Fanta

 

Hey, here’s a strange, World War II-ish fact I came across out of the blue a few days ago.

 

Do you know the soft drink Fanta? Though I don’t think I ever had one, I do remember seeing those colorfully musical commercials where a bunch of Latinas dance wildly while chugging the flavored sodas. I guess I must’ve thought that it was some sort of South American product that came up north twenty or twenty-five years ago to wrest some market share from Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper, etc. Certainly that seems to be the way it was marketed, at least to my nondiscriminating mind.

 

Anyway, I just found out that Fanta is not South American. It has nothing to do with Latinas, Latinos, or Latin culture.

 

Fanta had its birth in 1942 in Nazi Germany.

 

From what I read (from two apparently reputable sources online, so take that for what its worth), Coca Cola had a fairly sizeable share of the German market up until the American trade embargo of Nazi Germany in 1941. The head of Coke’s division in Germany simply rebranded the beverage as “Fanta” and soon almost three million cases were selling annually in Deutschland.

 

It tasted different from traditional Coca Cola because it could only be made with German-sourced products (the syrup that made Coca Cola Coca Cola was prohibited due to the embargo and the British naval blockade). The name is a take on the German word for imagination, Fantasie.

 

Seems Fanta production ceased in 1949 and was not restarted until 1955, this time in Italy, where orange Fanta was created using actual Italian oranges as an ingredient. It made its way across Europe and overseas to South America while several new flavors were introduced. In 1960 Coca Cola bought the brand, but sales were kept limited in the States until 2001 – when it was pushed to the growing Hispanic community throughout the US.

 

Me, I won’t be trying a Fanta anytime soon. To date I’m 221 days into being soda free in 2024, one of two resolutions I’ve successfully maintained from this past News Year Eve. To be honest I can’t say if I feel better or worse, but no doubt my liver and my teeth thank me and I’ve probably extended my life expectancy at my current age by a few months.

 

Churchill and Gibbon

 

Ever since I started reading about World War II, probably going back to 2011 but gaining some steam during the initial days of Covid, I started finding Churchill everywhere. It was a weird instance of synchronicity. I’d read an article in Astronomy magazine about the space race and Churchill’s name would turn up. I’d thumb through a book on the Crusades and there would be old Winston. Watched a YouTube video on the 1947 UFO flap and they’d mention the British Prime Minister’s curiosity in the phenomenon. Pick three random self-help books off the B&N shelves and scan the index, and chances are you’ll find Churchill’s name there, and a nifty quote somewhere in the meat of the book in question.

 

So I found it very pleasing to discover the fact that young Winston was a huge fan of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

 

[As you may know, my oldest daughter Little One is now in Italy for her college spring semester sophomore year, studying philosophy, theology, literature and art in Rome. I am reading through Gibbon’s late-18th century history of the Roman Empire in sympathetic solidarity with her – though I don’t believe that’s one of the works assigned to her. And as of this posting, I am 52 pages in … about 4 percent done …]

 

To quote a mature Churchill:

 

“I set out upon Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and was immediately dominated both by the story and the style. I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly though it from end to end and enjoyed it all.” Wikipedia states – I know, I know – that the British statesman “modeled much of his own literary style on Gibbon’s … like Gibbon, he dedicated himself to producing a ‘vivid historical narrative, ranging widely over period and place, enriched by analysis and reflection.’ ”

 

How awesome this is to a bookworm history buff like me!

 

I spent a month about a dozen years ago commuting to work listening to an audio book of the first volume of his World War II memoirs, The Gathering Storm. If I continue to enjoy Gibbon as much as I am so far – that is, the remaining 96 percent – perhaps I’ll revisit Winston later this fall.

 

Pearl Harbor

 

Haven’t been much into World War II this year, since I’ve been mainly focusing on classic literature, but on this anniversary of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor I thought I’d post some trivia from one of the best books I’ve read on the subject, Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness, by Craig Nelson, which I bought and devoured in early January 2021.

 

- Yamamoto and Tojo were both born in 1884. Tojo was posted to Berlin, Yamamoto to Washington, D.C.

- Eventually one-sixth of all American males would serve in the military.

- If America’s secret weapons of World War II were radar and codebreaking, Japan’s were its spies.

- Japanese aerial technology was at the time of Pearl Harbor the envy of the world.

- The Mitsubishi A6M Reisen was known as the “Zero.” It had a top speed of 310 mph, two 20mm cannons in its wings, and three 7.7mm machine guns in the cowling.

- Minesweeper Condor and destroyer USS Ward sighted a periscope at 0342 the morning of December 7 and unsuccessfully attempted to track it for an hour.

- The first wave of the attack consisted of 183 planes (with six failing to launch).

- The second wave consisted of 171 planes (with four fails).

- “Tora! Tora! Tora!” – To is the first syllable of totsugeki (“charge” or “attack”) and Ra is the first of raigeki (“torpedo”). Tora also means “tiger” which had a nice ring to Japanese staff.

- On the morning of the attack, Pearl Harbor held 96 ships.

- “Battleship Row” – the Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland, Oklahoma, and California.

- Arizona sank in 9 minutes. 1,177 men were lost. It was the highest mortality of men killed in a single explosion … until Hiroshima.

- In his famous speech on December 8, FDR replaced “world history” with “infamy.”

- Since war had not yet been declared at the time of their deaths, none of the dead wore dog tags, and the manner of their deaths, from fires and explosions, resulted in 670 “unknowns” buried in 252 different locations at Honolulu’s Punchbowl cemetery. Of that 670, 669 remain unknown to this day.

- Today’s generally accepted numbers: 2,403 American dead, 1,178 wounded. Japan lost 55 naval airmen, 9 midget-sub crewmen, and the 65-man crew of a destroyed submarine.

- A recovered Japanese midget sub was outfitted with mannequins dressed as Japanese sailors and sent on a tour of 41 states to help sell war bonds.

- The sub’s sole survivor, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, became America’s first POW of World War II. After the war he refused to be interview by Pearl Harbor historians and eventually became president of Toyota Brazil.

- After FDR’s 6 minute 30 second “Day of Infamy” speech, it took Congress just 52 minutes to declare war on Japan.

- By December 20th, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee were back in service. Nevada was restored at the end of 1942; California at the end of 1943. Oglala, Downs, and Cassin were sailing by February 1944; West Virginia on July 4, 1944.

- The Arizona’s five-inch anti-aircraft guns were salvaged and put to use to defend Oahu.

 

Of the 40 books I’ve read on World War II, Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness is easily in the top half-dozen. Much recommended.

 

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon

 

So I was genuinely excited a few months back when I first learned that a major motion picture of the life and career of Napoleon Bonaparte would be released in November. This was completely under the radar for me; I hadn’t read or saw anything about it on the webs until I saw the trailer while watching Oppenheimer in the theater with the wife last summer.

I was cautiously optimistic. Why? I’ll get into that in a moment.

I’ve written elsewhere here about my obscure interest in the French Emperor. The “First Antichrist” if Orson Welles and Nostradamus are to be believed. Might have something to do with the old rags-to-riches story. Or military genius. Boldness. Or the influence of a favorite history teacher at college.

I’ve read two thick biographies of the man (one around 1995 and the other in 2017) and a detailed manual on his military campaigns. I’ve also been moseying my way through Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe series. Sharpe is an English rifleman who fights his way through life and primarily against the Emperor’s French over the course of 15 years, in India, Spain, Holland, and, later I guess, St. Helena. Haven’t read the last novel as I’m only 8 books through the 13 Santa bought me two years ago, but I think Sharpe meets Bonaparte at the end of the General’s short life, in exile in the middle of the Atlantic.

Hence the excitement of a legitimate big screen adaptation of the Napoleonic era.

However … (and it’s a big however …)

This is Hollywood we’re talking about here. 2023 Hollywood.

And it’s Ridley Scott, as director.

Neither have been known to scrupulously adhere to reality in their historical epics. Much has to be sacrificed at the altar of Agenda. I am fearful that what thousands of people will see on the big screen will be some ignoramus’s idea of what Napoleon should have been like.

I am worried about –

The casting of Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon. Too old and probably too tall, and rockin’ an American accent. I like him and his movies, but I’m on the fence about this.

The irresistible temptation to make Josephine a girlboss, the real “power” behind the throne.

The other irresistible temptation to make Napoleon, a white man, a brutish, stupid neanderthal. (I do recognize the arguments against his life’s actions and works, but by no means could he be called a brutish, stupid neanderthal.)

The inaccuracies in battle tactics. I already read that the “squares” the infantry form in the flick to defend against cavalry attacks do not align with how they formed in the real world; indeed, in the movie they’d probably wind up shooting each other rather than the attacking enemy.

The dreary color saturation and dirtiness of the film. I realize that the battlefield is not the optimal place for cleanliness, but I gather everyone in the palaces and in the towns will look grimy, stinky and unhygienic.

(Plus, I heard an interesting theory that filmmakers tint their movies in different colors to psychologically affect the way the viewer interprets what’s happening on the screen, or the “message” they want to convey, and some movies are tinted differently depending on which country the film is being marketed to. Don’t know much about this, but it is interesting enough for me to look into the phenomenon.)

We’ll see. I may have to sneak into a movie theater myself on the second weekend of release to check it out, before seeing it with the Mrs. or the not-so-little Little Ones.

The National Museum of the Pacific War Pt. 2

 

My favorite part of last weekend’s trip to the Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas – and definitely the favorite part for my seven-year-old twin nephews, too – were the life-size artifacts from World War II. Planes, tanks, guns and bombs. It really provided a new angle to all the reading I’ve been doing over the past two years. Brought it more to life. Yeah, you can look at all the pictures of B-24 bombers in the world, but when you see one twenty feet away, it grants things a truer perspective.

Anyway, here are the highlights from the trip:

 

B-25 bomber

F4 Wildcat

M3 Stuart Tank

3-inch Japanese gun

Japanese triple barrel gun (25mm)

Garand M1 rifle

Japanese 35mm gun

American BOFORS gun - rapid fire 40mm cannon

Japanese "Rex" float plane

Japanese "Val" dive bomber. Reddish tint due to being behind a screen and seen only once the five-minute concluding film finishes.

Mock "Fat Man" bomb - Plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki. If I were to stand next to it the top of my head would be at the level of the black rectangle near the top center.

My only regret is that I did not think to get a picture of that midget Japanese sub, the first exhibit in the museum. I’ll get it then when we return in three years, when the boys are a little older and my girls go on the tour with us to escape the brutal south Texas heat.

The National Museum of the Pacific War

 

What a great long weekend we had down here!

Early Saturday morning we packed up the car with four days’ worth of luggage, food and drink supplies, and some books for car reading, and set off to visit my sister-in-law. She and her family live in the suburbs of Austin, Texas hill country, in a huge spread that holds an old house, a guest house, an in-ground pool, a separate three-room office, a barn, and six acres of land. This would be our first visit, though they’ve visited us twice since our relocation from New Jersey.

Anyway, they were wonderful and gracious hosts. They have seven-year-old twin boys, which my girls played with in the pool and on the trampoline and zip line. Saturday we swam all afternoon, then went out for some pizza listening to live music. Sunday we all journeyed to Fredericksburg, about an hour away, and spent the day shopping and eating. My brother-in-law and I and the boys spent two hours at the National Museum of the Pacific War – but more on that in a minute.

Monday, the Fourth of July, was spent tubing down the Comal River. This was the first time I’ve tubed in about forty years (and I’ll probably tube again in another forty …). It was okay. Initially the girls liked it, but it was extremely crowded and the river flowed at such a lazy pace it took us nearly three hours to float five miles. I baked in the sun for those three hours, but thanks to massive and frequent applications of sun block I only got burnt around my neck and on my inner elbows.

My old carcass was too exhausted to hop in the SUVs with everyone else to see fireworks that night so I stayed back at the guest house. After a long luxurious shower and an hour’s reading in the paradise of central air, I watched some fireworks bursting over the distant southern horizon, probably the same ones my family was watching in downtown Austin. It was a memorable night for me, as I was also thinking much Deep Thoughts.

Tuesday we celebrated my sister-in-law’s birthday and then headed out around lunchtime (they were going to Six Flags Great Adventure – her birthday present). We got home to a joyous Charlie the Jack Russell mix and relaxed in preparation for the short work week ahead.

My highlight of the visit was the trip to the National Museum of the Pacific War. It was on my bucket list of things to see / do / visit in Texas, one I compiled nearly a year and a half ago. It was also a pleasant surprise when I realized, down there, that it was only an hour’s drive a way. Texas is, after all, a huge state. Even better was that my brother-in-law, a highly intelligent man sixteen years younger than me, is a history buff and had always wanted to check the museum out. With a pair of seven-year-old boy twins, what was the downside?

So we went in at 1 pm while the ladies walked up and down Fredericksburg, a small tourist town, shopping and suffering in the hundred degree heat which we had the fortune to escape in the museum. Why Fredericksburg? Well, the town’s the boyhood home of Admiral Chester Nimitz, one of the driving forces for our victory against the Japanese in World War II. Apparently, a few decades ago, the Nimitz family donated a hotel they owned to the government to start a museum for the Admiral. This soon grew to a few other buildings over a couple of acres, and by national fiat the Museum of the Pacific War was created.

We visited the main museum. One city-block-sized floor of winding corridors filled with life-sized exhibits, memorabilia behind glass, video presentations, maps, newspapers, and other interactive features. It took us two whole hours to traverse it all, but in honesty, I did not feel the time fly by. I did feel transported back in time eighty years.

The first room held some seats like cargo boxes and a five minute “prelude to war” film played over and over, setting the tone. Then you would walk leisurely through interconnected rooms progressing chronologically through the phases of the war – the build-up, Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Midway, Guadalcanal, the island hopping strategy of Nimitz, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the death of FDR, the development and dropping of the atomic bombs, and the war’s aftermath.

My favorite exhibits were the life-size ones. The museum actually holds a Japanese midget sub (not so midget-y at a 75-foot length), a B-25 bomber, an F4 Wildcat, a Stuart tank, several guns of varying caliber, both American and Japanese, and a replica of the Fat Man atomic bomb. I took pictures of these and I will post them tomorrow.

At the gift shop at the end I spent an indecisive 15 minutes trying to find a book to purchase. I hovered over several volumes of Samuel Eliot Morrison’s official naval history of the war, but I think these need to be bought as a set somehow somewhere sometime. Instead I opted for a book on submarine warfare of World War II. The museum had a mock-up sub interior complete with periscopes (which the boys loved) where I confessed to my brother-in-law that due to claustrophobia and intense fear of drowning, I could never serve in the submarine forces had I been alive back then. So this book is to help me gain a dose of, I dunno, vicarious courage maybe.

Afterwards we went to – go figure – a German beerhouse down the street for a late lunch. Apparently Fredericksburg has a huge German contingent, dating back to before World War II. Young Chester Nimitz would find himself fighting against his … neighbors, at least indirectly. Oh well. Such is this crazy world we live in, crazy since at least eighty years ago (and probably going back a lot, lot longer than that).

Pics tomorrow …

Return to Napoleonic France

 

Over the past eighteen months or so I’ve been reading a lot about warfare. Specifically, World War II. I enjoy more “birds-eye” books rather than “ground-level” ones, “strategic books” on the art of war rather than “tactical” books on the practice of it. And there’s a reason. The atrocities committed by the Nazis tends to destroy one’s faith in humanity, and more. It wears one down. Not only the atrocities by Hitler’s band of evil thugs, but also those committed by the Japanese and the Soviets. Even the allies are not immune, with the questionable ethics behind their use of strategic air warfare, i.e. the firebombing of civilians in Tokyo and Dresden.

There’s also another angle why I’m taking an undefined break from World War II. It’s the Sovietization of the workplace, and the public square, that’s happening in America c. 2020-21. Read or talk about Nazis, and soon enough you’re accused of being one. It’s inevitable. Same thing goes for the Civil War, of which I was an interested student since 2012. With the craziness behind America’s current Race obsession, white supremacy, and the tearing down of Confederate statues, one best not discuss the Civil War, the war where 250,000 white Northern soldiers gave their lives for the ultimate goal of ending slavery.

Anyway, about six or eight weeks ago, when I was mulling all this over in my head, I remembered Napoleon. Over the years I’ve read several books on the Napoleonic era (roughly 1796-1815). In college I had a great history professor who ignited this interest to the point where I read two books on the French Revolution on my own. This lead to an immense biography of Napoleon, which I enjoyed immensely. In 2017 I read a neat book called Napoleon as Military Commander, where each chapter delved into one of the man’s 12 or 15 great battles. Two years later I read a different thick tome of biography. So I realized, why not dive into the Napoleonic Wars? Surely 2020-21 America wouldn’t have a problem with me doing that, would it?

Another factor that steered me in this direction was the search for an epic book series to lose myself in. Someone on some internet bulletin board recommended the works of Bernard Cornwall. He wrote a dozen or so paperbacks featuring Napoleonic soldier Richard Sharpe over the course of Napoleon’s campaigns. Sounded interesting and the endorsement was legit. So I used birthday money and purchased two of those books. They’re on deck.

Then, scanning the World History shelves of a massive used books store, this softcover 450-page tome caught my eye:

The Battle: A History of the Battle of Waterloo, © 2003 by Alessandro Barbero (translated from the Italian by John Cullen)

Once my Halloween reading, Dracula, was completed, I leaped into it. It’s a fast read. I am hallway done with the 424 pages. Each chapter is a manageable 5-7 pages that examines a certain area of the Battle of Waterloo in a way not too deep to get lost in the weeds but deep and clear enough where one can visualize and follow the battle. The whole thing moves in an easy, chronological order, and contains many interesting facts.

For instance, this one:

Several historians and students of the battle, over the years, have analyzed the relationship between battlefield deaths and logistics. Consider the musket, the main weapon used by the infantry. A rather poor weapon and highly inaccurate. Curious generals at the time tested various models. If one shot a musket at a target 30 feet wide and 6 feet high, at a distance of a hundred paces, about 75 percent of the shots would land. However, in the heat of battle and the fog of war, with targets moving and shooting back at you, this figure could dwindle as low as 5 percent.

One historian looked at the data and concluded that for every battlefield death, 459 musket balls were fired. Another came up with a figure of one out of 162. Yet another proposed a one out of 227 calculation. For my amateur musings, I took the rounded average: one out of every 282 shots were lethal.

So if you were in a formation of a hundred infantrymen, facing another similar formation at a hundred yards of basically open field, advancing and firing upon one another, what are your statistical chances of survival?

Well, consider the fact that the musket could be fired twice a minute and each engagement lasted about ten minutes. That’s about two hundred shots a minute heading at you and your fellow men. Two thousand in a typical encounter. If 5 percent hit their mark, then a hundred musket balls would land. One for each member of your group. Not all would be lethal, however.

Now look at that one out of every 282 shots being lethal. In this scenario, seven men would be killed. (2,000 shots divided by 282 lethal ones.) Though you’d have nearly a hundred percent chance, on average, of being hit, 93 percent of the time you’d survive with minor or major, nonfatal wounds. Still, I marvel at the courage these men must have had to fight these battles.

Review of the book to follow in a week or two.

411 Elm Street

 

Last Sunday the Mrs. decided to take us all out for sushi. But it couldn’t be any old sushi den. It had to be the hippest, trendiest sushi place in all of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. She is, after all, hooked into all the relevant Dallas Instagram pages and such. That’s just the way she rolls. The place she selected required days-ahead reservations, so we found ourselves heading south towards Dallas at 5 o’clock in the evening, sun still shining bright and high in the sky.

As we neared the city we saw this tower:

 

We’d been into the heart of Dallas two weeks earlier and the Mrs. remembered it vividly. “I need to know the story of that tower,” she said now.

So while seated and awaiting our sushi rolls I did some smart phone research. The tower struck me as an homage to Soviet-style architecture – klunky iron junk. But it does light up brightly in the night sky, with moving colorful images, as I remember from two weeks earlier. Turns out it’s called the Reunion Tower, and it was built in the late 70s, and it is an icon – but to the city of Dallas. It even appears every now and then in television shows, including, appropriately enough, that prime time soap opera from the early 80s, Dallas.

I also discovered the tower is 1,000 feet from the site of the JFK assassination.

Furthermore, a quick search revealed that Dealey Plaza was but two miles from the sushi restaurant in which we sat dining.

I announced an impromptu post-dinner destination. My wife would drive to Dealey Plaza, turn that left onto Elm Street, drive past the Texas School Book Depository, past the grassy knoll, and under the triple overpass. I’d be in the passenger seat snapping as many pics as I could on the cell phone. (I commissioned both girls to also take pics, but they were nursing engorged bellies in the backseat from overconsumption of raw fish.)

Here are the four best pictures I took:

 

1. The Texas School Book Depository

I didn’t catch it at first. We were driving along a canyon of somewhat rundown buildings when suddenly the street ahead opened up. My wife took a left (the Waze app was not clear on directions here) and stopped at a light. I glanced behind me and instantly and shockingly saw that famous façade: The TSBD! I had seen it hundreds of times in black-and-white photos, and here it was in color, framed by trees, behind us. I realized we took a wrong turn and were on Houston Street, so I told her to make a right onto Main. Elm would be parallel to our right.

I actually got shivers staring at this building, knowing the great transformative events that had taken place nearly a lifetime ago. It was very, very surreal.

 

2. The Grassy Knoll

I’d have to go back and check but I think there’s a wall in the center of the pic where the “Black Dog Man” – a darkened figure allegedly armed with a rifle – stood according to some conspiracy theorists. Zapruder would have been standing just beyond the right side of the picture when he filmed the assassination.

 

3. The Picket Fence

Witnesses say gunfire came from the direction of this fence, and some said they saw puffs of smoke. Another encountered a man on the other side who flashed some official credentials – the “Badge Man” – but who could have been an assassin himself. Afterwards investigators found cigarette butts and numerous footprints behind the fence.

 

4. The Triple Underpass

The famous underpass where the limo can be seen rocketing down at the tail end of the Zapruder film: Jackie Kennedy climbing on the trunk of the limo to retrieve parts of JFK’s head, a secret service agent hauling himself up on it to protect her, the vehicle accelerating from 10 mph to over 60 to get to nearby Parkland Hospital.

 

We went through the underpass and made a U-turn and drove back up, but couldn’t get onto Elm for a closer look with the way traffic is routed in the area (and which we were quite unfamiliar with). However I was satisfied with this initial run. A nice, neat, thrilling surprise.

I remember years back, a decade or so ago, wondering if I’d ever get the chance to walk through Dealey Plaza and see all the significant markers live and in person. Never would thought I’d be here now, but here I am. Still planning an extending visit here in the Fall, with more time to spend, walking about, and taking better photos. I’d also refresh my memory a bit better on the conspiracy angles, and if any information I’ve given here (most off the top of my head) is incorrect, it’s merely due to a rusty memory concerning my studies of that day in November 58 years ago.

 

Oh I Get it!

Seward

Family business brought me to the town of Florida, New York yesterday, and look what I discovered in a small alcove adjoining the building in which I had business:

Yes, this is a monument to William Seward, Secretary of State for Lincoln during the Civil War. As the obelisk states, he was born here in 1801, but what it does not state is that it was to a father who owned slaves. Throughout his political career Seward himself was a mild abolitionist. At age 37 he became governor of New York, and was re-elected to a second term. Later he became a two-term United States Senator, and would run against Lincoln in the election of 1860, only to lose and become Lincoln’s choice for Secretary of State.

What many don’t know is that the night Lincoln was assassinated, April 14 of 1865, there was a simultaneous attempt on Seward’s life. Indeed, the conspiracy also sought to murder Vice President Johnson. One of Booth’s co-conspirators, Lewis Powell, broke into Seward’s home, under the pretense of delivering medicine to the Secretary of State, who was in bed recuperating from wounds received in a hunting accident a few days earlier. Powell nearly shot Seward’s son dead, threw his daughter across the room, and stabbed the old man a half-dozen times about the neck and face.

Seward survived, recovered, and lived another seven years, gaining notoriety as the man who purchased Alaska from the Russians two years later. Powell, incidentally, was apprehended the next day and hung along with the surviving conspirators two-and-a-half months later. Justice was much more swift in the 19th century.

This statue / monument to Seward was unveiled in 1930. I thought about having the Mrs. take a pic of me standing next to it, but it was starting to snow and the wife don’t like the cold …

JFK

The JFK assassination … 56 years ago today.

I first became aware of it sometime around 5th grade or so. Must’ve been 1978, 79. It was one of those SRA kits we had to do back then. An SRA kit was a big box of about a hundred laminated cards the size of a regular sheet of paper. Each card contained a mini-article or a short story that sequentially got more difficult, harder and harder, as you progressed through them. You read through them, answered questions, and every now and then the teacher moved you up a level. Memory is vague, but I believe my first encounter with the events of November 22, 1963 was from one of those cards.

Then nothing for twelve or thirteen years. Oliver Stone’s JFK came out around Christmas 1991, and I saw it with pals and girlfriends in the theaters. It intrigued me, me who knew little of it as back then I was in the thick of my musician / band phase, and I rarely had time to crack a book (and if I did, it was of the horror King – Koontz variety).

Then again nothing for six more years till, one Memorial Day weekend, stood up by friends, I found myself alone doing laundry at my parents’ house. My stepfather had some books on the assassination, and on a whim I cracked one open. (Six Seconds in Dallas, by Josiah Thompson.) I was riveted, and read through the other two or three he had until the wee hours of the morning.

Then again nothing for nine years, till the bizarre fascination returned with a vengeance. From about 2006 to 2011 I bought a dozen or so books on the assassination and read or skimmed through them all. Not sure why, exactly, but I was taken in with the immensity of the alleged conspiracy. The little micro discrepancies as well as the big picture stuff. Like my childhood interest in Squatch and aliens and the paranormal, I was never a true believer, but I enjoyed the creepy campiness of what I was reading.

Then, in 2011, I read Gerald Posner’s book on the assassination and chased it with chunks of Vincent Bugliosi’s. Both men are firmly in the Lone Gunman camp, and both wrote with precision, power and passion and I was persuaded.

But I still appreciate a good conspiracy now and then.

Over the years I’ve posted a bunch of stuff on the topic here at the Hopper:

Overview, written on the forty-fifth anniversary

How I’d investigate the assassination, had I a couple million dollars cash laying around

Elm Street slow-down

How the cult of conspiracy has crept into our culture

Review of the exhaustive Norman Mailer book, Oswald’s Tale

How deep the rabbit hole

And yesterday’s entry into the labyrinth, White SuitConspiracy.

I think I’ll follow up this post with a list. Bloggers like lists! I like lists! I think I’ll list the best books on the JFK Assassination I’ve read, for those who may be interested in dipping a toe in the water or comparing notes …

Stay tuned.

White Suit Conspiracy

OK, I was slumming for a few days. I read a Jesse Ventura book on the JFK assassination. For those in the know, it was slightly closer to reality than the Jim Marrs book Oliver Stone used as background for JFK. But only slightly. Ventura’s book details 63 reasons to believe the assassination was the result of a conspiracy. Much was interesting, much was a rehash of the stuff I read during my JFK heyday a decade ago, and a lot was straight out of left field. It was a quick read, finished in about three hours.

It did mention a new take on small part of the assassination, one thing I had never read or heard before. I don’t believe it for a moment, but it struck me as intriguing.

Remember the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of the Dallas Police Department? He’s escorted out, handcuffed to a detective, into the midst of what seems to be a mob of a hundred men. One lurches forward, a nightclub owner name of Jack Ruby, a man who has absolutely no business in the basement of the Dallas Police Department, and fires a bullet at close range right into Oswald’s abdomen. The alleged presidential assassin dies an hour and 45 minutes later at Parkland Hospital, the same hospital that attempted to save Kennedy.

According to Ventura (or a source in his book, can’t remember which), all the men are wearing dark suits and hats except for one. One man is in a white suit and hat, and he’s the man cuffed to Oswald. The theory states that Ruby was sent in to kill Oswald and would recognize his victim because he would be to the right of the man in the white suit and hat.

Creepy. But I don’t think it’s true.

Take a look at this photo taken the instant Ruby fires at Oswald:

Yes, the detective next to Oswald wears what appears to be a white suit and hat (some describe it as “tan”). But in this picture I can see two guys with white/tan hats, one next to Oswald and the other immediately behind him, and at the right-side edge maybe another man with a white/tan suit. So perhaps this micro-conspiracy is a little half-baked.

But boy does that detective in the white suit and hat stand out.

The Military Presidents

A repost from seven years ago, since I’m in the thick of Shelby Foote’s second volume on the Civil War (Gettysburg, appropriately) –

* * * * * * *

Since I’ve been reading a lot of war literature these past ten months (Civil War, Mexican War, World War II, a bit of World War I), I thought it might be interesting this 4th of July to find out which of our presidents served in uniform.

Of the 43 men who attained the Oval Office (Grover Cleveland is counted as both the 22nd and 24th President, the only man to have two non-consecutive terms), how many do you think served in our military?

Hmm?

My first uneducated guess was probably about a quarter. Maybe a little more. At least twelve, maybe as much as fifteen. Off the top of my head I could name the obvious ones: George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, Zachary Taylor (he was obvious from my Mexican War reading). And I knew a slew had some military experience, like Bush Sr, Kennedy, Lincoln. That’s six. So I upped it two, two-and-a-half times.

How did I do?

Poorly.

Of the 43 men who became President of the United States, 31 served in the military. That’s 72 percent. A lot more than my maximum guess of 35 percent.

Want a ranking? Okay.


We’ve had three Generals of the Army become President – 

George Washington
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Ulysses S. Grant

They’re followed by five Major Generals – 

Andrew Jackson
William Harrison
Zachary Taylor
Rutherford B. Hayes
James Garfield (hey, he also came up with a proof for the Pythagorean theorem!)

Next comes four Brigadier Generals – 

Franklin Pierce
Andrew Johnson
Chester Arthur
Benjamin Harrison

Five Colonels – 

Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Polk
Theodore Roosevelt
Harry S Truman

Two Commanders in the Navy – 

Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard Nixon

Four Majors / Lieutenant Commanders – 

James Monroe
William McKinley
Gerald Ford
Millard Fillmore

Three Captains – 

John Tyler
Abraham Lincoln
Ronald Reagan

Two Lieutenants and two First Lieutenants – 

John F. Kennedy
Jimmy Carter
George H. Bush
George W. Bush

And, finally, one private – 

James Buchanan


Isn’t that interesting? I had no idea. This Fourth of July, let’s remember to thank them all for their service to this wonderful, great country of ours!