In the collection of historical photographs you see the Montgomery County Court House that stands to this day in the center of downtown Dayton Ohio. The photo shows its construction in 1846. Since then many Presidents, civil rights leaders and presidential candidates have spoken on the front steps. Lincoln and JFK among them. I used to sit on the steps and eat my lunch when I worked in the vicinity at one time. Here is an excerpt from a long defunct Dayton newspaper critiquing Abe Lincoln's speech: The editor of the Dayton Daily Empire, a Democratic daily newspaper, wrote: "Mr. Lincoln is a tall, spare man, dark complexioned with a pleasant countenance, and a long, slender round head. He is not a very pleasant speaker. He cannot long retain a Dayton audience. The people look at him, listen a few minutes and then walk off." Here it is today, 175 years later...
Funny thing is that I found out about it reading a SciFi Novel on Time Travel. The 2 main characters accidentally end up in Deadwood in 1890 and get involved in the Indian situation in the Dakota's, they were surprised to read the editorials about this from Baum, they only knew him as the Wizzard of Oz guy...so I looked it up thinking well this is fiction so those editorials might not be true...but they were.
I was 10 years old. I had just served a Sunday Mass In Dayton, Ohio and my father came and picked me up. We stopped at the neighborhood tavern to pick up some hamburgers. I was sitting on a bar stool in Rudy's Tavern at age 10 when I watched Oswald's murder on live TV.
November 22, 1963, I was in History class at Chino Junior High School. We were studying presidential succession, when suddenly we heard a scream in the hall. Miss Clibon froze. We froze. The entire rickety old building went dead silent. After 5-6 seconds of staring at each other, we gave a nervous laugh and carried on. The scream had not come from a student and there were other weird noises like thumps against the wall. Finally we got back to business, when the noises suddenly returned. Miss Clibon, looking angry at the interruption, announced "I'll see what's happening!" She never came back. When the bell rang, I walked out into the hallway and complete chaos such as I have never seen. For three days the world of small town Chino, California was a bedlam of hysteria, grief and screaming. Teachers were crying, coaches and janitors were crying. Students were crying and everyone was on the verge of turning violent, but no one knew what to do. I passed the vice principal Mr. Beckedahl, but he was trembling and crying and appeared to be more confused than the students. A girl I knew, Diane Young, came up to me and said, "Did you hear that Kennedy is dead?" My heart sank. My best friend was Walter Kennedy and I thought she was talking about him. She said, "No, the president!" I didn't believe her, but one look in the cafeteria confirmed the worst. There were the coaches, holding themselves and crying uncontrollably against the walls. These were the guys who beat the Japanese in the Pacific War. All of them were local heroes and it had never occurred to me that they could cry. Several pushing matches broke out and one quick fight, but no teachers intervened. Nobody was in charge... After a lunch which wasn't eaten, because of the hysterical kitchen workers, I went to science class. The teacher was a former major league baseball player named Mr. Wendt. He never even took roll. He just sat at his chair, trembling and crying as we stared at him in silence. We heard the voice of our principal Mr. Kropp announce that school was canceled until the following Monday and that we should go home. This was the most rattled, fuzzy headed decision of all time. Where are a thousand young teenagers going to go in the middle of the day? On a Friday? Was he kidding? Fridays were when we scheduled our big fights after school, and the fight scheduled for that Friday was a duesy: Albert Rodriquez (local gangster who later died in prison.) vs. Allan Brooks (The big queer cowboy.) We white kids were waiting for the light to change as we stood along Riverside Drive. There were maybe 200-300 of us, mostly Okies and hillbillies ages 13-16. I was 13 and I had a problem. I despised the Okie kids and they hated me. They would challenge me at P.E. or before school with observations like, "Those priests aren't nothing." and "My dad says Catholics aren't really Christians." My real friends were across the street, waiting for us at Rodelo's Gas Station. Most of the 50-60 Mexicans there were friends of mine. We went to the same church, played baseball and chased the same girls. So which side was I going to be on? I just wanted to get the hell out of there. Suddenly, the fight began with the two groups still separated by Riverside Drive. In a huge upset, Big Queer Allan began to kick Rodriquez arse. He bloodied Albert's mouth and nose, then knocked him down. At this point, every Mexican in the downtown area jumped in and began to stomp Allan into the asphalt. One of the older Okies yelled, "Let's get the Mexicans!" All the white boys rushed across. When I say stomp, you should remember that all the Mexican boys had boots made for that purpose. They had metal taps covering the toes and 2 inch Cuban heels with metal taps in the back. The Okies wore motorcycle boots. As the scrum turned into a full scale race riot, I attempted to quietly make my getaway. One of the Okies saw me and yelled "Hey O'Connor, are you with us?" (Think fast!) I yelled "Sure, let's go!" I was running with a group of about 20-25 Okies who were chasing this skinny little Mexican kid down an alley. We thought we had him cornered when he jumped a fence and ran into a house. He came back out with his mother to confront the mob. Only a mother can stop a riot and I can still hear her voice in my head, "What's wrong with you!" "Have you no respect for your country?" The white boys slunk away as her son was flipping us off behind her back and grinning from ear to ear. There was nothing we could do. EVERY boy knows that you never mess with a mother. His mother could call your mother, then you would really get stomped. I decided to exit this fracas and started jogging in the direction of home. I made it as far as Gird Elementary School, when I ran into some rioters that I knew. They were setting up an ambush for the Mexicans in that area, when matters went from bad to worse. First Mr. Kropp, the principal showed up in his little Nash Rambler. I never figured how he got into that thing, because he was 6'6"... He had nothing to threaten us with. The riot was mostly his fault anyway for dismissing school early. Chino is an agricultural area and most students lived miles from campus. We were in the process of telling him to go to hell... when the Chino Police showed up and pulled their guns on us. I'm not kidding. They pointed their guns at a bunch of 13-15 year old boys. The police were rattled by the assassination and like all the other adults, they were confused. Joe Harich and I looked at each other, looked at the guns and rolled our eyes. Somebody counted 1-2-3 and we yelled "Go!" We all ran in different directions and I ran more than six miles... End of Part One
11/22/1963 Part 2 I arrived, out of breath, at my house on the north edge of town. No one greeted me or asked why I was home early. I found my mom sitting by the telephone, crying her eyes out. The telephone didn't work and she didn't understand why. What she didn't know was the entire telephone system of the nation was down and it would take awhile to get it restored. Most American women were housewives in those days. When the news of the assassination interrupted their soap operas, they rushed to the telephone to call their friends and talk about it. Every woman in America did this, all at the same time...more than fifty million of them and it crashed the entire telephone system for hours... In the living room, I was shocked to find my father home from work. (Lockheed) He hadn't missed a day of work in 17 years. It was the only time that I ever saw my father cry. He and JFK were born a few miles apart in New England; a few days apart; both were Irish-Catholic-Democrats and WWII veterans... My parents called me into the kitchen, where they were drinking as usual and they wanted my opinion. That had never happened before and they made a suggestion which was new also. Since it was Friday, and they wanted to watch the assassination news on the TV, why didn't I go to the movies with my friends? They would give me money. (That never happened before either.) So off we went; me, Danny Baker, Ralphie Mendoza, and a very abused looking Allan "The Big Queer Okie" Brooks. His face looked like an old Jack O'Lantern on the day after Halloween, but Danny's dad said that we had to take him or we couldn't go... The Fox Theater in Pomona was full with teenagers. All over America, parents had the same idea to get rid of the kids so that they could watch television and discuss what had happened. The theater itself was a sad place. There were several grown men in the crowd who just sat there sobbing. They had come into a darkened theater so that no one could see them crying... On Saturday, my mom had a medical emergency. She was rushed to the hospital to have gall bladder surgery, which created a new kind of chaos. None of us had ever been away from mom and my poor dad was totally helpless without her. He had been a professional tennis bum, living with his parents before he got married at age 32, and he took no responsibility for raising children. With her gone, who the hell was in charge? Me? On Sunday morning, the Dallas Police were going to move Oswald to the County Jail, next to the court house, in Dealey Plaza where the assassination had taken place. At my house, dad threatened me to make breakfast and "do something" before Oswald made his appearance on TV. I sprang into action. I went to the living room and grabbed my 3 year-old brother Mikey and put him in charge of assassination news. I placed his small chair directly in front of the television and gave him his orders. JO'Co: OK Mikey, when that rat Oswald shows up on the TV, your job is to yell "Here he comes!" Mikey: Got it! I can do it! I then returned to the kitchen to grab my other brother, Billy. He was 12 and never enthusiastic about any of my ideas, so I put him in charge of making breakfast. He sniveled and cried that he didn't know how, so I found an aluminum pan and hit him with it. "There's your pan!" I cranked up the gas on the stove and tossed in some eggs from the refrigerator. I supervised his sniveling incompetence for a minute, when he began screaming. The high gas flames caused the eggs to explode and the hot grease was hitting his bare arms causing him to scream. The hot grease also splattered on the floor causing him to slip and fall down. My dad came in yelling, "What the hell's going on in here?" I explained that my efforts to assist my incompetent brother were fruitless, because he was stupid and incapable of learning. I also advanced my theory that mom had always wanted a girl and Billy was the result. He replied that if Billy didn't stop screaming, he would ... Mikey yelled, "Here he comes!" as all three of us abandoned the exploding grease and chaos of the kitchen to witness the first live murder in television history. It took weeks for our family and our country to find it's balance again. Nothing was ever the same after that weekend. Something had died, but the '60s had been born. For better or worse, Lee Harvey Oswald had changed everything...
It probably was the single biggest life changing event modern US history. The innocence was gone. There was an episode of Mad Men that captured that day from a New York perspective. This nation has never fully recovered from JFK's assassination.
Ditto what George said. I was a sophomore at ND getting a haircut in my dorm when a guy poked his head in and said the President's been shot. I was a news announcer on the campus radio station , so I rushed to the studio in the tower of O'Shaughnessy Hall. All we had in those days was a wire machine. I stayed there with a small group and, for what seemed like forever (about an hour), watched all the updates coming over the machine. The announcement of his death hit me like a baseball bat. I walked out the door, sat on the steps, and cried. The football game with Iowa was cancelled (Our 2-7 record that season would have been 2-8 if the game had been played). The pall over the campus was heavy, and it lasted without letup until the Thanksgiving break.
It's been said by many modern historians that 1968 was the year that America came closest to civil war since the Civil War itself. I agree. It was also my senior year at Damien High School in La Verne, California. Our graduation day was June 4, 1968. There were plans to attend several graduation parties all over the valley that looked promising, while some of the guys planned to attend Robert F. Kennedy's victory party at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It was election day in the Golden State and several of the guys received invitations to the victory celebrations for having worked on the Kennedy Campaign. We really couldn't make a bad choice of where to go. A private Catholic school like Damien has no shortage of rich kids with connections, so anywhere we went figured to be a good time. Since my parents wouldn't allow me to have a driver's license, (My mom said, "Jimmy you're crazy, you'd just kill yourself.") I always just got a ride with my friends, who were presumably better adjusted than I was, and more mature because of their parents wealth. I rode with my football teammate Louis Lopez, who was from Hawaii. Nice guy, graduated from St. Mary's College of California then returned to Hawaii. Our plan was to attend the party at Joe Edmond's house in Diamond Bar, then finish at the parties in Claremont near the colleges. It was a good plan. Joe's dad was a rich guy who lived up on a hill and there figured to be public school girls in attendance. Our plan misfired when we began drinking as we tried to find the house. We couldn't even find the neighborhood. We drove around for hours, then finally gave up and headed back toward Chino. We were on Carbon Canyon Road, the only connector road between our valley and Orange County, when the music on the radio was interrupted. Senator Bobby Kennedy had been shot after giving his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel. We slammed on the brakes and just sat there listening. We hardly noticed another motorist who slammed on his brakes going in the opposite direction. The three of us just sat there listening in disbelief. We stopped at the Hull House in Pomona to eat, talk and sober up. The cook turned out to be a guy named Mike Gibson, whom I hadn't seen since kindergarten. He was shocked to get news of the assassination as were all of the customers in the restaurant. Everyone was bombarding us with questions as we calmly tried to explain that we had no special knowledge, we just heard it on the radio. Finally somebody in the kitchen came up with a radio and placed it on the counter. Everyone just sat there in silence listening to the terrible news without eating, ordering or serving... I got home around 4:00 in the morning. My dad was furious and came out to blast me, but I just pointed to the television and said, "Bobby Kennedy got shot." He looked like he'd been hit over the head with a Louisville Slugger. He just stood there and made me repeat it two more times. He finally turned away and walked back to the bedroom without saying another word. My mom came out, looking like she'd seen a ghost, and watched the television for a few minutes, then retreated to the bedroom in silence. She never spoke a word... The next day, I got ahold of my girlfriend (Diane) and we took a field trip on the trail of the assassins. Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty had held a news conference where he revealed the name of the assassin and his home address on Howard Street in Pasadena. We found the house a few blocks north of Foothill Blvd, directly across the street from Pasadena City College. It was Jackie Robinson's old neighborhood. Police were everywhere: LAPD, LACSD, Pasadena PD, and all kinds of suits with guns. I assumed those were Secret Service and FBI. We took lots of photos of Sirhan Sirhan's house and observed the suits interviewing his brother and neighbors. All of the streets were blocked off by black and whites to the point where we had difficulty finding our way out. We proceeded from there to the new LAPD headquarters downtown where the assassin was held, but the cops wouldn't allow anyone near the buildings. The parking lots were empty and the LAPD seemed determined to avoid having an Oswald style murder on their watch. As I took photos of their buildings, a cop came over and asked what I was doing. When I told him, he laughed and said simply, "Take your pictures and be on your way." It was not a suggestion...
Sirhan worked as an exercise boy for the horses at the Osterkamp Ranch in Corona. One of the Osterkamp kids was a student at Damien High School with me. I didn't know him well, because he was two grades behind me. He was a sophomore in 1968, when I was a senior. Sirhan was in love with his older sister, whose rejection of him affected his mind, according to psychiatrists who examined him. His job there ended when he was kicked in the head by a horse, which was another contributing factor...
Nebraska’s state flag celebrates the state’s first law: “No Blacksmithing within a mile of a residential structure.” Nebraska became the 37th state on March 1st, 1867. It would’ve become a state during the Civil War, but it was fat and wore glasses, so neither side wanted it on their team. The state flower of Nebraska is goldenrod, which should not be confused with any similarly-sounding James Bond or Austin Powers movies. The powdered soft drink Kool-Aid was invented in Hastings, Nebraska, and was originally sold by traveling salesmen who would kick down people’s doors and shout, “OH YEAH!!!” The tradition of planting trees on Arbor Day started in Nebraska City, Nebraska as a cheap way of marking the numerous graves of Kool-Aid salesmen. The state motto of Nebraska is “Corn, college football, and… um… more corn.” 40% of the munitions used in WWII had to be manufactured at the Naval Ammunition Depot in Hastings, Nebraska, since the rest of the state was rooting for Hitler. The world’s largest indoor rainforest is the Lied Jungle in Omaha, Nebraska, but it’s currently closed to tourists because Daryl Hannah keeps climbing the trees and flinging poo at people. Nebraska’s Ogala aquifer is the world’s largest underground water supply. It’s estimated to contain about 800 million gallons of water – about the same as Natalie Maines. Nebraska is the only state in the U.S. with a unicameral (one house) legislature, which is currently evenly divided between the Feed Corn and Sweet Corn Parties. Nebraska was the first state to complete its segment of the nation’s Interstate Highway system, due to its citizens near-insatiable hunger for something to do besides watch the corn grow, i.e. watching concrete solidify. Nebraska’s phenomenal corn production is due to a combination of modern irrigation techniques and good old-fashioned human sacrifice. The 9-1-1 emergency phone system was first developed in Lincoln, Nebraska as a replacement for their old emergency communications system of having hobbits light signal fires to call the Riders of Rohan. Nebraska’s famous landmark “Chimney Rock” was recently sold to the Pfizer corporation and is now known as “Viagra Point.” Omaha, Nebraska is home to the world’s largest coffee pot. While there, remember to tip the world’s largest waitress. Kearny, Nebraska is located exactly halfway between Boston and San Francisco. This does NOT make it homophobic. Don’t be so sensitive. Marlon Brando’s mother gave Henry Fonda acting lessons at the Omaha Community Playhouse. Unfortunately, she neglected to give him lessons on raising kids not to be commie-loving traitors. The world’s largest Woolly Mammoth specimen was found in Lincoln County, Nebraska. If its skin were stretched to its full size, it would cover enough area to make a thong for Michael Moore. The Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company’s corporate office has 7 full floors of underground offices, in one of which the Architect awaits Neo. The Nebraska Cornhuskers college football team made a NCAA record 35 consecutive bowl appearances. 36, if you count the “Still Looking For A Corporate Sponsor – [Your Name Here] Bowl.” The world’s first college course about Rush Limbaugh is taught at Nebraska’s Bellvue University. Topics include “Barking Moonbats – When To Hang Up” and “Things Not To Take On A Plane.” Nebraska gets its name from the Oto Indian word “nee-ba-sah”, meaning “Are you SURE we’re not still in Iowa?” The world’s largest porch swing is located in Hebron, Nebraska. It can seat 25 adults, or Michael Moore in a Woolly Mammoth thong. The Fur Trading Museum is located near Blair, Nebraska. Just take Highway 75 north from Omaha, then follow the wet pelt smell. The University of Nebraska – Lincoln campus boasts America’s largest weight room. It covers 3/4 of an acre and is currently celebrating its second full day of being steroid-free. Oops… Nevermind… Nebraska’s 1986 Governor’s race was the first in the nation to feature two women running against each other. Sadly, the final vote tally was not close enough to trigger the Jello-wrestling tie-breaker. Buffalo Bill held his first rodeo in North Platte, Nebraska, which – contrary to popular rumor – was NOT catered by Hannibal Lecter. Father Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1917. To this day, it remains one of the few places in America not infected with girl-cooties. Dancer Fred Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, although he had to leave the city after Ginger Rogers gave him cooties. Gerald Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and was the only US President to hold the office without having been elected to it – blatherings by Gore and Kerry to the contrary notwithstanding.
Book report on "The Last Stand" by Nathaniel Philbrick as recommended by Professor O'Connor. I thought I was fairly well versed on the topic but I learned a tremendous amount of history surrounding Custer and the battle. Using the vantage point of over 140 years to examine what happened, what struck me was the series of tactical blunders that lead up to the annihilation of Custer and the 7th. They grossly underestimated the amount of Indian warriors they were coming up against. Even with their scouts finding multiple trails of incoming braves heading toward Sitting Bull's camp they still were shocked to find out at the last moment that they were outnumbered almost 20-1. They split their force into three and then four different regiments with the idea of surrounding a village that was so vast that it was impossible. These different regiments had little or no communication with one another. They were seriously under supplied. They were using bolt action single shot carbines while the Indians were mainly armed with Winchester lever action repeating rifles with 17 shots between reloads. They did not bing enough grain for their horses and the grasslands were depleted so the horses were underfed, underweight and exhausted. A large portion of his men had never seen Indian fighting before. His two Majors, Reno and Benteen, had a host of issues. Reno was always drunk and exhibited panic at key moments and Benteen hated Custer and was generally indifferent to the mission in general. The actual battle took bout 20 minutes. Both the braves and the squaws took place in the butchering of the bodies. Many soldiers were unrecognizable, scalped and totally mutilated. Custer had one gunshot wound to his chest and another to the left temple. It has been thought that his brother Tom may have shot him in the head to save him from torture. Reno and what was left of his command and Benteen and his men escaped. Years later both Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse would be killed by their own people. Excellent read for anyone interested.
During grade school (40 years ago, egad!) our classes took several field trips to Custer's Last Stand at the Little Bighorn, and this was the #1 thing that was discussed during the tour. (At the time, it still wasn't uncommon for artifacts to be found during the field trips, though inevitably they were confiscated either on-site, on the bus back to school, or in school later that week as kids gathered around to look at it.) At the time, the theory was that Custer had shot himself has he was surrounded. At the time, it was also thought that only one cavalry survived, so what happened either came from discussions with the Indians or recreation of events from what remained of horse tracks, weapons, remains, etc. Both of these methods leave a lot to be desired, but the lessons of the event remain the same in any event. History is lost on (most) youth. I know I didn't appreciate the depth and richness of it at that age.