Wednesday

                  Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Working with Cher was like being in a blender with an alligator.”

                                       Sam Elliott

I am reading about the history of France in WWII. When the German army was closing in on France with no chance of stopping them, a french politician named Pierre Laval negotiated an armistice. This agreement divided France into two sections. One was German occupied northern France that included Paris and the other was southern France governed by Frenchmen that were totally answerable the Germans and based in the resort town of Vichy. The leader of the Vichy government was Pierre Laval. After the Allies liberated France, Laval was captured, tried for high treason and sentenced to death by firing squad. In late September of 1945 somehow Laval digested some poison and was on the cusp of death but a team of doctors and nurses working feverishly pumped his stomach and saved his life. Two weeks later he was stood before a firing squad and executed. His death was not the issue, the Frenchmen wanted their pound of flesh by killing the rotten bastard themselves.

Now that the Electoral College has done its duty and Donald Trump is our chief executive, I cannot but wonder at how the people that opposed Trump and threw up every roadblock they could think of believed they could preclude their will over the 60 million voters that voted for Trump. Who the hell do they think they are, especially the “celebrities” in show biz? How do they think they are more important that the average American? To quote that great American thinker Joe Pesci...”Screw You”.

I was thinking about the Christmas Day that I remembered the most as far back in years as I could. I think it was when I got my first bicycle. Within a couple of months my Dad had got me a paper route to help pay for the bike. We were really poor, y’all. The bike was also my transportation to school at a distance of about 3 miles. It doesn’t sound like much but in a driving rain storm it was no fun, and neither was the paper route. I delivered the evening paper. I had to ride about four miles to pick up my papers and backtracked on my delivery route. It was no fun but that experience plus making me work all summer bagging groceries or work with an air conditioner and heating repair man, went a long way convincing me that I needed to learn how to make a decent living rather than a “slave labor” job. My brother (an architect) wrapped insulation around air conditioning duct work all summer, usually in attics or worked on large construction sites as a “gofer” which usually meant pushing a wheelbarrows full of debris all summer. My brother and I got the message.

I worked with a civil engineer on a job in Paducah, Kentucky that was an ex-Marine and from South Carolina. This man told me that he had a similar experience. After high school he knew his mother had a substantial nest egg set aside for his education. He told his mother that he was not going to school but was going to work and wanted the money help him get started. He mother said that was a good idea and put him to work with her brother. He ran a paving company and put him behind a truck spreading hot asphalt by hand. After a couple of days of that he told his mother that he had changed his mind and entered the University of South Carolina. Do you see things like that today? I think not.

       This Date in History   December 28

1781 British troops under the command of Major James Henry Craig occupied John’s Island, South Carolina. Craig and his troops had been kicked out of Wilmington, North Carolina a month before. Patriot General Daniel Morgan ordered the inimitable Lt. Col. Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee and his famous cavalry unit from the Star Fort in the back country of South Carolina near the settlement of Ninety-Six to go kick those redcoats out of there. Just before arriving Lee learned that the Patriot infantry unit led by Major James Hamilton had arrived late and could not ford the Wapoo River so Lee aborted the attack. Because of the flow of the river and variable tidal conditions, the Wapoo River could only be forded once or twice a month and this was not one of those times. It was the relative isolation of some of the coastal island off South Carolina that preserved the Gullah language and traditions. Gullah is a Creole culture that dates back to Elizabethan times and was brought over to America in the slave trade. It was well into the 1950’s that some of these islands could only be reached by water. The Gullah language is exciting to hear because of the accents, rhythm and tempo. However, to the non-Gullah you can understand but very little. There are islands in the Chesapeake Bay, Tangier Island for instance, that was settled by the English and their isolation helped preserve the Old English language to this day.

1793 0n this date American Thomas Paine was arrested in France and charged with treason. That’s right; it is the same Thomas Paine that wrote Common Sense and America in Crisis that inspired out forefathers to not give up in their quest for freedom from the British. At the outset of the French Revolution, Paine had gone to France to see if he could help. Evidently Paine loved revolutions. Paine was a hard core opponent to the death penalty and the French revolutionaries were keeping the guillotine hot chopping off heads of the elitist and backers King Louis. Paine raised so much hell that the revolutionaries arrested him to shut him up. It wasn’t a bad incarceration however. He was locked up in the Luxemburg Prison which used to be a castle. He had a room with two windows, was locked up only at night and had catered meals. None the less, when President James Monroe found out about it, he raised so much hell that the French released Paine after a short while. Paine had been writing a book called Age of Reason which stated that God did not influence the actions of people that it was science and rationality that prevailed over religion and superstition. After the book was published an outcry around the world was heard. Paine was declared as Godless and anti-Christ. Needless to say, his follows and admirers in America vanished. He died penniless in New York City in 1809. That just goes to show you that in those days you just did not suggest an alternative to religion.

1832 On this date, Vice President John C. Calhoun resigned to take a vacant United States Senate seat in his home state of South Carolina. This Yale graduate was the first sitting Vice President to resign but it would not be the last. I will let y'all figure out what other Vice-President(s) have resigned. Calhoun did not get along at all with President Andrew Jackson who kept Calhoun under wraps to decrease his political clout. John C. Calhoun was born near Abbeville, South Carolina in 1782. He served in the state legislature before being elected as Senator. Calhoun was a protector of the agrarian based South against the industrial based North. He also was a hard-core believer in the slave/plantation institution. He called it a “positive good” rather than a ‘necessary evil”. Calhoun spent the majority of his life in high public office including Secretary of War, Vice-President under two different Presidents, US Senator, US Representative. Calhoun died in 1850 in Washington, D.C. and is buried in the graveyard of St. Peters church in Charleston, South Carolina (been there).

Born today:

1905 US comedian “Charlie Weaver” who’s real name was Cliff Arquette. When he was on the TV show “Hollywood Squares” the emcee Peter Marshal asked him “If you are going on a parachute jump, how high should you be?” Charlie answered “Three days of straight drinking ought to do it.” I think so too.

            Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow