Monday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world.”

                                             Albert Einstein

Here is a continuation of my road trip from Tacoma, Washington to the east coast. In my last report I left y'all at a restaurant in Pendleton, Oregon. I am sure there were several stops in between but the next stop that was memorable was Boise, Idaho. We stopped at a motel on the north side of town and asked the desk clerk where was a good place to eat and a good watering hole. She told us a where to go get a steak and a bar that had live music. The steak was indeed a memorable one and the potato was way too big but after all we were in Idaho. Afterward we went to the nearby bar that the desk clerk told us about. It was as you might suspect. There was a hell of a lot horns, antlers and animal heads hanging from the walls. You would have thought the music would have western or country...wrong...it was blues, y'all. I do not mean Johnny Winters or the Allman Brothers genre, it was the Sonny Boy Williamson, “Pinetop” Perkins and Muddy Waters type. It was pure Delta Blues, y'all. I was flabbergasted and enthralled. I do not remember the name of the band(s) but they were dynamite. The evening gradually faded to gray amid a mixture of Jack and Bud but the music was memorable. By the way, while we were in the bar and the only ones in there without a cowboy hat, everybody knew we were not local. We told them that we had just gotten discharged from the Air Force and was on our way home to Florida and South Carolina. After that word spread around, I do not remember having to buy another drink. The next memorable stop was Rabbit Ears Pass. More on this later.

I guess it must have been a full moon this last weekend. A lot of strange things happened.

Over in Spartanburg, SC 26 year old Julius Cox was not happy with what his girlfriend was cooking for him and began beating on her. She headed for the bedroom and began gathering up her clothes to leave under a barrage of blows from her boyfriend. The cops finally arrived and put a stop to it and took Julius to the joint for criminal domestic violence. I don’t get it. If Julius was not happy with what she was cooking all he had to do is to go to Church’s Chicken, for crying out loud. Now he is eating some food that is barely edible and not much of it. I was always raised that if someone cooked for you, you ate it no matter what. It is a southern tradition. Obviously Julius is a Yankee...make that a damned Yankee.

Then over in the nearby town of Cowpens, 34 year old Earline Gowdy got mad at her husband for unknown reasons. She broke a leg off of and end table and hit him in the head three times opening severe gashes. When the cops arrived the husband was standing in the doorway bleeding like a stuck pig and yelling at the top of his lungs as was Earline. Earline was arrested for assault and battery and criminal domestic violence. Her husband was arrested for criminal domestic violence and taken to the Mary Black Hospital to have his head sewn up.

            This Date in History August 25

1944   A few days before the French 2^nd Armored division, General Jacque-Philippe LeClerc commanding, approached the German occupied city of Paris, France from the north while the American 4^th Infantry is approaching Paris from the south. The liberation of that great city was at hand. The 2^nd Armored took a beating from the German artillery but when LeClerc heard that the 4^th Infantry was approaching the center of Paris he found a surge of energy and they swept the west side of Paris while the 4^th Infantry swept the east side. The German Commander in Paris was General Dietrich Von Choltitz. When Choltitz told Hitler that Paris was lost and would soon by occupied by the French and Americans Hitler ordered him to destroy all of the famous places in Paris like the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Versailles palace, etc and then burn Paris to the ground. Choltitz thought about that about 3 minutes and then said to his staff “I will not go down in history as destroying the “the city of light”, the greatest city in Europe.” So none of the pre-set explosives installed by the Germans was detonated and Paris was saved when Choltitz signed an official surrender to the Allies. There were about 20,000 German troops stationed in Paris but when they found out that they were trapped in a pincer movement and the Free French insurgents came out and began an attack on the troops out in the open, the German troops melted away. On this date a gigantic parade with the 2^nd Armored, the 4^th Infantry and The Free French march in victory down the Champs d’Elysses with General LeClerc and Charles DeGaulle in the lead. It was a great day for freedom.

1864   The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, General R.E. Lee commanding, is under siege in and around Petersburg, Virginia by the Army of the Potomac, General Ulysses Grant commanding. The majority of supplies coming into the Confederates were coming in via the Weldon Railroad from the south. Grant orders his 2^nd Corps led by General Winfield Hancock to go down and destroy the railroad. Hancock is successful in destroying 8 miles of railroad track but the Confederates simply stopped the train south of the destroyed rails and brought the supplies up by wagons. Lee got fed up and sent General A.P. Hill and his infantry supported by General Wade Hampton III’s cavalry down to restore the railroad. The Confederate and Union troops meet at a railroad depot named Ream’s Station. The Union soldiers had build a revetment out of soil but they did not build it tall enough and the Confederate artillery easily crossed over and fell into the huddled troops on the other side. The troops under the command of US General John Gibbon were green and inexperienced. When the artillery shells began falling, those troops broke and ran with Hampton’s cavalry in hot pursuit. It was a rout. This was not easy for US General Hancock to witness because he was the hero of Gettysburg and was known as a leader that would stand his ground. Not this time. Hancock and Gibbon blamed each other for the debacle so Grant got fed up with the squabbling and transferred them both out of the 2^nd Corps.

1896     In 1858 William Doolin was born on a farm in Arkansas. At an early age Bill moved to Oklahoma and became a ranch hand on the huge ranch owned by Oscar Haskell. Oscar took a liking to the young Arkansan and eventually Bill became a foreman. But for reasons known only to Bill, he decided to engage in a little thievery. In fact he joined up with the Dalton gang from time to time on bank and train robberies. He was a very meticulous thinker/planner and he was useful to the Daltons in the planning of a robbery. Bill was wounded more than once in the robberies but none seriously. But he decided to go to the mineral springs in Eureka Springs, Arkansas for rest and recuperation. But he did not plan on one thing; he was being tracked by the famous lawman William Tilghman. Tilghman was able to surprise Doolin and captured him without a fight. Tilghman took Doolin to the Guthrie, Oklahoma jail and soon thereafter Doolin escaped and eluded the police for about 2 months. On this date, a posse of 12 men trapped Bill Doolin in a house in Lawton, Oklahoma. They call for Bill to surrender but he isn’t having any part of a long prison term and came out the door guns blazing. All of the posse fire their rifles and shotguns at the same time cutting Bill to ribbons. He was 38 years old.

Born today:

1836   US writer Bret Harte. He said “A big vice in a man is likely to keep out many smaller ones.” It works for me, Bret.

1850   US humorist Bill Nye. He said “I have heard that Wagner’s music is a lot better than it sounds.”

1889   US writer William Feather. He said “Flattery must get pretty thick before anyone objects to it.”

1912   US cartoonist Walt Kelly. He said “Women are not as mere as they used to be.” Walt gave us the comic strip “Pogo”. Pogo gave us the immortal phrase “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.”

1918   US composer Leonard Bernstein. He said “To achieve great things two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.”

1919   Former Governor George Wallace. He said “I may not look like a black man, but my heart is as black as anyone here.” How is that again, George?

1942   Scottish guitarist David Russell. He said “We live in a Newtonian world of Einstein physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.”

1949   US musician Gene Simmons. He said “Walk among the natives in the daylight, but in your heart be Superman.”

1951   English singer Rob Halford (Judas Priest). He said “In music there is only heavy metal and the rest of that shit they play on radio and show on MTV.”

1613   English writer Richard Crashaw. He said to his wife “It is daylight, my sweet. Not from the east but from thine eyes.” All you married guys need to remember these words.

            Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow