We are not given, on this troubled spinning globe of ours, to decide when or where we are going down a rabbit hole. It is not among our powers to choose what rabbit hole we enter. I am probably wrong in the first place for even calling it a rabbit hole. Because I fell into it by following a cat.
The adventure started innocently. Someone who realized she was probably not the first person to ask the question inquired, “Why do we say ‘copycat’? Why isn’t it ‘copymonkey’ from the old line about ‘monkey see, monkey do?’”
Uncharacteristically, I had my phone with me, and was able to check the online theories. “They claim it’s based on how kittens always copy their mothers.”
She frowned. “I’m not buying it. Why not ‘copykitten’ then? Or ‘copypuppy’? Are kittens the only baby animals that copy their mothers?”
I promised to look into this more deeply. I am not exactly sorry I did this, but I was very sorry to have to tell her later, “The truth is that everybody is just guessing.”
The word “copycat”, according to a multitude of online sources (who may all be stealing from a single source, of course.) give credit for the word “copycat” to the state of Maine. Two writers in that state published books in the late 19th century using the word, without, as one source wisely pointed out, using quotation marks to indicate it was modern slang. “Copycat” was a word they were used to, so it must have been in common use among the folks in Maine by the middle of the nineteenth century.
(There IS one online source which traces the word to Thomas Otway’s play “The Widow”, from 1692. I always meant to study Restoration drama, but I haven’t gotten to that, so I can’t say EXACTLY that this may be incorrect. But I can’t find anywhere that Thomas Otway ever wrote a play called The Widow, and as he died in 1685, the possibility that he produced this play in 16982 seems unlikely,. But, as I say, this is not my area of expertise, and I may be missing something.)
Anyway, with all due credit to Sarah Orne Jewett, an author known for excellent regional fiction about Maine, the FIRST author to use “copycat” would seem to be Constance Cary Harrison in an 1887 memoir called Bar Harbor Days. Mrs. Harrison was one of the leading lights of literary society in Maine, though she was originally from Virginia, and led a spectacularly eventful life there. Her house was seized and demolished during the Civil War, so she wrote her early works as Refugilia or Refugetta. She and two of her cousins, forming a trio called the Cary Invincibles, sewed the first Confederate battleflags, at least one of which still exists, and she eventually married Burton Harrison, Jefferson Davis’s secretary. You see what happens when you start down a rabbit hole?
Anyway, she eventually fell in love with Bar Harbor, Maine, wrote dozens of stories and articles and books (and, while we’re discussing rabbit holes, a stage version of Alice In Wonderland). AND, as we were saying before I made that side trip to Virginia, mentioned in Bar Harbor Days someone being warned people might think them a copycat.
As noted, the phrase was used as if it was well-known, a common word in conversation, meaning there was no reason to explain what it meant and how cats got involved with it. I could do some more hunting, I suppose; surely if the word was in common use in 1887 it must appear in a newspaper article around, say, 1868. Maybe THERE we would get the answer to “Why a cat?” But as I recall what somebody said about cats and curiosity, I think I’ll leave it at that. You may not feel you’ve had the hole story, but that’s the way it goes with these things.
The Panoply now connected the Rhododendron to the Drover, creating a massive three-ship complex commanded by His Imperial Worship. This looked less loke one large ship than like a large, beautiful, elegant, heartbreakingly lovely ship which had run into two chunks of space debris. No one mentioned this to Sheriff Parimat, who knew it anyhow.
His Imperial Worship sat in a light blue room aboard the Drover. The [pirate who had hijacked the immense and graceful slave transport had never penetrated to this exclusive command booth. He wouldn’t have liked it. The sleek, efficient bridge he loathed was utilitarian; this had been constructed for beauty and for luxury. The result would have grated against hus nerves the way His Imperial Worship’s nail file sometimes grated against teeth. Three technicians had spent their lives designing the sleek dotted control console. Polaster a-Khive had committed suicide on finding that two of the colored dots would have clashed with His Imperial Worship’s security force field.
His Imperial Worship reached into the snack container at his elbow, where some of his refreshments continued to whimper. Then he changed his mind, and moved his chair a little forward.
“Ah!” A little motor purred as the chair reclined a bit to allow him a better view of the big screen. A hand went to one of the polka dots on the light blue console. The dot changed color: a close-up of the two prisoners filled the screen. They were waking up, the tattered little pirate first. “Ah! Ah! Ah!”
Some twenty feet to the rear of the Imperial Chair sat the large egg which had been brought over from the Panoply to the Rhododendron and now to the Drover. Now divided in two, it hovered above a circular blue grate, the halves four feet above the floor and ten feet from each other. Imperial staff in the room were scrupulous about not coming within arm’s reach of it.
These privileged few were Sheriff Parimat, Taw Brust, and Dr. Pirgy from the Rhododendron, with Nosfro Sinca, Lanos Galen, and Sirg, tallest of the Imperial demi-pigs, representing the Panoply.
It was to be a great moment. The Sheriff wished she had missed it.
The prisoners, although still groggy, were becoming alert enough to be curious about where they were. Their hands slid up the walls of the tubular glass cell. The Dangerous Rebel’s nose nearly vanished completely as she pressed her nose against the glass. Only a thin, transparent layer of glass stood between her and her ship, which sat not a dozen feet away. Fists pounded against the glass, making no sound which could be heard in the padded control room.
“She should do well,” said Nosfro, his voice deep and passionless.
“Skinch,” agreed Pirg. “And skinch.”
“Ye-es,” said His Imperial Worship. “The pirate disappoints me. I thought pirates had more up-and-git-go.” The other prisoner had sat back down, his chin on his knees.
His Imperial Worship studied the prisoners for a moment and then leaned forward to drop his fist on the largest console dot.
“You have the privilege of hearing His Imperial Worship’s own voice,” he cooed.
Leaping to his feet, the pirate shouted something. Its nature was not revealed, there being no speaker attached to the big screen. His Imperial Worship smiled. “Much better.”
Sheriff Parimat glanced at her Deputy, the only person, besides His Imperial Worship, actually conducting Imperial business at the moment. He controlled the black box which broadcast events here to Entertainment Service Chanell 3 down on Lodeon VII. A massive audience was paying attention; bets large enough to tilt the economies of half a dozen planets had already been registered.
“But that is not the sum of your privileges,” His Imperial Worship informed the prisoners. “You are currently in the Gantlet of the Drover. This section was designed for the instruction of disobedient slaves, as well as for the entertainment of Imperial troops, particularly on long transports.”
The Sherrif nodded. His Imperial Worship had always been attentive about keeping his soldiers amused until it was time for them to die.
“The Gantlet, however, has never been fully tested.” The absurd little pirate shouted again. “Must find out which tab controls the translator,” murmured His Imperial Worship.
Then he went on, “In gratitude to you for making yourself available for this test, we offer you a prize. The Dragonshelf….” He watched their eyes: priceless. “With its cargo intact, awaits the winner.”
Imperial palms squeaked a little as they rubbed together. The librarian was doing her best to push her face right through the glass.
“Any survivors who return to this room will be allowed to depart aboard the Dargonshelf, and go where you will.”
Sheriff Parimat shook her head. “You have a suggestion, sweet sheriff?” inquired His Imperial Worship, not looking back.
She knew it had been foolish to assume, with all the little screens facing His Imperial Worship, that he would not be monitoring his audience as well. But she replied at once, “Your Imperial Worship has ordered that the prisoners be allowed to retain all their weapons and security cards. One wonders if, under such circumstances, they will really provide good sport.”
“If this ship is all it is designed to be,” His Imperial Worship purred, “They will need everything they have to afford any sport at all. The game will start now. Bad luck to you, traitors. Break your backs.”
An Imperial thumb came down on a light blue dot. Just slowly enough for the prisoners to realize it, the door beneath the pair slid away, letting the pair drop out of sight.
A second Imperial thumb pressed a pink dot. The scene on the main screen traded places with one on a smaller monitor, showing a vast white room miles from the prisoners’ starting point. He adjusted the picture to focus on a circular opening in the ceiling.
“All right.” His Imperial Worship turned the chair so that he faced his guests. “Everyone out. Take the box with you, Brust. I alone will watch the first test of this facility live, and will broadcast on a ten second delay to our audience. Sheriff Parimat, I require that you take command of this complex while I am sequestered here.”
The Sheriff found herself suddenly wishing the traitors good luck and long life. She stepped forward. “It shall be done, Your Imperial Worship.” No doubt they would be stuck in orbit around Lodeon VII for days, while the Rhododendron was needed for important work elsewhere. And an orbit around Lodeon VII meant disciplinary problems, with her troops finding ways to sneak down to the Circus Planet for unauthorized breaks. But at least she would have her command back.
“Take this,” said His Imperial Worship, “As a symbol of so immense a task.” He reached into a compartment on his arm rest and brought out a transparent blue disk with a golden pig at the center. The disc showed the bearer to be an Imperial Field Marshal.
She reached for it, realizing just an eyeblink too late that the Emperor, in holding it out, had not modified his force field to allow her hand to enter.
The others stepped backward as the Sheriff’s body jerked and twitched. Her lips were pressed shut as she twisted; only Sirg spoke above the crackling and hissing of the fore field. “Ee-gooey!”
In a mighty convulsion, the Sherrif pulled free of the force field and dropped to the floor, hair and uniform smoking. His Imperial Worship watched her for a second, and then adjusted his chair so that it faced the main screen again.
“Biggest joy buzzer in the universe,” he sighed.
Taw Brust stepped toward his captain, who was doing her best to rise. “You have your duties, Brust,” the Emperor reminded him. “So does our sweet sheriff. No. you’ll need to change into another uniform, won’t you? Sirg, I think you had best take command of the complex in her place. Our sheriff is too…untidy for such responsibility. Have her report to the Panoply for remedial lessons in control of bodily functions. You will find, sweet Sheriff, that Stenge is a most excellent instructor.”
He pressed a pair of dots on the large console, his eyes on the opening in the ceiling shown on the screen. “Come, traitors. I’m waiting.”
The door to the little command center slid open. The sheriff crawled toward it, prodded from behind by Sirg.
Dealing with postcards of other days and ways can bring me to the occasional “Huh?” moment. While this can be entertaining to onlookers, it DOES leave me with the problem of providing footnotes to my wares. Take this entertaining cartoon, in which our hero, from out of town, asks a policeman, “So, Mr. Watchman, where are the cows?” This depends on your knowing that the major shopping district in Berlin is Kurfurstendamm, that this is usually abbreviated Ku-damm (ssee the sign?), and that “kuh” is a German word for…it’s like a tourist complaining he didn’t see anyone rowing on Rodeo Drive.
Sometimes it’s not so much a matter of language as one of culture. The Polish inscription on this picture of birds and colored eggs is quite clear. It says “Merry Christmas.” This is NOT an ethnic joke: just because you and yours like colored eggs at Easter doesn’t mean EVERYBODY does.
With homegrown cards, it’s a matter of time, and how, in passing, time takes with it jokes which made sense to a decade, a generation, or an era. This card, for example, is still fun in an era when “generic” is now used only for prescription drugs. But there was a time when “Generic” was the new way to save: the product offered the basic ingredients in a plain black and white container without all the hype that drove the price up. At its peak, you could even buy from a line of generic novels, labeled simply “Western”, “Romance” or “Mystery.” The joke has faded, and we now buy “Store brands”.
The Two Little Spooners appeared in our ice cream blog, and I hope you already spotted the joke. Because they are making eyes at each other, we know they’re sweethearts, and could be said to be “spooning”. The word has undergone certain changes in our time: couples who date still occasionally spoon, but it means something somewhat otherly.
We have mentioned this question before: once upon a time, postcards were replete with pictures of young ladies picking up photos and talking about how well they had developed. How many years has ti been since you had to pick up pictures somewhere? And how long since those pictures had to be developed? (Postcards with gags about ladies who were well-developed but negative add another layer of incomprehensibility to the modern age.)
Someday will write again about how much we owe to geeks in their attics and garages: the camera, the automobile, the personal computer, and, here, the radio. But the fact that his contributions to science are a hundred years gone is not what dooms the joke to a modern generation as the technical terms. Who still uses, or even sees, an aerial?
And THIS radio enthusiast is not so much hampered by the fact that his descendants don’t have to wire the place for a radio, nor that few of us understand what an “accumulator” did for your radio. The problem is that since we no longer have chamberpots under the bed (get it? Accumulator?) the joke is not going to find a home here.
Here’s another language problem. Not the lacing of a corset: corsets and their laces keep going out of style and coming back again. It’s the use of “lacing” to mean a fierce scolding or even beating. The joke lies in the size difference and the realization that this is the only sort of lacing this chap dares give his wife, whatever he may say about it to friends.
The thing is that the passage of time doesn’t NEED to be a limiting factor. The tradition of letting ladies propose to men only during Leap Year is relegated to dusty corners of the Interwebs now, but the meaning of the joke is clear, and the situation is eternal. (And I wish I knew what artist had done such an excellent job of violence, shock, and awe. That kind of talent also never goes obsolete.)
So we move on into the twentieth century in ou quest for presidential conspiracy theories dealing with every President of the United States. To be considered for our list, the theory in question should be about as old as the administration in question, or at least nothing something somebody came up with on the Interwebs last week, and should be considered bogus by what the conspiracy theorists call “mainstream historians”. We seem to do better with such stories the farther back in history we go, and actually drawn nearly complete blanks with at least two Twentieth Century Chief Executives. I was thinking of giving up the whole project.
And then we came to Warren G. Harding, long considered one of the three or four worst Presidents of all American history. For years, the most prominent conspiracy theory about Harding was the story, put about in a book after his death, that he had had an illegitimate daughter with Nan Britton, the author of the book. Some staffers told tales of his escapades with women in the White House, while others snarled that this was a vicious lie, told by a woman with a taste for lurid stories. Historians primarily sided with the Hardings on this one, and then Ancestry.com tried DNA testing on descendants of the little girl in question, and scuttled the whole conspiracy theory. Harding WAS, in fact, most likely her father.
The financial scandals don’t qualify as conspiracy theories either. Several of his appointees were excellent choices, but others turned out to be opportunists who tried to make as much money out of their positions as they could. The Teapot Dome scandal was growing larger and larger when Warren, one of the most robust and energetic souls to occupy the White House, fell ill and, after a number of bulletins saying he was getting better, died. The verdict was food poisoning, with canned crabmeat as the culprit.
Harding was only the third President to die of illness in office, and the first since Zachary Taylor, some seventy years earlier. Combine that with our natural tendency to believe in conspiracy theories, and stories started to spread, from rumor to newspaper account (we didn’t have any Interwebs yet) to book publication. His doctors were accused of deliberately starving Harding to death by some at the time; more recent theories have suggested Harding actually had a heart attack but the doctors were confused. One theory blamed the Ku Klux Klan, while the Klan itself suggested Pope Benedict XV. The Anarchists were still a handy group to blame, though the Bolsheviks, having been successful in Russia, were a new alternative. All of the usual suspects were trotted out with grave seriousness.
In the end, the two leading candidates were Harding’s staff, and Harding’s wife Florence. Florence’s refusal to allow an autopsy (very common among families to this day but always suspicious in history) as well as her burning of his personal papers, are cited as clues. A few people feel she committed the murder because she was furious over her husband’s infidelity, but more claim she had the same motive as Harding’s staffers: the Teapot Dome Scandal was going to drag down the Chief Executive: killing him was the only way to save his reputation. (Several noble speeches Florence made about saving the good name of her husband were written for her by witnesses who weren’t actually there but felt she should have said such things.) Florence, who had suffered from kidney problems for years, died one year after her husband, making her an easier target.
Whoever might have done the deed to protect Warren’s reputation, this did not prevent writers from making Harding out to be, if not the most dishonest, at least the most stupid President who ever served, so he might have been better off had he lived to face the music. Modern historians, while still blaming the crabmeat, are still divided on the subject, some pointing out Harding’s accomplishments in a short tenure and others focusing on the financial scandals. Harding’s staff members–the ones who did time in prison when the business was sorted out–wrote some rather rude things about their boss as well. So whether Harding was a victim of plain assassination or character assassination will have to wait until we develop a test for THAT in the DNA labs.
Bott’s hands dropped to the console. His fingers jammed down on the tabs he had figured out. Then they hit the ones he hadn’t. Even those that were still lit refused to change under pressure. After a moment’s hesitation, he jammed one thumb down across the Mess Call. Nothing happened.
“Ship!” he bellowed. “Ship! What is all this?”
The Drover did not reply. “Cogs!” he shouted, slamming both fists down on the console. The navigational screen went dark.
Nubry was at his side. “Dassie! Oh, Dassie, what’s wrong?”
When the computer’s voice replied, it held a tone Bott had not heard before. “Well, if you really want to know, it’s a security preprogram. At random intervals, a sequence of lights appears on the security monitor. If the captain doesn’t insert the proper card, I change to a preset course.”
Bott looked to the navigational console, but the blank screen was no help. “Where are we going, then?”
The ship took a moment before replying, “Lodeon VII.”
Nubry had to catch hold of the console. “The Circus Planet? Oh!”
“Of course,” Bott whispered.
On every planet in Free Imperial space, officials were diligent in providing plenty of entertainment in varieties congenial to local cultures. But the center of entertainment research for the Free Imperial State, where every form of amusement from Tic-Tac-Toe to Comic Evisceration awas studied and advanced, was Lodeon VII. Every ;pyal Imperial subject dreamed of at least one trip to the Circus Planet, even if it cost everything saved in a lifetime of Imperial servitude.
Disloyal subjects had nightmares about it. Games of Deathtag or Sarpy Stirrups used up a goodly quantity of prisoners every year. Some games used the prisoners up to the very bones, and then neglected to kill them.
Bott sank back in his chair. “Is there anything we can do, at this point?”
“Only three cards can override the program now,” the ship informed him. “The Emperor has one. My chief technician had another, but I don’t know where that is now. They say he had a nephew he was leaving everything to, but he never mentioned it to me.”
Bott licked his lips. “And the third one?”
“Oh, you have it.”
Bott hauled up his collection of cards again. “Which one is it? Where do I put it? Wait.” He folded the cards back into a compact deck again, and tapped this on the console. “You can’t tell me that, right?”
“I’m afraid not,” the Drover replied. “Security, you see.”
“Yeah,” Bott replied.
The prayerstone was on Nubry’s forehead again. “Isn’t there anything we could do?”
“There are seventy-nine slots on the main console,” the computer reported. “Several of them simply open hidden slots. You could start now and try every card in every slot and hope you get it right before we reach Lodeon VII.”
Nubry looked to Bott, who nodded. “And by your estimate, slave ship,” the pirate captain inquired, “Can we get through every single combination of card and slot before we reach the Circus Planet?”
“Oh, yes,” the ship told him. “Barely. That is, if the slot you require is one of those on the main console, and not on another console. Or hidden under a chair. Or in some other room. Or something.”
Bott looked around the bridge; he hadn’t thought he could hate its sleek elegance more than he already had. A hand gripped his shoulder.
“The Dragonshelf,” Nubry told him. “We can still escape if we can….”
“If you were thinking of ramming through my cargo doors,” the Drover injected, “Let me tell you something about them.”
“Don’t bother.” Bott slumped in his seat.
Now Nubry looked across the bridge. “It’s a big ship. We could probably hide for days.”
Bott nodded. “Until they asked the slave ship where we were.”
Her head went up to the big blank main screen. “Would you have to tell them, Dassie?”
“If they have the right card. They don’t even have to say ‘please’.”
The bridge was silent. The captain’s console was completely dark. Lights on the auxiliary consoles were blinking out.
“But look,” the Drover said. “Go down to the slave holds. You can pretend you were slaves who were brought aboard before the pirate took command. Life as a slave, if they believe you, would be better than what they have planned.”
“I don’t take favors from slave ships.” Bott’s tone was that of a captain.
“Don’t be so stiff-necked; you’re only a pirate! Nubry, you have some sense. Can’t you….”
The librarian folded her arms. “I won’t do it,” she said. “And you can’t stop me!”
The bridge was silent for a few more seconds. Bott’s chin dropped slowly to his chest. “The Rhododendron is coming right up alongside,” he said. “I can feel it. They probably knew all along we didn’t have a chance.
“We do have a chance!”
Bott looked to the librarian. She was still facing the dark main screen.
“Dassie, may we use the elevator?”
“Be my guest.”
She pulled on Bott’s shoulder. She did not tell him what she had in mind, but he was getting a idea by the time they reached the cargo bay. He was a little surprised to find the door opening for him when he inserted his card.
Nubry ran all the way to the Dragonshelf. “Do you see?” she demanded, turning at the open ramp into her ship. “They’ll know we’re here and they’ll need to bring in weapons to fight us. We can at least shoot at them. But if they open the doors to bring in weapons from outside, you can fly out!”
“You can,” said Bott, joining her.
“No, no,” she told him. “You’re a pirate. You probably have all kinds of experience flying out of traps like this!”
“But it’s your ship. You’ll know….”
She gave hi a little push. “You go on ahead. I’ll be right there.”
Bott watched her move down a corridor to the main reading room. He shrugged once more and stepped up to the bridge. His mood was far from optimistic, but the sight of a fully functional command console cheered him a little. There would be something, at least, for him to do, whether it did any good or not. He checked the navigational screen. The Rhododendron was, indeed, very near.
“Ship?”
There was no answer. Remembering where he was, he reached for the communication card. “Ship,” he said to the card, “You seem to know a lot about what they’re going to do to us. What do they have planned for this rendezvous? When the Rhododendron reaches us?”
“What would you do, lummox?”
Bott didn’t need to think long. “Order you to flood the cargo bay with gas so the prisoners wouldn’t shoot at me with the Dragnshelf’s guns.”
“You’d’ve made a nice little Imperial guard, pirate. You really would.”
“Is anything happening?” Nubry came breathless onto the bridge, clutching a book to her chest.
“What’s that?” Bott asked.
“Bunny Bunk and the Purple Pillow.” She held up the book to show a brown animal next to a purple square on the cover.
”It’s the first book I ever read all by myself,” she said, settling into her seat. “It may be the last book I’ll ever see. What are you doing?”
“Setting an automatic course, with your permission, Captain. They may decide to gas the cargo bay, but if we’re already moving for the doors….”
Nubry pointed to a red dot on a monitor. “I think it’s too late.”
“Ship!” Bott sniffed the air.
“Sorry, lummox: part of the preprogram. I started before you left the bridge.”
It was too late even to ventilate the Dragonshelf and hope to get rid of the gas. Bott turned to Nubry. “Well, that’s that.”
Her eyes were turned down to the little square book. “Did anyone ever read you a bedtime story?” Something dripped from her face onto the book, but she dashed it away before it could leave a mark.
“So long, Drover,” Bott told the communication card. “It was quite the challenge, and fun while it lasted. So long.”
“Do you really think you’re getting away that easily? I’ll be seeing you, you bilstim pirate.”
The sentence was sharp, and the computer’s profanity was new to him. Before he could ask what either meant, he saw Nubry tip forward. He had time to put up one hand to brace her before his eyes closed as well.
Okay, I have been putting this off for a while, and you msay well decide to put it off indefinitely, because it is an obituary for a couple of guys named Bob, but, in the end, it’s more an article about me. I hate obituaries and eulogies like that, but let’s see if I can do justice to Bob and to Bob before I get to me.
I ran into Bob shortly after I took a job of work for a paycheck in Chicago. My employer tried a number of clever dodges to keep from paying me much (a whole nother blog) but in the end settled for getting me a second job. I would work both of these jobs until Covid came along, and one of the reasons I hung around so long with such a ridiculous work schedule was because of Bob.
Bob had become President of the club which was hiring me as a bookkeeper (not unlike hiring the Three Stooges to do your plumbing) and was determined to remake the sleepy old club as a more active outfit. He was a boisterous idea man who raised a few million dollars every year in HIS other job. A man of action, he was up against a lot of people who didn’t mind belonging to a club which didn’t ask much. He started a newsletter, aided and abetted some people who wanted to add a luncheon program to the traditional dinners, and wheeled and dealed to provoke a visible and exciting Centennial for the club.
With the new bookkeeper/secretary, he adopted a conspiratorial relationship. “What if you didn’t open that bill until AFER the monthly Council meeting?” he would suggest, and “I think I can get this printed for free if you don’t mind addressing all the envelopes for it.” His term in office was over after the first year, but he continued to push for attention and celebration in the Club and, when asking what I was up to, always concluded with “Keep up the good work!” I watched as he attempted, three times, to become a fundraiser for my primary employer, talked to him on the phone about articles for the increasingly large newsletter, and looked up data for him now and again in later days when his blindness slowed him down by perhaps one half mile per hour. I could not particularly credit it when his wife (always a partner in his efforts and as lively as he was himself) called to say he had passed to the Great Golden Ultimately and was even now probably discussing poetry wit Robert Frost. (He was not a great believer in an afterlife, but this is MY blog.)
I knew the other Bob in my primary job, and cannot recall when Evelyn convinced him to become a volunteer for us. As a relator, he was all over the area, and he was willing to pick up books for delivery. He had many adventures in that line, and I went along when an extra pair of hands and a reasonably strong back were needed. We unloaded the basement of a man who had been about to start a bookstore in 1964 but suffered family loss and had let the basement display sit for over thirty years until the state foreclosed. We cleaned out volumes of opthalmology magazines from a closet where there was space for one person to walk, sideways, on either side of a massive copy machine. We ventured into basements, attics, and back rooms, and once we fought against a 24-hour time limit to unload thousands of dollars of rare books before the garbageman came to take the rest.
He was as sardonic as the other Bob was jovial. He could be genuinely bright and cheerful, but he was always frank in his opinion of our annual book sale. “You just don’t have the books,” he’d say, shaking his head. “You won’t make as much as you did last year.” I learned that every year that he said something like this, we DID beat the previous year’s total, and when he was optimistic, we didn’t. As time went by, I would ASK him to give me a pessimistic review come July. He enjoyed the joke, but never realized he really was a reverse prophet. He went on venturing into White Sox territory wearing a Red Sov T-shirt until an exploding gall bladder and a couple of awkward surgeries left him more likely to deal with books from the bookshop he had in HIS home, assisted by his cats whom he named, among other things, Dumb and Dumber. I found it hard to believe the email when I found that he, too, had joined the Heavenly Choir, though he is probably spending less time singing than talking things over with A. Conan Doyle and P.G. Wodehouse.
The reason I find these two deaths particularly hard to understand is that these Bobs were part of my adventures in the 1990s, keeping a Club from quite running itself into insolvency and gathering books from hidden treasure troves around Chicago. Both these men were the embodiment of life and action and certainty that success was just around the next corner. But there’s another reason I just don’t get it.
See, if these two Bobs are gone, that means the Nineties are gone as well. And there is the barest possibility that my Thirties have gone with them. I will never be that age, embarking on another bookish adventures like those again. Now, if one Bob could keep going without his eyesight and the other without the tip of his spine, I can keep at this, too. But it does seem unfair that the adventures of thirty years ago should be so decidedly thirty years ago.
I have a very poor record when it comes to proposing new holidays. I have sought to increase the market for holiday observances which can help me sell more greeting cards or postcards, but despite my mercenary motivation, my heart is pure. (The jury is still out on “Pure WHAT?”)
But while looking up something else entirely, I was amazed to find there is no nationwide celebration of the comfort station, or public restroom. I have seen local holidays which commemorate the relief of this or that fort during a war, but what about the rest of us?
Having found myself in shopping districts where you were required to be a customer to use a supposedly public restroom, and in public restrooms which hadn’t been visited by a maintenance crew in weeks (why is there always so much apparently pristine toilet paper lying in strips on the floor when the rolls are empty? Are there cameras just outside to capture wild and funny videos of people walking around with paper stuck to their shoes?) I appreciate those establishments which try to address our concerns. I admit I have not done as much research into the public potty as I might, having been warned by my grandmother, who used to take troops of Girl Scouts on hikes into the country to clean and tidy rural comfort stations. “The public,” she said, “is VERY dirty. I knew someone, now, alas, not going out much, who had found every public men’s room within a seven-mile radius of his apartment building. (He should have written his book, though he was less critical of unwashed restrooms than he was of those which required a climb down steep stairs.)
There IS a World Toilet Day (November 19) but this is primarily concerned with sanitation concerns the world over. Where is a holiday suited to expressing our gratitude? I will have to work out some technicalities before I announce this new festival. Who gets the cards we’ll send out? Store managers? Janitors? We could send notes to the High Panjandrums (Panjandra?) of fast food establishments, but those probably wouldn’t get past the bomb squad.
Picking the proper day presents problems as well. New Year’s Day and Groundhog’s Day already have enough going on, which eliminates, say, One-One or Two-Two. Anyway, we need more holidays in the middle of the year, when we’re kind of low on days for decorating and baking. (Dibs on the production of gingerbread outhouses for the holiday. It may seem greedy, but I will let YOU produce the strings of lights in the shape of porcelain fixtures.)
E. Irvin Scott, probably the father of the toilet paper roll, was born on May 4, which is a too close to Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, and perhaps we are getting too far into the Pumpkin Spice holidays with September 28, birthdate of the apparent inventor of the flush toilet, the perfectly named Thomas Crapper. I would, myself, pick August 4, the birthdate of Sir John hartrington, perhaps an ancestor of mine, best known for his heroic potty verse, The metamorphosis of Ajax. I know this will annoy people in Iowa, who are at that point preparing the wild ruckus that accompanies the birthday of Herbert Hoover on August 10, but there ARE 49 other states. (It’s also close to my aforementioned grandmother’s birthday, come to think of it, but maybe she wouldn’t mind.)
I know this holiday faces an uphill battle. It quite spoils a traditional American prank if people tp their houses on purpose every August fourth. And decorating your average public restroom these days may well limit the access to paper towels (I never see the sign telling me how the dispenser works until I’ve tried five other methods unsuccessfully: bright lights and garlands of tissue will make this worse.) But think of the radio stations which can pull out classics like “Let Me Go, Lover” for holiday playlists. And consider all those malls that will HAVE to send the janitors in to clean up at least once a year. This is a holiday the world needs. Ready to go? Okay, I’ll wait ‘til you come back.
As noted, the ground is getting treacherous underfoot as we sally forth in search of conspiracy theories about the U.S. Presidents. Ideally, you will recall, we are looking for stories more or less contemporary with the Chief Executive which have since been dismissed by most “mainstream historians”. We hit quicksand hunting for anything about Theodore Roosevelt, mainly because the Interwebs sees “Roosevelt” and “conspiracy” and screams in reply “Pearl Harbor!” The idea that there were two different Roosevelts in the top job just does not fit into any of the algorithms.
I thought the main problem would come with those largely forgotten and somewhat indistinguishable Chief Executives of the nineteenth century, but here comes WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, remembered now mainly for his Billy Possum mascot (the successor to Roosevelt’s Teddy Bear) and for his girth (largest President ever.) He never especially wanted to be anything but a Supreme Court Justice, and apparently accepted other jobs in the meantime thinking he’d eventually get there (which he did.) He WAS the first President accused of spending too much time on the golf course; cartoonists loved to draw the big round President bending over to line up a shot. This leads into the ONLY conspiracy accusation against him, that he suppressed all news coverage of the time he got stuck in the White House bathtub and had to be hauled out by six men. Much as everyone WANTS to believe this, it apparently relies on the word of one White House staff member, published way after the death of Taft, and contradicted by the fact that Taft, even if he was considered clueless by his critics, knew very well how much he weighed. Every bathtub he used was custom built to fit him, and the chances of getting stuck were nil.
For years the great conspiracy theory about WOODROW WILSON was that his second wife secretly ran the government for months after her husband had a stroke. This, alas, has pretty much been declared true, so we have had to drop it from our arsenal of conspiracy theories. He DOES deserve a certain amount of gratitude from conspiracy theorists for being one of several people credited with inventing the phrase “New World Order” (which in his case was just an observation on how much the First World War rearranged international politics.) But there is also the accusation that he had contrived to corrupt the news media (this will be coming back into our story later, too) by establishing a public relations branch of the White House, to get the U.S. into World War I. This theory relies heavily on the notion that this crew of conspirators made sure Wilson’s pro-war speeches were played over and over in movie theaters (despite movies being silent) and contradicting the history of the 1916 election, which he won (just five months before the US declared war) using the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War.” (I was taught in school that Wilson was forced against his will to declare war by popular demand, but as everything else I was taught in school was apparently part of a huge conspiracy, I can’t include that.)
Thank goodness we have Warren Harding coming up next, a man who was president for only three years and yet piled up enough conspiracy theories to keep anybody busy. It’s all there: bribery, sex in an Oval Office closet, murder…we will reserve that for next time. After all the wild conspiracies above, I need a nap.
“It’s only a surface scratch,” Bott said, swiveling the captain’s chair left and right. “I can fix it myself.”
“Don’t you touch my ship!” Nubry shouted. The librarian strode halfway across the Drover’s bridge and back, shaking both fists above her head. Bott noticed the dark spots under her arms again. “Just leave it alone!”
“Some pirates ought to be ashamed of themselves,” said a voice from the ceiling.
“Ship,” said Bott. “Shut up.”
“Don’t change the subject!” Nubry stamped one foot on the sleek, elegant deck. “I’ve dodged enemy fire hundreds of times! I have!”
“I said I was sorry.” Bott hunched his shoulders a bit. “It was just…your ship….”
“Oh, yes!” Nubry stalked back the way she’d come, one of her fists knocking the ball of hair off-center. “My ship! If you’d thought of that sooner, I could have flown it out without it getting damaged. I could!”
She spun around and came back. Bott shrank into his chair as her face came forward and she actually growled at him. He was, he knew, absolutely in the wrong. You did not take command of an ally’s vessel without a word, not as long as the other captain was capable of doing the job herself. He wasn’t sure that Nubry could have done the job, but anyone who cared this much about her ship was probably pilot enough to have made it out. Unless it was the risk to her cargo that upset het; he had known captains like that. But she’d been going on about “my ship”, so it was probably….
Nubry turned her back on him and stamped that foot again. “What were you thinking? WERE you thinking?”
“I warned you he was a pirate.”
“Ship,” said Bott, summoning an air of menace.
“Yes!” Nubry’s fists were banging together in front of her when she turned around. “You were planning to steal command from me from the very start, just like…like a pirate!”
“{orates will be pirates,” said the ship. “They may be all right in their place: a dungeon, say, or….”
Neither Bott nor Nubry was really listening. “Even down in the Deaccession Chamber!” said the librarian. “You had to come down shooting things up, as if nobody else would know what to do!”
Bott was on firmer ground here. “You could NOT have rammed through the doors. At that temperature, the skin of a BBB-44 would have peeled off like a roast lumpuck!”
Her thumbs slid across her fists. She viewed him through narrow eyes, and tossed her head. “I think I know more about my ship than you do. For all you knew, we have special shielding for that!”
“Oh yes,” Bott snorted. “A library ship.”
The fists were shaken at him. “Yes! A library ship, you raggy little-bitty pirate!”
She strode eight steps away and turned to face him. “And….” Her mouth opened wider, emitting no further words, and then snapped shut.
Her fists fell apart into fingers. She took a half step forward. “I shouldn’t have said that. I…I must suppose that your height is completely normal on your planet. I’m….”
Bott’s chin went up and slightly to the left. “No. My father was a foot taller than I am.”
“It’s just that….” One hand went up the ball of hair; one foot went out to kick the navigator’s chair. Her mouth tightened. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
“A;; right,” said Bott.. “I shouldn’t have done it.” He turned the captain’s seat yo face the main screen. “Ship, where is the Rhododendron now?”
A voice behind him went on, “I mean, I’m the last of the Dangerous Rebels and the Dragonshelf is their last ship. It’s up to me to be caretaker.”
Bott bent over the console as if studying the lighted tabs. Where could he take the Drover now? Did it matter? At the moment, nothing seemed especially real except the overheated librarian behind him. He sat back in the chair, wincing as he hit the uncushioned back of the chair.
“Ship,” he snapped. “I asked for the location of the Rhododendron!”
He reached for his command cards but bounced forward as something was jammed in behind him. Looking back, he found the librarian retreating, arms folded, watching to see if he threw back the cushion she’d just returned to him.
Bott said nothing, his eyes on her. She turned an alarming shade of orange.
Her voice, though, was low and calm. “You went into the Deaccession Chamber and risked your life got out books.” She raised her prayerstone to her forehead. “It doesn’t matter whether I could have gotten out by myself. What matters is that we DID get out, and you risked your life making sure we did.” She closed her eyes. “Thank you.”
Bott shook his head. “I shouldn’t have taken command of your ship without your leave. It was just that…it’s been so long since I was on a ship I could really captain.”
He waved a hand around the vast array of lighted tabs and switches. “This is all really too much for me.”
Her eyes were still closed. Bott tipped his head back and called, “Did you hear that, slave ship?”
“Hear it? Lummox, I recorded it.”
“But I’ll figure it out,” the captain snarled. “I can fly any ship when I’m sober and I haven’t had a drink in three days!”
If the ship had a comeback for that, Nubry covered it, stepping forward, eyes open. “I understand. Do I? Yes, I do! I’ve been in charge of the Dragonshelf forever, I think sometimes, without any crew. So I never had to think about what anyone else would do. I just do the best I can.”
She let the prayerstone drop, and folded her fingers over it. “And you fly very well. I’ve been hit worse than that scratch. Sometimes.”
Bott rose from his chair as she came forward. “They say you should never have two captains on the same bridge,” he told her.
Her head bobbed fiercely. “We can take turns. We can go….”
Bott’s hands were up to take hers, but she raised her eyes and frowned past him. “Where ARE we going?” she asked. “Right now?”
Bott shrugged. “I just put in a general course away from the Library Planet. I hadn’t decided where to go yet.”
Her frown came to his face and then turned back to the monitors. “We certainly seem to be going someplace.”
Bott turned to a navigational screen. They DID seem to be going somewhere, and picking up speed in the process. His own course showed on the screen as a thing red line. The dot representing the Drover was mbing farther and farther from that line.
The second it took him to comprehend this meant it took one more second before he realized the lights on his chair console were blinking off, one by one.
Of course, I reckoned without the ingenuity of Madison Avenue.
Those of you who have read the last column in this space will be aware that I have so far failed utterly to find any conspiracy theories about Theodore Roosevelt. It isn’t that he is not liable to accusations—no one whose name appears on the Interwebs is—but that he keeps getting confused with Cousin Franklin, and people are busy falling all over themselves to tell us FDR’s secrets. (And how they can use the word “secret” on the Internet without giggling escapes me. It’s like “private.”)
So I filled the rest of the space observing the decline of a once mighty move to get us all to set up valentine’s Day trees once the time for Christmas trees had passed, and St. Patrick’s Day trees after that. The days of shamrock-themed strings of lights would appear to have passed without much regret.
But I was in a large store yesterday and my eyes widened at the sight of a kit for making your very own Valentine’s Day gingerbread house. Of course! I noticed, without making much of it, that there were haunted house gingerbread kits in the stores last Halloween, but now I see what the next push will be. It makes sense, really: decorating a tree is regarded by much of America as a chore, but eating gingerbread….
Mind you, the whole business does deliberately ignore another part of the question. My mother had a metal gingerbread house form. I saw it every year when we pulled out the revered old paper bag with the Christmas cookie cutters in it. But I never, ever saw it used.
See, constructing a gingerbread house requires a certain amount of manual dexterity, to start with, and a modicum of artistic talent as well. Viewed with nostalgia, our Christmas cookies were superb, and better than anything else any of the rest of you EVER decorated at Christmas. Viewed impartially, though, I think they were somewhat short of perfectly edible. We tended to go for the big, gaudy (and, nowadays, regarded as slightly poisonous) candy decorations. The cookies we liked to decorate were cookies that crunched when eaten. With luck that sound was not your teeth cracking on a layer of solid sugar.
I have eaten a number of gingerbread houses, or at least assisted in their demolition, and the temptation to go for big, chunky candies which looked nice but were difficult to eat was apparently irresistible (these bits were often thrown away along with the fossilized chunks of gingerbread which had been welded to the cardboard base by icing sugar. We actually preferred gingerbread houses from those of our friends who gave up, and just piled up walls and roof sections, tossed in a little candy, and said “Here. Do it yourself.” We ate the gingerbread and tossed the candy in a drawer for later.
But never mind that. The point of gingerbread house kits, after all, is not the construction of gingerbread houses, but sales. And the Valentine’s Day houses, like Christmas ones, LOOK so yummy on the box. I might prefer, say, a red velvet set of walls to go with the themes, but gingerbread is always welcome. And my mind immediately leapt to ideas for the future.
Gumdrops come in all colors, after all. Use a bunch of green ones for a St. Patrick’s Day house with shamrocks drawn freehand in the white icing on the roof. (A lot of us are still getting snow in March, so it fits.) And LOOK at this Fourth of July gingerbread house, its roof studded with multi-colored lollipops to simulate fireworks going off overhead. How about a Father’s Day gingerbread house, or maybe a gingerbread garage, with a gingerbread Mustang parked outside with marzipan golf clubs in the back? Once we think outside the house, how about a gingerbread highway construction project for Labor Day, with jelly bean gravel and a big gingerbread truck filled with chocolate asphalt for pouring as pavement or into the palms of each State Engineer?
It has all the benefits of the tree idea with the added advantage of edibility (perhaps) and without the pressure of having to put presents under your St. Patrick’s Day tree. I LIKE the idea. It’s got scope, it’s got legs.
Blogsy Babbles 