I remember when I was twelve years old, all I wanted in the world for my thirteenth birthday was a little radio with an earplug that I could call my own, that I could take with me where ever I went, and my brothers couldn’t complain about the noise.

What I got was a pair of glasses. Seems that all my squinting in class had finally given one of teachers the idea that I had trouble seeing. Boy were they right. I knew that trees had individual leaves until I walked out of the ophthalmologist’s office. Since we weren’t exactly swimming, I figured that ‘sight’ was going to be my big “Happy finally being a teenager day” present. But I was wrong.

I also got the perfect radio. It was so unremarkable in appearance or sound quality that it defies researching to find a photo of it on the whole of teh interwebs. But it rocked. Keep in mind, at my house, in 1979, we were as apt to hear Ronnie Milsap or Tom T. Hall as Elvis or Dolly. That, and the folk’s collection of comedy records (yes records, 33-1/3) or country and western 8-Tracks. This little pocket sized jewel introduced me to the rest of the radio world. I could get a classical station from Montgomery, an all-god-all-the-time station from over yonder in Ozark, and a real live, honest to goodness rock and roll station from Enterprise. As well as a radio dial (a real dial) full of stuff i had never heard before. I had everything from ABBA, Alice Cooper, America, Chicken Man and Disco Duck, the Eagles, Manfred Mann, Pink Floyd, Skynyrd, etc. all the way to Queen and Zepplin. I ate it up.

I went through batteries like crazy because I would fall asleep to the music. I would wake up with a sore ear from the ear plug pressing into my head all night, switch ears, change batteries, and keep on listening.

I could hear the strange beeping of ghost stations way at the far end of the AM dial and would stop everything when American Top 40 came on the air. (I remember being confused when I could hear it on two different stations at the same time and the countdown was in a different place.) I could pick up Mexican stations and Cuban stations on AM at night as well as a California station that still played the Wolfman. Sometimes the earplug would be so loud at night that my brothers would yell at me to turn it down. Which I would reluctantly do, hoping not to lose too much of the signal in all the noise.

Oh, looking back, it was a piece of crap little pocket radio. But it was the only thing working when Hurricane Frederick ate all the electricity. It broadened my musical tastes as well as set some of them in stone.

So, this is the soundtrack of my Patriot’s Journey. Hazel loves her internet music and XM, but I’m still that thirteen year old kid with a brand new pair of glasses and a new radio, trying to pull signal out of the static and content to listen to what the radio gods program or to keep changing the channel.

This is a Patriot’s Journey post. Remember to check out the other Patriotic Journeyers: Drumwaster, The Bastage, Inessential Musings, and The Edge of Reason

All I can do is try to describe my memory and see if it rings any bells.
I don’t know if you can help or not, but I am looking for a 1911 like my dad used to have.  It was a govt issue, slim 1911 .45.  It didn’t have all the extra swirly bits that 1911′s seem to have in newly manufactured pistols, what with triple safeties or internal gun locks and whatnot.  It was a plain, simple, beautifully ugly gun; if beauty is in the simplicity of use and ugly is in the beat-up finish.  To be totally honest, I don’t even remember for sure but think I remember that it was olive colored with black plastic grips, possibly even had a big “US” on the grips. I do know for sure that it had a lanyard loop.

I don’t know if trying to hunt down this piece of nostalgia is worthwhile, what with the age of a gun like this possibly precluding it’s actual use, but would love to see if any new manufactured pistols still follow the old design.  The closest I have come are some of the Springfield models.

If it helps even to narrow this down some, my dad was a Navy corpsman serving with a Marine unit back in the Vietnam era.

No, I don’t know what happened to this pistol or I would be carrying it right now.  All I can hope to do is replace it.

Thanks in advance for any information you might have to point me in the right direction.

But this isn’t a book review or book report. Read it yourself, then you will get why the following makes sense.

Every time I read that book, even though I know I what is about to happen, I cry reading Chapter XII.

Oscar is leaving the lands of a local feudal lord and a local boy is in awe of “the Hero.” The boy, Pug, tells Oscar that when he grows up he wants to be a hero, too. Understand, this boy is an uneducated, illiterate, bumpkin who is barely bright enough to take care the horses. But Oscar is moved by a sense of duty. So, in perfect feudal fashion, he determines that he must make a Gesture: give the boy a bit of the old noblesse oblige. So Oscar gifts the boy with one of his own names, Easy. (And here is where I lose it.) He also gives the boy a US quarter. The following is a quote:

I gave him the quarter and showed him George Washington on the obverse. “This is the father of my house. A greater man than I will ever be. He stood tall and proud, spoke the truth, and fought for the right as he saw it, against fearful odds. Try to be like him. And here”-I turned it over-”is the chop of my house, the house he founded. The bird stands for courage, freedom, and ideals soaring high.” (I didn’t tell him that the American Eagle eats carrion, never tackles anything its own size, and will soon be extinct- it does stand for those ideals. A symbol means what you put into it.)

The Liberty Bell. The U.S.S. John F. Kennedy (CV-67). The Saturn V rocket outside of the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. “We The People” writ large against the backdrop of History. My father’s Flag. These symbols, these things, mean what I put into them, yes. The blood of heroes, the tears for the fallen, the duty to leave home to do what you can to turn the tide, and the joy of returning.

I haven’t read the biography, though it is one I usually touch every time we enter a bookstore. Should I get this now? No, you have nineteen things at home that need reading first. </inner monologue> I’d be interested to hear a contrast/compare between the book/mini-series from those who’ve sampled both.

Poking about online this morning, reading Abigail’s wiki bio, I came across this collection of her letters, to John and others. Amazing how erudite one can become on home-schooling, eh? As interesting as they are to read, I’d rather have both sides of the conversation, and Amazon provides:

And that most helpfully leads me to John Adams’ political writings:

Which in turn leads me to a collection of Thomas Jefferson’s correspondence with John Adams:

And after that, Thomas Jefferson’s correspondence with James Madison:

And…and…and… AUGH! Do you suppose I could get away with just cutting out sleep entirely? That’s like 7 hours of time right there that could be used for reading…

I want to write about my dad.

Well, Dad and what we came to call in our youth ‘the goddam bricks.’

Backstory…

I grew up in a little town in lower Alabama that had about twelve thousand people. County fairs, 4-H and FFA, FHA and Vacation Bible School. Small town America, complete with the required ‘plant’ that a large portion of the population got a paycheck from every Friday afternoon. The ‘plant’ was really the biggest employer since the ‘old factory’ had burned to the ground a generation before.

The ‘old factory’ was still a pile of rubble near the edge of town, down by what folks around there called the ‘quarters.’ That was a euphemism for the poorest section of town, the part of town that still had red clay roads and shacks in 1980.

We lived three blocks away.

Now, understand that my dad, besides just being the lead investigator for the county, was also a craftsman of the highest order. He built a wood and tin shed that survived a hurricane-force wind blown tree crashing into it. (The seventy foot tall pine tree, bigger around than a man, broke on the peak of his roof.) He built a rocking motorcycle that my son, then daughter, then niece and nephew have all used and it looks brand new to this day. When Dad decided to build something, he built it to last.

Well, Dad got the idea that our old house and detached garage could use some work. Our house was an old and small one that may have encompassed all of a thousand square feet. I shared a bedroom with my two brothers; something that stood me in good stead when I had to live in the cramped quarters of an aircraft carrier later on in my life. I never realized that by just about every standard, we were somewhere on the socio-economic scale between poor and lower middle class. I didn’t realize that was where we fell on the scale until I was much older. (It never occurred to me that the other kids I grew up with never seemed to have ketchup sandwiches for lunch.) So, considering our limited funds, Dad decided that he was going to have to acquire materials for improvements from some other source.

Dad found out who owned the property where the ‘old factory’ stood and paid him a visit. Asked the nice man if there were any plans to ever clear away the rubble. When the nice man said “not only no but hell no, it ain’t worth the expense,” Dad asked permission to haul away some of the brick to use for improving our house. A deal was struck where we could have some of the brick if we would bring a load of it over to his home first…he had never thought of the burned ruins as anything other than ruins; but when shown the value of the materials as building blocks instead of “a factory” he decided that he wanted some bricks for his own little project at his house.

So off we go to the site–Dad and his hammer monkeys and pack mules (us boys) — to mine for brick. This is how I spent my summer vacation. We would get up when Dad got home from working the nightshift (or on his rare days off, as soon as he woke up), have breakfast that Mom would actually cook for us (sausage, eggs, grits, waffles, etc) and hop into the back of his truck. Driving with kids in the back bed of a pickup wasn’t child abuse back then. Dad would survey the ruins for walls that was still standing since those bricks would be the least likely to be damaged either by the fire or the elements. A ‘good wall’ would be two or three bricks thick and at least six feet high. When he found one, he took up his sledge hammer and would go to town at the base. The idea here was to just knock out a few key points, not try to tear down the whole wall at once. Once he had created the stress fractures, we would all push and/or pull to get the wall rocking until it fell over from it’s own weight.

Once the wall was down, the detail work came into play. Often, many of the bricks would just fall out of matrix with no mortar attached on any of the surfaces. These were the easy ones. They went straight onto the back of the truck, ready to be used back at our house. The others had to be cleaned. We would sit with pick hammers and chisels and break apart fused bricks for hours. Peeling off the old cement was tricky; you couldn’t hit it too hard or the brick would break, too soft and the slab of mortar would break into smaller pieces that had to be removed a chunk at a time. But hitting it just right made it pop right off whole and the brick surface would be nice and clean and ready to go on the truck. (Our very first truckload went to the nice man who let us glean off the ruins. It really sucked knowing that what I had done all day that day was just enough to pay for permission to do it again tomorrow.) When we got a truckload full, we would take it back to the house and unload it into our backyard.

Loading a truck with scavenged brick is one thing, because we did it a few bricks at a time throughout the course of the day. Unloading was a different matter altogether. Unloading came when muscles were already sore, hands were already raw, feet and backs and shins had already been smashed, bashed, and burned by a day working in the Alabama summer sun. If the work to fill the truck was hard, unloading it was hell.

I began to wonder if all this was worth doing. Sure, Dad had a plan. Mom knew what she wanted to have built. We boys were just sick to death of the goddam bricks. And from then on, that is what we called them.

Eventually, Dad had enough bricks. Our backyard looked like a brickyard we had so many stacks. Now came the building phase. We dug a hole beside our front sidewalk. The hole was sixteen feet long, three feet wide, and two feet deep. Dad made sure that the sides were as straight up and down as possible. Then we lined the hole with thick plastic sheeting, using loose bricks to hold down the bottom and to keep the top edge from blowing away. Finally, came the building part. We hauled mortar bags and bricks by the wagonload from the back yard to the front yard all day. Dad would mix the mortar and lay out runs of brick almost as fast as we could haul them to him. By the end of the day, he had built a flower bed. A flower bed that was weed proof from two feet below the ground due to the floor and walls being solid hundred year old brick. It was beautiful: eighteen inches above the ground with an offset border around the top. He had planned it out so well that he didn’t have to cut a single brick. It even had offset drain holes so that it wouldn’t drown the roots of the plantings. And I didn’t appreciate it one damn bit.

The rest of the yard got similar treatments. We built much smaller scale beds around our camellia trees (not bushes, trees), our holly trees, and all around the house’s perimeter. Dad rebuilt the back stoop, put beds in the back yard, and even floored the previously dirt floor of the carriage house (detached garage by modern nomenclature, but that tells you how old the house was.) We still had enough bricks left over for a barbecue grill. And we boys hauled those damn bricks everywhere Dad wanted them.

I still didn’t appreciate the total rejuvenating effect my dad’s brickwork had on the house. Neighbors wold stop by to marvel at how pretty everything was now that we had moved in. They would ooohhh and aaahhh at the craftsmanship, ask if Dad was a professional mason, marvel at the beauty of the bricks themselves. To me, they were still those goddam bricks. Other neighbors started to spruce up their yards and ask if we boys wouldn’t mind helping them with yardwork since they obviously knew we were hard workers. I mowed grass and harvested pecans for a good portion of middle and high school based on “those Bronson boys sure know how to get things done.” But I never touched another goddam brick for anyone else.

I was a senior in high school before I finally understood how good the brickwork really was. My mom had taken every family photo for years out in the front yard, posed in front of the screen door, with her flower bed in the lower left corner, or sitting on the edge of the flower bed itself. I was out front mowing the grass one day when a college girl walked up with her camera. I was hoping to be a photographer myself some day, so recognized it as a ‘serious camera’ back when serious cameras were very expensive or hand me downs. This college girl was a photography major at a university up in north Alabama. She wanted to take pictures of my mother’s flowers. I won’t try to reproduce the conversation, but nuts and bolts she liked the flowers fine, but the planter was what really caught her eye. “You don’t see this kind of work anymore” is one of the only things I remember about our chat. (The girl went on to become an actual professional shooter for a magazine after she graduated, but I can’t even remember her name any more.) All the neighbors and all the family members clucking about how good the landscaping was didn’t penetrate my thick head– it took a complete stranger to make me see how well done it was.

Mom and Dad had moved on to a different house after I had gone off to enlist. But Dad still had access to the bricks at the old house because one of my brothers was living there. One fine spring day when I was home on leave, hungover if I remember correctly, Dad woke me up with “Ted, eggs and sausage are cooking, waffles are just about ready. I need you to help me get some stuff done around here today.” I should have crawled under the bed. Instead I got up, had a worker’s breakfast, and asked Dad, “How many are we moving?” I knew that my task for the day was going to be moving bricks. Again. And I was fine with that. We pulled out all the brick from the carriage house floor, filled in Dad’s sooper sekrit hideyhole I wasn’t supposed to know about in the process, loaded all the brick up onto a trailer big enough to handle the load in one trip, and brought it over to the new house to be a pathway, deck, and barbecue pit. It was a very fun shore leave.

I used to call them the ‘goddam bricks’, but not anymore. Sometimes they are the ton of bricks I need to land on me to see how badly I am screwing something up. Sometimes they are the crumbling walls that need to be set back into place into something beautiful. And sometimes I just gotta let them hit me in the nose so that I can see I am too close to a problem. But mostly, they are a reminder that I have to work hard, every day, not just to maintain my status quo, but to try to improve. To keep precious that which is precious. To see potentials, and to plan for the future.

A prominent Saudi Arabian cleric has issued a rare public attack on religious hardliners angry over a video showing him dancing at a wedding in the conservative Islamic state, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

…

Obaikan, an adviser to the cleric-run Ministry of Justice, defended himself in remarks published in Asharq al-Awsat, saying the society needed to “get over restrictions imposed by ignorant people.”

*blink* Well, that’s not the usual message we get out of Islamic countries.

*heavy sigh*

As I’ve mentioned before, I spent a total of about six years total in Saudi Arabia, from the late 70s, to early 80s. We lived in Jeddah our first “tour,” a total of four years, in a compound within the bounds of the city. I was about 9 years old at the time of our arrival, and remember nothing but normal days. We went to school, we went shopping at Al-Mukhtar’s and the suk; they had jeans, perfume, high heeled shoes, American and British music, anything homesick foreigners could want. (Al-Mukhtar’s also had a LION for sale at one time but that’s another story.) We went to beaches on the Red Sea…pristine things, with clear beautiful water, and absolutely no other people. We wore normal swimsuits and spent lazy days poking through the shallows while my father wandered reefs, shell collecting, and my mother sat under an umbrella, reading books and listening to Englebert Humperdinck tapes.

Our second “tour,” about a year later, we lived in Taif, on a plateau above Jeddah. We lived in a high-walled compound well outside the city limits, and took buses to school every day in another high-walled compound run by Northrop (pre-Grumman). We still went shopping at the suk, only now we had to wear thobes over our jeans. But we still were never really bothered by the religious police. We delighted in trading rumors at school though, people with their hands cut off for stealing, heads cut off for murder. Friday’s were judgement days, when these things were carried out in a central location in the city, foreigners were not allowed to attend.

The point of all this background is the atmosphere in Saudi Arabia when we were there was unremarkable. All the locals we met were individually, decent people. Helpful, friendly, and so very delighted to meet Americans. If there was rabid fundamentalism, we *never* saw it. Never. It’s possible that was a side effect of King Khalid’s foreign policy…after all, he was the one bringing in foreign workers to handle certain construction projects around the country. Did he also put a chokehold on the “religious police” of the time, preventing them from putting the kibosh on his ambitions? Or was SA of that era just not in the grasp of the fundamentalist clerics as it seems to be now?

I wonder these things as I read articles like the above. The Saudis are a warm, friendly people, just like most of the rest of us in the world, and it is disgusting to see them crippled by these power-mad monsters.

I’ve always liked Jon Stewart, especially after he handed Tucker Carlson his little bowtie back all done up knots.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And seriously, why won’t Tucker SFTU and let a person talk?

Once upon a time, we lived outside the U.S. for almost five years. As a family, we fully adopted our alien land, learned its language, loved its people, hated its traffic, but always understood that we were guests in an amazing, overcrowded, ancient city. We also learned about the sort of strength it takes to live without your normal and almost invisible underpinnings of culture and familiarity.

Where There Is No Doctor was a required manual before moving South of the Border. It’s not that Mexico has no doctors, it’s that you wouldn’t know how to tell them what is wrong. And even if you could, would you understand his reply? At any rate, it’s an excellent handbook for every family, regardless of where you live, and especially if you go on long camping trips. It may be hard to imagine, children, but some places really don’t have Internet. Even now.

Anyway, when my son was but seven years old and adjusting to the Grade A smog in Mexico City, he came down with bronchitis. Really bad. Fortunately, penicillin is cheap and plentiful, so I went around the corner and bought a 10-day supply and some decongestant. Late that night, the poor child’s rasping brought me to my knees to pray, and to my handbook for insight. A steaming pot of water was place on the floor by his bed, I woke him and turned him onto his tum, with his face down below his chest, breathing in the vapors and steam. And then I pounded his little back. Out popped the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen from that day to this: black-green-yellow mucus, a big as a large egg. He cried, I cried, and then he could breathe again. Slept sound. Woke better.

You have no idea what that kind of relief feels like, so far from home.

We hadn’t lived there a month before the transmission gave out on our Blazer. Right near Chapultapec Park. On the on-ramp of the Loop. I had to sit and wait for the Jolly Roger to find a “grua”. Hours pass. No cell phones. No idea if I’ll ever see him again, or how we’ll get home or when, or if I’ll ever see the States again, while my hungry son and I rejoice to find peanut brittle in the glove box. Twilight approaches and hard-looking men come up to the truck saying, “don’t be here after dark, Senora, it’s not safe.” I nod and blink back tears, but my young son has picked up on the fear.

Like some gallant knight, Roger soon arrives with a tow truck, and with his heart in his throat commits us to a taxi driver to take us home while he rides with the tow truck. Fortunately, I was a good navigator early on, recognized landmarks, out loud, just to let the driver know I knew where we were in that sea of city inhabitants. We made it home without incident. All three of us. And the truck.

You have no idea what that kind of relief feels like, unless you’ve tested your courage outside its limits, called upon your wits, and stood your ground politely, while inside you weren’t even sure you could ever hope your Stateside family could recover your remains should some fell evil strike you down.

Politically, it’s a dicey thing, being from the Imperialist Nation to the North. Everyone wants to know you, talk with you, and hopes that you know their cousin in Los Angeles. Even in a city of 20 million people, one’s world is very small, to the point of hoping that yours is, too, and maybe we’ve got something in common. It was a charming and amusing occurrence, every time.

However, when the U.S. went to Panama to wrest power from Noriega (in order to allow the Chinese to run the place, apparently), we lost some good friends who took extreme umbrage at the act. They weren’t alone. What a strange sense of alienation, to see anti-American graffiti near our apartment,to feel the sense of betrayal and suspicion some felt at having an “invasion” so close to their back door.

No wonder some Mexicans in Arizona are headed back home. Intimidation is a real motivator to someone who is at a cultural disadvantage.

The papers and magazines loved a good murder and would splay the bloody scenes on the front page, like some demented Tarantino story board. You shield young eyes from that and all the girlie mags on every corner.

And people worked hard,there. All 20 million of them. Beggars only existed in the tourist zones, go figure! But little wizened old men could work your young American lard-butt into the ground, make no mistake.

And hardworking friends always wanted to abandon Mexico and move North, where there was hope long before the Obamas cheapened it. And what would you say, what could you say? You can’t say anything because you see what real hopelessness looks like. It looks like unpainted cinder blocks and dirt yards and endless need. Not easy to say no, don’t go north.

Do you know what it’s like to watch the Super Bowl in Spanish, and yet hear Whitney Houston sing the National Anthem and watch the fly-over, only to burst out in tears? No one was more surprised than I, for I loved Mexico as my own, learned its dirgeful anthem, its pledge, and recited them daily in our charter school. But, oh! My Country ‘Tis of Thee was the song in my young and non-political heart. Sweet land of liberty, I missed her so!

And then the Space Shuttle has its first successful mission since Challenger, and you see it on television while staying in the jungled heart of the Yucatan, and you just blub and blub until your sinuses become painfully impacted.

One morning we came home to our apartment after breakfast, only to be surprised by the concussive sound of your next door neighbor, a Federal, firing his semi-automatic rifle into the park. The other neighbor ladies all run to our apartment where Roger is the only other man around during the day, seeking some sense of security. Our son, half a block away was held in the school house for safety, and we couldn’t get to him. We peered through the service windows into the other apartment only to see the Fed with his baby on one hip and his rifle on the other. The local SWAT team arrives and leaves just as quickly once they find out he’s a Federal. Peace resumes, but we move two days later.

We survived flash floods, smog, earthquakes, sickness, disorientation, panic attacks, measles, mumps and dengue fever. We endured public frottage on the Bruta Cien bus lines and subways. We went camping, ate corn fungus, were politely robbed by a gas station attendant, saw primordial cave paintings, hiked jungle trails, fired off a gun in church, and were pulled over numerous times by the cops. Never paid more than a few bucks of “mordida” fines, while other Americans paid hundreds of dollars. That’s because Roger knew one of the simplest forms of foreign survival: how to smile. He really is irresistible when he smiles!

So, we smiled and smiled, laughed and learned good jokes, gained the best friends, and sometimes didn’t have the best plans for our adventures, but always knew we could make it happen. It was terrifying and reassuring most of the time and all at once!

If you ever get the chance, pull the rug out from under your life just once, before life does it to you first. Test yourself. Test your real nerve, your real sense of survival, your real sense of place and time and how you’re going to fit into the circumstances… or if not, how you’re gonna call the shots.

Best to have Tequila handy. And a smile.

In August of that same year, back home the FCC was allowing capitalism and the First Amendment to finally work together by getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine.

In October, Jesse Jackson announced his plans to run for president, again. Days later, the country was riveted by the story of “Baby Jessica” and mobilized to establish a trust fund for her that was rumored to be worth over a million dollars.

Feb 88 brought further strengthening of the the First Amendment when the Supremes found for Flynt in Hustler Magazine, Inc. v Falwell. Any time the Supremes get something right about constitutional law you gotta be proud.

Evan Mecham was booted out of office, proving that the system could indeed work.

In August, the Cubbies finally played a night game at Wrigley.

In September, Space Shuttle flights resumed.

In November, the B-2 is rolled out to the public for the first time.

In 1989, history and pride combined in the Gulf of Sidra incident on January fourth. I was there, and my pilots did good.

In Feb, Ron Brown, a black man, became the head of the DNC and Barbara Harris became the first female bishop in the Episcopal Church.

In May, the world watched Chinese students stand up for American-style rights, even unveiling a strangely familiar statue. In June, the world watched as these liberty and freedom loving students showed that they knew what price needed to be paid to achieve what they craved.

In November, the Wall did indeed come down.

By the end of the year, the Iron Curtain was shredded.

1990 started with the arrest of Noriega in Panama, Marion Barry arrested in D.C., and Hazelwood on trial.

The Soviet Union collapsed, German Reunification was underway, and the Sandinistas were voted out in Feb.

With freedom breaking out all over the planet, I found myself again in the Mid-East by the end of this year, to help Kuwait kick a bully out of their sandbox.

From ’91 to ’94, I was at the Fleet HQ for the Atlantic Fleet, doing a job that only one other person in the Navy was doing, plus going through physical therapy for injuries sustained in the sandbox. Highlights include Desert Storm to free Kuwait, Albania and Georgia had free elections, the DOW closed over 3,000, this tech thingy called the internet was being built, Clarence Thomas got appointed to the Supremes, and David Duke is put to political rest; Ross Perot, a third party guy, got his name on the ballot for all fifty states, the mall of America was built, and U.S. troops were asked by the UN to help out in Somalia; the second START was signed, Janet Reno became Atty Gen for the US, two Iraqis tried to kill Bush 41, and China held a nuke test; the Kremlin Accords were signed, South Africa held its first fully multi-racial elections, Aristide wes restored to power due to US assistance, and Newt led the Republican Party to dominance in both the House and Senate.

1995 had Steve Fossett setting records, Belfast free of British troops, Scott O’Grady showing that even zoomies can be tough, and Bernard A. Harris. Jr., a black man, walking in space. Ebay was founded. The Million Man March was strangely not the scene of race riots or face warfare.

1996 had the summer Olympics in Atlanta, GA. Hazel and I took the day off so we could watch the Torch make its way through town.

1997 had a few firsts, like Madeleine Albright becoming the first female Sec of State, Tara Lipinski became the youngest ever womens figure skating world champion, and IBM’s Deep Blue beating Kasparov. Pathfinder landed on Mars, Old Ironsides celebrated 200 years, and the F-22 underwent flight testing.

1998 put John Glenn back into space, the Lunar Prospector into orbit around the moon, and data from space about liquid oceans on Europa and ice on the Moon. The iMac was unveiled. Google was founded.

1999 saw the best in us all. Many were worried about the Y2K bug, Lewinsky, and Columbine. But Americans rose to the challenges, put our lives back together as best we could, and carried on. Lance Armstrong won his first Tour de France, the Liberty Bell 7 was raised from the ocean floor, and the United States kept it’s promise to turn over the Panama Canal Zone, proving that we were an honorable nation.

And surely in the past seven years, there are things in which you too are proud, yes? Things or people or accomplishments of your friends and neighbors?

One thing I will remember to to the day I die happened in 1987, but you won’t find it in wikipedia:

I was a young enlisted sailor in Virginia, when my duty day rolled around. The chief handed me a shovel and told me to grab another kid and follow him outside. We followed. He marched us around to the back of our barracks and opened the access door on the thirty foot dumpster. Beside that dumpster he placed a tape deck on the ground. When he pressed play it was a repeating loop of Lee Greenwood singing “Proud to be an American.” (Edited to correct title: “God Bless the U.S.A.” is what it should be. Thanks Jeff from the comments.) Me and my buddy cleaned out a dumpster for our country, singing at the top of our lungs, and laughing our asses off. The chief gave us the rest of the day off and we never stood a watch again.

I’m not sure, but maybe there is a lesson there.

I think pride in the country doesn’t come from what the government or the military or even our heroes do; I think it comes from realizing that every day, in every thing we do, we are making our country into something new. If you don’t believe in where we came from, how can you expect to get to someplace worthwhile?

Anyway.

Commercialism and state-favoritism aside, we thought some Presidential Trivia would be nice today:

1. Who served as president for only one day?
2. Which four presidents have state capitals named for them?
3. Who was the only president granted a patent for an invention?
4. Which president had 14 children?
5. What future president’s Texas classmates ran a shot of a jackass under his yearbook photo?
6. What U.S. president threw out the most Opening Day baseballs?
7. What President lived the longest?
8. Who was the tallest President?
9. Who was the shortest President?
10. What Presidents had no specific religious affiliation?
11. What college sent the most men to the White House?
12. Who was the youngest elected President?
13. Who was the oldest elected president?
14. Which President married while in office?
15. Which President did not marry?

You can leave your guesses in the comments, or click the “read more” link and highlight the pale gray for the answers.

1. David Atchison, senator from Missouri, March 4 1849. President-elect Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn in on a Sunday, so Atchison, the president pro tempore of the Senate was president for a day. He is reported to have spent the entire day in bed.
2. Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson City, MO), James Madison (Madison, WI), Andrew Jackson (Jackson, MS), and Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln, NE).
3. Abraham Lincoln received a patent in 1849 for his adjustable bouyant chambers for steamboats.
4. John Tyler
5. Lyndon B. Johnson
6. Franklin D. Roosevelt
7. John Adams lived 90 years, 247 days. Herbert Hoover also lived to be 90 years old.
8. Abraham Lincoln was the tallest President at 6 feet 4 inches. Next was Lyndon Johnson at 6 feet 3 inches.
9. James Madison was only 5 feet 4 inches and weighed only about 100 pounds
10. Jefferson, Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson has no specific religious affiliation with any particular denomination.
11. Harvard sent five Presidents to the White House; John and John Quincy Adams, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy.
12. President John F. Kennedy, 43 years old.
13. President Ronald Reagan, 68 years old.
14. The only President to be married in the White House was President Grover Cleveland. On June 2, 1886 he married Frances Folsom.
15. The fifteenth President James Buchanan did not marry and died a bachelor.  Some historians speculate he might have been gay.