Daily history

Good Morning,


Quote of the day:

“Failure is just a change in direction to set you straight for your next success. Only those that dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

                                       Sam Walton

I have been thinking about my closest calls in my past and it seems that most of them happened when I was involved in either fishing or hunting. Here is another adventure:

I was living in Greenville, Mississippi. Greenville is right on the mighty Mississippi river with docks and everything. There was an oxbow lake nearby that looked very fishy. By the way, an oxbow lake is formed when the river cuts a channel off to one side of the main channel and reenters the river somewhere downstream. Eventually the entrance and exit of this channel closes up forming a lake. I was on the way to a fish camp to rent a boat. The fish camp was down a dirt road that was on top of a levee. It had rained like hell that morning and I came upon some water running over the levee from the river to a swamp below. I stopped, got out and looked for quite a while, and then decided that my ’51 Ford would make it across. I got about halfway across and suddenly I felt the car drifting to the right and there was not a damned thing I could do about it. The car, with me still aboard, slid off to the right, did a half roll and ended up laying on the passenger side wedged against some brush. Very quickly there was a solid stream of water coming in the driver side and exiting the passenger side window. I was able to get out of the car through the driver side window and crawl up the embankment to the road. If there had not been plenty of small trees and brush to hold on to I would have been washed into the depths of that swamp filled with world class mosquitoes, leeches and moccasins as big around as a car tire. About three hours later the water flow abated that the road reappeared. Some passersby stopped and offered to call a wrecker which was accepted. The wrecker pulled the car to a garage where I had all the fluids and greases changed. When I went to get my car, it started right up but the stench of rotting fish was apparent. It took me quite a while to locate all the little minnows that were tangled in the seats or under the floor mats. I did not find any snakes, however.

A good friend of mine lived on a small lake here in Greenville known as Oak Grove Lake. This lake is primarily a recreational facility created by the county. The lake has a small road circling the lake that is exactly one mile around. This makes it very popular with the joggers and walkers because they know how long they have traveled in one lap. Anyway, one day my friend’s wife was taking their youngest son to school on “show and tell” day. Their driveway ended at the lake and you had to turn one way or the other when reaching the road. Their son had a small snake in a half-gallon glass jar. When his wife was about 10 feet from the lake, her son said “Mom, the snake got out.” The car ended up in the lake in about four feet of water but no one was injured. The boy was just joking but later on that day his father was not.

This same guy (a Cajun) had a small horse carriage that he would ride his kids around in. He had a small pony for propulsion. One day he hooked up the carriage but the pony refused to move even after several encouragements. He got down and tried pushing the pony but the pony took one step back and ended up standing on my friend’s foot and resumed his stubbornness about moving. My friend could not do much pushing with the pony standing on his foot so he hurriedly pulled out a cigarette, lit it and touched it to the rear end of the pony. The pony got off his foot and using both back legs, kicked the carriage into kindling. What can we learn from this?

Up in Cooperstown, New York a bunch of teenagers got into a rumble near the Hall of Fame Library. After a while a 16 year old kid shows up with a rifle and the others scatter. One kid ran into the Cooperstown Police Department for safety and hid behind a column. The kid with the rifle saw a piece of the other kids arm and put a bullet through the fleshy part of his right arm. He then put the muzzle of the rifle under his chin and pulled the trigger. The kid with the arm wound was treated and released the other kid is in ICU with his fate not yet known. What the hell is this world coming to?

This date in history April 5

1774    On this date Benjamin Franklin and his cronies are sitting around the Smyrna Coffee Shop on Saint James Street in London when Ben decides to write an “open letter to Lord North”. Lord North was the prime minister of England. Both Ben and Lord North knew war was on the horizon if things didn’t get better between the colonies and England. Ben’s letter was at least tongue-in-cheek if not pure cynicism. The letter included phrases like “everyone knows that one Englishman is worth twenty colonists”. And stating that “all the British have to do is capture a few towns and then they can sell the colonies to the Spanish.” Ben’s letter was not published until April 15. Evidently Lord North took Ben’s letter to heart because soon thereafter he recalled the British Military commander in the Colonies, General Thomas Gage, and ordered him to take over the reins as the Governor of Massachusetts meaning martial law was on the horizon. Lord North did not realize the width and depth of his actions because war did indeed break out that resulted in an ocean of blood, thousands of lives, not to mention the 13 colonies that it cost Great Britain.

1955    On this date one of the greatest political leaders in history, Winston Churchill, resigns as prime minister of Great Britain. It was Churchill that took over as prime minister after Neville Chamberlain went to Berlin and kissed Hitler’s ass in 1938 to get a signature on a worthless piece of paper saying that Hitler would not invade any country in Europe. Just a few months after this Germany invaded Poland and England had no choice but to declare war on Germany. Churchill declared that “we will fight them on the beach, in the streets, we will never surrender”. England was pretty much alone in Europe against the Germans. All the other countries were either too small or lacked courage (France) to stand up to the German juggernaut. England took a hell of a beating in the early years of the war but eventually the Royal Air Force firebombed the hell out of many German cities with the help of the United States 8th Air Force. Actually, it was the 8th Air Force that did most of the damage with the RAF in support. When the 8th Air Force began bombing Germany they lost 30 to 40 percent of the aircraft they sent over. But later the odds began to swing the other direction when the US found a fighter that could accompany the bombers over to Germany and back to England. It was the legendary P-51D Mustang. Upon the arrival of this great aircraft in Europe Germany’s days were numbered.

1862    On this date on of the worst US military commanders in its history, General George B. McClellan arrives at Yorktown, Virginia with an enormous army of 100,000. That’s right ya’ll, it is the same Yorktown where George Washington beat British General Charles Cornwallis that essentially won the Revolutionary War for the Patriots. Anyway, McClellan saw a Confederate force in Yorktown and believed that it was a huge, well armed force and rather than attack he began a siege. In actuality, there were 11,000 Confederates under the command of CSA General John B. McGruder. McGruder saw what an enormous force he was facing and marched his troops back and forth in front of McClellan to make it look like there were a lot more troops than there really was. This delay in McClellan’s advance allowed CSA General Robert E. Lee to assemble a substantial army and kick the living shit out of McClellan’s army at the Battle of the Seven Days a little while later.

1994    On this date an electrician arrives at the Seattle home of rock singer (of sorts) Kurt Cobain to install a security system and finds Kurt dead as hell as a drunk chick with a scrawled suicide note nearby. This is not the first time that this sort of scenario had happened with Kurt. A month before Kurt had threatened suicide and was persuaded to enter a sanitarium. One month later he walks out without telling anyone and went to Seattle and killed himself. Kurt’s wife Courtney Love was an immediate suspect because this girl was a brick short of load at best. Kurt almost got the job done earlier in England when he mixed the sleeping drug Rohypal and champagne. They found him just in the nick of time and pumped his stomach. Also, he was well known to be a heroin addict on and off for most of his adult life. I really don’t get it. This addict could not sing a lick and became a multi-millionaire only to end his life much too early. What’s up with that?

1976    Howard Hughes died aboard one of his Learjets coming from Acapulco, Mexico to Houston ending a bizarre and sad life. Howard was born in 1905 in Houston. His father was a brilliant inventor and businessman who died in 1923 leaving Howard a huge fortune in the Hughes Tool Company. This company would lease sharpened oil drilling bits to drilling companies and take them back when they were dull, refurbish and re-sharpen them and then lease them out again. This was during the oil exploration boom in the west and southwestern United States. Howard expanded his business into the commercial aviation business which was also booming. Eventually Howard became one of the wealthiest men in the world. Howard was interested in two things, beautiful women and fast aircraft. He dated several female movie stars and designed some of the fastest sport aircraft every made. Not only that, he built the largest aircraft in the world to that time in the seaplane “The Spruce Goose.” Howard was suppose to take this giant out for a taxi run near Long Beach, California. Not only did Howard taxi the plane but he lifted this behemoth into the air for about 50 yards. It never flew again and became a museum piece. Howard was a fanatic about germs and washed his hands almost constantly and became more and more reclusive. He felt he had several diseases either real or imagined and injected himself with a variety of drugs. There are no credible witnesses to Howard’s remains but it was reported that he was extremely thin, long stringy and unkempt hair and beard, fingernails that curled back into his palms and was much unwashed. There were several broken off syringe needles in various places in various places in his skin. He was almost an ogre. What a damned shame.

Born today:

1900    US Actor Spencer Tracy. He said “There was a time when my pants were so thin that when I sat down with dime in my pocket I could tell if it was heads or tails.” Me too.

1908    US actress Bette Davis. She said “They always star me as bitch when I am really not one; I guess that is why they always star Joan Crawford as a lady.”

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow