Listen, I am NOT giving up on my countdown of presidential conspiracy theories, false tales of conspiracies, preferably contemporary with the man himself, but I MAY have to skip Teddy Roosevelt. This would make me unhappy, as Teddy seems to me the sort of person who would ATTRACT conspiracy theories.
But the Interwebs is doing me very little good. Whenever I try to look up the subject, I get replies shouting at me, “Of COURSE he knew all along about the attack on Pearl Harbor!”
I have tried every way I can think of to say “No, wait. I said Theodore, not Franklin.” And all I ever get is “Of course, he KNEW about the attack on Pearl Harbor.”
Perhaps he did, but having died in 1920, couldn’t tell anybody about it. Unless there was a conspiracy by spiritualists to cover up his attempts to warn us about it from Beyond. I’;; let you know.
In the meantime I thought I’d ask “Whatever became of the Valetine’s Day tree?”
Yes yes yes, just like the Christmas tree, the Valentine Tree has a long history, going back to Roman festivals, and the acirn St. Balentine planted and blah blah blah. This is NOT the phenomenon I mean. At some point in the late 1980s or thereabouts, mail order catalogs by common consent went all out to sell us strings of lights in the shape of hearts and glass or plastic Valentine ornaments. This continued for three or four years and then the listings stopped appearing. The rush to get Americans to set up trees for other holidays slipped away to the world of decorating magazines and the society pages. It was as if the lower and middle classes had turned against the idea of decorating a tree every month or so. See, because at the same time in the eighties, the same catalogs were also promoting shamrock strings of lights for St. Patrick’s Day, eggs for an Easter Tree, and so on.
I’d like to know, since I wrote at the time what a fun new tradition this would be. Those of us who are lackadaisical about decorating would gain the advantage of never having to take down your tree. All you had to do was redecorate it. I definitely remember strings of orange lights and bat ornaments, but I THINK the groundhog ornaments or strings of lights that spelled out MOM were my own…..
See, I KNOW there was something about Teddy Roosevelt and the Navy. Like his cousin, who has usurped his place in the world of conspiracy theories, Teddy was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He had an advantage, as his superior was not a well man, and let Teddy do a lot of the heavy lifting, including preparing for war with Spain while President McKinley was trying to stave it off. And as President, Teddy had half a dozen different Secretaries of the Navy. He was looking for something and not getting it.
So what was it all about? Somebody must have remarked on it at the time, but unless I can prove it all took place in Pearl Harbor, I may NEVER find out. The only useful thing I’ve learned so far is that several companies produce Teddy Roosevelt ornaments suitable for hanging on your President’s Day tree. That will have to do for now.
Blogsy Babbles 