Thursday

                            Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Many men go fishing all their lives not knowing that it is not the fish that they are after.”

                                             Henry David Thoreau

A while back down near Clinton, South Carolina a female

State Trooper stopped a car near the intersection of I-26 and I-385, there were two Latinos aboard. The trooper arrested the driver and asked the passenger to get out of the car, at the same time she called for backup and two deputies of the Laurens County sheriff’s department headed her way. The passenger refused to get out of the car and threatened the trooper’s life while producing an xacto knife. The passenger then tried to slide over into the driver’s side but the trooper held on like a bulldog and they started down the road struggling. Finally the trooper pulled her trusty .40 caliber Glock and shot the Latino several times killing him on the spot. I just have a few questions. Why not shoot out one of the tires? Did the late Latino believe that a woman would not use deadly force? Was he wrong? I can assure you, some women are lethal with or without a gun.

A while back night up in Charlotte, NC there was a football game between Charlotte Catholic and Garinger high schools. At the beginning of the fourth quarter a fight broke out in the Garinger stands. The cops came in and called an end to the game after breaking up the fight. Soon afterward shots were fired in the parking lot and another fight began. The cops took a more aggressive stance at breaking up that fight. The cops said that they believed the fight was gang related. What the h-ll is this world coming to? A gang fight at a high school football game!

               This Date in History   October 26

1948 Earlier Betty and Jerry Ferreri had been married for some time with Betty getting the worst of the deal. Jerry was the spoiled son of a New York family and gave Jerry enough income that he never worked and after moving to Los Angeles and they bought him a five bedroom house in upscale Hancock Park. Jerry was a notorious and unapologetic womanizer and was a wife beater. He hit Betty so hard on the side of her face that it ruptured an eardrum and when he got the doctor bill he became infuriated and hit her on the other side of her face an ruptured that eardrum also. He said “Maybe the doctor will give a two-for-one now.” On this day the final straw came when Jerry brought a young model home while Betty was there. Betty produced a large wrench and ran them both off. Betty knew that when Jerry came back home it would be hell to pay so she conspired with her housekeeper, Alan Adron, to kill Jerry upon his arrival. Sure enough, Jerry came home and began dragging Betty around the house by her hair. As directed, Alan shot Jerry twice in the stomach and then the gun jammed and Jerry was still alive and kicking. It was then that Betty produced a large meat cleaver and struck the staggering Jerry 22 times in the head and shoulders that resulted in his demise. Both Betty and Alan went to trial for first degree murder. It was touch and go until the defense attorney quoted the things that Jerry had done to Betty. Both Betty and Alan were acquitted. This jury resorted back to justice in the old west when men were acquitted of murder if the victim “needed killin'.”

1881 Earlier on October 25 Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury had came into Tombstone, Arizona for supplies. The Clanton-McLaury gang lived out of town on ranches and felt that the range was theirs to rob and rustle and the town of Tombstone was the Wyatt Earp’s domain. All throughout the day Ike Clanton and Wyatt Earp had been verbally sniping at each other and the atmosphere was very tense. The next day, October 26, Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury and Billy Claiborne rode into town to help Ike and Tom. Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury went into the closest bar and the first person they met was Doc Holiday. Doc told them that Wyatt was about fed up with Ike’s mouth and there would probably be a fight. Billy and Frank immediately left and went to find Ike and Tom. In the mean time Wyatt Earp had assembled his brothers Morgan and Virgil knowing that a fight might be on the horizon. Wyatt’s close friend Doc Holiday also offered his expertise. At about 3:30p Wyatt had seen the Clanton/Mclaury bunch at the end of Fremont Street near the OK Corral and the four of them headed that way. When the men were about 20 feet apart Wyatt said “You sons-of-bitches have been looking for a fight and now you’ve got one”. No one knows who really fired the first shot but it is believed that it was Virgil that pulled his revolver and shot Billy Clanton point blank in the chest. Almost simultaneously Doc Holiday unloaded both barrels of his double barreled shotgun into Tom McLaury’s chest. Wyatt got off a couple of rounds into Frank McLaury’s stomach, Frank did not go down right away and got off a couple of rounds at Wyatt before collapsing as did Billy Clanton. There were about 30 shots fired and it was all over in about 30 seconds. Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were dead. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne ran like hell and got their young asses back to the ranch. Sheriff John Behan, a supporter of the Clantons, had witnessed the fight and arrested the Earps and Doc Holiday for murder. They were all acquitted when the judge ruled that they “were fully justified in committing these homicides”. To paraphrase the judge, “they needed killin’.” Morgan, Wyatt and Doc were all wounded but survived.

1998 Earlier a tropical storm named Mitch had ambled in to the Caribbean Sea apparently without much punch and seemed to be headed toward the Nicaragua/Guatemala border. Soon thereafter it blossomed into a category 4 Hurricane and stormed ashore as such. Belize had already evacuated 70,000 people but the poor and indigent in Nicaragua and Guatemala did not get the word and even if they had, they had no transportation to escape. Mitch stalled out over Nicaragua and eventually dumped over 50 inches of rain. The flooding was the worst in 200 years as you might expect. Entire villages disappeared in gigantic mudslides. There was 10 feet of water in the Nicaraguan capitol of Tegucigalpa. No one knows for sure but it is estimated that between 11,000 and 18,000 people perished. In several villages that were buried in mudslides, the Presidents of Guatemala and Nicaragua did not even attempt to dig them out and just declared the whole area as a cemetery. In addition to this misery, the crops of both nations were destroyed by 60% making the agricultural workers in even more in a bind. Sometimes we think we have had it bad, but just think of these people.

1942 On this date during the battle of Guadalcanal the aircraft carrier USS Hornet is struck by an avalanche of Japanese aerial bombs and torpedoes. The Japanese were desperate to hold onto control of Guadalcanal as a fighter/bomber base to protect their advance onto Indo-China and sent swarms of fighter and bombers to attack the US Navy and Marines that were attacking that island. The Japanese had put underway several shiploads of troops to counter the Marine landing. The ultimate battle was called the Battle of Santa Cruz where the US Navy and Marines knew that if those reinforcements reached Guadalcanal the Marines already there would be in deep doodoo. The explosions from the Hornet were so severe that a couple of Japanese bombers that dropped the bombs were damaged and crashed. By the way, it was the Hornet that US Colonel James Doolittle launched his famous B-25 air attack on Tokyo. After a series of gigantic explosions the Hornet was abandoned and it now rests on the ocean bottom near Santa Cruz Island but the Japanese reinforcements never reached Guadalcanal in force and the Marines secured control. There was a second aircraft carrier built and launched during the war in 1943 that was also named the USS Hornet.

               Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow