Tuesday OYSTERS

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Quote of the day:

When asked why that most of the poverty stricken in India continue to have babies he said “The bed of poverty is fertile, sex is all they have.”

                                        Mahatma Gandhi

I read about a strange incident that happened down in south Georgia. Three GHP officers were trying to arrest a suspected drug dealer that was traveling north on I-95 when an altercation occurred. The suspect lashed out with a haymaker and caught one of the officers in the chin and knocked him out. He then decided to run across an open field but accidentally fell and was pinned and arrested by the other two officers. However, they had to take the suspect to the hospital because of the injuries suffered in the fall. The hospital report stated that he had two broken arms, a fractured cheekbone, a cracked rib and severe bruises on both shins. It must have been a hell of a fall.

For reasons known only to the present administration, the border between North and South Carolina was re-surveyed. The only reason I can think of is to give people jobs. Many years ago there was a dispute as to where future president Andrew Jackson was born. Depending on which biography you read, he was born in “the Waxhaws” which was a very early settlement on the North Carolina/South Carolina border just south of present day Charlotte, NC or in Lancaster County, SC. No one knows for sure because the border between North and South Carolina had not been surveyed at the time of his birth.

Here are a few facts about this man. He was the first president to be not an aristocrat and was from the frontier. He had the crap beat out of him at the age of 13 by a British officer because he refused to clean the officer’s boots. Shortly after this episode he killed and scalped his first Indian. He was wounded several times in duels mostly about his wife Rachel. He married Rachel thinking she was a widow and so did Rachel. Rachel’s first husband deserted her and one child and was not heard from for an extended period and was assumed to be dead. After Andrew and Rachel were married it was discovered that Rachel’s first husband was indeed alive. Rachel immediately went through a divorce process but Andrew’s enemies jumped on this claiming that Rachel was a bigamist. This was not a smooth move with hot-blooded Andrew Jackson and many of them paid for it with their lives.

               This Date in History   January 5

1781 The day before former Patriot General, now British General Benedict Arnold and 1,500 troops sailed up the James River to Westover, Virginia and on this date, they march on the almost defenseless Richmond, Virginia. The Governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson called for the Virginia Militia to come to the defense of Richmond and for all the arms and weapons to be moved out of Richmond and sent to Westham, Virginia to keep them out of Arnold’s hands. Unfortunately, nearly all of the militia were veterans of many previous battles with the redcoats and felt they had done their duty and only 200 militiamen showed up defend Richmond. Jefferson also sent Prussian Baron Von Steuben to defend the arms that had been taken to Westham. Arnold and his troops entered Richmond and brushed aside the 200 militia and headed toward Westham to capture the arms but when he saw that he was facing Baron von Steuben, Arnold turned around and went back to Richmond. On his second trip through Richmond, he burned it to the ground. After the war, Benedict Arnold tried to open businesses in Canada and London all of which were failures. Arnold died penniless on June 14, 1801 and was buried in his British uniform in the graveyard at St. Mary’s church in Middlesex, London. What a tragic end to a brilliant military leader.

1861 On this date the civilian cargo vessel Star of the West left New York City with supplies and 250 troops to relieve Major Robert Anderson and his 80 troops in Fort Sumter, an island in Charleston, South Carolina harbor. The President of the United States, James Buchanan, did not want to further inflame the already hostile South Carolinians by sending a military ship. South Carolina had seceded in December of 1860. The ship arrived on the 9^th of January and was met by a shore battery barrage and the ship was hit. After this, the ship turned around and did not enter the harbor. What caused South Carolina and the others to secede was the election of a Republican president, Abe Lincoln, among other real or imagined offenses. This time period was between the election of Abe and his inauguration.

1970 On this date the bodies of United Mine Workers leader Jock Yablonski, his wife and their 25 year old daughter are found on their Clarksville, Pennsylvania farm. Earlier Jock had run for the President of the UMW against a man named Tony Boyle. During the campaign, Yablonski had accused Boyle of nepotism and misuse of Union funds. In spite of all of this, Boyle won the election. Yablonski said that he was going to call in the US Department of Labor to look for fraud in the election process. After this Boyle put out a contract on Yablonski. Boyle delegated the job of locating a hit team to his underling named Albert Pass. Pass hired a Paul Gilley and Claude Veasey to cap Yablonski and the two went to visit Yablonski but lost their nerve at the last minute. They returned a week later with yet a third assassin named Buddy Martin and he shot and killed Yablonski, his wife and daughter. The Department of Justice jumped all over this and eventually nine people were imprisoned for this debacle, including Tony Boyle who died in prison. The upside of this was that the Department of Labor cracked down hard on the UMW and cleaned house making the Union much more favorable to the rank and file.

1825 On this date Alexander Dumas pere engaged in one of his many duels and emerges with only minor injuries. There were two Alexander Dumas, a father and his son. The word “pere” means father and the word “fils” means son. We are talking about the father or pere. Alexander’s father was a General in Napoleon’s army. His great grandmother was a black slave to his great-grandfather making Alexander a quadroon. His father died when he was four and his mother struggled to keep her family fed. But in spite of this little Alexander was an insatiable reader and heard many adventurous tales of his father fighting for Napoleon. At the age 21 he obtained a job on Paris working for the powerful Duke D’Orleans who eventually became King Louis-Philippe. In1844 Alexander delivered to the world the king of adventure novels in The Three Musketeers. Needless to say, the novel was an immediate success and remains so until this day. It is a story full of battles and individual duels and feats of courage. I imagine that Alexander was reliving in his imagination what he thought his father's life was like. Alexander had many, many love affairs resulting in many illegitimate children and led a rambunctious life. The result of one of his liaisons was his illegitimate son also named Alexander who also became an author. In 1845 Alexander delivered yet another blockbuster adventure novel in The Count of Monte Cristo, the king of all jail break novels and still to this day one of the most engrossing books ever written. He also gave us The Man in the Iron Mask, a superb mystery novel. These three book were not the only contributions this man made to literature, he also gave us many essays and short stories. All of these successful writings made Alexander very wealthy. But Alexander was not a prudent man lived his life to the fullest and was frequently broke. His elegant residence, Chateau de Monte Cristo that he built, was almost constantly the location of days long parties with complete strangers wandering in and out indiscriminately. The soul of Alexander Dumas departed this earth on December 5, 1870. This very talented author was 63 at time of death. There has been more than one movie made about each of his three major works. His son Alexander Dumas fils wrote several successful novels also but his books smacked of the resentment he apparently felt about his father wasting his life on song and ale and ignoring him. I am not sure the Pere’s life was wasted but ignoring his son sucked.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow