Tuesday

                     Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Fathom the hypocrisy that Obama wants everyone to prove they are insured, but people do not have to prove they are citizens.”

                                                Ben Stein

A while back a new car wash opened in the small South Carolina town of Moncks Corner. The owner decided that it would be good advertising if he had strippers in Bikinis washing the cars on opening day. One of the first cars to arrive was city police squad car. Unfortunately a photo of the squad car with five or six top notch exotic dancers in Bikinis washing the car appeared on Facebook. The city cop was fired before dark. The peculiar part was that one of the supposed exotic dancers doing the washing was not a dancer at all, she was a city cop and she was not fired. I have seen the photo and let me tell you, that girl can get a job at any strip joint if she gives up on law enforcement. What puzzles me is why the cop driving the car was fired and she was not. The driver was just trying to keep the squad car clean and the girl doing the washing (off duty) was trying to make a little extra money. The chief of police said that the girl did not break any of the city’s rules and regulations. That indicates to me that there is a rule or regulation in Monck’s Corner that says, “Squad cars cannot be washed by women with kick-ass bodies in Bikinis.” There are some strange laws out there, y’all.

Back in 2007 two Charlotte city cops were gunned down and killed from ambush by a career criminal. The alleged shooter was captured and has been in the joint ever since. As you might suspect, the city and county prosecutors got together with city cops and piled up an enormous amount of evidence and trial began a while back. The prosecutors called any and everybody that had ever known the slain cops including their families and nearly all the city cops to testify. To this minute, the alleged shooter has yet to utter a word. I see that pesky needle in his future.

             This Date in History September 27

1925 Construction of the famous road race course Nuburgring in Germany is begun. This race course was world renown as the toughest course in the world with its 13 miles and 72 corners. Not only that, the course had an elevation change of 1,000 feet up and down. The drivers called it “Fighting the Dragon”. The course is no longer in use but during its time it claimed the lives of 22 drivers.

1935 Judy Garland signed with MGM at the age of 13. I have written about the tragic life of this woman before but here are some more tidbits. She was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota to parents that owned a movie theater. Before the movies Judy (known then as Frances Gumm) and her sisters would get on stage and do a vaudeville act. Her name was changed to Judy Garland at the age of 10. Judy finally was cast in a couple of fluffy movies with Mickey Rooney which was moderately successful but her real break came with The Wizard of Oz. She married Band Leader Davis Rose in 1941 and divorced him in 1945. That same year she married movie director Vincente Minnelli and her daughter Liza came from this union but she divorced Vincente in 1951. Judy got bad on the sauce and uppers and virtually disappeared from view. In the late 50s she had a triumphant return when she played to a packed house at the Palladium in London to rave revues. She was in a couple of hit movies like A Star in Born and A Judgment in Nuremberg for which she received and Oscar nomination. In 1969 Judy died of an overdose of sleeping pills. She was 47.

1983 On this day the Broadway show A Chorus Line broke all records for the longest running Broadway show ever with 3,389 performances. The show is about the behind the scene lives of the people involved with producing a chorus line type show.

1991 Oona O’Neill Chaplin died. Oona was the wife of the famous movie star Charlie Chaplin. The funny part of this marriage was that she was 18 and Charlie was 54 when they were wed. Charlie made many movies in the US but on one occasion he had left the US on vacation and was not allowed back in because the government thought he was a communist sympathizer. Look at what we have coming into out country today, for crying out loud. Anyway, Oona and Charlie moved to Switzerland and raised 8 children. Charlie sired 8 children after the age of 54. Charlie died in 1977.

1864 This is a dark day for the Confederacy when Confederate guerrilla William “Bloody Bill” Anderson raided and pillaged the small village of Centralia, Missouri killing 22 unarmed Union soldiers in the process. There was a train pulling into Centralia during the raid which had 120 Union soldiers aboard. Anderson saw them and started an escape, but it ain’t an escape. He went a few miles out of town and set a trap for the Union soldiers in pursuit and killed all 120 of them then he rode back into town and does some more pillaging.

1996 A stamp honoring the author F. Scott Fitzgerald is issued by the USPS. What can one say about Fitzgerald? He was born to a wealthy family in St Paul, Minnesota was sent to a fancy boarding school and then to Princeton. He could not seem to find himself so he joined the army during WWI. He was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama where he met his future wife Zelda. He proposed to her but she refused thinking that he could not support her in the lifestyle to which she was accustomed. Does that sound familiar to you divorced guys out there? Later on Fitzgerald wrote a successful book and started making a lot of money. Guess who contacted him and said that she had changed her mind, yes it was Zelda. So Scott and Zelda were wed and set about on a life of fun, frolic and oceans of booze. Even though Scott was making tons of money, they were sinking further and further into debt so they move to Paris to try to ease their living expenses. While there they met Earnest Hemingway and other writers that encouraged Scott to more writing. It was there that he delivered his masterpiece The Great Gatsby. Even more money starts rolling in but to no avail, they found out that it was just as expensive in Paris as it was in the US. About this time Zelda in beginning to show signs of terminal weirdness. They come back to the US where Zelda completely wigged out and has to be put in a mental facility where she stayed the rest of her days. Scott moved to Hollywood to try screenwriting. He fell in love with a gossip columnist, stopped drinking and straightened out his life then promptly dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of 44. Moral: Don’t stop drinking.

1869 It seems the fine citizenry of Ellis County, Kansas are fed up with the soldiers, buffalo hunters and drovers coming into town, getting drunk and raising general hell, so they hired James Butler Hickok better known as “Wild Bill” as sheriff to calm things down. It was well known throughout the west that Bill didn’t play, you had better do exactly what he said immediately upon receipt. It was also known that Bill was a deadly shot with either hand and was as quick on the draw with either, also. On this night Bill was told that Sam Strawhun and several of his drunken buddies were shooting up John Bitter’s Beer Hall in Hays City. Bill and his deputy went into the bar and told the drunks to stop. Strawhun makes a move toward Bill and Bill stopped him and the brawl with one shot to the forehead of poor Sam. Sam hit the deck as dead as fried chicken. The next day a drunken soldier tried to resist Bill’s arrest and Bill capped him too. The citizens of Ellis County decide that they ain’t ready for Bill and at re-election time they elect Bill’s deputy instead of him. Bill then headed for the Dakotas and fame.

                 Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow