Daily history

Good morning from Paradise,




Quote of the day:

“I smoke a lot of grass because it stops me from killing people.”

Willie Nelson



Monday morning breakfast:



I had 6 large shrimp that had been covered with Old Bay seasoning and steamed.



12 raw oysters on saltine crackers and covered with a sauce made of ketchup, horse radish, soy sauce and Tabasco. This dish is eaten in one bite per oyster and chewed vigorously.



4 slices of raw yellow fin tuna that had been marinating in a mixture of soy sauce, lemon juice and a few drops of Tabasco.

\A small slice of Key Lime pie.

One small Cuba Libra. This is rum, coke and a squeeze of lime.





For lunch I will probably have a Sidelines Special hot dog. It is a hot dog made with a Kiel Basa sausage, chili, onions, Cole slaw and sauerkraut. YUMMY!

Willie’s Nelson’s free concert was Sunday night. It was paid for by BP because of the oil spill. He opened with his signature song “Whiskey River.” Willie is probably the most traveled musician that ever existed. What has Willie NOT seen in his lifetime? There is rumor that after four days of I.W. Harper whiskey and grass with very little sleep, Willie was supposed to have a song for a movie ready by the end of the day when he finally sobered up. His bus driver said “Come on Willie, we have to get on the road.” Willie sat down and wrote “On the road again, we have to get back on the road again….” The song was ready in10 minutes. By the way, Willie wrote “Crazy” made famous by Patsy Cline and “Hello Walls” made famous by Faron Young among many, many others. My favorite is “Blue Eyes crying in the Rain”. What a treasure he is to us all.

The promoters of the “DeLuna Fest” were very pleased with the results of this weekend’s music fest and have planned another one in May.

I am sorry to report that I cannot find any gun duels, drive-by shootings, over-zealous cops stopping people for nothing, no robberies of a convenience store, etc. in this area. There were three DUI citations. But considering the number of people moving around this weekend that is a surprising statistic. The high temperature today will be about 81 with partly cloudy skies and calm winds. If there is a wind it will be from the Gulf of Mexico.

My eldest daughter and her paramour came over Sunday night and we watched her beloved Saints win. It was good to see her again.

This date in history October 19

1781 On this immortal day, after eight years of blood, sweat, toil and tears the British Army of 8,000 soldiers and sailors commanded by General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to the Patriot army commanded by General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia essentially ending the Revolutionary War in the United States. There were a few sea battles and skirmishes elsewhere afterward but the land war in America was over. Earlier in mid-September Cornwallis had retreated with his ragged army from the Carolinas after being bled white by several engagements with US General Nathaneal Greene. Greene did not win any of the engagements but made the British pay a tall price for each victory. Cornwallis decided to head back toward New York and the umbrella of British General Sir Henry Clinton and his troops. Cornwallis decided that it would be prudent to travel north up the east coast so as to have the British Navy close by for supply and reinforcements. The only problem was that the French fleet had arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay first and established a blockade the British navy could not breach which essentially isolated Cornwallis. Cornwallis and his troops dug in on Gloucester Hill near Yorktown. Washington sent the Marquis de Lafayette and 5,000 troops to cut off a retreat to the south and Washington and his troops sealed off a retreat to the north. With the French controlled Chesapeake Bay at his back, Cornwallis had no option but to surrender or risk total annihilation. On the afternoon of this day, Cornwallis feigned sickness and under a white flag sent his second in command, Colonel John O’Hara out with his sword. As the British troops stacked their arms their band played “The World Turned Upside Down.” In 1783 the United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris which recognized the United States as a free and independent nation.

1864 Earlier CSA General Jubal Early and his army had free rein up and down the Shenandoah Valley and that aggravated the hell out of US General U.S.Grant and felt that Early was a threat to his flanks while having Petersburg, Virginia under siege. Grant sent US General Phillip Sheridan and 30,000 troops to neutralize Early. After a couple of battles near Winchester, Virginia, Sheridan lost contact with Early and did not know exactly where he and his army were. Sheridan was called to Washington for a conference and while he was gone, Early and his troops launched a surprise attack near Cedar Creek, Virginia. The stunned Yankees reeled backward for three miles before establishing a line a defense that slowed but did not stop the retreat. For reasons only known to Early, he slowed the advance and surrendered some of the advantage he had enjoyed. One of Early’s division commanders, CSA General John B. Gordon, was beside himself with anger and urged Early to pursue his advantage and annihilate this Yankee army while he had the chance but Early was unmoved. General Sheridan was on his way back from Washington and while passing through Winchester heard the sound of the battle and spurred into a gallop. He began running into some of his troops in retreat and ordered them to turn around and begin a counter-attack. Because Early had slowed his advance, the counter-attack succeeded and Early’s army was driven from the field while losing the greatest majority of their artillery. After this debacle Early was never a viable force in the Shenandoah Valley again allowing Sheridan to destroy the crops in the field. Early never explained why he slowed the advance but it cost him and the Confederacy a hell of a lot.

1812   In June of 1812 Napoleon Bonaparte and his enormous army of 500,000 launch an attack on Russia. This was the largest army ever assembled up until that time. The Russian army knew it would be fruitless to combat such an enormous army and set about a campaign of delay, harassment and destroying anything of use ahead of the Frenchmen. On September 10, Napoleon arrives at Moscow but finds no one home. The Russians had evacuated the entire city and they weren’t done yet. A day or two after Napoleon’s arrival, he started seeing flames and soon the entire city was ablaze which denied Napoleon and his army shelter for the infamous Russian winter which was already upon them. On this date, Napoleon decides that he had better head for the house and turned his army west and sets out. If there was ever hell on earth it was Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow with the Russian army nipping at his heels every step of the way. There is no use in me telling ya’ll what hell those troops suffered before arriving back in Europe. The Russians got ahead of them and burned each and every bridge they had to cross heading west making Napoleon’s engineers and his troops stay a little longer in the numbing cold of the winter while they rebuilt bridges. The final analysis was that Napoleon arrived back in France with only 100,000 of the original 500.000 troops. Even with this famous disaster known to the world, Adolph Hitler tried the same thing in 1942 with nearly the same result. Dictators with visions of glory are all the same, they seek fame and power at the expense of other’s lives.

A brief biography:

This is a short biography of a famous name in the Marine Corp. Daniel “Dan” Joseph Daly was born in Green Cove, New York in 1873 and joined the Marines in November of 1899. Daly wanted to get into the Spanish-American War but the war ended when he was in basic training. He was a small man being about 5’-6” and weighed about 130 pounds but during his career in the Marines Major General John A. Lejeune said called him “the most outstanding Marine of all time.” His commanding officer Major General Smedley D. Butler said of Daly “He was the fightingest Marine I ever knew, it was an object lesson to have served with him.”

After missing the Spanish-American War he was sent as part of Marine expeditionary force to China during the Boxer Rebellion. He was assigned the task of protecting the wall at the American legation. Left alone with only a bayoneted rifle, he was shot at by snipers and the wall was finally stormed by dozens of attackers. Daly held his ground and fought off the assault single handed. After the attackers retreated, there were 36 corpses either on the ground or lying across the wall. For his action here he received the Congressional Medal of Honor. He achieved the rank of Gunnery Sergeant making him essentially a platoon leader. His next action was in Haiti during a rebellion. Daly’s platoon was surrounded by a group of raiders and the Marines knew they were in deep shit if they did not get more firepower. That night Daly snuck through the raider lines, located a machine gun that the Marines had to abandon the day before, and brought the gun and ammo back to his platoon undetected. The next morning the raiders attacked but were met not with the rifle fire of a few Marines but the withering fire of a machine gun. The raiders retreated post haste and Daly received his second Congressional Medal of Honor. And finally, at the age of 45, he and his platoon were part of the legendary Marine action at Belleau Wood in WWI. His platoon was pinned down by an avalanche of German artillery getting chopped to pieces. Daly went from man to man, machine gun position to machine gun position cheering his men. Finally, Daly ordered a bayonet charge and rose up and yelled the immortal words “Come on you sons-of-bitches, do you want to live forever?” Daly was wounded three times during this campaign. He was offered a commission more than once but refused saying “I had rather be an outstanding sergeant rather than an ordinary officer.” As you might suspect, he received a hell of a lot of publicity which he scorned and called the entire hubbub a lot of foolishness. Daly never married and did not drink. His bride was the Marine Corp. His only known sin was that he smoked a pipe stuffed with plug tobacco. There are many other acts of bravery and valor attributed to Daly beside these few examples above, Daly was the definition of an “Iron Man”. Strangely, his commanding officer Major General Smedley Butler also received two Congressional Medals of Honor for separate actions. After retirement Daly worked as a guard in a Wall Street bank. Daniel Joseph Daly died on February 6, 1937 in Glendale, Long Island, New York. There is a US Navy destroyer named for him. His remarkable record as a fighting man is unequaled in the annuls of Marine Corp history. I thought it would be nice to remember our brave military guys in a favorable light during these difficult and trying times.

Quotable quotes:

When asked why she never married, Gloria Steinem said “I cannot mate in captivity.” Hey Gloria, I damn sure can and have offsprings to prove it.

“Why do men get married? So they don’t have to hold their stomachs in anymore.” Red Skelton

Shut up, Red

“Basically my wife was immature. She would come into the bathroom while I was in the tub and sink all of my boats.” Woody Allen

“Why did God create men, because a vibrator can’t mow the lawn.” Madonna. You have to admire this broad, she really knows how to market herself.

Births and deaths:

1895 US writer Lewis Mumford is born. “Men of courage do not need weapons, but they may need bail.” Nearly all of the US Marine Commandants say the same thing.

                Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow