BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: AMERICANA

“I don’t like to read books. They muss up my mind.”
                                           Henry Ford
**
Lawyer: Do you know anything about the American
                Revolution?
Henry Ford: I understand there was one in 1812.
Lawyer:  Any other time?
Henry Ford: I don’t know of such thing.
Lawyer: Did you ever hear of Benedict Arnold?
Henry Ford: I have heard his name.
Lawyer:  Who was he?
Henry Ford: I have forgotten just who he is. He is
                       a writer, I think.

**
ON THE ELECTION OF THOMAS JEFFERSON in 1800

“Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will 
be openly taught and practiced, the air will be 
rent with the cries of distress, the soil soaked 
with blood, and the nation black with crimes.
 Where is the heart that can contemplate such 
as scene with horror?”

The New England Courant

**
I'M SORRY I DID NOT TAKE AARON BURR SERIOUSLY

When Aaron Burr
Asked to borr
ow one of my dueling
Pistols, I thought he was fooling.

LJP
**
 NOAH WEBSTER GOES TO SCHOOL (circa 1772)

"'The instruction in schools was very imperfect,' 
Webster explained. 'No geography was studied...no
history was read...no book for reading was used...
Before the revolution & for some years after, no
slates were used in common schools: all writing &
the operations in Arithmetic were on paper. The
teacher wrote the copies & gave the sums in Arithmetic,
few or none of the pupils having any books as a guide.'
    "'According to Webster's daughter Emily: 'The nurture
and admonition of the Lord' were almost the only education
he received until his fourteenth year, for secular studies were then confined within very narrow bounds.'"
  
Harlow Giles Unger. Noah Webster: The Life and Times 
of an American Patriot (2000)
 **

**
“I never saw an American man walk or stand well;
…they are nearly all hollow chested and round shouldered.”
                      Francis Trollope (1780-1863)
**

HOW ERIC CLAPTON  GOT TURNED ON
TO MUSIC

“ Well, the first thing that rang in my head was 
black music – all black records that were R&B or 
blues oriented. I remember hearing Sonny Terry 
and Browne McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry 
and Bo Diddley, and notreally knowing anything about 
the geography or culture of the music. But for some 
reason it did something to me – it resonated. Then I  
found out later that they were black;
They were from the deep South and they were American 
black men. That started my education.”

GUITAR LEGENDS: CELEBRATING 30 YEARS  OF
GUITAR WORLD. Special Collectors Edition, Celebrating
Thirty Years of Guitar World (2010)

**
ABE LINCOLN AND JACK ARMSTRONG’S BROTHER

Jack Armstrong was a wrestler “who had wrestled with
Lincoln. His brother was that Duff Armstrong who had been defended by Lincoln, using an almanac to prove that that the witnesses had misstated the facts when they testified that the moon was at the meridian at the moment that Duff Armstrong struck his victim with a neck yoke and produced his death. If the moon was not at the meridian, but was setting, the witnesses could not have seen the blow struck., or with what it was struck. That was the point of the almanac, which proved the moon was setting.”

Edgar Lee Masters. “Dreiser at Spoon River” in The
Armchair Esquire, edited by Arnold Gingrich and
L. Rust Hills  (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Son, 1958)

**

PAUL BUNYAN

"Few creations can match the prowess of Paul Bunyan, the titan of the North Woods who palled around with Babe the Blue Ox and was responsible for the formation of landmarks such as the Grand Canyon and the Great Lakes. For all the obvious hyperbole, the character may have been based on the real-life French Canadian lumberjacks Bon Jean and Fabian Fournier, the latter better known by the workers who traded tales at logging camps in the late 1800s.
Bunyan stories first appeared in print just after the turn of the century, but it was a marketing campaign by the Red River Lumber Company that introduced the behemoth woodsman to the masses during World War I. Collected stories soon appeared in book form, establishing a mythical mainstay that remains larger than life through the monuments in his honor that populate the northern landscape."
from INTERESTING FACTS (April 21, 2023)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGsmDvrgtZFczFRJNxpmkdBGPlg
**
LINES ABOUT THE OLD LINE STATE

Maryland is known as both the Old Line State and the Free State. According to some historians, General George Washington bestowed the name "Old Line State" and thereby associated Maryland with its regular line troops, the Maryland Line, who served courageously in many Revolutionary War battles.
Source: Maryland State Archives
(Wisetrivia, April 21, 2023)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgz
GsmDtkkndjJtJZhHXGXZvFcbKg

**
WAKING UP IN THE MORNINING
THINKING ABOUT BILLY THE KID

Out of the blue it comes to me.
What Pat Garrett sd
About Billy the Kid:
That Billy 'Drank and laughed,
Rode and laughed,
Talked and laughed,
Fought and laughed,
And killed and laughed."
Damn it!
Today's Tuesday,
That's exactly what I want to do."

LJP