Tag Archives: History

Vice President Spiro T. Agnew – A Man Ahead of his Time

Posted on August 5, 2012 by | 13 comments

What can a person say about Spiro Agnew?  Most of you readers are too young to remember the most well-known, most popular Vice President in US history.  He served at a time when the US was torn apart by civil strife, an undeclared, unpopular foreign war, and a level of corruption in the Executive Branch few citizens allowed themselves to suspect.

Agnew.  Forced from office for accepting bribes before, “Everyone does it,” became a defense.

But, of course, that was long before Iran-Contra, Bush 1&2, Billary Clinton, Blackwater, and the current king.  Nowadays Spiro would seem clean, honest and soft-spoken.  A pristine choice for wannabe king for either of the parties:

In April 1973, when revelations about Watergate began to surface, Agnew was the choice of 35 percent of Republican voters to be the next Republican nominee for President, while then-California Governor Ronald Reagan was second on the Gallup Poll. [18]

Spiro Theodore Agnew (pronunciation: /ˈspɪroʊ ˈæɡnjuː/; November 9, 1918 – September 17, 1996) was the 39th Vice President of the United States (1969–1973), serving under President Richard Nixon, and the 55th Governor of Maryland (1967–1969). He was the first Greek American to hold these offices.

During his fifth year as Vice President, in the late summer of 1973, Agnew was under investigation by the United States Attorney‘s office in Baltimore, Maryland, on charges of extortion, tax fraud, bribery and conspiracy. In October, he was formally charged with having accepted bribes totaling more than $100,000 while holding office as Baltimore County Executive, Governor of Maryland, and Vice President of the United States. On October 10, 1973, Agnew was allowed to plead no contest to a single charge that he had failed to report $29,500 of income received in 1967, with the condition that he resign the office of Vice President. Nixon replaced him by appointing by then House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford to the office of Vice President.

Agnew is the only Vice President in United States history to resign because of criminal charges. Ten years after leaving office, in January 1983, Agnew paid the state of Maryland nearly $270,000 as a result of a civil suit that stemmed from the bribery allegations.

Agnew soon found his role as the voice of the so-called “silent majority“, and by late 1969 he was ranking high on national “Most Admired Men” polls. He also inspired a fashion craze when one entrepreneur introduced Spiro Agnew watches (a take off on the popular Mickey Mouse watch); conservatives wore them to show their support for Agnew, while many liberals wore them to signify their contempt.

Agnew was known for his scathing criticisms of political opponents, especially journalists and anti-war activists. He attacked his adversaries with relish, hurling unusual, often alliterative epithets—some of which were coined by White House speechwriters William Safire and Pat Buchanan—including “pusillanimous pussyfooters”, “nattering nabobs of negativism” (written by Safire), and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history”.[15] He once described a group of opponents as “an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiro_Agnew

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Posted in 1970's, America, History, Liars

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The Limerick Masters of Yesteryear – The Lost Artform

Posted on August 2, 2012 by | 8 comments

By the time I arrived at adulthood the state of the limerick as a masterpiece of the literary foil was in alarming decline.  Playboy Magazine attempted to inject new life into the medium during the 1960s and 1970s by paying $500 for limerick submissions accepted for publication.  The selection process was tough and they accepted only true masterpieces.

During those years I submitted no fewer than ten [10] limericks per month and never had one accepted.  Hundreds of limericks.  There was no place in Playboy for second-rate hacks.

While the artform requires a particular meter, the truly well-constructed one needs more.  Internal rhyming.  Puns.  Lilting beat to simulate waves on a beach.  A joy to the tongue and ear. 

To illustrate my point, here is perhaps the best limerick ever written, once published in Playboy:

The new cineramic emporium
Is not just a super-sensorium
But a highly effectual
Heterosexual
Mutual masterbatorium.

Every time I run those timeless words through my mind, I’m humbled.

I don’t know whether the image at the top of the page depicts a man who once wrote limericks and submitted them to Playboy.  He almost certainly could have.  Possibly should have.

He might have been a contender.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 1960's, 1970's, 2012, America, Art, Creative Writing, Hack Writing, limericks, Senior Citizens, Writing

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The Boy Captives – J. Marvin Hunter – Book Review

Posted on July 30, 2012 by | 8 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming for a read.  I bought this tome in a thrift store in Kerrville before I knew it’s the hottest piece of literature to be had in TimeWarpVille [Junction], Texas. 

I suppose that qualifies me to brag I have a nose for cool, an instinct for hot, to boast that I was also country when country wasn’t cool, same as the song said. 

Over in TimeWarpVille every business in town has a stack of these with a $10+ pricetag.  And customers standing in line to buy soft drinks, potato chips, deer corn, and steel fenceposts will each answer verbal quiz questions about it, when asked. 

They likes it.  They likes it real good.  They know the family heirs to the publishing history.  This I know to be true because I asked and was answered.

I’m reasonably comfortable some of the other parts of this non-fiction book are also true.  There’s a fair amount of documentation and affidavits from people alive at the time of the incidents certifying various parts of the story they had personal knowledge about.

I’d guess the older brother, Clinton’s part of the tale he’d possibly be able to pass a polygraph on 75-80%.  Maybe higher.  Most of the details he gives don’t conflict with anything clearly different and known under more verifiable circumstances elsewhere.

Brother Jeff’s part of the tale, however, has a somewhat different air about it, to my suspicious mind.  I ain’t going to say he wasn’t traded to the Apache, not going to say he wasn’t adopted by Geronimo.  But if I had to stake any money on the truth or fiction of it I’d put my large bills on most of his story being lost in the dust of history because it ain’t on these pages.

Not that it matters.  Fact is, the book is a hoot, an interesting read, a flashback to a time when Brother Comanche still rode southeast under a Comanche moon, killing, taking captives, stealing horses.   Good descriptions from a couple of kids of settlers before their capture about their lives, the family.

And both brothers succeed in spinning yarns Marvin Hunter could put on a printed page well enough to keep the reader turning them, not putting the book aside for something with more potential for holding the mind in place.

You Texas readers would almost certainly enjoy this tome, thinks I.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, Book Reviews, Books, History, Native American, Native Americans, Texas

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The National Synthetic Grief Olympics [NSGO] Deadline

Posted on July 29, 2012 by | 3 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

This is just a reminder.  If you, or your community, plan to enter the NSGO this year, time is running out.   For the orchestrated [team] events the competition is going to be stiff and the weather’s likely to be hot. 

Parades might be out of the question unless your community is prepared to haul off horseflesh collapsed on the streets and fried to the pavement.  Evening candlelight services conducted a few hours after sundown might be a better option.  That will allow the darkness to hide the furtive yawns while the names are being read from the podiums and so on.  It will also take a lot of the pressure off those who’d prefer to go home and watch television after they’ve carefully shown their faces and pronounced themselves present and grief-stricken. 

Slipping away to the car in darkness will maintain the illusion of mourners for the dedicated name-readers, and deniability later.  There’s even a next-day potential for smug, holier-than-thou denouncements of those who sneaked off without having to actually have stayed.

But the individual competitions will be tough this years, as well.  A lot of celebrities bit the dust this year, while a few big ones from the past are still lingering to be celebrated for the novelty.  Michael Jackson, JFK, Pearl Harbor, Elvis Presley and Rin Tin Tin come to mind.

If you’re only in this for a lot of public drama, pretense and shameless exploitation of the dead, you probably still have some time to prepare.  But if you’re in this to sell flags and bumper stickers, or create a commercial illusion of patriotic zeal for people to pretend to believe, you need to be out there now.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2000's, 2012, America, Communication, Government, Human Behavior, Politics

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We Will Never Forget 7/27/53

Posted on July 27, 2012 by | 9 comments

Hi Readers. I just got back from the County Seat in Junction, Texas.  Nice little Texas town and I managed to get the title on the $400 stolen car transferred into my name successfully.

But it was a strange experience, not only because it was raining.  The whole town’s festooned with variations on the US flag and signs declaring they’ll never forget.

As nearly as I can figure, they must be celebrating the Cease Fire for the Korean War, July 27, 1953, and declaring the US ain’t ever going to bring our troops home from Korea.

Maybe the only town in the US still remembers that Cease Fire, celebrates it, and is overjoyed 25,000 US troops are still over there keeping the commies from taking over South Korea if they could.

Junction, Texas.  Time Warpville, USA

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 1950's, America, Current Issues, History, Human Behavior, Politics, Texas

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Pieces of the Past

Posted on July 24, 2012 by | 3 comments

When Keith and I were in the fifth grade one of our classmates at Central Grade School , a girl named Ruth Durett, came to school with an ornate, silver-handled dagger she’d dug up in her back yard.  It was known that Coronado had camped a while in the vicinity of Portales, and in those days Portales people had a lot of interest in Spaniards and conquistadors. 

Ruth’s dagger became an object of envy, conjecture and debate.  Billy ‘the kid’ Bonney had also hidden from the law and raised cattle for a while at Portales Springs.  Some thought the dagger might have belonged to him.

Eastern New Mexico University was right there on the edge of town.  Ruth’s parents evidently thought someone out there might be helpful identifying the age, at least, of the artifact.  Took it out there and left it for examination.  Vanished into thin air, that dagger.

The people who came here a while, lived their daily adventures and died couldn’t resist scattering their belongings all over the countryside.  Nobody paid a lot of attention to them for a longish while, but sometime during the 19th Century a fascination became an obsession with many.  Acquiring them by any means whatever became the rule of thumb, on the one hand, preserving them if they couldn’t be conveniently stolen, on the other.  The British Museum’s an example of stolen ones that eventually made their way into preservation.  Same with other museums.

And naturally there are legions of academians, anthropologists, who’ve developed protocols and rituals of method for stealing them in approved ways, vilifying anyone who loots the sites without the proper credentials.  Nowadays they have the law on their side.  Probably today, ENMU would have found a light-of-day legitimate means of stealing Ruth’s dagger.

Even so, it’s not always easy to resist picking off pieces of the past.  I described in an earlier entry how Mel inadvertently tried to carry Oola’s skull home with him.  Exploring Alley Oop’s Home Circa 1947 and how something similar got Squirelly Armijo into all manner of difficulties.  ‘Squirrelly’ Armijo Survives his own Funeral

Maybe something in all that explains the popularity of Gale’s ‘Hanging Tree’ belt buckles.  A number of years ago Gale managed to acquire a mesquite tree they’d cut down somewhere with a history of having criminals hanged from the branches.  Naturally he brought it home and over the years made belt buckles, all manner of jewelry items from it to sell at art and craft shows.

Not everyone wants a hanging tree belt buckle, but a lot of people do.  I’ve never been able to quite wrap my mind around why.  For me, having my belly button rubbing against a piece of wood that was part of a long series of dangling partici-whatchallits just doesn’t have a lot of appeal.  But I hold my pants up with galluses, anyway.  Rarely wear a belt.

As for artifacts, I was never attracted to run off with Oola’s skull, either.  Though I do wear this arrow head I figure offed my old prospector on the mountain hanging on a thong around my neck.  [Recapping the Lost Gold Mine Search]

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, America, Education, History, Human Behavior, Native American, Native Americans, Outdoors, Portales, Texas

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Waldo – Robert A. Heinlein – Book Review

Posted on July 23, 2012 by | 19 comments

My first introduction to science fiction came in the Portales Junior High School Library around 1958.  One of the first of the hundreds of Sci-Fi books read over the course of a lifetime was Red Planet, by Robert A. Heinlein.  Probably Keith, one of the readers of this blog, stood beside me in PJHS Library and argued over who’d get to check it out first. 

The library didn’t include a lot to select from and we pored over them all.  Thunder and Roses, by Theodore Sturgeon.  City, by Clifford D. Simak.  The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury.  The Stars are Ours, and Star Born, by Andre Norton. And anything by Robert Heinlein.

Written in 1940, Waldo must have been one of Heinlein’s earliest novels.  By the late 1950s it was still too early to be profound.  Most of the setting, plot, concepts Heinlein visualized in 1940 hadn’t yet come to pass.  Hadn’t made their way into human reality in a form more concrete than a pleasurable indulgence in imagination set to words.  My memories of reading it were vague compared to hundreds of other works by Heinlein and other visionaries who hammered and blasted the new genre into mainstream readership. 

So when Waldo showed up in a box of books in the Saint Vincent de Paul Thrift Store in Kerrville for a dime each and I bought them all, noticing Waldo among them, I was only mildly interested.  Another couple of hours of something to read before dropping off to sleep, I figured.

I was wrong and discovered how wrong I was roughly 20 pages into the book.  Squinted, read and re-read it far past my normal sleep time.  Read it again the next day.  Twice.

Aside from a goodly other phenomena Heinlein described in 1940 that eventually came to pass decades later, he discusses others that haven’t yet made it into mainstream thinking.  One of which includes something I’ve been examining with insane intensity during the past several years, began experimenting with during the late 1990s.  Dropped, partly because of Y2K, partly because the Internet and home computer RAM didn’t yet allow the accumulation and examination of sufficient evidence to arrive anywhere beyond conjecture and assertion.

Thankee, Saint Vincent de Paul Thrift Store.  And thankee Robert Heinlein, particularly for this one.

I keep Waldo close at hand, thumb through it when I’m pondering where things are going as I go through my daily downloading rituals, working my way through the maze to the center. 

You mightn’t, probably won’t be as impressed with this tome as I am.  But I’m betting if you can find it you’ll be more than mildly surprised.  Find yourself asking, “How the hell did Heinlein figure all that out in 1940?”

If not, you’ll at least enjoy a fun plot, good characters, a couple of hours of science fiction back when that’s what it was.

Old Jules

19 Comments

Posted in 1940's, 1950's, 2012, Book Reviews, Books, History, Reading, Science

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Earth in Upheaval – Immanuel Velikovsky – Book Review

Posted on July 23, 2012 by | 10 comments

During the last 18 months of Albert Einstein’s life, November 1953 until April, 1955. he sat around with Immanuel Velikovsky on numerous occasions mulling over the implications of the historical/geological evidence described here.  Largely ignored, met with a shrug by the scientific community because no explanation within accepted scientific theory could account for the massive physical evidence, the two men examined other possibilities, no matter how unconventional.

Mountain ranges yanked from their roots and moved laterally, sometimes as much as 100 miles during a short passage of time.  Megafauna stacked like cordwood in cracks from southern Asia to the Arctic Circle by the millions, perhaps hundreds of millions.  Countless among them quick-frozen rapidly enough to leave them relatively undecayed for examination by modern man thousands of years later. 

Entire tropical forests uprooted, moved by massive waves and left to petrify when the water receded.   When Bad Things Happen to Good Megafauna

If Einstein had lived to see the publication of Velikovsky’s book his interest, prestige and comments might have provided the momentum to carry the discussion into the overall scientific community and more widespread recognition.  Might have forced the unpalatable conclusions to which examination of the evidence leads without leaving many alternatives.

Instead, Planet in Upheaval was published quietly, largely ignored by science, Velikovsky vilified and often denounced by his peers.

But the book’s still out there, used.  Probably available from Amazon for pennies.  I bought my copy in a thrift store in Kerrville for $.25.  I couldn’t have afforded it, wouldn’t have bought it had it cost a buck.

But I bought it for quarter and have now read it enough times to make up for a lot of the people who never did.  Pick up a copy somewhere and you can make up for a few others.  I suspect you won’t be satisfied with a single reading.

If you do read it you’ll be forced to conclude, Stuff Happens.  Sometimes it happens fast and big.  And it doesn’t need man to push it along, make it happen.  Doesn’t even pause to explain itself and why it happens for the benefit of the best minds of humanity to carefully ignore.

Old Jules

Afterthought – Edited in to avoid confusion:

The book referred to here is not Chariots of the Gods.  The author is not Erich von Daniken, of whom you probably have a vague recollection as a discredited ‘scientist’, author of half-truths, incomplete truths, and fig-newtons of the imagination. 

Erich von Daniken.  Immanuel Velikovsky.  Two entirely different individuals.  They even spell their names differently.  Admittedly both foreigners by heritage, but they had little else in common.  Von Daniken actually had a following and readership.  Velikovsky, on the other hand, was a scientist.

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Posted in 1950's, 2012, Astronomy, Nature, Science, Thrift Stores

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Khe Sanh – Two Worthy Reads – Book Reviews

Posted on July 22, 2012 by | 5 comments

The Hill Fights – The First Battle of Khe Sanh, Edward F. Murphy

Considering he also authored Semper Fi, – Vietnam, and is/was probably a fairly gung-ho man, Murphy does a surprisingly workmanlike job depicting what actually led up to the Khe Sanh bloodbath, why became a bloodbath, and where the responsibility for it having become a bloodbath clearly rested.  All without pointing fingers of blame.  He just describes events as reported by the people involved in them.  For instance:

“Fourteen of the eighteen patrols Wilder sent out early in July found NVA, several within mere minutes of being inserted into their patrol areas.  He learned from other intelligence sources that the North Vietnamese 324B Division had moved south of the Ben Hai River with the mission of conquering Qang Tri Province.  When Wilder dutifully reported this to higher headquarters, he unwittingly stepped into the fray raging between General Westmoreland and General Walt.

“Within days General Walt, General Kyle, and Major General Louis B. Robertshaw, commander of the 1st Marine Air Wing, arrived at Wilder’s headquarters at dong Ha for a personal briefing from Wilder.  As soon as Wilder mentioned the presence of the NVA 324B Divbision, Robertshaw rudely interrupted him.  “You’re a liar,” Robertshaw accused Wilder.

If any single incident could sum up what happened to the unfortunate grunts getting themselves blown apart at Khe Sanh over the next couple of years, that probably does it.  What happened to the US lower-grade officers and enlisted men throughout the Vietnam experience, for that matter.

It echoes and it rhymes.  The M16, newly issued and fired for familiarization before being taken into combat.  Jams.  Jams.  Jams.  So the cover story becomes, “You’ve got to keep it CLEAN!  If you don’t keep it clean, it jams.  Your own fault, marine!”

A few weeks later squads, platoons were being slaughtered by the NVA at Khe Sanh.  Found afterward with jammed M16s, unable to return fire against the enemy.  Marines complained, the high command accused them of lying.  Of not cleaning their weapons.  The slaughter continued until a letter home from a dead marine ended up being read on the floor of the US Congress and an investigation began.

The M16 was designed around a cartridge containing a particular propellent.  But a major military contractor with the right connections offered a cheaper cartridge because it contained a different, more inexpensive powder.  Millions of rounds purchased, all defective.  Probably hundreds, maybe thousands of US servicemen lost their lives because they were provided weapons incapable of returning fire without jamming.

Friendly fire?  Khe Sanh began with a US air strike dropping napalm several miles off target on the friendly village of Khe Sanh, killing 250 villagers and injuring hundreds more.  Following that it was helicopter gunships, fighter aircraft and artillery strikes opening up on ground troops by mistake. 

Air forces all over the world from early during WWII provided their planes with IFF [Identify Friend/Foe] radio transponders.  Somehow the concept never seeped down to include ground troops being protected from friendly fire.  As late as Gulf War 1 it continued to happen.  And at Khe Sanh it happened a lot.

Then there were the commanders who just made lousy choices for whatever reasons other than the well-being of the troops they commanded.  “You guys aren’t likely to find anything up there.  Take off your flak jackets and leave them down here.”  Twice.  Two separate occasions.  Two bloodbaths.

There was no overall strategy for US troop involvement in Vietnam.  The curse of the undeclared, presidential wars from WWII onward.  The US high command couldn’t agree among themselves what the roles of the troops under their commands should be and how they should perform those roles.

Despite all this, The Hill Fights – The First Battle of Khe Sanh, Edward F. Murphy doesn’t dwell on this side of things.  He simply provides a detailed history, day-to-day of one of the countless debacles of the 20th Century quickly forgotten when another president needed some other injection of excitement to keep the voters going to the poles, the flags waving, and the patriots pounding their fists on their chests.

[Incidently, there’s a good photo section in the book.  I was surprised to see my old friend,  Mel King as a young marine standing unidentified next to a Company Commander who’d just gotten a few of his men out alive and unhurt.  Mel must have gotten his injuries later.]

—————————————————

A Marine at Khe Sanh, by John Corbett.  A young marine just out of basic training arrives in country at Khe Sanh and spends the next 77 days living in a foxhole, almost constantly under mortar, artillery and rocket attack.  This is his diary. 

Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon never got around to hanging their heads in shame for the young men the dead and crippled as by-products their Vietnam presidential military adventures.  But then, I don’t suppose any of the other, later ones have, either, for theirs.

After all, a lot of the right people made one hell of a lot of money from those wars.  You can’t make an omlette without breaking some eggs.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1960's, 1970's, Adventure, Government, Politics, US Army

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Limericks Honoring Undeclared Presidential Wars

Posted on July 13, 2012 by | 8 comments

The New Military Empireum
Just doesn’t exactly inspireum!
The wars presidential
Globular, non-essential
Don’t excite all that much to admireum.

Hairy-assed Truman began it
But maybe Joe Stalin helped plan it,
The Kennedy brothers
LBJ and the others
Threw darts at a map of the planet.

Kohreaah Bay of Pigs Vietnam,
Salvadore, Grenada and Iran
Let’s you and him fight
And do it up right
With rifles we sell you and bombs.

M16s for the Christians [our guys]
AK 47s you buys
From Rooskies and China
Moscow, Carolina
Both working three shifts get the prize.

Whoopteedo! I’m a Vet’ran you see,
Patriotic flag waver, that’s me.
Say, “Thank you!” I helped
Keep it going! But yelped
Nobody’s acknowledging me.

Say “Thank you!” Admire what I did.
The rest of my life I just slid
Along on past glories
Dreaming up good war stories
Of Commies and Muslims I rid.

I din’t get none of the riches
From selling the arms to the bitches
But I got me some poozle
And plenty of boozle
But now I’m just one of the snitches.

Contracted a dose of the clap
Saved your freedoms while you took a nap.
This bumper sign’s all that is left
Of those freedoms not taken by theft
But by always believing their crap.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Government, History, Military, Politics, US Army

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