Musings
and History
Quote of the day:
“A
psychiatrist is someone that goes to a strip joint and watches the
audience.”
Mervyn
Stockwood
Trivia
question of the day:
Who
played Steve McQueen's girlfriend in the movie “Bullitt”? Answer
at the end of the blog.
A
while back over a three month period, Federal Drug agencies arrested
678 gang members of which 449 are illegal aliens. Every one of them
had an attachment to Central American drug cartels. They arrested 67
in the Charlotte, NC area.
That
reminds me of a couple of friends of mine that met me in downtown
Charlotte to partake of a few frosty adult beverages. After a fairly
long evening my friends headed for the Corvette they came in. It was
parked on Tryon Street which is the main drag in Charlotte. After
making it to their car by taking two steps forward and one step back
they finally got seated in the car. Suddenly there was a tap on the
driver’s side window. It was a Charlotte city cop tapping the
window with a night stick. My friend lowered his window and the cop
said “If you start this car you are going to jail.” My friends
wisely decided against starting the car and got back out. They
produced a cell phone and began trying to find a hotel. The cop came
around and pointed to a doorway about 10 feet away and told them that
was a hotel. They made their way into the hotel and got a room. The
cop could have waited until the car was started and arrested them
both. I guess he was feeling magnanimous.
A
while back I went to one of my favorite watering holes. The
bartender is of the alternative life style. My group was discussing
another watering hole that is open 23 hours a day here in Greenville
which is pretty damned redneck. The bartender came over and told us
that he and his social group meet at this establishment almost every
Sunday morning at the crack of dawn for their “gathering”. It
was difficult for us to grasp this concept because this place is
pretty rough. He said that the majority of his social group was
either bartenders or servers making Sunday morning the optimum time
for a gathering because most of them were not working. He said that
on one occasion the bartender came over to him and said that he could
not be in there with flip-flops. He reassured the bartender that he
and his group would be drinking high dollar shots and expensive
drinks. The bartender did not back down and told him that he had to
change shoes or leave. About that time an elderly man got up from
the bar and headed to the men’s room leaving a trail of pee along
the entire route. My friend asked if it was OK if he left a trail of
urine on the way to the men’s room and kept his flip-flops on. The
bartender was adamant, the flip-flops had to go. Apparently a trail
of urine was not as offensive as flip-flops.
This
Date in History March 4
1861
Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President. Immediately after
he was elected in November seven southern states seceded from the
Union. A few years before the Republican Party was formed for the
expressed purpose of freeing the slaves. Old Abe knew that he was
stepping into a quagmire of Civil War but he thought he was ready for
the job but after his United States Army received two or three
ass-kickings from the outset and he could not find a field commander
worth a damn. But as I said in a past lesson, Abe finally found
Ulysses S. Grant who knew had more replacements than the Confederates
and was not bashful about sending in his troops against an almost
impregnable Confederate position just so he could kill just a few of
them because they had no replacements and he did. Four years later
Lincoln was inaugurated again after being re-elected for a second
term. Shortly thereafter he and his wife Mary decided to see the
play “My American Cousin” at the Ford Theater in Washington. A
Confederate sympathizer, an actor named John Wilkes Booth, was
waiting near the box seat where President and Mrs. Lincoln would be
seated. We all know what happened next.
1944
Previously the British Bomber Command had been making night
bombing raids on Berlin along with other major German cities that
manufactured the tools of war. The United States Army Air Corps, the
8th
Air Force in particular, flying out of various bases in England had
been making daylight on cities other than Berlin. On this date the
8th
Air Force made its first night raid on Berlin giving the exhausted
British a breather. The 8th
Air Force had a variety of commanders such as General “Hap”
Arnold, General Carl Spaatz and Medal of Honor winner General Jimmy
Doolittle who had led the raid on Tokyo early in the war. The
defenses around Berlin had stiffened since other military targets had
been destroyed and the Air Force was looking for other targets of
opportunity and Berlin was prime. The bombing of Berlin was
effective but did not do anything to disrupt the morale of the German
people. What happened later was this:
Later
on in the spring of 1945, the allies sealed off the western side of
Berlin and Germany as a whole and waited not accepting any
surrenders. They were giving the Russians coming in from the east
and southeast a chance at their “pound of flesh”. The Russians
had lost about 26 million of their countrymen to the Germans during
Operation Barbarossa. Hundreds of Russian towns and villages were
razed and the citizenry were unceremoniously murdered in the German
onslaught. Not only that, when the Russians finally began to gain
ground back toward Germany, it was the Russians that liberated the
hell on earth places like Dachau, Auschwitz and Buchenwald
concentration camps. One can imagine the frame of mind those
Russians were in after seeing all of this horror along with the death
of so many of their own. The Russians struck Berlin from the east
and southeast with unparalleled ferocity that will probably never be
repeated in history. They killed and literally ground into the soil
anything they confronted including men, women, children, dogs, cats
and any thing else that was in their path. There was one story of a
German anti-tank gun in Berlin being manned by German boys about 13
or 14 years old. They took a shot at an oncoming Russian tank and
missed, the Russian tank commander sent a round their way killing all
of them then rolled over the gun and the boys repeatedly until there
was nothing left that could be identified as human. War is hell
y'all, especially if one side has nothing on its mind except revenge.
1944
As a child Lepke Burkhalter would run up and down the streets of
his neighborhood in New York and rob the poor guys selling fruit and
produce off of their pushcarts. A little later he met up with a
hoodlum name Jacob Shapiro and they formed a relationship and began
to expand their business into extortion, prostitution and
bootlegging. His organization became so large that it attracted the
attention of the likes of Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and “Dutch”
Schultz. This group formed a loose business partnership. That is
until Dutch decided he was going to cap the District Attorney of New
York, Thomas Dewey. The group knew that this was a bad idea so they
sent Burkhalter to take care of the problem. So he shot and killed
Dutch, end of problem. It was after this that Burkhalter organized
his own individual service known as “Murder Incorporated”. It is
estimated that Burkhalter had over 250 men and women working for his
at one time or another. All it was that if you wanted someone
capped, you just contacted Lepke or one of his associates and after
they investigated to see if the hit was legit and enough money
changed hands, your problem was over. Anyway, Lepke was arrested and
convicted of murder and on this date he went to meet his maker extra
crispy courtesy of “Old Sparky” in Sing Sing.
Answer
to the trivia question:
Steve
McQueen's girlfriend in the movie “Bullitt” was played by
Jacqueline Bissett.
Thanks
for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
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