall to them. Blond and tall: that’s not all they noticed about her. They noticed her beautiful nails. They were long, perfectly shaped, … and painted. They had never seen anything like that. They all wanted nails like that. How do you do that? They wanted to become manicurists!
Hedren watches teaching demonstration at Nail School, Camp Hope, 1975
Trying to find employment: why not work with what you love? Hedren flew her personal manicurist to Camp Hope, to help train them. Then she recruited a local beauty school to work with them. In that first class, they trained a group of about 20 Vietnamese women. She guaranteed them all jobs, when they graduated, mostly in southern California. And she flew them to LA too. And they continued to train more refugees who wanted to become manicurists. Not pure coincidence that LA county has the highest population and concentration of Vietnamese of any place in the world, outside Vietnam. [Many other refugees from nearby Camp Pendleton eventually settled there, too].
One of the first graduating classes at Camp Hope (Weimar, CA)
And from there the nail phenomenon exploded. In the US, the nail salon industry grosses over $8 billion in sales annually. There are about 55,000 nail salons in the US – you can see them in almost any strip mall and shopping center – and about half of them are owned and operated by Asians. And over 95% of those are Vietnamese. Of these Vietnamese professional manicurists, most are only one or two degrees of separation from Tippi Hendren and her nail salon school for Vietnamese refugees. [3]
[1] the veracity of Hedren’s sexual harassment claims against Hitchcock are much disputed, including by actors and stage hands who worked with them on “The Birds” and “Marnie.” I tend to concur with the skeptics. At 5’7″ and 300 pounds, one can hardly imagine that the rotund 61-year old Hitchcock thought he had any romantic chance with the 5’5″ 110-pound 30-year old blond bombshell. But, stranger things have happened (ahem: Harvey Weinstein). Plus, she returned to work with him, briefly, in the ’70s on a TV show.
[2] Hope Village is now the home of Weimar Institute, a health oriented college.
[3] US Nail Salon sales, staff and salary stats here
1960s, growing up in Milwaukee, going to a Catholic parochial school — yes, we had fire drills often. I mean … a lot.
Later, in high school and university – even occasionally at places I have worked – there were also fire drills. But never again so frequent – or solemn – as at OLGH elementary.
I’ve asked some old school friends about their memories. Those who can recall have memories that generally concur with mine.
The teachers (mostly nuns) took on an even more serious demeanor than we were used to. “Screwing around” was verboten.
Kids who chatted, teased, or lolly-gagged were publicly chastised afterward.
The principal (I do recall Sister Marilyn) timed everything.
Each class was assigned a location to orderly assemble in the parking lots, some distance from the school building.
We were told that this was extremely important; that during an actual fire there might be water coming from the fire sprinklers; and there might be smoke. Move quickly, but orderly and calmly. Remain calm.
Couple other recollections. The only things that made it seem “real” were the constant blaring of the fire alarm; that, and the nuns’ extra-stern decorum. And at least one thing that made the Fire Drills seem very unreal: each room of students always evacuated to the stairs and/or exit nearest their classroom. What if that exit or stairway was impassable owing to flames or smoke?
I’ve recently wondered about the frequency and urgency of those drills. Was there a historical spark to trigger all this activity?
There are good reasons for such exercises.
It was 2:24PM when Frankie Grimaldi raised his hand and asked to go to the lavatory. Permission granted, he slipped out the door of the 5th grade classroom. But something was wrong. He quickly returned. “Miss Tristano, I smell smoke.”
November 27, 1958.
Thanksgiving certainly seemed innocent enough, with little portent. Probably not much different from our 21st century experiences (well, 2020 was a severe exception … we hope). It fell on the 4th Thursday of the month, as it had since FDR deemed it so, back in 1939, to extend the holiday shopping season. FDR’s pen notwithstanding, this year of 1958 it fell nearly as close to December as it possibly can, due to the month’s Saturday start.
Families traveled and assembled to give thanks – to eat and drink, to visit and catch up, and convivially confabulate over current events. In more than a few households they probably spent some time huddled together around a mystical tiny cathode ray tube, embedded within a heavy box which contained many more tubes, and which rastered fluttery black-and-white pictures onto a 12 to 15” screen, sent from magically far away.
In the 1950s TV ownership exploded, from under 10% of households at the start of the decade to over 80% by 1958. And this as the number of households also grew rapidly. Owning a TV was a criterion for hosting Thanksgiving get-togethers in many families.
Many watched the annual Macy’s parade in the morning; perhaps all three hours. Two football games followed. At mid-day was the annual Thanksgiving Day match-up between the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, played at Detroit’s Briggs Stadium, broadcast on CBS. That game was a turkey indeed, Detroit winning 24-14, with miscues a-plenty, each team nearing the end of poor seasons. The Packers clinched the worst record in the NFL that desultory day (ending at a franchise all-time worst 1-10-1, two weeks later). Later in the afternoon, over on NBC, Texas and Texas A&M concluded their mediocre seasons, Texas winning 24-0.
Well, football. Papers indeed called the Lions-Packer game a “turkey”: full of muffs, fumbles, drops and off-target passes. One contributing reason might be Detroit’s Briggs Stadium, built in 1912 — long before domed stadiums. It offered scant protection from the weather.
What weather?
Anyone who’s lived in the upper Midwest, especially quite near the Great Lakes, is familiar with this weather pattern. It begins to “settle in” sometime in November, and lasts – on and off, but mostly on – until the first buds of spring. The skies? Brutally dull. Simply shades of gray, often monochromatic; texture deficient; so thick and dull that it often denies human perception of the sun’s position. Breezes – transporting high humidity air near or below freezing – steadily sap energy. Then, randomly – suddenly – a potent gust bursts forth, taking away the breath, biting the lungs. Oh, where is that hot toddy? That fireplace? That villa in Florida?
This weather slowly emotionlessly sucks away at man’s vitality … one’s zest. That is what I recall, growing up in Milwaukee, near Lake Michigan. And that was the bleary upper mid-west weather when the Lions beat the Packers, November 27th, Thanksgiving Day, 1958. This weather carried the weekend; and so, it seemed, would go on and on.
Yet for most it was a time of joy. There was visiting and eating and drinking and catching up on family: how are the kids? How is your job? How do you like the suburbs? It was an era when large families, abundant jobs and booming suburbs were more common than not. That Sunday, November 30th, was the First Sunday of Advent: the beginning of the Christmas Season. The holiday season had arrived. Shoppers were out. Christmas trees and lights were going up.
When I was a lad I struggled with, among other things, an awfully bad case of asthma. It often debilitated me and kept me on the sidelines … from my earliest memories until I was nearly 30. The things that set me off worst were allergies, very cold air and physical activity that required hard breathing. A combination could be a near-death experience.
One consequence of severe asthma was that I was frequently excused from recess. Yes, that sounds weird. Repeat: Excused from recess. Back then, in Catholic schools, recess was our Physical Education. Just try to stop a boy from running and jumping and playing – even when there’s pollen flying around, or when chilly wintery air triggers a lung reaction. The school’s teachers and administrators, so counseled by my parents and doctors, often made me stay inside.
To keep me out of trouble, I got to hang out with and help the janitor a lot. I was good at mopping up puke, sweeping the cafeteria floor, collecting garbage. Most garbage was taken to the basement, and then stored near the incinerator. Every so often I would get to watch the janitor load and fire-up that beast. It was terrifying. Its flue pipe rattled. The door shook. You could watch the intensely colorful, bright dancing flames through a small window. Heat radiated from its metallic surfaces. And … in a few minutes … several days’ worth of the school’s flammable waste was nothing but a small pile of ashes. Plus, a sooty, expanding dark cloud, wafting across the city of Milwaukee.
Why in the world did we do that? It seems most irresponsible to us today. Nevertheless, schools, hospitals and institutions across America disposed of their trash that way. Some still do.
Monday, December 1, 1958
About 250 miles west of Detroit – where the Lions played lethargically and the Packers played worse – over in Chicago, along Lake Michigan, the weekend weather had been much the same: dismal. On Monday, surprisingly, the day broke cheery, rather calm and clear. In many places the sun even shone through, although still chilly at only 17 degrees. Gloom and breath-sapping breezes would come in a few hours.
Our Lady of the Angels (LOA) elementary school stood over on the west side of America’s second largest city. Operated by the eponymous parish church next door and staffed mostly by nuns from the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM), it fell under the auspices of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
OLA parish, founded in 1894, had grown to be perhaps the largest within the Archdiocese, which in turn was one of the largest in America, thanks to Chicago’s growth (it was then at its max population, about 3.6 million), the Baby Boom, familiar Catholic fertility, and waves of Catholic European immigrants. For decades it was the center of worship for mostly families of Irish descent. But since the war Italian names had become slightly more prevalent – and even some Polish and German family surnames had begun to appear as well – on the rolls of the burgeoning parish and school.
Burgeoning school. Its K-8 enrollment was 1,600 – with 50 to 60 students in most classrooms. The north wing was the original building, opened in 1911. The similar south wing – parallel to the north wing and separated from it by a small courtyard – was the old church, converted to classrooms two decades before. In 1951 the two wings were joined by a slender annex, adding a few more classrooms, bringing the total to 22. [Actually closer to 30, as Kindergarten and a 1st grade class was held in Joseph and Mary Halls, across and just down the street].
With its booming enrollment, OLA was probably 40-50% over-capacity. Despite that, academic achievement was not neglected; the reputation for Sisterly and Catholic fear-and-guilt driven discipline did not come without basis.
On this day, December 1, 1958, it’s been estimated that up to 400 students had stayed out of school. Some due to illness, but for most probably in order to extend the long Holiday weekend.
Despite the day’s encouraging meteorological start, things changed around midday; the skies began to cloud a bit, portending that life-sucking winter pattern Midwesterners know too well. At least it warmed to about 30 degrees … but still chilly and humid enough to make one wish for a scarf and extra layer, especially when the wind suddenly picked up.
Other than that, the day seemed perfectly normal. They said the pledge and their prayers. They worked on Advent calendars and Christmas decorations. They got through their lessons. Some kids probably got their knuckles wrapped. All normal. Until around 2:00 PM.
There are many recollections and memories by survivors and witnesses of that historically tragic afternoon. Narrative timelines overlap; some of the details recalled are conflicting; an exact sequence of events has never been precisely determined. However, the overall big picture is the same; and it is a very big, very dark picture.
I choose, for simplicity, to work around the stories of two individuals. The first is Miss Pearl Tristino, age 24, one of the few lay teachers (that is: not a nun) at OLA. She taught 5th grade in Room 206, on the 2nd floor of the annex building, near the south wing. She had grown up near, went to school at, and still lived near OLA. The other is James Raymond, the school janitor who had five children in the school and, apparently, was something of a handyman for the parish,
Around 2:00 Miss Tristano excused a boy to go to the restroom. He quickly returned. At around 2:23 she asked two boys, probably Jimmy Grosso and Wayne Kellner, to take the day’s trash down to the basement; this was customary for every classroom at that time of day, as they were preparing for dismissal at 3PM. It was considered an honor. Jim and Wayne dumped the trash into a barrel, one of several, in the basement. The school’s trash was usually hauled over to the incinerator by the chief janitor, James Raymond, to be disposed of (burned) on Tuesdays, which would have been the very next day.
Some historical texts say they returned with reports of smelling smoke. Others say Miss Tristano soon permitted Frankie Grimaldie to go off to the restroom, at about 2:24. He quickly returned saying he smelled smoke.
Either way, Pearl was alarmed. She ducked her head out the door. She smelled it, too. Definitely smoke.
The school rules at this point were clear. No one could pull a fire alarm (there were only two in the entire school complex), nor even evacuate the building without the permission of the principal, who was sister superior: Sister Mary St Francis Casey. Pranksters can always be found in student populations, and LOA was no different; frequent false alarms had driven her to this despairingly costly regulation.
Pearl ran to the classroom next door, #205 (the doors were virtually adjacent), where her friend Dorothy Coughlin taught 6th grade. Together they quickly decided to evacuate their students regardless of regulations should they not be able to quickly find the principal. Pearl scampered down the hall of the south wing, to the school office, perhaps 20 yards … but it was vacant. She could not have known that Sister St Francis Casey was serving as a substitute teacher on the 1st floor. Pearl quickly returned to 205/206. She and Dorothy evacuated their classes. On the way out, Pearl pulled one of the fire alarms … nothing happened.
Their students safely outside, an adrenaline-charged Peal Tristano hurried back into the building – the smoke now more noticeable .. more putrid. She pulled on the alarm again. This time it did ring. Loudly. There were still well over 1,000 students and teachers in the burning school. However, the alarm was not connected to the Chicago Fire Department alarm system. They were all still alone.
[The closest “fire box” – a box from which an alarm could be sent directly to the Chicago Fire Department – was two blocks away. Stunningly these were still sparsely placed, even though fireboxes had been very useful since the first one in America was installed many decades before, in Charleston, in 1881]
The fire had begun in one of the basement trash bins, probably around 2:00PM. Perhaps it was set by the lad Miss Tristano permitted to use the restroom. Or, perhaps by one of the few dozen or so kids who took their classroom’s trash to the basement between then and 2:24. There has been no official cause ever found or given. It’s officially just “an accident.” Several years later, a well-known fire bug and prankster admitted to setting the fire, hoping for a “fire alarm” – he purportedly said – and a chance to get out of school a bit early. Further questioning revealed gaps and inconsistencies in his story; he divulged the information in a meeting with investigators conducted without permission of his parents (he was still a minor); shortly after he recanted. And there the investigation died.
The fire smoldered and grew with insidious furtiveness, invisibly gaining strength for 25-30 minutes. Flames then burst out of the bin, and hungrily sought anything flammable: walls, more trash, wood paneling … and oxygen. Finally, the fire’s heat ruptured a nearby basement window. Bolstered with fresh oxygen, carried by the cold, life-sucking December winds, the fire quickly became an inferno.
It raced up the main stairwell – its steps, handles and paneling made entirely of flammable wood: oil-stained, and wax-polished – and reached the first-floor entry. There it encountered perhaps the single significant useful fire safety feature of the building – a closed fireproof door. The fire turned and raced up to the second floor. No students or teachers on the first floor, which held the classrooms for grades 1 through 4, perished; the door saved them all. Most barely knew there was a fire until they were outside.
There was no fire door on the second floor. Up there, in the old north wing directly above the old basement, the incinerator and trash bins, virtually everyone was taken by surprise. That is where all 95 deaths occurred: 92 students and 3 nuns.
Near 2:30, James Raymond, he with 5 kids in the school, was returning from a nearby parish property (probably Mary Hall) where had completed some handyman tasks. He noticed a glow from a basement window. Investigating, he found an out-of-control fire. He ran over to the rectory (the parish priests’ residence) and told Nora Maloney, the cook and housekeeper of 26 years, that the school was on fire. Call the Fire Department!!
At first unbelieving, she did as told. Several minutes later (narratives give varying amounts of time) Fire Engine 85 and Fire Truck 36 pulled up – the first of several dozen fire department vehicles to appear on site – with sirens blaring, ladders and hoses and ready. It would soon be a five-alarm fire, with 65 different Chicago Fire Department companies responding. Unfortunately, Ms Maloney had given them the address of the Rectory, on Iowa Street, nearly half a block away from the school entrances. Panicked and terrified neighbors had started to gather. They told the fire fighters that the fire was at the school, around the corner on Avers Avenue. They would have to reposition the vehicles and hoses, costing several precious minutes.
Horrified neighbors and parents
Although 2nd floor teachers on the north wing, now trapped by impenetrable hallway smoke, had closed and sealed their classroom doors, the fire roared right up to a small overhead attic, through which it could spread unfettered. Then onto the roof. With fire also creeping along the hallway floors – made of asphalt tiles over wood floors – many classrooms were soon surrounded.
Before the fire brigade’s arrival, many neighbors had already brought their own ladders to the school to help evacuate students and teachers trapped on the second floor. Unfortunately, the school’s design put these windows about 25 feet off the ground – most ladders simply didn’t reach. [Why? The basement extended about ½ floor above the ground, and the 2nd floor windows were nearly 4 feet from the floor]. Many students who could clamber to the window ledges simply leapt to the ground. Fatally in some cases.
His message delivered in the Rectory, Raymond returned to the school ASAP. From classroom to classroom he rambled. Through smoke and heat. He led evacuations (with benefit of knowing where the fire was likely to be worst and knowing the school layout – literally – like the back of his hand). Raymond is credited with personally physically saving at least forty children and one teacher. And countless more with his verbal directions and force of personality.
OLA fire, helicopter view (Chicago Tribune)
The storytelling could go on and on – almost all of it painfully sad. Much of it full of heroism. Some of it poor, unfortunate choices made in the most stressful of circumstances. I’ll leave that to those who are interested. The internet is full of reports, memories, pictures, building plans, anniversary articles and analyses of the fire. Just Google something like “Fire, Our Lady of the Angels school, December 1, 1958.”
[Warning: It is powerfully heartrending and gut wrenching to simply to do such a search, and click images. ]
Students and teachers were taken to hospitals all over Chicago, mostly to St Anne’s Hospital, about one mile away. St Anne’s was run by the sweet nuns of the Poor Housemaids of Jesus Christ, under the administration of Sister Almunda. Perhaps some of the same nuns who cared for these poor burned and battered students of LOA were the same who helped welcome the eldest of my two sisters and me into the world; she was delivered there just under a year before, and I – nearly her “Irish Twin” — was born there just 2-¼ years before the fire.
The saddest of all is perhaps the passing of 8th grader, William Edington, Jr. As if clinging to the ledge of one of LOA’s tall windows, “Billy” survived until August 9th, over 8 months after the fire. He had undergone dozens of skin grafts; finally the paperboy’s body could take no more. He was the 95th victim.
Aftermath:
Defying credulity, LOA had already conducted six fire drills that school year. And the school had passed a fire inspection just weeks before, on October 7th. Passed a fire inspection! Yes, there were many shortcomings identified – most notably no fire sprinkler system. Also: flammable stairways, hallways, and ceilings. Only two fire alarms (and those in a single wing) in a complex accommodating 1,600 souls – and neither of those connected to the Fire Department. Yet for all these flaws it was “grandfathered” – given waivers on account of the buildings’ ages, with too much cost and difficulty associated to implement all the fire code regulations.
The country had suffered massively deadly school fires before LOA. Two that were more lethal: the Lakeview School fire, in Collinwood, OH in 1908 that killed 175. And then the Consolidated School fire, of New London, TX, caused by a gas explosion, when 294 perished in 1938.
Fireman Richard Scheidt carries out the body of 10 year old John Jajkowski, (Steve Lasker / Chicago American)
The fire at Our Lady of the Angels – with 95 deaths and scores of serious injuries – was a George Floyd-type of moment. A Medgar Evers moment. A Pearl Harbor moment. The country finally got serious about fire safety. No cost would be spared to protect our children. Smoke detectors, then something considered new and still evolving, went in. Buildings were remodeled. Fire-proof walls and fire-proof doors. Non-flammable materials. Smoke detectors. Heat detectors. All with upgrades, as technology advanced. Fire extinguishers and fire alarms: all within reach of anyone, not just taller adults. [At LOA the few fire extinguishers were seven feet off the floor; even many teachers could not have gotten to them].
Within a year over 16,000 schools in America underwent major changes to address fire danger.
Fire codes were regularly updated and rigorously enforced. Grandfathering had to go. Fire codes and enforcement have increased and improved so much that it is now a misnomer to call a Fire Department a Fire Department. We should call them “The department that responds to all sorts of emergencies, and occasionally even a fire.” Across the country less than 5% of FD calls are for fires. The vast majority (about 70%) are for health emergencies. Other emergencies (hazmat, weather cataclysms, possible gas leaks, etc) make up most of the remainder. Sadly there are still false alarms, although most are not ill-will; just smoke scares and alarms going off.
And frequent fire drills continued, with an increased earnestness. I started Catholic schooling in 1962. No doubt the LOA fire and the images were still fresh in the minds of the nuns, parishes, and archdiocese. I recall they were at least once a month, but rather randomly timed.
There have been school fires since. Of course. But none completely out of control. Very few with body counts; and those are just one, or at most two. Over the past several decades there has been an average of one death by fire in schools per year in the US.
On the other hand, our schools now have active-shooter drills. And bomb scares. <Sigh. > Personally, I think we can do a lot better in protecting our children – in this regard – But I digress and didn’t want to get political.
St Anne’s is no longer a hospital. It was converted a few decades ago to a charity-run assisted living complex for the elderly. It’s now called Beth-Anne Life Center. Maybe I can leave this world at the same location I entered it.
OLA’s school was razed and rebuilt – completely fire-proof – within two years. It was closed a few decades ago, due to declining interest in parochial school education, in the ‘90s. A few charter schools have tried to make a go of it in the building. It appears to be mostly vacant now.
The OLA church and building function has changed too. It now finds itself in one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. Currently it serves as a faith-based “mission” doing community service and outreach in areas like childcare, after-school ed, food & clothing distribution, senior citizen programs and bible school classes. For some functions it uses parts of the otherwise-abandoned “new” school building.
Treatment of burn victims has improved fantastically since the trauma of LOA and Billy Edington’s suffering. Development in Stem Cell technology has led to “spray on skin” treatment, which has greatly reduced need for large scale skin grafting for burn victims.
Cheesebox, Rescue Janitor James Raymond, also alerted to the Cheesebox situation, perhaps by Fr Hunt’s frantic efforts, arrived at Room 207 at about the same time as Fr Hunt. Like him, his shoes and slacks had been on fire, and floating cinders had burned holes in his shirt. Raymond was also sporting a serious bloody gash across one wrist from breaking through a window. Sr Geralita explained: No keys. Do you have keys? Raymond, putting pressure on his bleeding wrist, looked dolefully down at the dozens of keys hanging from his key chain. “Yes, but which one?” Outside and all around the fire had burst through onto the roof. The room was beginning to flash over. By God’s grace the very 1st key he tried opened the door. As Sister sheparded kids through the door and onto the escape, Raymond and Hunt swept the smoke-filled room for kids hiding under desks, their noses to the floor for the cleanest air. There were no fatalities in the Cheesebox. Assured all students were out, the 3 adults stepped onto the escape just as the room completely flashed over: everything in 207 was on fire or melting.
[Of all days. Sister Geralita never forgave herself for forgetting the backdoor keys to the fire escape that day.]
I sort of feel like 2020 has been a metaphoric fire drill. This virus and all this crap is not going to wipe out our species: not even close. Yes, people have died, suffered, and been dragged through anguish. This too, shall pass. Still, 2020 has been a serious thing: including the virus and how we respond to it.
So, principal mother superior. How are we doing? Are we pushing and sniping in the hallways? Shoving or being respectful down the stairways? Are we minding the tasks at hand: taking care of ourselves, those we love, our fellow humans? Are we yelling boisterously at each other?
What are we going to change going forward? Ourselves? I can do better, myself.
Right now, I think we all suck at this fire drill. We suck. We are wasting a possible “Pearl Harbor moment.” Is there a contemporary social metaphor for nuns of the ‘50s and ‘60s wrapping our knuckles and boxing our ears? Because we deserve it. Each of us can take this opportunity to step back, objectively critique ourselves (not others, please) and move forward with more clarity in our primary individual human roles and responsibilities: that is, with sympathy, compassion, kindness, respect, and patience.
Along with Alex Trebek, another Canadian-American, I have hope.
“In spite of what America and the rest of the world is experiencing right now, there are many reasons to be thankful. There are more and more people extending helpful hands to do a kindness to their neighbors, and that’s a good thing. Keep the faith; we’re gonna get through all of this, and we will be a better society because of it. ”
Alex Trebek (Farewell Thanksgiving message, RIP, November, 2020).
The horrible fire of December 1, 1958 helped make us better. I believe the tempering fire of 2020 will help make us better, too.
Resources/Bibliography: These are all easily found. The best is a very well researched and written book called “To Sleep with the Angels”, by David Cowan and John Kuenster
A.G. Bell, inventor of telephone age 29 (most photos show him much older)
Memory. One way those of us without photographic memories can maintain the vitality of some facts fresh in our minds is to repeat them often to ourselves, like flashcards. Sometimes we do this by sharing with others; story telling is a form of memory re-enforcement. For example: the date, time and place you met your true love. “In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Perhaps the date of an election: 1948, “Dewey Defeats Truman!”
Likewise, key facts of our nation’s founding and early years are kept fresh by repetition; they are well-known and often repeated.
1776: Declaration of Independence.
1781: Victory at Yorktown.
1787: Constitution is written.
1791: The first 10 Amendments, AKA the Bill of Rights, become part of Constitution. Et cetera, et cetera.
Gonna shake the tree here, maybe turn over some rocks, and see if we can get a few more interesting, fragmental facts rejuvenated.
The thirteen “original” American colonies. Why only 13 colonies? Could there have been more? Weren’t there?
At the dawn of the US’s independence, let’s say we go south, and recall both Floridas: East Florida and West Florida, divided by the Apalachicola River. La Florida had been claimed by Spain since 1565. Spain had made an ill-timed poor decision to enter the Seven Years War (or French and Indian War, according to your preferred history) on the side of France near the end of that war. Through the British victory and the 1763 Treaty of Paris, both Floridas became British possessions. (As did all of the French lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, and all of Canada). In fact, the Floridas became British colonies. Yet, the Floridas did not join “the thirteen” for Independence; they had yet to build up a sense of disdain for Britain and the Crown: they had only recently been acquired and were lightly populated. But they were certainly British American colonies. So, already up to fifteen British colonies in the New World.
Henry Knox, about age 56. Somehow he failed to maintain his figure, perhaps too much good living [Painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1806, Public Domain]
What about Vermont? Your mental Rolodex and flashcards will quickly show that Vermont was not among “the Thirteen.” Yet – thanks to Ethan Allan and the “Green Mountain Boys” – they fought with the Americans against the British, helping Benedict Arnold win an important early revolutionary war victory at Fort Ticonderoga in May, 1775. The 60 guns captured there (brilliantly transported over hill, dale and frozen river, by Gen Knox in his “Noble Train of Artillery” about 250 miles in wintery conditions) led to the American rebels ability to fire upon, and surprisingly dismiss, the British Navy from Boston Harbor in March, 1776. [Knox was only 25 at the time. ]
How did Vermont even come to exist? Why was it not part of “the Thirteen?” Conflicting charter definitions left the area we know as “Vermont” in limbo: the colonies of New York and New Hampshire both laid claim to it. And, at one time, even Massachusetts. Even Quebecois traipsed fairly freely through the area, setting up camps, exploring and fur trapping.
Vermont took the opportunity presented by such disorder to become a de facto separate colony, beginning in 1770. The “cities”, i.e. centers of administration, for New York, New Hampshire and Massachusetts colonies were distant, and Vermonters felt no connection to them at all. The aforementioned “Green Mountain Boys” defended Vermont’s “independence” from other colonies fiercely.
Knox Cannon Trail. Many walk/hike this 250 mi trek to commemorate Knox’s achievement. Historic towns along the way offer lodging and refreshment options
When “America” formally declared its independence from England, the Vermonters deigned not to join, and formed their own Republic, in 1777 (although they continued a military alliance with the rebel Americans). Much later, when New York finally acceded to Vermont’s discrete separateness, the Green Mountain Republic folded its tent and was incorporated into the union, in 1791 – after 14 years of formal independence. It became, coincidently, the 14th state.
Aside: The only other state I can think of that was subsumed directly from independent nation status into the US as a state is Texas. Any others? [Hawaii went from independence through a lengthy Territory status].
Vermont was never formally granted its own charter of any sort by Britain. So, it was not a “colony”, per se. Our historical scavenger hunt did turn up some revolutionary factoid fragments: Ethan Allan and his Green Mountain Boys, Vermont’s short lived independence as a republic, the defeat of the British at Fort Ticonderoga and Boston Harbor, and Henry Knox’s 250-mile Noble Train of Artillery.
Our New World Colony tally remain at 15; i.e. “the Thirteen” plus the two Floridas.
But were there more? Well, we mentioned Canada. Canada is surely part of America – North America. The Canadian half of me is a bit ill-at-ease by lack of thorough knowledge here, but we’ll give it a shot. In 1776 Quebec had been its own chartered provincial colony since 1763. As was St Johns Island (later Prince Edward Island), split off as a separate chartered colony from Nova Scotia in 1769. At this period we should also count Nova Scotia and Newfoundland as colonies. The Hudson Bay Company had also been granted a special charter, but I don’t believe it was of anything like formal colony status. [Notes on Canada and British colonial status in footnotes below].
So, how many Colonies did the Brits have in America at the time of the US War for Independence? I count 19, or perhaps 20. Not including Vermont. And that’s just mainland colonies. We’d find more British American colonies in the Caribbean, like Jamaica, the West Indies, the Bahamas, and others. So much for 13. But that is the number we tell ourselves, on our mental flashcards, over and over. 13 … 13 … 13.
The Bill of Rights.
We know the Bill of Rights as the original ten Amendments to the US Constitution. Lost in the shuffle is that there were twelve original amendments passed by Congress in 1789. Twelve was the number of Amendments submitted to the states for ratification.
Turns out Amendments #1 and #2 failed. Well, sort of. The remaining ten – which we Americans fondly study and recite – were ratified by the requisite number of states (three-quarters), finally, in December, 1791. These thus became formally part of the nation’s Constitution … these are the first 10 of its 27 Amendments. So, our current #1 was actually originally #3.
Strangely often forgotten are Amendments numbered as #9 and #10. These clearly imply that the power of the federal government is limited; and suggest that the “Founders”, including James Madison, the principal author, clearly feared a powerful and unrestricted central federal government. You can refresh your memory here and here.
Well, what about the original first two Amendments?
Amendment 1. What happened? Didn’t pass. Probably a good thing. It would have allowed the House of Representatives to grow to approximately one representative for each 50,000 inhabitants. Positives? On the one hand, it would have had at least two benefits. First: it would certainly give us much more granular representation, possibly eliminating the drive for gerrymandering. Second, it would have adjusted the Electoral College to almost entirely obviate the advantage of smaller states. But it had a serious downside: the House of Representatives would currently have to accommodate up to about six thousand butts and noses (that’s 6,000 – compared to 435 now). With some foresight, the states did not ratify this. [More here].
The original Amendment #2 has a significantly different story – although for nearly two centuries it followed the same moribund track as #1. This originally proposed Amendment #2 concerned Congressional salaries. It forbade any sitting Congress from voting itself a pay raise. They could, however, vote for an increase for the next and following Congresses. I don’t know why it didn’t pass, but it didn’t. Seems like a good idea. In fact, at this very time, in 1789, Congress voted itself a 17% pay raise (from $6/day to $7). Passed by Congress, but unratified by the requisite number of states, it lay in limbo, like a genie in a lamp.
Jump to 1982. An otherwise regular and inconspicuous student at the University of Texas, young 19-year old Mr Gregory Watson, was doing some research hoping to find a good topic for a term paper for his government class. He stumbled across this proposed Amendment.
“No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”
He found, upon further investigation, that this amendment was still “alive”; seven of the Thirteen states at the time had ratified it. But, it had no sunset. It was still alive. That is: it could still be ratified by the states without going back to Congress. What a novel idea! Congress cannot vote itself a pay increase. Now, let’s get it ratified by 31 more states.
Undeterred, Watson undertook a one-man campaign to get the amendment passed. With enough letters and phone calls, and ten years of persistence – and more than a few states getting pissed that Congress continued to vote itself pay increases – it eventually got momentum. The number of states that ratified went from 7, to 10, to 20. To 30.
It took a decade. In 1992 Michigan became the 38th state to ratify the amendment. It has passed the ¾ threshold. It passed! It became part of the Constitution and is now the 27th Amendment. It’s the law of the land: A sitting Congress cannot vote to increase their own pay. It remains the last change to the US Constitution. It was ratified and became law 202 years after it passed Congress; a record that will surely never be broken. [Watch recent video of Watson and his story here.]
Our lost fragments of history can be significant. Our past is much more interesting and its texture much more complex than our day-to-day notions give credit to it. And more than our flashcards of rote memory. Not only that: it shows that a diligent, young, energetic, inspired and undaunted person – one who is blessed with fortitude and idealism, whether Henry Knox, Alex Bell or Greg Watson – can change the nation. Even if it’s just one thing.
To all the lost fragments … let’s not lose the threads of our past, nor the possibilities of our future.
And to all the potential Greg Watsons out there. Just do it! Be Greg Watson. Wherever you are, Mr Watsons of the world, we need you.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
Status of British colonies in Canada at time of American Revolution:
New Brunswick was part of the British Empire during the American Revolution, but not a colony itself; it was attached at the time to Nova Scotia.
Labrador, to my knowledge has never held colonial status. It is currently attached to Newfoundland.
To my knowledge and research, neither the Hudson’s Bay Company nor any part of Rupert’s Land was ever a colony. These were pure business propositions from their founding up through the American Revolution.
Sketch of Knox Winter transport of cannons, artist unknown, US Military Archives, Public Domain
Correction: A few essays ago I wrote in Driving me Dazy that no state has an Interstate Highway with the same number as a US (Route) Highway number. Wrong! Wisconsin now has I-41 (which overlays US-41 over its entire length, to avoid confusion). I-41 stops in Green Bay, but US-41 continues well north into the Keweenaw Peninsula on Michigan’s UP (Its other end is Miami: no confusion there). And Arkansas has US-49 in the eastern part of the state, and a few fragments of I-49 in the far west part of the state. Those happened long after I lived in those states. Sorry.
The early 1960s milieu of my youth was certainly different than that of our contemporary turmoil, well over five decades hence.
For example, some obscure skills regarding road maps were very useful, whether on a cross-country adventure, or just heading out to the next county, or across town. One was being able to find a tiny street somewhere in F-9. You could not just whip out your mobile phone and ask for directions over that last mile.
Another was to unfold a large detailed map and then re-fold differently so that it could be easily used for navigation; – and then, upon completion, getting it all neatly re-folded again (yes, using the original creases and into the original pattern) without rips or tears so that it could be stored efficiently for multiple future uses. That’s an almost completely lost art. It required patience, some imagination, and 3-D topological mathematical skills to visualize and execute the folded shapes.
1960s Road Maps
State maps and city maps often folded differently, and especially so if one was from Texaco, another from Standard Oil, and yet another from Michelin, or from whomever. If you need a tutorial, find a road map collecting club. These clubs actually exist. You can find anything in America.
I was wondering recently about the children’s cartoon show that we sometimes watched: Roger Ramjet. I think it was a tangent thought on our nation’s new Space Force (by the way, we’ve effectively had a Space Force since long before President Trump deemed it so). Roger Ramjet was one of countless mindless children’s empty-headed shows that ubiquitously populated the TV Wasteland of the early ‘60s moors (the theme song is right now an earworm in my brain). The term TV Wasteland was so coined by Newton Minow, the first chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in a famous speech to a Senate subcommittee, in 1961.
The commissioner’s name is part of a humorous twist, from yet another silly brain-dead show for children that jumped into the 1960’s wasteland: Gilligan’s Island. The show’s creator and executive director, Sherwood Schwartz, decided that the name of the tour ship that would survive an ocean storm, and drop seven castaways on an uncharted island, would be named the SS Minnow, in sardonic honor of the Chairman.
I wondered how Roger Ramjet, both the character and the TV show got their name. Ramjet was a “hot” word de jour, in those fast-paced technology-war and cold war years. Simply – I would learn a few years later – a basic sort of turbo charged jet engine, without an actual turbo air-compressing mechanism.
Our hero: Roger Ramjet
But the name “Roger”, I guessed from early on, was due to Roger’s nature. Namely military. Roger was super patriotic, definitely military, painfully loyal and honest, possessed a bizarre superpower, and fought evil. He was also a few cards short of a full deck. Sort of a US version of RCMP officer Dudley Do-Right (yes, Dudley was from that same TV Wasteland brain dead era).
The military term “Roger”, I (think I) learned from watching popular WW2-themed TV shows like 12 O’clock High and Combat!, which featured radio communications wherein the word “Roger” was used to indicate a message had been received. R for Roger; R for Received.
The history and etymology of the word “Roger” in this context is interesting and worthy of an essay in and of itself. It’s still used today, particularly in aircraft communication. Variations include Roger Willco (Received, will comply), Roger That, and Roger Dodger. If its use were to start up from scratch today, it would probably be “Romeo”, as that is the NATO and US Military phonetic alphabet word-based “R.” [US Military phonetic alphabet is a tad different.]
[Since my surname is so often misspelled I am used to giving it as Golf-India-Romeo-Alpha-Romeo-Delta. That gets the job done, and the reply is sometimes: Thank you for your service. To which I must respond: I did not have that honor sir (or ma’am)].
The beginnings of “Roger Dodger” seem apocryphal, but it is a good story, nonetheless. According to legend: a naval pilot was returning from a very successful WW2 mission. Feeling quite jolly and cocky, and upon receiving landing instructions from control, he replied “Roger Dodger.” Very, very unmilitary. The reply is simply “Roger.”
Radios of the squadron came alive with the shouting of a senior officer at control who had overheard the wisecrack. Such undisciplined comments are simply not acceptable over military channels. To which the pilot replied (knowing that his reply was anonymous; it could be from anyone on that frequency): “Roger Dodger, you old codger.”
Another essay foray could be into the use of exclamation points, as in the 1960’s TV show name “Combat!”, which was my first experience with a formal name or title having an exclamation point; this was decades before Yahoo!, and Yum! type product branding. I was too young and unsophisticated to know of the famous musicals “Oklahoma!” and “Hello Dolly!” [Soon thereafter would arrive the cookie brand, “Chips Ahoy!”, then came so many it became silly.]
What I recall of Combat! and 12 O’clock High is that they were obviously military oriented … one army air force, the other infantry army. They were not silly, but very serious. The suffering – both physical and psychological – was real. Personal struggles. Seeing and dealing with pain, injury, aloneness, death.
So, how did Roger Ramjet get his name? Did Roger get his name from military roots? No. Like the name “SS Minnow” it was simpler and even less meaningful. It turns out that the name Roger Ramjet just had a good “ring” to it. Ramjet was from ramjet, a type of forced-air-breathing jet engine. And Roger was the name of a reporter (Roger Smith) who joked during an interview with executive producer (Fred Crippen) during the show’s initial creation that the main character’s name should be Roger. So it was, … and so much for branding back in the day.
“Roger” has made it over to emails and texts – well, at least in mine. If I reply:
“Roger”, then I received and understood your message.
“Roger That”, then I received, understood and I agree.
“Roger Dodger”, then I received, understood and I am feeling a bit goofy or lighthearted – or perhaps I think you are being supercilious. But I won’t add “You old codger.”
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
Driving on highways is different wherever one travels. The US has large expanses of land, and most major cities have many miles between them, hence national highways are sort of laid out and numbered in a grid pattern. Look at national maps for even the largest European countries, like France and Germany, and it can look like that pot of spaghetti you spilled on the kitchen floor while trying to “help” your mom when you were 9 years old.
United States Interstate traffic carries ~25% of all vehicle miles, and ~80% of all commercially transported product, by value
It’s OK. You felt bad when you spilled dinner, but mom made it a learning experience and you are a better person for it. Now we’re going to make a little sense of those European “spilled spaghetti” highway maps.
Although these countries individually generally do not lend themselves to a US-style grid and grid-number system, both because of history and geography, they do indeed have patterns. These are not very useful, if you want my biased opinion. Well, perhaps useful for rote memorization.
European countries all have several “levels” of highway, just as in the US. And each level will carry different amounts of traffic, depending on demand and the level. For example, in the US, the Interstate Highway system has very high demand, and has the highest standard. Although comprising only about 1% of all US highways by mileage, the Interstate highways carry 25% of highway traffic by vehicle miles. That’s astounding. A little more on this later.
I’ll use the two largest European countries, France and Germany, as examples here (um, “largest” not counting Russia). Each also, naturally, has multiple levels of highway. Or Classes. Each has an “A”, or top level “motorway.” In Germany the A stands for Autobahn. Of course. In France it is A for an Autoroute. These are limited access, high speed, and high standard roadways; in France there is often a toll involved – and they are quite expensive.
Each has a second-tier highway as well. In France, it’s the N highways, or Route Nationale. Germany’s second-tier are “B” (which makes more sense, B following A), for Bundesstraßen – or Federal Roads. These are often quite nice as well.
Speaking of expensive. Beware of radar speed detectors, especially on the B or N roads. Speed limits rise and fall rapidly around mid- and smaller-sized cities. Where it falls suddenly – often with scant warning – there is almost sure to be an automatic radar speed detector. If you flinch when you see a sudden flash (usually blue), you’ve been nicked. Your car rental company will make sure you get all of these resulting traffic tickets, while the ticket processing fees are inevitably pinned to your credit card. Sneaky European bastards. You can generally ignore the tickets themselves; they make nice wallpaper, or fire starters, tools to study another language, whatever. (I hear Italy is the absolute worst). The money grabbers, er, ah, traffic officials will try to collect for about 6 months. Ignore them. They will give up…eventually. But the processing fees for the car hire company are unavoidable. Those cost about $25 a pop.
As much of the highway patterns initially look like spilled spaghetti to an American European-car-vacation beginner, one cannot imagine at first that there is a numbering pattern. The routes generally link larger cities and often follow – or run roughly parallel to – centuries’ old trade routes. Often newer, higher standard “A” routes run near the “B” or “N” routes, but bypassing the snarled urban areas. But … an actual numbering pattern?
France’s Autoroute (A) network. Spokes leading to/from Paris
Well, of course there is a pattern. We are talking Germans here. How could Germans not have a pattern? And the French would hate to be outdone by their European rival brother.
Germany’s single digit Autobahn A highways are border to border (except 2, apparently)
In both countries highway number sequences are assigned by region. It’s that simple. In France, the major highways near Paris seem to get most of the lower numbers; and they sort of radiate out from there, like crooked spokes on a banged up old bicycle wheel. In Germany the single digit “A” autobahn highways have single digit numbers if they run across the entire country – border-to-border, so to speak. The rest are assigned by region: for example, any Autobahn in Bavaria has an ID number in the 90s.
Yet, the Europeans have demonstrated a sort of “Highway-Pattern-and-Numbering-Envy”. “Envy of whom?” you ask. Of course, the United States. ___________________________________________________________________
In September 1925 – nearly a century ago – a small committee of national highway officials met at the Jefferson Hotel in downtown St. Louis. One of their tasks? To assign numbers to the new federal highway system. Other related tasks involved national highway standards: e.g. widths, grades, surfaces, signs and markings. This would become the US Highway system.
Until then, as in Europe, major roads – and later highways – followed older trails: in the US either old Amerindian, pioneer or fur trade routes. And, to make it complicated, each state had their own system for numbering highways (sometimes letters or names), even if they “linked up” with a highway in an adjoining state. They were twisted too; they often directed motorists on less than efficient paths, in order to promote commerce in remote, but politically well-connected, towns and villages. [many US highways retain these rather anachronistic vestiges, wandering through downtown and business sectors of towns, villages and cities].
Well, in what seems to have been accomplished in a single day, September 25th, a small committee of five Chief State Engineers (from Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and South Carolina) devised the US Highway numbering system. With few exceptions, it’s still in use today.
Ah, the beauty, power and efficiencey of small but powerful committees. China, anyone? Anyhow …
These mighty five decided that highways leading mostly north/south would be assigned odd numbers, with the lowest starting along the east coast. These odd-numbers would increase as you moved west, with the highest odd-numbers being along the west coast. The longest and/or most important N/S routes would end with the number five.
Routes that went mostly East/West would be assigned even numbers; with lower numbers in the north, and increasing to larger numbers in the south. The longest and/or most important E/W routes would end with the number zero. For example: the first transcontinental highway, also called the Lincoln Highway, was US Highway 30.
The beloved and ballyhooed highway from Chicago to Los Angeles, which we know as “Route 66”, was originally to be numbered Route 60. But Kentucky governor William Field wanted the more important sounding 60 to run through his state. Route 66 is officially retired, but signs and the famous song still commemorate “66”, and its representation for our attraction for the open road.
This is the US Highway numbering system still in use today.
A few decades later, in the 1950s, when President Eisenhower got the nationwide super highway system approved (the so-called Interstate Highway System, officially called the “Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways”) the numbering scheme for the new system was kept more or less intact. With one major twist.
Key to Interstate Highway numbering: these shown end in 5 or 0; to they go border to border, or sea-to-sea, or sea-to-border. See extra figure in footnotes.
To avoid number confusion with the US Highway numbers, the lower numbered North/South Interstate routes would be in the west, instead of the east, increasing as the numbering moved east. And the lower numbered East/West routes would be in the south, instead of the north, increasing as the “grid” progressed north. [They wanted no number ambiguity or confusion, which was possible in the middle of the country: fly-over country. So they made a rule that there are no duplicate US numbers and Interstate numbers within the same state. This is the main reason there is no Interstate 50 or 60. And the north/south number confusion was solved by having so many highways in the more densely populated east.]
Although mainly sold as something to facilitate national defense, the Interstate system by far has had its greatest effect on commerce, and next tourism. Up to 80% of the nation’s commercial product (by value and mile) is moved to market, or between suppliers and factories, along Interstate highways. Its effect on individual or family travel: Driving across many states, or the entire nation, has been a summer vacation right-of passage in many families for decades. Many commuters use it as well.
US Highways (left) and Interstate Highways (right) have different markings and colors. US 40 (or Route 40) runs near Interstate 70 (or I-70) across much of the country, from the east coast, across the Rocky Mtns to Utah.
A few asides on the numbering systems. [Recall there is a difference between US Highways (often called “Routes”) and Interstate Highways.]
(1) The US coastal highways do not follow the “5” designation for major N/S routes: US 1 runs along the entire east coast, with US 99 and 101 running along, or near, the west coast. Neither end in a 5. [See add’l map in footnotes].
(2) Three-digit US highway numbers show highways that are sort of alternates to the original: for example, US 287 which passes through my neighborhood, goes north/south through the same regions as US 87. Both go from the CAN-US border in Montana down to the Texas gulf coast. Both US 85 and US 285 also pass near our home. 85 goes from the US-CAN border in North Dakota all the way to the Mexican border in El Paso; 285 branches off from 85 in Denver and winds down to dusty west Texas as well.
(3) For the Interstate system, three digit numbers generally indicate loops or by-passes if the first digit is even (I-405 loops around Seattle, but otherwise is on the I-5 path) or, if the first digit is odd, it denotes spurs that shoot out to facilitate transport and commerce (I-190 in Chicago connects I-90 to O’Hare airport).
The United Nations was formed in 1945 at the close of World War 2 to help countries peaceably work together. Well, in short order the UN had a commission for pretty much everything. One of those was the UN Economic Commission for Europe (or UNECE).
Around 1950 the UNECE looked first at the many highways in Europe, noting that they – like in the US before the 1925 St Louis Commission – often changed identification as they crossed boundaries. National boundaries in the case of Europe. They noticed the numbering systems were messy and inconsistent. They also anticipated economic growth as recovery from war progressed, which would require more and better roads. The vision was vast, eventually reaching from the UK and Ireland (island nations!) to Central Asia, and beyond … almost to China. A potential for a vast grid and simple, consistent numbering based on the cardinal directions! To wit: Copying the US approach.
These are the “E” highways shown on maps. It is a separately numbered set of highways, much more often than not simply using existing highways. The “E” numbers were just placed alongside the “A” — and in some cases the “B” or “N” — numbers on signs and maps.
With some exceptions, they followed the US example for the “E” highways. Generally North/South are odd; East/West are even. They have secret codes for loops and spurs and local funkiness, just as in the US. The “E” highways are generally “A” class: that is, limited access and high speed. Yeah, there are exceptions, and lots more tedious details, but it’s kinda cool that this system extends from Ireland to Kyrgyzstan. In fact, the E 80 goes from Lisbon to Tokyo!
E highways even span the the North Sea (although the UK refuses to implement them; the M, for Motorway, system is quite satisfactory — you know: Brexit, not using the Euro and all that).
The E network throughout Europe and much of Asia, with numbering patterns based more or less on the US highway system
A consistent and logical numbering system for a huge grid of highways. Says the US: You’re welcome. Bitte sehr. Prego. De nada. Molim. Hey, have fun with it. It’s working for us. Hope it continues to work for you.
Until next essay, I wish you safe travels with simple and uncomplicated maps and highways. Yes, even with simple easy to understand highway numbering, keep your GPS/SatNav on and up-to-date.
Note of thanks to John Sarkis for his St Louis history blog, which provided many details and inspired this essay.
For my European friends and family — feel free to make corrections, additions or suggested edits in the comments on the A, B, E, N parts of the essay.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
Extra figure showing US vs Interstate Numbering scheme.
US routes have low numbers in north and east. Interstate numbers have low numbers in south and west. US 10 used to run to Seattle, but was gradually replaced and de-commissioned as I-90 was completed in segments.
The first thing we should address, given contemporary sensitivities, is if this is even an appropriate term.
The sports teams of my undergrad alma mater, Arkansas State University, used to carry the nickname “Indians.” ASU started out as an A&M (Agriculture and Mechanical) school and thus were known for some time as the “Aggies.” They changed to “Warriors” in 1930, then to “Indians” the next year. They remained the Indians until 2008. They then changed to the Red Wolves.
Jumpin’ Joe: Arkansas State mascot when I attended in the 1970s.
Nominally one could argue that the name was not insensitive. However, the mascot was known as Jumpin’ Joe (see figure), usually portrayed as a hideous visual parody of a native Amerindian. I was always uncomfortable with this, but as a young man finding my way in the world – and coping in the South as a native Yankee – I never made much fuss about it.
Historic range of the Red Wolf
So, Arkansas State became the Red Wolves. The Red Wolf is an endangered species, and – if ever seen – is usually in the southeast US. It’s a mixed beige-reddish/copper colored subspecies of the gray wolf [1], and also evidently quite modern in its evolution, having a genealogy that is only about 50-400,000 years; so not that different than humans.
Interesting that the most successful college sports team in the hometown of my youth (Milwaukee), is Marquette University, and was also called the “Warriors” for decades; definitely an allusion to a supposed war-like nature of the American Native. Marquette, is a smallish Jesuit run school. Yes successful: they won the NCAA Basketball Championship as the “Warriors” in 1977. In time, the nickname was deemed a negative portrayal of native Amerindian culture. Marquette’s sports teams have been called the Golden Eagles since 1995.
The Golden Eagle is a very successful species. It’s one of the most widespread birds of prey across all of the northern hemisphere. So that was probably a good choice by Marquette. Pick success.
And let’s not forget the team that can be called “That team formerly known as the Washington Redskins.” Or maybe the official name is just the “Washington Football Team.” Or something like that. Not following sports much lately.
In any case, Indian Summer is a wonderful time. Typically, it refers to a period of pleasant weather late in the year. It could also be a wonderful period of time late in one’s life. I may be having my own Indian Summer right now, in early retirement, and before Old Man Time tatters and frays my neurons and sinews even further.
The term might have even originated with “Indians”, as some oral traditions tell of how American Natives explained the phenomenon of this weather to new arrivals: fear not, an unexpectedly nice time of year will arrive. You can hunt, and sometimes even fetch a late harvest of berries. Northern Europeans would likely have expected no such thing after a blast of Jack Frost and wintery chills.
The thing about Indian Summer is you don’t actually know if, or when, it is going to arrive. It’s kind of a “bonus summer.” An end of year “bonanza.” A happy surprise.
The US Weather Service prefers to apply the term to a stretch of summery weather that occurs in the autumn after a killing freeze. Annuals have all perished. Budding has ceased. Perennials are into dormancy. Deciduous trees are shutting down. It’s best if there is even some snow; a warning of the deep dark nights and short days to follow.
And then: bam! Sun. Warmth. Hope you didn’t put those shorts away, or that sunscreen.
Colorado is Not currently in Indian Summer, although one could be forgiven for thinking that. The temperatures are back into the 80s – and might even soon touch 90. Yet last week we had three days of freezing temperatures and even several inches of snow in most places.
But it’s not autumn yet. Fall has yet to fall.
It’s just one of those things. One of those crazy Colorado things. [3] Even though we were over 100 degrees just a few days before the snow and freezing temperature. It’s not Indian Summer, yet. I hope we get one again this year.
Anyhow, should we call it Indian Summer? As opposed to Bonus Summer, or Extra Summer? The Cajuns of Louisiana have a cute term: Lagniappe (Lan-yap), for an unexpected pleasant little add-on. [2]
I rather like Indian Summer, both the event and the term. But Lagniappe Summer works fine, too. All so multi-cultural.
Wishing you a lovely rest of summer and a blissful Indian/Bonus/Lagniappe Summer as well.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] The taxonomy of the Red Wolf is much debated – sort of like whether the names Indian, Warrior and Redskin are insensitive or not. Many believe that it is a cross between the Gray Wolf and Coyote. Others say it is a blend with an additional wolf species.
[3] Apologies to song writer Cole Porter, and every great singer-artist who sang it, for poaching and re-appropriating these words. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOg3B9cELgQ
Wow! I received some well-deserved corrections from you readers of my last essay: a bio on songstress Bobby Gentry and a review of her most famous song. Thank you! It turns out that the use of “dinner” for the mid-day meal extends through northern rural America from Ohio to Montana as well as the South. In fact, one reader who grew up in the Cleveland metro area informed me of this! I knew that some rural areas of Indiana, West Virginia and Missouri say “dinner.” Wow. Thanks all for the corrections and information.
Public drinking contraption is called a ______?
As long as we’re on regional word usage. What do you call this common device shown in the photo? On account of response to concern over the novel coronavirus, it has been eight weeks since I’ve seen one of these actually functioning anywhere. Their usefulness is surely missed in many public areas. Hydration is important!
Some say it is a “water fountain.” Some call it a “drinking fountain.” As with dinner vs. lunch, what name you call this
device varies by region across the country.
What do you call it?
As you ruminate on that, let’s consider the Kohler family,
of Wisconsin.
_____________________________________________
Johann Michael Kohler emigrated to the United States from Austria, with his large brood of children and new bride, his second, around 1854. His oldest son, and fourth child – Johann Jr – was 10 years old. They settled in Saint Paul, the capital city of Minnesota Territory, some four years before Minnesota became a state. In fact, its Twin City, Minneapolis, across the Mississippi, was a mere fledgling: just a few houses, an original platting and the old Fort Snelling. St Paul was already over 4,500 souls.
St Paul was a like many new, inland, booming US cities of the era, such as Milwaukee, St Louis, and Chicago. Immigrants from almost anywhere in Europe could easily feel at home: their native language was spoken at church services and theatrical productions, was read in newspapers, and used to discuss current events over a cup of coffee (or a glass of beer). [OK, Catholics, constituting the vast majority of Austrians, even today, would have used mostly Latin in church]. And opportunity abounded.
The name of Kohler presents perhaps a fleck of interest here. In some cultures, particularly those with roots in Germanic and English lands, the family name often designates a skilled trade. This commenced in medieval times, as the importance of tracking families grew: recording land, taxes, and military service. In English, think of surnames like Baker, Smith, Cook, Fowler, Taylor, Mason. Not hard to guess what those professions are. Back in the day many families took their name from their ancestral trade, passed from generation-to-generation.
The name Kohler probably was Anglicized upon immigration and certainly came from Köhler: a charcoal burner. (In England, the name would be Collier. Neither that popular, but Collier did leave its name on a line of Encyclopedias.)
Charcoal burners were considered a lowly profession. They marched through their lives in exquisite solitude, collecting and piling wood, then turning it into charcoal with a careful, slow, low-temperature semi-burn, either in heaps of carefully assembled wood mounds, or in crafted kilns. It was an important profession: Charcoal was necessary as a heat source in smelting, forging, and smithing of many metals – from basic iron and copper to precious metals like silver. It was also used in glasswork.
Schnepfau, Austria: in one of countless fertile Alpine dairy producing valleys
So, historically, the Kohler’s family ancestors would certainly have been charcoal burners. As the Industrial Revolution matured, the significance of the role of charcoal burner decreased, even though charcoal remained extensively necessary. This precipitated a move to industrial scale production of charcoal. At some point, the Kohler family left their namesake’s profession; Johann Kohler, the elder, is listed as a Dairy Farmer from Schnepfau, Austria; that’s high up in a valley above Bregenz, near Lake Constance (Der Bodensee). Upon settling in Minnesota, he resumed this occupation.
From our travels and hikes, the alpine valleys of Austria are utterly drenched with countless dairy cows, almost regardless of slope; one hears cowbells ringing and echoing off every hill, dale, and ridge. Often the isolated and remote dairy farmhouses serve double-duty as guest houses, where a trekker can rest their feet, quaff a crisp refreshing beverage – and sometimes even get a meal, or a room for the night.
Dairy farming – for those who don’t
also provide respite to travelers – is quite accommodating to the less
gregarious and socially-oriented person, but not so much so as charcoal burner.
So, why leave? Well, there was much general disappointment in Europe after the failed attempts to liberalize governments in the widespread Revolutions of 1848. Other than that, people left for America because they could. My mother’s ancestral male-side left Germany at this time (also for Minnesota), and a generation later, my father’s maternal-side did, too (for Chicago). It was a good call for most who came to the US. My mom recalled her father and uncles speaking German around the house decades into the 20th century.
John Kohler, Jr — founder of The Kohler Company
In any case, a few years after settling into St Paul, Johann the younger – Johann, Jr, and now going by John Kohler, Jr – started to make his own way in the world. His early schooling was there in St Paul. The eager and aspiring young Kohler picked up a variety of jobs there. At 18, he moved to Chicago, to study at Dyrenfurth’s College, the first business college in Chicago, and certainly the closest to St Paul.
The rapidly growing Chicago would be his hometown for a few
years, as he took on more ambitious jobs – from merchant to traveling salesman.
Kohler developed a sense of purpose, willpower and world-view that set him
apart from his ancestral recluses.
The young, eligible, well-connected and well-traveled John Kohler, Jr met the acquaintance of a lovely young lady, Elizabeth “Lillie” Vollrath, some four years his younger. Lillie, a first-generation immigrant from Rheinland, Germany, happened to hale from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, some 50 miles north of Milwaukee. They shared a mother tongue.
In the similarly immigrant-rich city of Sheboygan, where German and Polish were as likely to be heard on streets as English (and that, often with an Irish accent), Lillie’s father, Jacob Vollrath, owned substantial interests in local manufacturing businesses, including two iron and steel foundries.
John and Lillie were married in 1871, in her hometown, and settled there. John was given a small interest in one foundry, probably as a wedding gift, and a job there as well.
We are now well on our way to telling the story of “what to call that convenient public area drinking device.” Many who are familiar with such water-spewers, and the Kohler name, might well know the story already. Especially those who live in, or were raised in, Wisconsin. But first we must separate fanciful fiction from the rest of the story.
A couple years later it’s 1873 and a great financial panic strikes brutally with icy indifference. Across Europe and North America economies collapse. With weak, or non-existent, central banks the holes open deep, wide, and quickly. It mercilessly lasted for several years. It was so devastating that the crisis was called “The Great Depression” up until the 1930s. Then, of course, that title was supplanted by the economic abyss of the ‘30s. With that lost decade, the numbing economic circumstances commencing in 1873 passed to the brink of historical oblivion, surviving now with the mere understated label of “Panic.”
But the Panic was grave: It nearly ruined the implausibly colossal
Krupp manufacturing empire in the newly united Germany.
Panic. Depression. Prices collapsed. Currency depreciates. Cash flow seizes up. Businesses flounder, especially those leveraged with credit, as debt must be paid back with more valuable currency – and at a time with decreased receipts.
With his employer’s iron and steel business staggering (coincidentally, Krupp’s major product was also steel) young John Kohler saw an opportunity. He made an offer to purchase his employer’s entire operation. Vollrath and his partners were ready to sell and get out with their skin. Kohler joined in ownership with a small team, led by him; but he was majority owner of the firm. Before the decade flipped to the ’90s he would own it all.
One of the reasons historical economists provide for the panic was the massive over-building of railroads. The US was on a rail building spree. With bank and investor support, based on expectations of an ever-expanding economy, and the need for transportation to support it, railroad lines and networks grew stunningly and precipitously in the years after the civil war. This was perhaps, an example of malinvestment: money so cheap, and/or optimism so great, that capital which could have been either saved or conservatively invested chases after bigger returns, blind to risk. As railroads require vast amounts of steel (locomotives, boilers, tenders, cars, rails, depots), and capital to expand, it’s no surprise that many steel vendors found themselves in trouble.
_______________________ o _______________________ o _______________________
Initially making farming implements, Kohler’s company soon got into manufacturing bathroom fixtures: a product line for which they are still known around the world today. What came to be known as the “Kohler Company” (now based in the adjoining community of Kohler, not Sheboygan) is one of the largest and most successful privately family-held companies in the world. Their first great leap forward came from an idea probably fetched from family members over on the Vollrath side. Vollrath’s main business concern (also in iron and steel) had been experimenting with adding enamel to the surfaces of products. Kohler began doing the same thing with items such as tubs and sinks around 1878. Their great bathroom and plumbing business was born; and has since grown to be an extensive world-wide enterprise.
And now for the story of the drinking fountain. Or the water fountain. Call it what you will.
However, if you are very special – if you were raised in
some very specific geographic areas, or spent many years there – you call this
device a “bubbler.”
The largest of these special locales is a sort of L-shaped region. One leg of the “L” goes from Madison, Wisconsin, almost due east to Oconomowoc, about 2/3 the way to the Milwaukee city limits. From there the north-south leg goes up to Green Bay. The width of each leg, varies along their lengths, but is generally approximately 60 miles. Within this “band” the use of “bubbler” is nearly 100% among locals. The L spreads out into a bean shape if predominant use of bubbler is included, say over 50%; but definitely not beyond the western shores of Lake Michigan, and certainly never, never south across the Illinois state line. Say it there and, if you’re lucky, they look at you like you’re from a distant country. If you’re not lucky, you’ll be ID’d as a cheesehead and taunted with detestation, in ways that only people from Chicago-land (i.e. long suffering Bears fans) can administer.
Map is approximate, but fairly accurate for bubbler. The “heart of bubbler land” is the L described in the text.
Two other tiny US regions also call it a “bubbler”: Most of Rhode Island and slivers of eastern and southern Massachusetts, reaching in a few areas into New Hampshire. (Actually, they probably say “bubb-lah”, but the root and idea are the same).
I left Milwaukee nearly 46 years ago; I still instinctively want to call them bubblers. I’ve forced myself to say “drinking fountain,” for clarity (see Colorado, on map). But in the company of other native Wisconsinites I drift autonomically: it’s a “bubbler.”
A commonly repeated legend about the bubbler moniker and the Kohler Company lives on, percolating outward from this special L-region, and re-energized with every local re-telling. It seems that in 1888 a Kohler employee named Harlan Huckabee invented a device that would provide a small fountain of water, shooting up a few inches, from which a passerby could easily dampen their parched palettes by putting their pursed lips to the airborne stream and drawing it in. The fountain made a “bubbling” sound, with water gurgling up and splashing back down; hence the device that made the sounds was called a “bubbler.” Kohler trademarked and patented the device. And successfully marketed it as such – a bubbler – coast to coast and then internationally.
This is oft repeated fable is largely false. But repetition of falsehoods somehow makes them more credible. Followed politics at all?
Yet, there is a strong Kohler and Wisconsin connection. Kohler had been making a similar device since about 1900. And it was indeed called the bubbler. And it did make a bubbling sound (like a small brooklet) as the water shot up a couple inches for the quenching of thirst. But there was no Harlan Huckabee, and no 1888 invention. The word and name bubbler were never trademarked nor patented by Kohler.
Yet, by 1900, the word “bubbler” for a drinking device had indeed already been around for a few decades. So, what happened? As Beth Dippel of the Sheboygan Sun reports from her deep research:
“Wisconsin was filled with one-room schools in the late 19th Century, and each school had a pretty standard set of furniture and equipment, including portraits of Washington and Lincoln, blackboards, the old pot-bellied stove, maybe a globe and some type of container for drinking water. One container frequently used was the Red Wing Stoneware Co.’s ceramic water cooler or water ‘bubbler’ made as early as 1877. They came in three-gallon and five-gallon sizes and were prized possessions of schools.”
Sheboygan Press [1]
When students filled a cup for drinking, air would move up through
the cooler and make a “bubbling” sound. And
kids in many schools called it just that: a bubbler.
Kohler’s product took the local popular school-children’s name for a drinking device. By the 1910s a new design had modified the basic design. Shooting the water straight up was considered unsanitary, since unconsumed water, which had touched lips, fell back onto the spout. Most devices now shoot an arc of water, as shown in the first figure. This invention was not from Kohler, but they adopted it and continued successfully selling “bubblers”, although they now didn’t make quite as much of a bubbling sound.
Kohler Family Plot, Kohler, Wisconsin — company founder, John Kohler, Jr passed at a mere 56 years old, in 1900, leaving a long-lasting family legacy
The product sold well for decades, and the name “bubbler” traveled with it, all the way to the east coast. Hard to imagine residents of Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia being anything but confused today if you were to ask them how to find the nearest “bubbler.” But once upon a time they did call it that.
From vernacular studies, about 4% of Americans call it a bubbler, or a water bubbler. I find that ridiculously high, but perhaps “water bubbler” bumps it up a few points. I’ve never met a single person from outside Wisconsin (or who didn’t live there a spell) have the faintest notion what a bubbler is. Some 33% call it a drinking fountain. The rest, a whopping 63%, call it a water fountain. The last one, water fountain, seems silly to me; that’s a place to toss coins for wishes, or to take off your shoes, roll up your pants and take a forbidden dip, or – more scandalously – fish out those coins.
Words change. They come and go. Regions are particular. Pop or Soda? But the name “bubbler” lives stubbornly in its homeland – that is, much of southern and eastern Wisconsin – as well as pockets of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and almost all of Rhode Island.
Well, that was a mouthful.
Now I need a drink of water.
Where’s the bubbler?
Popular T-shirt in much of Wisconsin: “Bubbler” is secret code for “I’m from Wisconsin” … in RI and Mass it would be “Bubb-lah”
And a Kohler is no longer a charcoal burner. It is a fine, respectable bathroom fixture.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
Afterward: Vollraths
The Vollrath name and family business remains prominent in Sheboygan, however. One of Vollrath’s other businesses lived on and is a prominent manufacturer of commercial restaurant and food services equipment: still in the metal implement business. Since the Kohlers and Vollraths are multiply intermarried (in fact, after Lillie died leaving Kohler 6 children; he then married her younger sister and one more: he would go on to lead the Kohler dynasty into the 20th century), the current generations sit on each other’s boards of directors. There is a beautiful 26-acre park along the Lake Michigan shore in Sheboygan named for Vollrath, who donated the land and funded its early development.
The Kohlers are, of course, gigantic in Wisconsin. The family has provided two state governors (not to be confused with the Kohl family, and the Kohl’s chain of stores). In fact, founder John Kohler was once mayor of Sheboygan. Kohlers have gotten into the golf business, starting locally with two gorgeous links/dunes courses, one near and another along Lake Michigan: Blackwolf Run and Whistling Straits. These have hosted multiple major golf championships. They’ve also expanded into the golf hospitality business, owning and running the famous Old Course Hotel in Saint Andrews, Scotland. If you get to the area, drop by the Kohler museum in Kohler. And, if it’s summer, try to take in a festival in Sheboygan. It doesn’t matter what festival: there will be really good bratwurst, plenty of beer, friendly people … and bubblers.
“There was a virus goin’ ‘round, Papa caught it and he died last spring. Now momma doesn’t seem to want to Do much of anything.” – From Ode to Billie Joe, by Bobbie Gentry
Introduction. Those lyrics popped into my head – I wonder why? – during one of my recent daily social-distancing long walks and bike rides that I’ve been taking during this time of coronavirus isolation. The lines are a couplet from the last verse of Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 smash hit, Ode to Billie Joe. [Note: if you haven’t heard the song in a while – or ever heard it – then maybe have a listen by clicking the link].
Album Cover: Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe
The tune became an earworm. I hummed it over-and-over to myself. Most of the melody and lyrics of the song came back to me – and of the story they told. The song remains as catchy and haunting as when it first came out. It mixes matter-of-fact family life in the Mississippi Delta with references to things mysterious and wrong, all packaged within a simple, non-distracting melody. The catchy, yet minimalist, musical arrangement even suggests naivety, such as an adolescent innocence.
“The hardest thing in song writing is to be simple and yet profound” – Sting, in the documentary “Still Bill”, about Bill Withers.
Well, the song “Billie Joe” is profound … if initial and sustained popularity are any measures. It’s simple. But it’s more. It’s memorable. It’s catchy. It sticks with you. It tells a story. It’s moving. A story that is both awkward and incomplete. As humans, we crave completeness. Closure. But in Ode to Billie Joe it’s not there … just out of reach. And so, we always want a little more.
“… a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” – Winston Churchill, describing Russia during WW II.
Similarly, the mysterious story of Billie Joe McAllister, is wrapped inside the enigmatic life of author/singer Bobbie Gentry. We don’t ever get to know the “why?” of the story of Billy Joe. And Bobbie Gentry – reportedly still alive – simply disappeared four decades ago when she was still a culturally popular and gorgeous brown-eyed brunette. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Tons of research and speculation about the song’s background and meaning have been published. Go ahead. Google “What happened to Billie Joe McAllister?” You’ll get a zillion hits. None has the answer. Almost as many hits for “what happened to Bobbie Gentry?” Again, there just really are no fulfilling answers.
Nonetheless, my analysis follows. Why? This is largely a product of this bonanza of extra time — thanks to the novel coronavirus. I’ve contemplated the details of the lyrics, in the context of Gentry’s life. The lyrics are richly textured. They reflect an uncommon authenticity, even for country songs.
The musings and reflections herein are based mostly on: my own memories from my years living in the South; my book-learnin’ for the Ag Engineering degree that I earned there; fading memories; a little internet research; as well as my thoughts and imagination.
It was the third of June – another sleepy, dusty Delta day. I was out choppin’ cotton, and my brother was baling hay. At dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat. And mama hollered out the back door: “Y’all, remember to wipe your feet.”
Gentry was born Roberta Lee Streeter in northern Mississippi in 1944 (or 1942, depending on source). Her family moved a few miles west when she was young, to Delta cotton country. Not unlike eastern Arkansas, where I lived for four years: also Delta country. In the South, it’s not hard to imagine she was called “Bobbie Lee.” She lived in Mississippi until age 13, when a messy divorce took her and her mother to southern California to stay with family.
During those early years, her family reportedly had no electricity and no plumbing. It must’ve been a hard life. One that gave heartfelt credibility to songs like “Billie Joe.”
Analysis: In Ode to Billie Joe, verse one starts out as a set up. Seems like regular, work-a-day life in a hot, dusty early June in the deep South. I’m not a musician, but it’s neither a happy key, nor a somber key. It sets a mood of ambivalence and ambiguity. Not joy. Not sadness. As in: I’m just here telling a story.
The song is a first-person narrative (“I was out choppin’ cotton …”). We instantly suppose that there are some autobiographical aspects in the story. What details support that supposition?
— “Chopping Cotton”: This does not mean picking cotton. Picking is done in late summer to early fall. “Chopping cotton” is done shortly after the cotton plants begin to emerge; so, the June 3 date makes a lot of sense. Using a manual hoe, the “chopper” turns over the weeds among the small, vulnerable cotton plants. It takes a good eye to tell the weeds from the cotton – an eye that usually has sweat dripping into it.
Chopping Cotton: many weeds are herbicide resistant. Chopping requires a good hoe, sun protection, gloves and a strong back
Chopping also includes thinning the cotton plants if they are emerging too close together. It is back-breaking grueling work. Bent over, in the sunny Delta humidity, hour after hour, row after row, acre after acre. It’s obviously a labor-intensive task that is physically demanding and boring. Yet, it’s an important task you can screw up with a slight amount of inattention, or clumsiness. If Bobbie Gentry didn’t do chopping herself as a girl, one can surmise she saw others doing it.
“Brother” is baling hay. The June 3 date again makes sense. “Hay” is usually a grass or a legume (alfalfa). It is richest in nutrients when it is fully leafed, just as after it blooms; as it prepares for seed growth. Once pollinated, the plant puts ever more energy into its next generation: healthy seeds. So, it is cut, dried and baled before seeds can form, when its nutrition is dense. In fertile Delta country, “Brother” is harvesting the hay, probably the first hay harvest of the year. It’s not clear whether this is done manually or with a mechanized hay harvester/baler.
Whether the family has farm animals to feed is not clear. If they don’t, they would sell the hay to others in the area who do.
Mechanized cotton equipment slowly became more and more available, affordable, and prevalent in the decade or two after the 2nd World War. Since this is the 1950s, it’s likely that this family baled their hay – and picked their cotton – by hand. Perhaps with migrant workers, as in John Grisham’s novel A Painted House.
“At dinner time we walked back to the house to eat.” Clearly, this is southern-speak. Until several generations ago, across America, the mid-day meal was the main meal of the day, and hence called “dinner.” The evening meal was “supper.”
In most of America, “dinner” has become lunch; “supper” has become dinner, and the term supper … has just faded away.
In many ways the south is traditional and slow to such changes. Lunch is still quite often called “dinner.” I worked various factory jobs in Arkansas in the mid-70s; the mid-shift meal was always called “dinner break.”
[Close of the first verse, mama still speaking]
Then she said: “I got some news today from up on Choctaw Ridge. Today Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
Boom. Someone they all know has jumped off a bridge. A suicide. This is a sudden change. It’s not an everyday southern thing, like the song until now. You’re on edge the rest of the song: why?
Yet Bobbie continues in her matter-of-fact and I’m-just-telling-a-story-here tone of voice, strumming gently.
And papa said to mama, as he passed around the black-eyed peas, “Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense. Pass the biscuits, please. There’s five more acres in the lower forty I’ve got to plow.” And mama said: “It’s a shame about Billy Joe, anyhow. Seems like nothin’ ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge. And now Billie Joe MacAllister’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
Talahatchee Bridge, Mississippi
Roberta had shown a knack for music at a young age. She sang in the church choir and learned to play piano by watching the church pianist. Her grandparents encouraged her musical interests. They traded a milk cow for her first piano.
After the divorce, when she and her mother were in California, living at first with relatives, her life prospects improved. Especially after her mom re-married. She started writing and singing songs. She taught herself guitar, banjo and bass.
A promising music and entertainment career took her briefly to Vegas – with a new name, Bobbie Gentry – where she performed in shows as a dancer and backup singer. She returned to LA after a couple years and attended the UCLA Conservatory of Music, working side jobs to get herself through. There she learned, among other things: music theory, composition and arranging. She had been writing songs since she was a girl. Now she had all the tools to do something with it.
She was completely prepared in all aspects to be a star. Mature beyond her years, she could write, sing, arrange, produce and play the music for her own songs.
Summer, 1967: Ode to Billie Joe was recorded as a demo. The session took only 40 minutes. The song immediately took off. Bobbie Gentry, an unknown country singer, crossed over to pop, and bumped the royal much revered Beatles (“All You Need is Love“) off the top of the chart. Until now, virtually totally unknown … she’d soon be awarded three Grammys. She was an instant star. Her story would be the unbelievable stuff of fancy, if it weren’t true.
Analysis: the song now mixes more everyday life on a family farm with recent news. “Papa” is very calm and unmoved. He clearly doesn’t think much of Billie Joe (“never had a lick of sense”), then barely pausing for breath to ask for some biscuits.
“Lick of sense” is a southern and rural expression that has migrated to some other areas. “Lick” means less than the bare minimum and is used to refer to things like “give your hands a lick” instead of a wash. It’s merely a perfunctory effort. Less than sufficient. That’s what Papa thought of Billie Joe.
Biscuits and black-eyed peas. Again, this is a true southern experience. The mid-day dinner is meant for a good dose of calories to replenish what’s been worked off in the morning, and for the long afternoon in the hot sun ahead.
Black Eyed Pea stew, southern style
Black Eyed Peas are a staple of southern diets. They are easy to grow, especially in rich Delta country, healthy to eat, full of protein, and are quite good for the topsoil. Being a legume, they deposit nitrogen, leaving healthy and fertile earth for the next crop. So, it is often built into the regular crop rotation (as is hay). As southerners — whether share-cropping farmers or not — the Black-Eyed Pea would certainly have been a family diet staple.
And what southern meal would be complete without biscuits? Easy to make, and so tasty (calorie rich) when smothered in gravy.
Other thoughts and possible clues for Billie Joe’s fate. Black-Eyed peas came to the South with the slave trade. They are generally pale in color, with a small dark spot – the Black-Eye. Could there be a black-white thing between the narrator and Billie Joe? Many have surmised this. I think not. This was mid- to late-1950s Mississippi Delta country. Like “pass the biscuits”, the “Black-Eyed Peas” reference is just settling the listener into day-to-day southern life.
Whereas “Papa” doesn’t feel any pain for Billie Joe, “Mama” seems to briefly manage a modicum of pity: “It’s a shame about Billie Joe” and then she immediately minimizes even that by adding “anyhow.”
Finally, Papa must plow another five acres on the “lower forty”, meaning forty acres. That’s a lot of land, and it implies they have quite a bit more. Whether they own it, or just work it, we don’t know.
The lower forty is also an expression for “way out yonder.” And there’s a reason: the “lower 40” is the acreage that is on your lowest land; the house and farm buildings are built on higher ground. The “Lower 40” would probably be the last acreage plowed in the late spring, or early summer, as they’d have to wait for it to dry out from the winter and spring rains. You can plant that late in the South, in fertile Delta soil, and still get a crop. So yes, June 3rd again fits. And yes, it dried out: it’s a “dusty Delta day.”
In any case, it sounds like Papa has a tractor to pull the plow. So, they are not completely destitute.
Southern diet, southern language, southern rural farming workdays. The timing of chopping, baling and plowing. I conclude Gentry wrote from personal experience: both her own, and things she’d seen up close. This is authentic southern life. Her life. Not stuff you pick up from listening to stories and reading books. I judge this song to be largely autobiographical. Gentry has pulled back some veils from her history. _________________________________________________________
The 3rd verse:
And brother said he recollected when he, and Tom, and Billie Joe Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show. And wasn’t I talkin’ to him after church last Sunday night? “I’ll have another piece of apple pie. You know, it don’t seem right.
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge. And now ya tell me Billie Joe’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
Bobbie Gentry, on Music Hall TV, 1968
Bobbie Gentry worked her fame into a great career that must’ve been financially rewarding. She took personal control of virtually every detail of every tour, every show, every arrangement. The lighting, the sound, the production. And, she was very successful at it.
She returned to Vegas with her own show; she was a huge hit in Vegas. Her show ran quite a few years and always got rave reviews and a packed house of adoring crowds. I was lucky enough to see her Vegas show, August 1974. I was not quite 18 years old. I was blown away: Great show, beautiful woman, really good music. Just, wow.
Analysis: Brother – and the whole family for that matter – still has no name, but a new name pops up: Tom. I suspect this is only to give the line a more even meter. (As an Ode, it technically has minimal lyrical meter requirements — just a lick).
The “frog down my back” comment is, to me, very apropos. The kind of light, odd, funny comment someone would make at the wake of a deceased person. Or during a get-together after the funeral and burial. But … There is not going to be a wake, funeral, or get-together for Bille Joe. Or, if there is, no one from this family is going to attend.
“Brother” and Billie Joe were friends once, perhaps just a few years ago. This is a stunt one or two boys would dare their friend to do. I can imagine that Billie Joe had a crush on the boy and his friends have figured this out – they tease him about it and eventually dare BJ to put a frog down the back of her shirt. Wanting to fit in, he complies. Billie Joe is a bit of an outsider. He’ll put a frog down the shirt of a girl he likes just to show he “fits in.”
And what is a “picture show”? It’s another phrase that left most American lexicon long ago but remains in parts of the South. It’s just a word for “movie”, and “movie theater.” Carroll County is not very populated. Even now the entire county has only 10,000 scattered souls (although it has two county seats). So, it’s not hard to imagine that in the ‘50s there was but a single “picture show” in the entire county.
No doubt: This song has a reverberate ring of southern authenticity.
Why did “Brother” see Billie Joe at the sawmill up on Choctaw Ridge? I think this is a possible clue to the story. “Brother” could be there for two reasons: 1) he worked there (when he wasn’t baling hay on the family farm); or 2) he was buying lumber. #2 is rather unlikely (he’d probably go to a lumber yard in town), but in any case, he was there, at the mill. But: why was Billie Joe there? I suspect he was looking for a job. And he got turned down.
Conjecture: Billie Joe wanted a job to impress the narrator, or rather, the narrator’s father – who clearly disapproved of Billie Joe. Partly because he didn’t have a job. He’s not worth a lick.
And mama said to me: “Child, what’s happened to your appetite? I’ve been cookin’ all morning, and you haven’t touched a single bite.” That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today. Said he’d be pleased to have dinner on Sunday. Oh, by the way:
He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge, And she and Billie Joe was throwing somethin’ off the Tallahatchie Bridge
Mmmmm. Southern biscuits and gravy
Bobbie Gentry started slowing her career down in the mid-‘70s. She had a few TV specials, mostly for Canadian and BBC viewers. Appeared on some talk shows.
In kind of an odd twist – and very fitting for the song and story – she re-recorded the song in 1976. It was released again, and it made the charts.
But – she insisted – the title and words to the original song were incorrect. It should have been Billy Joe, not Billie Joe.
Bobbie Gentry, 1969, Show Promo Pic [citation below, fair use here]
Ode to Billy Joe was the last song she recorded to make the charts (peaking at 46 in Canada, and 65 in the US). That’s probably the only time in music history that a singer/songwriter’s last song to make the charts was the same as their first song to chart – and with different titles no less.
“Billie Joe” remained very popular in decades that followed. The song – and the mystery of what happened – was still so intriguing that it was made into a movie, in 1976. In fact, the song was re-recorded for the movie (see album cover).
Cover to soundtrack album for movie: Ode to Billy Joe
The movie, also called Ode to Billy Joe (like the re-released song), was produced and directed by Max Baer, Jr. He’s better known as Jethro of The Beverly Hillbillies – not authentic southern – and also the son of Heavyweight champion boxing champion, Max Baer.
Gentry was originally cooperative in helping with the movie. She worked with Herman Raucher on the screenplay, which has the lead female role named “Bobbie Lee.” If she agreed to that name (her own!), she clearly saw the song as autobiographical.
At some point Gentry pulled her support for the movie. Raucher and Baer seemed too attached to the idea of setting up the mystery, and then revealing it to the audience at the end – a la Sherlock Holmes. She might not have liked the movie’s purported reason for Billie Joe’s suicide (no plot spoiler here). But she was most disappointed that they failed to fully present the casual and unfeeling way that the family reacted to the suicide and her situation.
About the time of the movie’s release Gentry started to reduce the frequency of her public appearances. This, as she went through two marriages. One was short. The other – to another country music star, Jim Stafford of “Spiders and Snakes” and “Wildwood Flower” fame – was extremely short. Although she and Stafford did have one son, her only known child. I simply cannot imagine anyone who wrote and sang “Billie Joe” being married to someone who sang about Spiders, Snakes and Wildwood Flowers.
Anyhow, by 1981 she was twice-divorced and had completely vanished.
Analysis: Verse four is curious because it is all “mama” talking (as verse three was all “brother” talking). I suspect she is babbling nervously to fill space and mask her own discomfort.
There is only one verse left. You can tell the song’s almost over, because if it lasts much more than four minutes it would never have made it on the radio in 1967.
What can we tell here? The narrator is nauseous. She was well enough to chop cotton in the field all morning, walk up to the house and wipe her feet … but now she’s ill. Clearly, Billie Joe meant something to her. The news of his suicide has disturbed her. But even mama has missed her own daughter’s quiet emotional pain. She’s even offended that the girl isn’t eating: “I’ve been cooking all morning!” [more evidence that the mid-day meal, dinner, is the largest of the day: cooking all morning].
Worse, Mama calls her “child.” This is a truly southern term, and one that – to my understanding – is usually part of the Afro-American lexicon. Yet, whites use it too, especially when emphasizing that someone is not yet adult. Or they are a young adult, but not acting like it. As in: “Lordy, child! What’s gotten into you? Clean your hands before you come to this table.”
We don’t know any other details, but we can guess the girl is at least mid-teens, maybe a tad older, and had done something(s) recently that made mama (and papa) think she’s sliding back into childhood. Like maybe confiding to them that she thought Billie Joe (who doesn’t have a lick of sense) might be “the one” for her.
The narrator is hurting, yet mama is thinking of her as a petulant, unappreciative adolescent who can’t act proper. “Rub some salt in that wound for me, please, would you?”
Is it coincidence that the same day that Billie Joe jumps off the bridge, the “young preacher” stops by and announces he’d be “pleased to have dinner next Sunday” with the family? Dinner would be lunch to us non-southerners, and Sunday – especially in summer – is an all-day church-related series of events in many parts of the South and even Mid-South. Church all morning, Church in the evening, with a church-congregation-centric social dinner in between. [Recall in verse three, the narrator was talking to Billie Joe “after church just last Sunday night”].
So, Brother Taylor. He gets a name, and a title. He’s young. He’s nice. Does he have an interest in the narrator? And, since mama gives him a proper title and name, does Mama have an interest in the “nice young preacher” as a mate for her daughter? The inference is certainly there. Safe to assume that Gentry wants us to recognize it.
And what was he doing up on Choctaw Ridge? Doesn’t he have pastoral duties? In many small southern congregations preachers have a career outside of the church. These congregations tend to be small and poor; there’s not enough money to support a full-time preacher. Brother Taylor probably wasn’t up on the Ridge for work. Was he stalking the narrator?
Regarding the “Brother” title for a preacher: this is a form of address that many Christians, especially in the South, address each other with.
And the second biggest question of the whole song, besides “why did Billie Joe jump?” — What were they throwing off the bridge? Is this a clue to their relationship, and, hence, a clue to the whole mystery?
Ruminate on that while we tackle the final verse; the one that first popped into my head during that lovely spring afternoon.
[5th and final verse] A year has come and gone since we heard the news about Billie Joe. And brother married Becky Thompson; they bought a store in Tupelo. There was a virus going ’round. Papa caught it, and he died last spring. And now mama doesn’t seem to want to do much of anything.
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin’ flowers up on Choctaw Ridge, And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
So many flowers to pick
Well, papa died. Mama, sensitive soul that she is, has fallen despondent and unable to do anything. The narrator is left alone; her older brother got married and moved away. Who could blame him? This family is emotionally detached from each other. — Besides: farm work (and sawmill work) are hard labor. So, brother’s gone, probably after getting a small inheritance. It’s easy to surmise that “Papa” did not approve of Becky Thompson either. Given freedom by Papa’s death, “brother” marries Becky and runs away.
A little more insight into “Papa” is provided by another song on the very same album with “Billie Joe” — this one called “Papa, Won’t you let me go to Town?” [lyrics]. Papa is not a very nice man.
And in Billy Joe he’s not very nice either. I presume that – based on the messy divorce – her own dad wasn’t a nice man.
Oh, if Billie Joe had only waited a few more months – Papa would have been gone and then he could have courted our little darling narrator. Alas, things happen the way they do, and they can’t be undone.
The story’s narrator. Where is she? She’s not working the farm. Is anyone working the farm? It’s been nearly at least half a year. In fact, what is she doing?
She is up on the ridge, picking flowers. Then she wanders over to the bridge and drops them into the water. Apparently over and over.
Analysis: The narrator is as emotionally detached as the rest of her family, just like they were toward her and Billie Joe when he jumped. What goes around, comes around. With papa dead, Mama is clearly suffering; yet darling daughter is off alone, feeling sorry for herself. And Brother is off in Tupelo, with his new bride.
There’s a lot of theories about the song. What it was about? What really happened? The song’s real meaning – the why? – will always remain a mystery. Bobbie Gentry – mysterious, beguiling – has never really said.
Bobbie Gentry disappeared. At first she made sporadic appearances — ever the mystery woman, as if she had planned to deceive us all along. She appeared on a Mother’s Day special in 1981, then disappeared for almost one full year — until the next April, when she showed up at the Country Music Awards (CMA) in Nashville, Tennessee. [We were there during CMA week in 2018 — the town is really fun anytime, but super abuzz that week]. No one has seen or reported on her since.
Fruitless analyses of the song and her life have been going on for decades. We’ll never really know why Billie Joe jumped to his death, what was his relationship with the narrator, or what they were throwing into the muddy waters of the Tallahatchie River. Pressed hard for an answer during an interview once, Gentry finally answered, with practiced carelessness: “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it was a ring.”
Endless research by inquiring reporters and fans have suggested that Gentry lives quietly in an upscale gated neighborhood near Memphis, not far from her birthplace and childhood Mississippi Delta roots. She takes no visitors and takes no calls. And the song? It’s meaning is left to the listener — which can change with mood and even time of day.
By many accounts, Jim Stafford is still in love with Bobbie Gentry. As a hopeless sentimental romantic, I sympathize. Alas, they simply weren’t meant for each other. In rare interviews, he is still probed about the meaning of Billie Joe. Through a lot of digging I have found one website, wherein a reporter claims that – in an interview through an alcohol lubricated night – Stafford suggested that Gentry one time shared some dark details of her youth with him. Details that fit with the story.
The details that Stafford recalled, and that the reporter recalled (hearsay), are all probably hazed, and the implied dark story are not worth repeating. [I lost the webpage, so I won’t tell the reporter’s text of Stafford’s take on the story.]
But I think the story/song is exquisite and sufficiently complete just the way it is. If Gentry had told us anymore, then it probably wouldn’t have been such a hit. Let alone a long-lasting hit. That’s the genius of good song writing. We’ve been hooked for decades just trying to figure it out. It still generates a regular healthy royalty check for her today.
Final analysis: Papa is a harsh man and stern head-of-the-household. He probably felt he had to be that way as the patriarch of a family working its own farm in 1950s Mississippi. Perhaps a WWII veteran and feeling the pain of the Great Depression. He didn’t want to lose his children (workhands) via marriage to some slackers who didn’t know the value of hard work. He was dismissive of his children’s yearnings to find a mate. Sadly, his emotional distancing set the tone for the family.
No one wanted to challenge Papa by expressing sympathy for Billie Joe, who’d committed suicide because of Papa. Nor did anyone dare show sympathy to the narrator, Billie Joe’s probable love interest.
Then, Papa got a virus and died. Probably between 35 and 45 years of age. Not old. Mama fell into depression and had to sell the farm. Whatever money “brother” got, he used to buy a store in Tupelo (Elvis Presley’s birthplace). He ran away with the girl Papa wouldn’t let him court. And all the narrator-daughter got was lots of free time to pick flowers.
In the end, the children were just like their parents. They didn’t know how to console others and show compassion in difficult times. Unable to respond to Mama’s and each other’s suffering …. they just ran away.
That’s sad. It’s a strong message. It’s a warning, delivered by a story, wrapped in a song.
With this virus “goin’ ’round” us now, and time on our hands, let’s remember what’s really important: family, understanding and support.
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Afterthoughts & Things not included Ode to Billie Joe changed country music and paved the way for new heartfelt types of music, telling stories where something is quite wrong, like Tanya Tucker’s Delta Dawn and Jeannie Riley’s Harper Valley PTA.
The Tallahatchie Bridge is only about 20 feet above the muddy river waters. Jumping to one’s death there is unlikely. But it fit the song well, and rhymed with Chocktaw Ridge. So unlikely is fatality, in fact, that jumping off the bridge became quite common, due to the song’s popularity. You can’t jump off that bridge anymore. It collapsed in 1972 and was rebuilt. Jumping was made more difficult and a fine for jumping was imposed. Other hints. Bobbie Gentry’s original draft was said to have been eleven verses. It was cut to five verses for marketing, so it could fit on a 45rmp record, and manageable for radio airtime. Gentry donated her handwritten lyrics of the first page of draft lyrics to the University of Mississippi (see below). The only new information is in an alternate verse one, which starts out “People don’t see Sally Jane in town anymore.” Some have speculated that what they threw off the bridge might have been the body of Sally Jane.
Halley’s Comet – named for Sir Edmond Halley, the English bloke who used Newton’s new art of calculus to surmise that frequently seen comets in history were, in fact the same comet – returns to the inner solar system once every 76 years or so, on average. [1] When this occurs, it is usually quite visible with the naked eye for weeks at a time.
76 years is quite a short period for a comet that can be so easily seen. It is the only one that can be seen twice in a single human lifetime.
Alas, the only appearance during my lifetime – in 1986 – was far less than spectacular. Earth’s and Halley’s orbits were sort of “out of synch” and thus minimized earth’s view of the comet when it was brightest. I was most disappointed, since I had read about it so much and had been very let down by the “flame out” of Kahoutek in 1973-74.
Such has not always been the case.
In 1066 the Comet portended the defeat of English King Harold II to William, the conqueror from Normandy at a battlefield near Hastings. [2A] So important was this astronomical sign that its significance and image are captured on the magnificent 70 meter (230 feet) long tapestry that that tells the story of conquest, and still survives in Bayeux, Normandy. [2B]
Over the millennia, many other occasions of Halley’s return and sighting have been recorded in several cultures. As there was no effective difference between astronomy and astrology, a comet’s appearance (exceedingly rare as they are) are usually associated with some momentous decision, or a historical event.
Could that event be the end of the world?
The year was 1910, and the comet’s return was certainly expected. Based on its path through the solar system since its 1835 appearance, astronomers and physicists predicted it would appear in spring. [3]
And yet, in January, a comet brighter than anything anyone had expected appeared! Was this Halley’s? Appearing early? Astrophysicists re-worked and labored over their calculations again. As they did, the comet got so bright it was visible during the day! It’s brightness rivaled that of famously bright evening and morning “stars” – Venus and Jupiter – but with a tail painted across the sky.
Soon enough scientists announced: No! This is not Halley’s. This is an unrecorded comet, probably with a period of 50,000 to 100,000 years! People alive then were fortunate to see such a spectacle. That 1910 comet is often referred to as “The Daylight Comet.”
Historians regularly call 1910 “The Year of Two Comets.” Just a few months after the Daylight Comet faded away Halley’s made its scheduled appearance in April.
Astronomers first sighted it in early April, and it could be seen with the naked eye starting around April 10. They tracked it, and – again – many scientists and astronomers made their calculations and observations. Those who calculate did their calculations: Each orbit of a comet is different, and everyone wanted to know how bright the comet would get, and how close it would get to earth.
From the Dallas Star, May, 1910
On April 20 the comet reached perihelion – its closest approach to the sun – and became very easily viewable from earth with casual unaided observation. [On cue, Mark Twain passed away[3]]. After perihelion they predicted an Earth-comet approach so close that on May 18th Earth would pass through the comet’s tail. Now that’s astonishing!
What would happen then? How should this news be treated? Should they let everyone, and anyone, know? Would panic and hysteria ensue? What about the news that spectroscopic surveys of the tail suggested the tail was comprised of a high percentage of cyanogen, a precursor to cyanide?
A few scientists suggested that this could make the entire atmosphere fatally toxic! But most scientists thought that there was no danger. Yet, we couldn’t know until we actually passed through.
What do you do when the world might end? Many people just stayed home, preferring to spend their final hours with their families. Factories shut down for want of workers. Yet, in many places around the world the answer was: have a party. A big party. Get all your friends, family, food and booze together and enjoy yourselves like there might be no tomorrow. Humans around the world wondered what might happen, … while partying. It was a delicious time: while the vast majority had little or no fear of the “calamity”, they took it as an opportunity to have a good time, enjoy this singular event: a few spectacular hours of passage. And by doing so – maybe – mocking those who were in hysteria.
It might have been the last time until now (the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, March 2020) that the world has been more or less united in the same activities. Mankind united by a single set of events.
Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet. When it was over, of course, nothing happened. They had simply witnessed and experienced an event that probably no other human had! And no other human will for a very long time. [5]
Well, perhaps more than that happened. Quite a few probably had hangovers – and there might have been a mini-baby boom in early 1911. (There was, in fact, a few percent jump in US births in 1911 over 1910; however, (1) that was a time of such massive immigration; and (2) birth numbers jumped consistently from 1900 until 1918 [insert WW1 comment here], so it’s not clear what we should attribute this mini-baby boom to.) [4]
Anyhow, one way or the other, this SARS-CoV-2 thing (and the illness it causes, COVID-19) will pass. Some of us have panicked. Nearly all of us will survive, although many of us will be changed; maybe with larger waistlines.
Unlike extraordinary 1910 – with two brilliant comets, and with Halley’s extremely close-approach to Earth – an epidemic or pandemic will occur again. For some of us, perhaps, within our lifetime. What will happen next time? Much will depend on what we have learned. And what we remember.
I hope it’s not the end of the world. But in any case, we can have a party.
By the way: Halley’s is predicted to appear again in the summer of 2061. I don’t think I’ll hang around for that one. Gotta join ol’ Mark Twain sometime. But if I do make it to then: we’re having a heck of a party!
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] Halley’s orbital period varies a bit with every orbit; and the variation is random. Why? A) The comet sheds a fraction of its mass with each inner solar system pass due to solar heating; and B) the comet is tiny and light, and thus subject to (usually) slight gravitational perturbation by planets. Halley’s once had an orbital period of many tens of thousands of years, falling from the Kuiper Belt – or more likely the Oort Cloud – but after repeated close encounters with planets, it has been captured and now strays only about as far away from the sun as the 8th planet Neptune at aphelion – it’s farthest distance from the sun.
[2A] My son Aaron and I walked the battlefield in April, 2010. It is actually quite far inland from Hastings. There is a lovely town there now, with a beautiful Abbey. The town is called, appropriately enough: “Battle”
[2B] My wife and I were fortunate enough to have time to walk along and see the entire tapestry during our Normandy tour, in May, 2018.
[3] Mark Twain was born in 1835, with Halley’s Comet visible in the night sky. As he aged, he grew weary and bitter – he had lost his fortune, three of his four children perished before him, and then his wife went. In such a dark cloud he predicted his own demise in 1910, concurrent with Halley’s reappearance. He was correct.
[5] Deaths from Halley’s. There were quite a few deaths associated with Halley’s, almost all of them due to the hysteria. I read a report of a 16-year old Canadian girl falling to her death from the roof of a building where an “end of the world” party was being held.
[6] Author’s note: My disappointment with Halley’s 1986 appearance was greatly relieved by Hale-Bopp in March and April, of 1997. On a spring break trip to the Arizona desert, with perfect viewing, Hale-Bopp was magnificent. And its brightest night was almost exactly the same as a lunar eclipse and – right next to the moon – Mars in perfect and brilliant opposition.
Dawn Wells won the title of Miss Nevada in 1959. She went on to star in TV, live theater and movies, most memorably as Mary Ann in the Gilligan’s Island TV series. Still a beauty at 81, she and Tina Louise (Ginger) are the last surviving actors in that ‘60s TV show – which continues to live on in re-runs. Wells was born in October 1938.
Mary Ann & Ginger (Dawn Wells and Tina Louise), on Gilligan’s Island
Also, in 1938 – just a few days after Miss Wells’ birth, on the Sunday night right before Halloween – a series of “news” flashes and reports were broadcast nationwide over the Columbia Broadcasting System. The news went out as part of a regular show: Mercury Theatre. But unless listeners were tuned in at the very beginning, they might well have not realized that the “news” was a spoof — part of an entertainment show. [2]
Orson Wells, on CBS’ Mercury Theater
The news shocked and, briefly, terrified more than a few people – and a bit of panic broke out. (The panic was not nearly as widespread as legend has it[3]). Even some who understood that the “news reports” were fake did not understand it was actually a radio show dramatization of H.G. Wells’ famous novel, “War of the Worlds.”
The creator and producer of the 1938 radio show? Orson Welles. (He also played several voice-roles in the dramatization.)
So, Welles produced a show based on a novel by Wells? Put on the air the same week as Wells’ birth?
Wells, Welles, Wells. These are simply coincidences. A sequence of events and names that present a
curious pattern of no significance.
But as humans, we cannot help but notice such coincidences. Coincidences look a lot like patterns. And humans have evolved to be probably the best pattern recognizers in the world – outside, perhaps, of advanced Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning Algorithms. (Such as: whatever on the internet seems to know what I might be shopping for?) As humans, we’ve used pattern recognition to help us survive and thrive, evidence of Darwin’s theory. We hunt prey, avoid predators, plant, harvest, and socialize – including finding mates – according to evolved inherited skills of pattern recognition.
One of the most important is patterns for weather forecasting. We recognize “Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning. Red sky at night sailor’s delight”. It was already ancient when Jesus said “When it is evening, you say ‘it will be fair weather for the sky is red.’ And in the morning: ‘it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red.’ O hypocrites. You can discern the face of the sky, but not the signs of the times!” [Matthew, 16:2-3].
——————————————————————–
Long ago humans recognized patterns of movement in the night skies. For example, every 780 days the red-orange planet Mars appears very bright in the sky, and almost directly overhead at midnight. (This phenomenon, called “opposition”, would likely have been tracked by counting lunar months, and predictably occurred every 26 lunar cycles, plus 19 days). Such celestial movements and tracking have meager connections to our lives, try as astrologists might to make them. On the other hand, the single biggest influence on ocean tides is the moon. Plus, constellations and the north star have been trusty navigational tools that pre-date history. So, our planet and our fates are not fully disconnected from all celestial patterns.
———————————————————————————-
In 1894 Mars and Earth met in their regularly scheduled dance
of syzygy. Astronomers were ready and turned their telescopes toward the planet
named for the god of war. Their
observations, sketches and conjectures helped inspire a novel: “War of the
Worlds”, by H.G. Wells.
Percival Lowell saw the great Canali on Mars and fancied that they were massive water projects, undertaken to manage water by a civilization on a nearly barren planet that was drying up. H.G. Wells’ imagination: Would they be interested in coming to water-rich earth?
Further exciting scientific speculation: great flashes of light were seen on Mars during that alignment. From the respected astronomer Perrotin in (Nice, France) to the Lick Observatory in the hills outside San Jose, California, Mars-gazers confirmed to each other that the bright Martian lights were real. H.G. Well’s imagination: Might these flares of light be the firing of a giant gun, to send a spacecraft to earth at this opportune planetary alignment?
Like most science fiction writers, Wells was pretty well attuned to scientific developments. And world affairs. Thus armed scientifically and culturally, and with a great imagination, Wells wrote “War of the Worlds.” Initially published as a series in 1897, the work was published as a novel in a single volume in 1898.
I’m not sure why the title has the word “Worlds”. In the Wells novel, per my recollection and re-perusing of the fairly short book [1], the only locale inflicted with invasion and destruction of the Martian “heat ray” was southeast England, in and around the London area. [4]
In Welles’ 1938 radio show, the Martian invaders’
destruction was mostly limited to New Jersey and around New York City, although
he does make brief passing mention – almost like an afterthought – of Buffalo,
Chicago and St Louis. [2]
I’ve seen the 1953 movie a few times, mostly as a kid, and the “invasion” was limited to California. Writers can be so parochial. If it were really “War of the Worlds”, the whole human race would have been affected, and united in an effort to fight (or at least survive) the invaders. [5]
Alas, uniting our race would have done no good in any of the versions of the story. The Martians were virtually indestructible. The annihilation from their heat ray was total. Their only weakness was that they lacked an immune system adapted for earth. At the end they all perished due to exposure to simple common germs.
Martian Death Ray — War of the Worlds movie, 1953
Virology was not even in its infancy when Wells wrote his novel; the very existence of anything like a virus was postulated (and indirectly proven) only a couple years before that Mars-Earth alignment. Scientists and novelists knew, of course, about bacteria. But those are usually many, many times larger than most viruses, and had been observed under microscopes. Humans would not truly “see” a virus until 1931, with the development of the electron microscope.
If Wells had known about viruses when he wrote his novel, he might well have included them in earth’s “victory” over the Martians. If he wrote the novel today, he might have included a “novel virus” (ha, pun intended) as the “hero.”
Returning to patterns (like novel & novel), and the
current novel virus (AKA SARS-CoV-2 and 2019-nCoV – the “n” indicating
“novel”), we can understand a bit how the US under-reacted, at first, to this
threat.
The virus that causes COVID-19 is a “new” virus (that’s what novel means) but is closely related to the corona viruses that caused SARS in 2002-3 and MERS in 2015. From a US-perspective, these were mostly well contained to Asia and the Middle East, although a nasty outbreak of SARS occurred near Toronto.
More novel viruses will come. They mutate easily and quickly. Some will be worse than SARS-CoV-2 or even the H1N1 variant that caused the pandemic of 1918-19 … more fatal and more transmittable. Concurrent with another existential catastrophe, they might even threaten the species. Not sure when … next year … next decade or in a few generations. But they will come.
In my imagined minor and more modern re-write of Wells’ story, it is a virus that saved the Homo Sapiens species. In future, perhaps the lessons-learned from this 2020 virus pandemic will save us too.
Mary Ann and Ginger, again
Final thought: By the way, from way back in the ‘60s until today, I always preferred Mary Ann over Ginger. No contest. Is it because she was a brunette, or because Mary Ann was … well she was Mary Ann? Or because she was Dawn Wells?
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[4] Backstory spoiler: Wells was disheartened by the methods and human impacts of British worldwide colonization and empire building. So, in his novel, the roles are flipped. The Brits are set upon and invaded by strange and powerful foreigners who have come to take their resources, without regard for human life, or for destruction of a civilization.
“UNESCO is the conscience of the United Nations” - Federico Mayor Zaragoza [1]
I will not live long enough, nor do I have enough money, to see everything there is to see in this world. Yet, I have been fortunate to visit many wonderful places and see many beautiful things. Most of them with my wife. A great blessing.
Some of them have even been awesome. Awesome. What does that even mean anymore in this age of ever-fluid language and shifting definitions? It is a bit sad that this word, “awesome”, has been so overused and misused that it has nearly lost its meaning.
Plitvice Lakes, Croatia
Alas. Only a few decades
ago it was rarely used, and only then to declare an exceptional status:
possessing such rich quality that its beholder experienced a state of “awe.” As in “awestruck”; or to be overcome with
reverence and emotions like wonder or fear.
Nowadays a meal, a glass of
wine, a golf shot or a last second winning field goal are commonly described as
“awesome.” Pshaw. These things happen almost every day. Hardly awesome.
The Grand Canyon? Awesome. A 50-year marriage of mutual support, trust and fidelity: awesome. Landing a spacecraft on another world? Awesome. Even a total eclipse of the sun can be awesome.
_____________________________________________
Where does the history of
the United Nations begin? Can we say it
rose from the ashes of the League of Nations, whose failure:
(1)
can be ascribed to political bickering in the United States; and
(2)
led to the rise of fascism and World War II?
Roosevelt and Churchill, aboard the USS Augusta. August, 1941.
Alternatively, perhaps the UN rose from the thoughts and aspirations shared between Churchill and Roosevelt in a clandestine meeting off the coast of Canada, in August, 1941, aboard the cruiser USS Augusta, some four months before Pearl Harbor triggered the US entry into WW2 (and nearly two years after that war had begun). During that meeting, they wrote and signed the Atlantic Charter: a betrothal of sorts, that the US and Britain would support each other, not just in this struggle for the future of mankind, but to avert war and protect human rights forever afterward.
Soon thereafter, on January 1, 1942 – with the US now officially at war with the Axis Powers – the term “United Nations” became official, as the US, the United Kingdom and 24 other countries signed the Declaration of the United Nations. An extremely brief document, it contained the affirmation to support the Atlantic Charter, and a commitment to win the war without “separate peace.” It would grow in scope and vision to become the charter of the organization we now call the United Nations.
Regarding travel. My wife and I spent most of this past October in Croatia. That country – even though sizing up smaller than West Virginia – is more abundant in history, culture, terrain and beauty than I had imagined. Among the many locales and sights, we visited perhaps the most beautiful and truly awesome place either of us had ever seen: Plitvice Lakes. Any attempt to describe it is to fail at justice.
Here’s my attempt.
For many millions of years the region that is now the mountain ranges and rugged islands of Croatia and Italy that parallel the Adriatic coast lay under a sea. For most of those ages the earth was much warmer than today; the sea teemed with life – including fish of many sizes, as well as shellfish like oysters and clams, all feeding on the abundant micro-plant life, like phytoplankton. When each individual perished the detritus of their life, which contained calcium, collected as sediment on the seafloor. Layer upon layer. Under great pressure and through eons of time, calcium-rich rock formed tremendous amounts of dense, hard limestone (primarily calcium carbonate, CaCO3) extending over a vast region.
Eventually, more powerful and longer-term earth dynamics took over: plate tectonics. The Adriatic Plates began to drift and rotate, forcing these huge sheets of limestone to fracture and rise from the sea, sometimes reaching for the sky. This produced the dramatic mountains and islands of Croatia’s Dalmatian coast, including the Velebit Range, as well as the Apennines that form the spine of Italy. While some areas are still rising, others – like Venice – are sinking into the sea due to the same dynamics, millimeter by millimeter.
Along the Adriatic, the climate and terrain of Croatia’s coastal side of these mountains tends toward the classic Mediterranean feel: rocky, warm and dry. I was quite astonished to cross the mountains, drop to the coast, and see cactus and palm trees at the same latitude as Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I grew up. On the inland side, where it is cooler and wetter, many streams and rivers drain the region – all of which eventually run to the Danube – including the Korana River. [2]
Along the Korana River’s
path it has sculpted a lovely little canyon from the limestone. Here you will find Plitvice Lakes, probably
the most naturally awesomely beautiful place I’ve seen in my life. To walk its paths and feast your eyes is like
walking through endless postcards. [Pictures
here: hopefully this link lives a while]. <More
pics>
Within the canyon are a
series of 16 lakes, each linked to the next by cascades of countless waterfalls
of every shape and height – one lake flowing to the next. At the brink of each falls, particularly
where there are entangled roots of trees and shrubs, calcium carbonate is
continuously, slowly, steadily precipitating from solution to form new rock;
thus the crest of most waterfalls tend not to erode, but grow and change in
shape. Very. Very. Slowly.
Yes, if you go, take a full day to see it. Be prepared for crowds, even post-tourist season, in October.
Plitvice Lakes is a UNESCO
World Heritage Site. UNESCO is a United
Nations Agency that has been part of the United Nations practically since its
beginning, also going back to 1945.
(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). The mission of UNESCO is to help preserve
peace by promoting Education, Science and Culture.
Currently there are over 1,100 such heritage sites worldwide. They are recognized – and thus protected – for having great significance, either as a historic human achievement, a wonder of nature.
In the United States, you will easily identify places like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. There are some 20 more, many of human construct, such as Independence Hall in Philadelphia and the Statue of Liberty.
There are several benefits
to such sites. Yes, they do get some UN
funding, but it is small. Being so
recognized brings attention – this means positive world recognition, and (sort
of bad news) more tourist dollars to support the site. Finally, the Geneva Convention on the rules
of warfare protect all UNESCO heritage sites.
Croatia is dense with such
sites, much more than most countries, and we were fortunate to see many. Besides Plitvice Lakes, we
walked the ancient island city of Trogir,
saw the Venetian defense walls of Zadar,
were amazed by Diocletian’s Palace in Split, there also experiencing a UNESCO Heritage Intangible: an a capella performance by a local Klapa group (example here, and we watched in the same place as this performance),
experienced the historic splendor and walls of Dubrovnik,
and we bicycled through the Stari Grad Plains on the island of Hvar, where sturdy folk have eked out an existence on the rocky ground cultivating olives, figs, grapes, lavender and pomegranate for nearly 24 centuries.
Stari Most Bridge, Mostar, Hercegovina
On side trips, we walked the Stari Most Bridge in Mostar (in Hercegovina) and beheld the eye-candy of Lake Bled, Slovenia. (The bridge is a UNESCO site; the latter is not, but could well be soon). [3]
Lake Bled, Slovenia
A couple of places we visited are likely candidates to become such sites soon: the tiny village of Ston, with its most impressive wall – the longest stone wall in Europe (now that Hadrian’s has faded away) – as well as its salt beds, oyster and mussel farms. And, the fetching city of Korčula, on the eponymously named island, purported birthplace and later home of famous Venetian world traveler Marco Polo.
I won’t let it pass that UNESCO World Heritage Site status spared neither the city of Dubrovnik nor the Stari Most Bridge of Mostar from severe damage during the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, the 1990s.
In Mostar, the bridge crashed into the Neretva River from Croat shelling. In Dubrovnik, thousands of buildings were damaged, many of them totally; over one hundred non-combat inhabitants were killed. Many more were injured. The city was left without power and water during the seven-month Serb “siege of Dubrovnik.” Such a cultural outrage that even Hitler’s Nazi armies, nor Tito’s national partisans, would perpetrate.
In any case, the historic and magnificent walls of Dubrovnik, built between the 12th and 14th centuries were finally used for defense of the city – and they did quite well. The city has been largely rebuilt, as has the Mostar Bridge. Each done faithfully to their original construction.
We do intend to visit
Croatia again. It is quite reasonable with regard to cost and weather, and the
people are extremely friendly and English speaking. Croatia, as they say, is
open for business.
In case you are thinking of visiting the area (and I hope you are), I’ll put in a plug for the company we used: Soul of Croatia (SoulOfCroatia.com). Robi helped us set up, and pull off, a rather complicated tour with no hitches whatsoever.
Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and that you find peace in your lives through all components of your heritage, including education, science and culture.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing me at Joe@Girardmeister.com.
Notes:
Federico
Mayor Zaragoza,
head of UNESCO for 12 years. Bio here.
The Danube River watershed
is large, second only to the Volga for European River watershed size.
Final
notes: The US is not starved for UNESCO Heritage sites, although on a per
square mile basis, it is sparse compared to Croatia. In the US I have visited the following: Grand
Canyon, Yellowstone, Olympic Peninsula National Park, Cohokia Mounds, Mesa
Verde National Park, The Everglades, Independence Hall and Park (Philadelphia),
Redwoods National Park, Great Smokey Mountains, Chaco Canyon and Culture
Center, Monticello and the University of Virginia, Carlsbad Cavern, The
Missions of San Antonio (including the Alamo, which I wrote about here).
Still
have about 10 to go: Yosemite, Glacier Bay are on the bucket list.
Outside
the US and Croatia, our list is larger still.
We’ve been quite fortunate …
In
Germany we’ve visited and seen: Aachen Cathedral, Würzburg Residenz, Medieval
town of Bamberg, and Köln Dom (Cologne Cathedral).
Austria: Hallstatt, Salzburg, Vienna, and
Schönbrunn Palace.
Belgium: Brugges (Brugge)
France: Mont Saint-Michel, a Vauban
fortified city (Neuf Breisach), and the post-WW2 re-built city of Le Havre.
Canada: Rocky Mountain Parks, and Head
Smashed in Buffalo Jump (this last one might need its own essay)
Also: Luxembourg City Center, and Sydney
Opera House
Recently the brand new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,
Boris Johnson, suspended parliament at a moment in history that portends a
possible keyhole event: a “Hard Brexit” is
about to occur. Technically the term is prorogue. That is to say: “Johnson has prorogued
Parliament.” He simply sent them home
for a few weeks. Although not
all that uncommon for a new government – it comes shortly after his
placement as PM – the timing has made many
Brits uncomfortable, to say the least.
One supposes that my writing has been sort of prorogued of
late – not much publishing anyhow. I don’t
think many readers are uncomfortable about that.
You can look back through a keyhole, but you can’t go back through one
I have a pair of terms for events that are
so transformational that things can never return to the way they were; not even
ways of thinking can return: Wormholes and Keyholes. Either way, when we pass
through them – either as individuals, families, communities, cultures,
countries or the entire world – a new reality emerges.
A possible alternative to keyhole and wormhole is “Rubicon”; or the full phrase “crossing the Rubicon.” Way back in 49 BCE, a Roman general named Gaius (of the patrician clan “Julia”) took his powerful and famously successful army across the River Rubicon. When he did, he also created a keyhole through which he, his army, and Roman culture passed and could never return.
Rubicon: Reality was irreversibly changed. A civil war ensued. At its conclusion, there was no more Roman Republic, although it had endured nearly 500 years with a slight flavor of democracy. It was replaced with the Roman Empire, to be led by a sovereign head of state named “Caesar” (the first one being the aforementioned general).
“Crossing the Rubicon” is a term that means total commitment, and no turning back. You’ve gone through the keyhole. Although, for Julius Caesar, there was an strong element of personal choice in the matter. That’s not always the case.
Using the theme of keyholes, I will touch upon many a quaint
and curious story of forgotten lore [1], including brief
biographical glances at the lives of three individuals.
These are but three people among countless. Passing through the same keyhole in history. An entire nation of millions was transformed by that keyhole, through which nothing – no person and no part of American culture – could return to their previous state … forever transformed. These three people made history because of their transformations – and society’s – brought about by a major disruption to American national culture.
Hattie had a sweet personality and an even sweeter voice. And she had a quality of magnetic personality mixed with pizzazz, or panache. Today the name “Hattie” is rather obscure – in fact, it almost completely disappeared in the 1950s and ‘60s. It was not an uncommon name at all across American cultures in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hattie Caraway (ARK) was the 1st woman elected to the US Senate, in 1932. Our Hattie was born in Wichita, Kansas, to parents who had been slaves. Although the name Hattie would later virtually disappear, her own name would not.
Born and raised of pure German descent, Henry hailed from the German neighborhoods on the southside of the great beer-making city of St Louis. But he usually went by the nickname “Heinie” (or “Heine”), since it was German and rhymed with his last name: Meine. Of course, it was Americanized to “High-nee My-nee”; you can’t get a much more memorable name. Nonetheless, he’s virtually forgotten, although Heinie came through the keyhole and left his name in the record books.
A first generation Italian-American, he preferred to go by “Al” rather than his given “Alphonse.” Born and raised in Brooklyn, he’d make his name in Chicago. Known for many things – including feeding over 100,000 Chicagoans each day during the Great Depression’s early years – Al was not known for being very faithful to his wife. That’s too bad, because she was extraordinarily faithful and loyal to him. At least he was loyal: he treated her well and never spoke poorly of her. That, and his Depression-era food lines, are among the few good qualities we can credit to him. ___________________________________________________________________
On a geological scale, the biggest disruptor to life on earth was almost certainly when the 12-mile diameter Chicxulub Asteroid slammed into the earth at 40,000 kilometers per hour, near the Yucatan peninsula (modern day Mexico) about 66 million years ago. Scientific estimates of the energy released approached one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) Hiroshima atomic bombs.
The asteroid event is probably the biggest reason, among many, that between 99.9% and 99.999% of the all species that have ever lived are now extinct.
Dinosaurs had ruled the earth; they had for some 250 million
years through advanced evolution which tracked the earth’s warming climate. (Consider
how far humans have evolved from advanced apes in less than 1/1000th
the time). For most of those many millions
of ”dinosaur” years, the earth was generally a very warm, even rather tropical,
CO2 rich environment. Literally, in a very
few years (perhaps a handful) all had changed.
The world, relatively speaking, became a frigidly cold “ice box.”
The asteroid, as agent of disruption, had altered reality so suddenly, and so irreversibly, that the world and its reality was forever immediately changed. We should be thankful. That stupendously, mind-boggling cataclysmic event permitted the survival and prominence of tiny mammals – and eventually to us: we humans and our many friends like horses, dogs, cats – over dozens of millions of years.
I should hesitate to even suggest candidates for
“disruptors” in the human era – especially in our post-industrial age era. But, eventually we must get to our three
protagonists: Hattie, Heinie and
Alphonse. Therefore, I submit some
examples, starting with —ta da – the internet.
It has spawned on-line commerce and “the sharing economy.”
The “sharing economy” starts with the simple idea that we, as humans in a free-market economy, have assets that are lying dormant. In economists’ terms: non-performing assets. Our houses. Our cars. Our time. The sharing economy idea suggests we can put those assets to work. Over just a very few years, this simple idea has disrupted how we consume, travel, commute and vacation. Many of us now think of Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, CrowdFunding as powerful and preferred alternatives to “traditional business models.” The value of Taxi Cab medallions in New York City has fallen by some 85% since their peak value of $1.3 Million in 2013. Entire industries must now behave differently – or die.
The sharing economy has been co-joined on the internet with
our lust for connectivity and ease. Amazon has put booksellers out of business.
Thanks to the internet, we often now shop in the comfort of our homes, in front
of our computers – often clad only in our underwear (if we are dressed at all –
sorry for the visual).
Merchandise is delivered to our front door, sometimes within hours – while many old and drab strip malls slowly, silently go vacant and “turn-over”, their dull slots replaced by the equivalent of pre-human mammals that are mostly just cheap “creature comforts”: nail salons, micro-liquor stores, tattoo and/or piercing parlors, micro-breweries, tobacco-friendly stores, massage parlors, pot shops (where legal), second-hand and antique shops, etc. And that’s if the vacant spaces are filled at all. There is no telling which will survive to coming generations, if at all: evolution, disruption and their effects have their ways of being unpredictable… that is their very nature. [2]
In American culture, looking back over the past 125 years,
or so, I cannot think of any more forceful disruptor – outside of the Internet,
the Depression, and the Great Wars – than Prohibition.
Prohibition. The 18th Amendment. The Volstead Act. The culmination of decades of effort by the Temperance Movement, the Women’s Movement, and Cultural Conservatives.
I’m sort of a fan of Prohibition. Why? It was, in effect, a vast significant social scientific experiment. It made being anti-government-control very cool. It made counter-culture cool. It made “shoving it in The-Man’s-face” cool. For many cultural icons and movements – from the obvious, like craft beer brewing and craft alcohol distilling, to the Beatniks, to Elvis, to The Stones, to Jay-Zee, to tattoos, to piercings, to sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll, sexual licentiousness, the prevalence of Sugar Daddies, and even NASCAR, (America’s most popular spectator sport) – Prohibition helped paved the way.
To me, on balance, those are good things. But every die comes with many sides: it also gave more profit and respectability to the mafia and the underworld.
Our protagonists: In order of how famous they are today:
#1. In 1913, Young Al dropped out of school at 14, after slugging his teacher. He then worked odd jobs while falling in with various young gangs of hoodlums. Eventually, he got connected to the local mobs, and began working his way up the mob ladder – getting a nasty razor gash across a cheek in one episode – before finally getting in so much trouble that he was sent off to a different “branch of the business” in Chicago, along with his wife (the one he was not quite “totally committed” to) and young son.
Propitious timing: Prohibition was about to start. Chicago is where Alphonse – Al Capone and Scarface to us – made it big. Really big. Prohibition provided almost unlimited opportunity to make money … either through booze itself or through protection schemes. Capone inherited the top position of a major Chicago crime syndicate, at age 26, when boss Johnny Torino retired and went home to Sicily.
After various deals and “take outs”, like the 1929 Saint
Valentine’s Day Massacre, Capone’s gang ruled supreme in Chicago and Cook
County.
Al Capone, king of Chicago ~1926-1931
“Scarface” (a nickname he hated) escaped criminal conviction many times. But Prohibition Agent Elliot Ness and the government finally got him on income tax evasion; his lifestyle and braggadocio were just too conspicuous during a time such as the Great Depression. Yes, he daily fed many thousands in the early years of the Depression. But everything ended on October 17, 1931, when Capone was found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.
While in prison – eventually at Alcatraz – Capone’s old cronies in the Chicago mob did quite well. But he didn’t fair so well himself, even though he was released for “good behavior” after serving only about 7 years of his term. It turns out his good behavior was probably because he developed advanced dementia caused by syphilis. Evidently it had been attacking his nervous system since his teens – considering that his only son, Alphonse Jr, was born with congenital syphilis.
Capone’s wife, Mae, remained loyal, and took great care of him until his demise, in 1947, only one week after his 48th birthday. He was probably not aware of that or much else, as he was given to talking to inanimate things and people not present. Their son Al Jr, an only child – who lived quite deaf since infancy on account of surgery for syphilis-caused infections – changed his name to “Albert Brown” in 1966, to distance himself from the infamy of his father. “Brown” was an alias his father had sometimes used.
2) In 1895 came Hattie McDaniel into this world. She was the
13th and last child born to Susan and Henry McDaniel, both former
slaves. Her father was a freed slave, who fought in the Civil War and suffered
the rest of his life from war injuries.
Originally from Wichita, Kansas, the family moved to Ft Collins, then Denver, Colorado seeking opportunity – as Henry had a difficult time with manual labor on account of his war injury – about the time young Hattie was 5 or 6. There, in school and in church, her phenomenal musical skills were discovered.
By age 14 she had a professional singing and dancing career
… and she also dropped out of Denver East High School. As feature vocalists for various bands, mostly
Blues, Hattie had made something of a name for herself.
In 1930 she found herself in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as part
of a traveling theatre troupe on the Show Boat production. Then,
disaster: The Depression struck. The
show and tour were abruptly canceled, leaving Hattie and the rest of the cast
abandoned … and nowhere near home.
Club Madrid was famous for great entertainment, as well as a great stash of alcohols. It was a place to visit and be seen for politicians, high rolling businessmen and other wealthy gangsters.
Word had gotten around Club Madrid that Hattie was extremely talented; but Madrid was a “whites only” establishment. They kept her in the restroom. Until one night when an act didn’t show. Desperate to keep the lubricated and influential guests engaged, Sam brought out Hattie. She brought the house down … and did so for over a year. Her income and notoriety soared.
Whereupon her skills as a performer were noticed by
Hollywood. She’d go on to a rich film career
of over a decade, most notably as Mammy in Gone With the Wind. In perfect Hattie pose and poise, she was
virtually “playing herself” as the only truly likeable and reasonable person in
the entire saga.
Hattie McDaniel was honored by the US Post Office with her image on a stamp, 2005
For that performance she was justly awarded an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Hattie McDaniel was the first Black to receive an academy nomination, and the first to win an Oscar. Bravo Hattie.
She remained popular, and used that popularity to serve in
World War II, entertaining troops and performing at War Bond rallies.
At the end of the war the role of blacks in America was about to dramatically change. Truman integrated the military with a stroke of his pen. There was a loud popular cry to end the stereotyping of black characters as obsequious, simple-minded submissives in movies. The cry was heard. Unfortunately for Hattie, she had already been well typecast into such roles, and her Hollywood career faded.
Not so for radio, and Hattie signed on to play a maid on the nationally popular regular radio show Beulah. Another first: she was the first black to have a weekly appearance on any media. [3] Her years were running out, however. Too young and too late she was discovered to have breast cancer, and she succumbed in 1952, aged only 57.
And #3. Henry “Heinie” Meine is surely the least famous of the three who actually achieved a significant level of fame. Born in Saint Louis in 1896, he was a sports enthusiast who took to baseball well. He played a lot of local sand-lot and then semi-pro ball as a young man, mostly as a spit balling pitcher.
By 1920 word got around that he was pretty good – especially with his favorite pitch: the spitter. He’d been noticed by legendary scout Charles “Charley” Francis Barrett, and he was signed to a minor league contract with the St Louis Browns of the American League. In 1922 he was called up briefly to his hometown Browns and pitched in one single game — a mop up effort in a late season blow out. Unfortunately for Heinie, the spitball had been outlawed as an unfair pitch; and was now being enforced. His major league career seemed over.
He bounced around the minor leagues for a while, gaining a reputation for a “rubber arm”; he was kind of an energizer bunny, as he regularly pitched 250-300 innings a season during those years in the minors. Finally, Meine just gave up, retiring at the end of the 1926 season after learning he’d be demoted to the Single-A level for the 1927 season. It seemed he had no path to the majors, especially without his spitball. There were other options: he intended to make money in his beer-happy hometown of Saint Louis running a Speakeasy. Prohibition provided opportunity.
Like Pick’s Club Madrid, Meine’s “soda bar” was located just outside
the city limits, in a German neighborhood that was known for some reason as
Luxemburg. His drinking establishment was so popular, he got the nickname “Duke
of Luxemburg.”
When other major league teams came to Saint Louis (the city had two teams then, so it was often), Luxemburg was a frequent stop for refreshment. After a few drinks the players often teased him about being a good minor league pitcher, but not being good enough to make it in the majors.
This was motivation. He’d show them! After a layoff of nearly two years, Meine returned to baseball. He was determined to make it as a “control pitcher”, one who could make the ball move any direction, who could constantly change speeds and hit any spot on the edge of the strike zone. He became an early effective “junk” pitcher. He didn’t strike out many batters; they just hit soft grounders and popups. After a couple minor league seasons, he was eventually acquired by the Pittsburgh Pirates.
As a 33 year-old rookie, Heinie Meine made his major league debut in 1929. Unheard of even in those days. After two moderately successful and contentious seasons with the Pirates (including missing much time with a bad case of tonsillitis) he set the baseball world on fire in 1931, leading the league in wins and innings pitched. A phenomenal record for a Pirate team that managed only 75 wins against 79 losses that year.
Henry “Heinie” Meine
Meine was a holdout for the 1932 season – one of the first
to successfully do so – demanding more money.
Starting the season over a month late, after a contract renegotiation,
he still managed 12 wins and nearly 200 innings.
But Meine was now approaching 37 years old. His rubber arm was wearing out. Still, he managed 15 wins and 207 innings in 1933, impressive totals for any age in any era. All the league’s pitchers with more wins than Meine were aged 31, or younger.
The next year, 1934, would be his last, as Meine was getting past his prime. He still put up a winning record, at 7-6, but he knew the end of his career had come. If he’d stayed for just a small part of the next season, he’d have seen a national superstar who was well past his prime have one last unlikely and very dramatically successful day at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. A very wobbly 40-year old Babe Ruth hit three home runs in one game in late May … the last three he’d ever hit. Then promptly retired a few days later.
But by then Meine had already retired to run his saloon business full time. With Prohibition over and his reputation for Gemütlichkeit, Meine’s career as saloon keeper was safe for years to come. And with some thanks to Prohibition and the customers who teased him, he had made his place in baseball’s record books.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing me at Joe@Girardmeister.com.
[1] With apologies to Edgar Allen Poe fans. Lifted almost verbatim from verse #1 of “The
Raven.”
[2] Strip Malls have a rather interesting history in the US
(and Canada). Briefly: The preponderance
of Strip Malls exploded in the 1950s in North America, along with the expanding
post-war economy and our love affair with cars. Ubiquitous on the edges of urban areas, and within
the new suburban areas, they were a “strip” of available business spaces in a
single building with parking in front. Sometimes
“L-shaped”, they lined major and semi-major roads, near residential areas, but seldom
near central business districts.
They provided convenient, if not “drab”, space for respectable
businesses like pharmacies, butcher shops, barbers, and sellers of fresh
produce and groceries … where everyone seemed to know everyone else and friendly
chit-chat was interwoven with business. In an America that no longer exists.
But cars got bigger and ever more plentiful. Available parking for strip malls was too small. So then came the “Big Box” strip malls, with huge parking lots anchored by one or two major retailers, like Walmart, or Home Depot. The small strip malls lost business, tenants and most public interest. Also came the super malls … and strip malls were just so-o-o 1950s and ‘60s.
If not already scraped away, strip malls still exist, but ever more with spaces that are vacant, or populated by the likes of businesses I listed above. Always drab. Always an eyesore.
[3] At about this time, only about 10% of US homes had televisions. Nearly 100% had radios, and people built their daily schedules around radio shows. By 1960, this had reversed: nearly 90% had TVs, and Americans lives revolved around their favorite shows, on only 3 networks.
Regarding Strip Mall history: One of the better sources I
found was here.
