Dave Barry.
Dave Barry Slept Here

Dedication

   For Robert, who really was born on October 8

Introduction

   “WE THE PEOPLE ...” These are the words that begin the Declaration of Independence. Or maybe we are thinking of the Gettysburg Address. No matter. The point is, these words are written on an extremely historic yellowed document that we, as a nation, keep in a special vault in Washington, D.C., where, each working day, it is cherished by employees of the Document Cherishing Division of the Federal Bureau of Historic Yellowed Objects.
   And with good reason. For these three words remind us that we live in a nation that was built by human beings. It is easy to forget this, especially when we are riding in the coach section of a commercial aircraft, sitting on seats apparently built by and for alien beings who are fourteen inches tall and capable of ingesting airline “omelets” manufactured during the Korean War (1949-1953). At times like this, it is important that we look back at the people and the events that got us to where we are today, for, in the words of a very wise dead person, “A nation that does not know its history is doomed to do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.”
   And that was the main reason why we wrote this book, aside from wanting to become so wealthy that we shall routinely leave motor yachts as tips. Tragically, many Americans know very little about the history of their own country. We constantly see surveys that reveal this ignorance, especially among our high school students, 78 percent of whom, in a recent nationwide multiple-choice test, identified Abraham Lincoln as “a kind of lobster.” That’s right: more than three quarters of our nation’s youth could not correctly identify the man who invented the telephone.
   What is the cause of this alarming situation? Partly, of course, it is that our young people are stupid. Young people have always been stupid, dating back to when you were a young person (1971-1973) and you drank an entire quart of Midnight Surprise Fruit Wine and Dessert Topping and threw up in your best friend’s father’s elaborate saltwater aquarium containing $6,500 worth of rare and, as it turned out, extremely delicate fish. (You thought we didn’t know about that? We know everything. We are a history book.)
   But another major part of the problem is the system used to teach history in our schools, a system known technically, among professional educators, as the Boring Method. You were probably taught via this method, which features textbooks that drone on eternally as follows:

Early Explorations

   The region was first explored by the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Rigeur (1534-1579), who in 1541 was commissioned by King Charles “Chuck” IV of England (1512-1583) under the terms of the Treaty of Weems (1544) as authorized by Pope Bilious XIV (1511-1598) to end the Nine Years, Three Months, and the Better Part of a Week War (May 4, 1534-August 8, 1543, at about 1:30 P.m.), under which France (1243-present) would cede an area “north of the 17th parallel, west of the 163rd longitude, and convenient to shopping” to England in exchange for those lands originally conquered by Denmark during the Reign of Large Unattractive Feathered Hats (1387-1396) and subsequently granted to Italy under the Treaty of ...
   And so on. Little wonder that our young people choose to ignore their nation’s history and instead focus their intellectual energies on procuring designer clothing. Not that you, the reader, should feel superior. You are probably not such a history whiz yourself. In fact, we are willing to bet that you cannot even name the man who served as Gerald Ford’s running mate in 1976 (It doesn’t matter.). Which is why it is a darned good thing for all concerned that this book has been published. Because this book does not waste the reader’s valuable brain cells with such trivial details as when various events actually occurred. Oh, sure, it contains many exact dates—it is, after all, a history book—but you will notice that we have tried to make these dates as easy as possible to remember by making them all start with “October 8,” as in “October 8, 1729” or “October 8, 1953.” We chose this particular date after carefully weighing a number of important historical criteria, such as (a) it is our son’s birthday.
   In our view, the one-date system of history has the same advantages, in terms of simplifying things, as the metric system of measurement, which has taken this country by storm, and we look forward to the day when history textbooks carry this system even further and contain only one year, so that a child will be able to get all the way through the secondary educational system without ever having to grasp any concept other than “October 8, 1947” (We were born in 1947.). And that is only one of the many revolutionary advances contained here. Another one is: We have left out the dull parts. Take, for example, the Role of the Plow in the Settlement of Nebraska. “The hell with the Role of the Plow in the Settlement of Nebraska”—that is our motto. This philosophy left us with plenty of extra room, which enabled us to provide you, the reader, with large, restful expanses of white space, as well as numerous riveting “behind-the-scenes” historical anecdotes that you will not find in a normal history book because we made them up.
   In conclusion, we hope that, in reading this work, you gain a deeper and broader and taller understanding of how We, the People, through the sweat of our armpits, created this great nation, a nation of which it can truly be stated, in the words of the famous folk singer Woody Guthrie (October 8, 1912-October 8, 1967.):
   This land is your land, This land is my land, Looks like one of us Has a forged deed to this land.

Chapter One. Deflowering A Virgin Continent

   Hundreds of thousands of years ago, America was very different. There was no civilization: no roads, no cities, no shopping malls, no Honda dealerships. There were, of course, obnoxious shouting radio commercials for car dealerships; these have been broadcast toward Earth for billions of years by the evil Planet of Men Wearing Polyester Sport Coats, and there is nothing anybody can do to stop them. But back then, you see, there was no way to receive them, so things were pretty peaceful.
   The only inhabitants of America in those days were animals such as the deer and the antelope, who were engaged primarily in playing; and the buffalo, or “bison,” (Meaning “buffalo.”) who mainly roamed. The bison must have been an awe-inspiring sight: millions of huge, majestic animals, forming humongous herds, their hooves thundering like, we don’t know, thunder or something, roaming from the Mississippi River all the way across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains, which they would smash into headfirst at speeds ranging upward of thirty-five miles per hour, then fall down. They were majestic, those bison, but stupid.
   But all of this changed twenty thousand years ago with the construction of the Land Bridge to Asia, which was completed on October 8. Suddenly, the ancestors of the Indians and the Eskimos, clans who called themselves “The Ancestors of the Indians and the Eskimos,” had a way to get to North America. Still, it was not an easy trek: They had to traverse hundreds of miles of frigid snow-swept wasteland, which was cold, and each was permitted to carry only two small pieces of luggage. Eventually they arrived in an area very near what we now know as Kansas, and they saw that it was a place of gently rolling hills and clear flowing streams and abundant fertile earth, and they looked upon this place, and they said, “Nah” (“No.”). Because quite frankly they were looking for a little more action, which is how come they ended up on the East Coast. There they formed tribes and spent the next several thousand years thinking up comical and hard-to-spell names for major rivers. Also they made a great many Native American handicrafts such as pots, although at the time there was not much of a retail market for these, so the Native Americans wound up having to use them as household implements.
   During this same period another group of early Americans, the Mayans, were constructing a culture down in Mexico featuring a calendar so advanced that it can still, to this very day, tell you where various celestial bodies such as Venus and the Moon will be at any given moment. They will be out in space, states the miraculous Mayan calendar.
   Meanwhile, way the hell far away in someplace like Finland, Vikings were forming. These were extremely rugged individuals whose idea of a fun time was to sail over and set fire to England, which in those days was fairly easy to ignite because it had a very high level of thatch, this being the kind of roof favored by the local tribespeople—the Klaxons, the Gurnseys, the Spasms, the Wasps, the Celtics, and the Detroit Pistons. No sooner would they finish thatching one when the Vikings, led by their leader, Eric the Red (so called because that was his name), would come charging up, Zippos blazing, and that
   would be the end of that roof. This went on for thousands of years, during which time the English tribespeople became very oppressed, not to mention damp.
   Then there arose among them a young man who many said would someday become the king of all of England because his name was King Arthur. According to legend, one day he was walking along with some onlookers, when he came to a sword that was stuck in a stone. He grasped the sword by the handle and gave a mighty heave, and to the amazement of the onlookers, he suddenly saw his shadow, and correctly predicted that there would be six more weeks of winter. This so impressed the various tribes that Arthur was able to unite them and drive off the Vikings via the bold and resourceful maneuver of serving them relentlessly bland food, a tradition that remains in England to this day despite numerous armed attempts by the French to invade with sauces.
   Thus it was that the Vikings set off across the Atlantic in approximately the year 867—on October 8—to (a) try to locate North America and (b) see if it was flammable. Did these hardy adventurers reach the New World centuries before Columbus? More and more, historians argue that they did, because this would result in a new national holiday, which a lot of historians would get off. But before we can truly know the answer to this question, we must do a great deal more research. And quite frankly, we would rather not.

Discussion Questions

   1. Would you buy a car from a dealership that ran one of those obnoxious shouting radio commercials? Neither would we.
   2. Have you noticed that you hardly ever see Zippo lighters anymore? Explain.
   3. Are you aware that there is a traditional British dish called “cock-a-leeky soup”? Really.

Chapter Two. Spain Gets Hot

   For many hundreds of years, European traders had dreamed of discovering a new route to the East, but every time they thought they had found it, they would start whimpering, and their wives would wake them up. So they continued to use the old route, which required them to cross the Alps on foot, then take a sailing ship across the Mediterranean to Egypt, then take a camel across the desert, then take another sailing ship back across the Mediterranean, then change to the IRT Number 6 Local as far as 104th Street, and then ask directions. Thus it would often take them years to get to the East, and when they finally did, they were almost always disappointed. “This is it?” they would say. “This is the East?”
   And so by the fifteenth century, on October 8, the Europeans were looking for a new place to try to get to, and they came up with a new concept: the West. The problem here was that the immediate west was covered with the Atlantic Ocean, which represented a major obstacle because back in those days many people believed that the world was flat. Today, of course, we know that this is true only in heavily Protestant states such as Iowa, but back then people believed that if you went too far, you might sail right off the edge. In fact, you would probably want to sail off the edge, since the average sailing ship had about the same size and seaworthiness as a Yugo hatchback.

The Fortunate Invention Of Certain Navigational Aids

   Then, fortunately, along came the invention of certain navigational aids. Chief among these was a very realistic doll that, when you inflated it, could ... WAIT! Wrong kind of aid! Our mistake! Chief among the navigational aids was the compass, a device that, no matter where it is, always indicated which way was north. This was a tremendous boon to early navigators, although its value was diminished somewhat by the fact that the early voyages always ended with the ship banging into the polar ice cap and everybody aboard freezing to death. But eventually the compass was improved by the addition of such features as: south, west, and even east again, and soon hardy (In the sense of, “not tremendously bright.”) mariners were able to venture far out into the Atlantic before getting lost. Still, it was difficult to recruit new sailors, even with the use of extensive advertising campaigns built around catchy themes such as:
   BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE! Become a Hardy Mariner
   “Get Lost and Die.”
   Eventually the breakthrough came that made modern navigation possible: the discovery of longitudes and latitudes. These are thin black lines that go all around Earth in a number of locations, so that all you have to do is follow them, and you have a surefire way of getting wherever it is they go. Of course they are difficult for the untrained eye to see; the early sailors had to squint at the water for hours, which is why so many of them ended up having to wear eye patches, especially in movies. But the hardy sacrifice those early mariners made for us will never be forgotten, not as long as we are reading this particular paragraph.
   Meanwhile, in nearby Italy, Christopher Columbus was forming. As a youth, he spent many hours gazing out to sea and thinking to himself: “Someday I will be the cause of a holiday observed by millions of government workers.” The fact that he thought in English was only one of the amazing things about the young Columbus. Another was his conviction that if he sailed all the way across the Atlantic, he would reach India. We now know, thanks to satellite photographs, that this makes him seem as stupid as a buffalo, although it sounded pretty good when Columbus explained it to the rulers of Spain, Ferdinand and his lovely wife, Imelda, who agreed to finance the voyage by selling six thousand pairs of her shoes.
   And so Columbus assembled a group of the hardiest mariners he could find. These fellows were so hardy that, had the light bulb been invented at that time, it would have taken at least three of these mariners to screw one in, if you get our drift. On October 8, 1492 they set out across the storm-tossed Atlantic in three tiny ships, the Ninia, the Pina Colada, and the Heidy-Ho III. Fortunately Columbus kept a detailed log, so we can get some sense of how long and arduous their journey was from revealing excerpts such as this:
   October 8—Boy, is this journey ever long! Also arduous!
   But finally, after numerous storm-tossed weeks, just when it seemed as if Columbus and his men would never see land again, there came an excited cry from the lookout.
   “Hey!” he cried. “we forgot to put up the sails!”
   And so they all had a hearty laugh, after which they hoisted the damned things. A few hours later, on October 8, they came to an island, where Columbus and a convenient interpreter waded ashore and had the following historic conversation with a local tribal chief:
   COLUMBUS: You guys are Indians, right?
   TRIBAL CHIEF: Kham anonoda jawe. (“No. We came over from Asia about twenty thousand years ago via the Land Bridge.”)
   COLUMBUS: Listen, we have spent many weeks looking for India in these three storm-tossed, vomit-encrusted ships, and we have cannons pointing at your wigwams, and we say you are Indians.
   TRIBAL CHIEF: B’nomi kawa saki! (“Welcome to India!”)
   Thus the white men and the Native Americans were able, through the spirit of goodwill and compromise, to reach the first in what would become a long series of mutually beneficial, breached agreements that enabled the two cultures to coexist peacefully for stretches of twenty and sometimes even thirty days, after which it was usually necessary to negotiate new agreements that would be even more mutual and beneficial, until ultimately the Native Americans were able to perceive the vast mutual benefits of living in rock-strewn sectors of South Dakota.

The Age Of Exploration

   When Columbus returned to Spain with the news of his discovery, everybody
   became very excited and decided to have an Age of Exploration. Immediately, a great many bold adventurers—Magellan, da Gama, de Soto, Chrysler, Picasso, and others—set forth on Voyages of Discovery, only to have their ships bang into each other and sink at the harbor entrance. But they boldly set out again, this time in alphabetical order, and soon they had made some important discoveries, the most important one being that what Columbus had discovered was not India at all, but America, which explained why the inhabitants were called “Native Americans.” In Mexico and South America, the Spanish also discovered highly advanced civilizations, which they wisely elected to convert into ruins for use as future tourist attractions.
   One of the most famous Spanish explorers was Juan Ponce de Leon (literally, “John Punched the Lion”), who came to Florida seeking the mythical Fontainebleau Hotel, where, according to legend, if you had one drink, you could have another one for half price on weekdays between 4:00 and 5:30 P.m. He never found it, but he did meet some natives who at first seemed friendly—they gave him a free meal and guided tour of the area—but who then subjected him to a vicious primitive ritual wherein they trapped him in a small room and repeatedly explained to him the benefits of “time-sharing” in a “vacation resort community” and refused to let him leave, until ultimately he was forced to take his own life.

The Decline Of Spain

   On October 8, 1565, Spain declined.

Discussion Questions

   1. There’s no IRT stop at 104th Street, is there?
   2. Did you ever purchase time in a time-sharing resort? You did? Ha-ha!
   3. This question is not technically related to the early Spanish explorations, but we are curious: In the song “luie luie,” by the Kingsmen, do you think they are singing dirty words? Cite examples.

Make A Simple Compass

   Here’s a simple experiment that you might want to try if there is absolutely nothing else going on in your life. All you need is a cork, a bar magnet, and a pail of water. Simply attach your magnet to your cork, then drop it into the water, and vola (literally, “you have a compass”)—you have a compass. How does it work? Simple. Notice that, no matter which way you turn the bucket, the cork always floats on top of the water (unless the magnet is too heavy). Using this scientific principle, early hardy mariners were able to tell at a glance whether they were sinking!

Chapter Three. England Starts Some Fun Colonies

   By the sixteenth century at approximately 4:30 P.m., England was experiencing a Renaissance. This took the form of Ben Jonson and of course William Shakespeare, the immortal “Barge of Avon,” whose plays continue to amuse us to this very day with such hilarious and timely lines as:
   What dost thine tinder knowest of thine face?
   The weg-barrow canst not its row’l misplace!!
   (From Antony and Cleopatra IV. Return of the Fungus People, Act II, Scene III, seats 103 and 104.)
   Ha-ha! Whew! Excuse us while we wipe away several tears of helpless laughter! This Golden Age in England was called the “Elizabethan Era” after the queen, Elizabeth Ann Era, who was known as the “Virgin Queen” because it was not considered a tremendously smart move to call her the “Really Ugly Queen.” She inspired many men to leave England on extremely long voyages, which led to expansion.
   The first prominent expanding English person was Sir Francis Drake, who, on one of the most famous dates in English history, October 8, defeated the Spanish Armada (“El Armadillo de Espana”). This was a biggish armada that had ruled the seas for many years, and nobody could defeat it until Sir Francis Drake employed the classic military maneuver of hiding his entire fleet inside a gigantic horse shaped like a Trojan. As you can imagine, this maneuver worked to perfection, and soon the English “ruled the waves,” which led to the writing of the hit song “Hail Britannica”:
   Hail Britannica! Britannica dum de dum. Dum dum, da de dum dum Da DEE dum DUM!
   (repeat chorus)
   (and books, a series of twenty-four unopened volumes.)

The Establishment Of The Lost Colony

   Another English person who existed at around this time was Sir Walter Raleigh, who invented chivalry one day when he encountered the Virgin Queen trying to get across a mud puddle, and he put his cloak over her head. She was very grateful and would have married him immediately, except that he suddenly remembered he had an appointment to sail to North America and found a Lost Colony. He went to an area that he called Virginia, in honor of the fact that it was located next to West Virginia, and he established a colony there, and then—this was the darnedest thing—he lost it. “Think!” his friends would say. “Where did you see it last?” But it was no use, and this particular colony is still missing today. Sometimes you see its picture on milk cartons.
   Still, the English were undaunted. “Who the hell needs daunts?” was the English motto in those days. And so a group of merchants decided to start another colony, which they called Jamestown (later known as “Jimtown,” and still later, “JimBobtown”), located on an estuary (A person who works for an insurance company.) of the Lester A. Hockermeyer, Jr., River. The leader of Jamestown was “John Smith” (not his real name), under whose direction the colony engaged in a number of activities, primarily related to starving. They also managed to form the first primitive corporation, and, despite the fact that they lacked food and clothing and housing, they courageously engaged in various corporate activities. They would lie around in the snow, dictating primitive memoranda to each other about the need to look into the feasibility of forming a committee to examine the various long-term benefits and drawbacks of maybe planting some corn. Somehow, they managed to survive those first few harsh years, although at one point they were forced to eat their own appointment calendars.
   There is an old Virginia saying that goes: “The darkest part of the tunnel is always just before the tollbooth.” And this indeed turned out to be true, for just when the Jamestown colonists were about to give up, they came up with a promising new product concept: tobacco. With remarkable foresight, these early executives recognized that there was a vast untapped market for a product that consumers could set on fire and inhale so as to gradually turn their lungs into malignant lumps of carbon. Soon the Jamestown colony was shipping tons of tobacco back to England, and had even begun to develop primitive advertising campaigns featuring pictures of rugged men on horseback and slogans such as:
   SMOKE TOBACCO
   “It won’t gradually turn your lungs into malignant lumps of carbon!”
   Although of course there have been many scientific advances in advertising, such as having the rugged men ride in helicopters, this basic message remains in use to this very day.
   Another concept that was in the early stages of development in Virginia was democracy. By 1619, a rudimentary legislature had formed, and several years later it had mutated into two houses, called “the upper house” and “Steve.” For a bill to become law, it had to be passed by a two-thirds majority of both houses, after which it was sent back to the king, James II, who would tear it into pieces the size of postage stamps and feed them to his dog, Bart XI. So it was not total democracy as we know it today, but it was a start.
   Yet all was not well. Because at the same time the clouds of religious intolerance, propelled by a large arctic air mass of hatred, were forming a major storm front of persecution, which was to result in one of the most moving stories of courage and faith in all of American history, not to mention a four-day weekend. We refer, of course, to the Puritans.

The Story Of The Puritans

   The Puritans were an extremely religious group who lived in England and did not believe in drinking or dancing or having sex with hooved animals. They were very unpopular. So they decided to sail over to the New World, where they would be free to worship as they chose and live in peace and harmony and set fire to suspected witches.
   And thus it was that in some specific year, the Puritans, taking with them little more than stupid hats and an unwavering faith in Providence, (A city in Rhode Island that, unbeknownst to the Puritans, had not been founded yet.) set sail across the dark and treacherous North Atlantic in the Mayflower, a cramped, frail ship of Panamanian registry. The crossing was brutally harsh. Only two days out of port, a fierce storm destroyed most of the shuffleboard equipment. As giant waves washed over their tiny ship, tossing it about like a cork, the Puritans, realizing their fate was not in their own hands, got down on their knees and, drawing on some inner strength, threw up. Then they looked toward the heavens and vowed that if, by some miracle, they were able to make it safely to their destination, they were definitely going to get a new travel agent.
   Finally, just when the Puritans were starting to think that maybe drinking and dancing wouldn’t be so bad after all, the lookout spotted the coast of Massachusetts. This resulted in a tremendous hue and of course cry aboard the ship as the Puritans rushed excitedly up on deck and shoved the navigator overboard, because he was supposed to be aiming for Virginia.
   By that point, however, the Mayflower, which had no shower facilities, was starting to smell like the postgame laundry hamper of a professional ice-hockey team, so the Puritans decided to row ashore and land at Plymouth Rock (So called because it is shaped like a Plymouth.). But first, for insurance purposes, they all had to sign the Mayflower Compact. This was a historic document that set forth what would become some of our most fundamental and cherished principles of government, as is shown by this direct quotation:
   6. No spitting on the sidewalk.
   When the Puritans landed, they found themselves in a harsh and desolate world, and they probably would have starved to death if not for the help of a friendly local Native American named Squanto (Meaning “Native American.”). Squanto looked at the Puritans barging around the wilderness with their hats and their comical Puritan muskets shaped like trombones at the end, and he took pity on them. “Look,” he said, because fortunately he spoke English, “what you need to do is plant some corn.” And so they did, and after a couple of months it grew and ripened, and the Puritans, who by this time were hungrier than ever, boiled it and ate it with butter and a little salt. “Next time, you should try shucking it first,” advised Squanto. Eventually, as you would expect, a year went by. The Puritans decided that, all things considered it had been a pretty good year, except for the fact that the vast majority of them were at that point dead, so they decided to have the first traditional Thanksgiving. They invited Squanto over to help in eating a turkey (“Next time,” advised the ever-helpful Squanto, “try cooking it first”), after which they watched the Lions-Bears game. Then the Puritans told Squanto that they were very grateful for all he had done, but that frankly they would not be needing him anymore, so he and his tribe should go find some other area to be natives of. In the next several years the Puritans became prosperous and built New England, parts of which can still be seen today.

Discussion Questions

   1. Why only hooved animals?
   2. Did any of your ancestors come over on the Mayflower? So what?
   3. If you were on the Detroit Lions, would you be ticked off about always having to play on Thanksgiving? Explain.

Chapter Four. The Colonies Develop A Life-Style

   The typical life-style in the early colonies was very harsh. There was no such thing as the modern supermarket, which meant that the hardy colonists had to get up before dawn and spend many hours engaging in tedious tasks such as churning butter. They would put some butter in a churn, and they would whack it with a pole for several hours, and then they’d mop their brows and say, “Why the hell don’t we get a modern supermarket around here!” And then, because it was illegal to curse, they would be forced to stand in the stocks while the first tourists took pictures of them.
   So it was harsh, all right, but nevertheless more and more persecuted religious minorities—Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Scientologists, Cubs fans—were flocking to freedom and establishing religious colonies such as Maryland and Heritage Village, USA, site of the New World’s first known Christian water slide.

The England-Holland Rivalry

   Meanwhile, England got into a rivalry with Holland. Although today Holland is known primarily for being underwater and making Heineken beer, in those days it claimed a great deal of land in the New World because of the important explorations of the brave Dutch explorer for whom the Hudson River is named, Henry Hudson River (should have been in Chapter Two, but we forgot.). Based on these explorations, Holland claimed all of the land west of the Atlantic Ocean and north of the equator. This angered the English, who claimed all of the land in the world and a substantial section of Mars, and so on October 8 a rivalry broke out between the two nations.
   The largest Dutch settlement at the time was New Amsterdam, located on the site of what is now New York City and which had established a thriving economy based on illegal parking. So one day an English individual named James “Duke of” York sailed into the harbor with his fleet and captured New Amsterdam without the Dutch firing a single shot. He was able to do this because at the time the city’s commissioner for the Department of Firing Back was testifying before the Special Grand Jury to Investigate Municipal Corruption, which is Still in session. And thus was the name of New Amsterdam changed to “The Big Apple.”
   Meanwhile, more colonists were arriving, a good example being William Penn, who founded the colony that still bears his name, New Jersey. But life in the New World continued to be harsh, with most colonists leading a hand-to-mouth existence. “Take your hand out of your mouth!” their mothers were always shouting, but you know how it is with colonists. What they really needed, to get themselves off their duffs, was for trade to develop. Luckily, several days later this occurred.

The Development Of Trade

   One morning the colonists noticed that the New World contained a number of products that were not available in Europe, such as turpentine, which could easily be obtained in the colonies simply by boiling trees. Soon the colonists were sending barrels of turpentine across to England, where the English people would dump it on the ground, because, let’s face it, a little turpentine goes a long way. Then the English people would fill the boat up with some product they had a surplus of, such as used snuff, and they’d send it back to the colonies; and then the colonists would retaliate with, say, barrels of dirt, and so on, until trade had escalated to the point where the two sides were sending entire boatloads of diseased rats back and forth.
   But life was not all hard work in the colonies. Culture was also starting to rear its head, in the form of the Early American Novel. The most famous novelist of this era was Cliff, the author of the famous Cliff Notes, a series of works that are still immensely popular with high school students. The best known, of course, is The Scarlet Ladder, which tells the story of a short man named Miles Standish, who lived in a tall house with seven people named Gable, only to be killed in a sled crash with an enormous white whale. This was to become a recurring theme in colonial literature.
   But little did the colonists realize, as these cultural and economic developments were taking place, that they were about to become involved in friction with the French. The cause of this was ... Hold it! We have just received the following:
   EDUCATIONAL ADVISORY ALERT
   A REVIEW COMMITTEE CONSISTING OF EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS WITH DOCTORATE DEGREES AND INITIALS AFTER THEIR NAMES HAS DETERMINED THAT, SO FAR, THIS HISTORY BOOK is NOT MAKING ENOUGH OF AN EFFORT TO INCLUDE THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF WOMEN AND MINORITY GROUPS. UNLESS SOME EFFORT Is UNDERTAKEN TO CORRECT THIS SITUATION, THIS BOOK WILL NOT BE APPROVED FOR PURCHASE BY PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEMS IN ABSOLUTELY VAST QUANTITIES.
   Another important fact we just now remembered is that during the colonial era women and minority groups were making many contributions, which we are certain that they will continue to do at regularly spaced intervals throughout the course of this book. But right now, let’s get back to:

Friction With The French

   French traders came to the northern part of the New World to barter with the Native Americans for their pelts of beavers, minks, otters, elks, muskellunges, and so forth. The two sides quickly learned to communicate with each other using a stripped-down bartering language, as shown by this painstakinly researched historical re-creation:
   FRENCH TRADER: How does this look?
   NATIVE AMERICAN: Honey, that pelt is you!
   FRENCH TRADER: Really, Red? You don’t think it’s too bunched at the hips?
   NATIVE AMERICAN: Listen, bunched at the hips is the look in the New World.
   FRENCH TRADER: I’ll take it!
   Soon the French, aided by Native American guides, were penetrating deep into North America in search of matching belts, shoes, and other accessories. By the late seventeenth century, pioneering French designers such as Marquette
   and Joliet (most of them went by only one name) had made a number of major fashion advances in the New World. The basis of the entire French colonial philosophy was natural fibers, in stark contrast to the British, who were already using water-driven looms to make primitive polyesters. It was only a matter of time before friction broke out in the form of:

The French And Indian War

   The French and Indian War is highly significant because, as David Boldt (A friend of ours. You don’t know him.) points out, it had a stupid name. It sounded like the French were fighting the Indians, whereas in fact they were supposed to be on the same side. The British didn’t even realize they were supposed to be in this war until several years after it started, by which time the French and the Indians, totally confused, had inflicted heavy casualties upon each other. So England won the war, and on October 8 the French king, Louis the Somethingth, signed the Treaty of Giving Away Canada, under which he gave away Canada. “Que enfer,” he remarked at the time, “cest seulement Canada” (“What the hell, it’s only Canada.”).

Discussion Questions

   1. How come, if the country is called “Holland,” the people are called “Dutch”?
   2. Have you ever noticed that on those rare occasions when you do need turpentine, the can, which you bought in 1978 and have been moving from household to household ever since, is always empty?
   3. Do you feel that people who insist upon referring to themselves as “doctor” simply because they hold Ph.D. degrees, which are about as rare as air molecules, tend to be self-important weenies? And what about the use of the word “professional,” as in “automotive sales professional”? Does that make you want to puke, or what? Explain.

Chapter Five. The Birthing Contractions Of A Nation

   What caused the American Revolution? This is indeed a rhetorical question that for many years historians have begun chapters with. As well they should. For the American Revolution is without doubt the single most important historical event ever to occur in this nation except of course for Super Bowl III (Jets 16, Colts 7. This historian won $35.).
   One big causal factor in the Revolution was that England operated under what political scientists describe as “The Insane Venereally Diseased Hunchbacked Homicidal King” system of government. This basically means that for some reason, again possibly the food, the English king always turned out to be a syphilitic hunchbacked lunatic whose basic solution to virtually all problems, including humidity, was to have somebody’s head cut off. There was one king, Henry “Henry the Eighth” Viii, who could barely get through a day without beheading a wife. It reached the point, with Henry, where the clergyman had difficulty completing the wedding ceremony:
   CLERGYMAN: I now pronounce you man and ... WATCH OUT! (SLICE)
   This style of government was extremely expensive, especially in terms of dry-cleaning costs, and as a result the kings were always trying to raise money from the colonies by means of taxation. This was bad enough without representation, but what really ticked the colonists off were the tax forms, which were extremely complicated, as is shown by this actual example:
   To determineth the amounteth that thou canst claimeth for depreciation to thine cow, deducteth the amount showneth on Line XVLIICX-A of Schedule XIV, from the amount showneth on Line CVXILIIVMM of Schedule XVVII ... No, waiteth, we meaneth Line XCII of Schedule CXVIILMM ... No, holdeth it, we meaneth ...
   And so on. In 1762 the king attempted to respond to the colonists’ concerns by setting up a special Taxpayer Assistance Service, under which colonists with questions about their tax returns could get on a special toll-free ship and sail to England, where specially trained Tax Assistors would beat them to death with sticks. But even that failed to satisfy the more radical colonists , and it soon became clear that within a short time—possibly even in the next page—the situation would turn ugly.

The Situation Turns Ugly

   One afternoon some freedom-loving colonists known as the Boston Patriots were sitting around their locker room, trying to think up ways to throw off the yolk of colonial oppression. Suddenly one of them, Bob, had an idea: “Hey!” he said. “Let’s dress up like the locals and throw tea into the harbor!”
   Instantly the other Patriots were galvanized. “What was that?” they shouted. “A galvanic reaction,” responded Bob. “Named for the Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), who conducted experiments wherein he sent electrical currents through the legs of frogs.”
   But the Boston Patriots were not the only people engaging in inhumane scientific research during the colonial era. Another person doing this was Benjamin Franklin, who, in a famous experiment, sought to prove his theory that if you flew a kite in a rainstorm, a huge chunk of electricity would come shooting down the string and damage your brain. Sure enough, he was right, and he spent the rest of his days making bizarre, useless, and unintelligible statements such as: “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Eventually he became so dodderingly pathetic that he had to be placed in charge of the U.S. Postal Service. Also around this time women and minority groups were accomplishing a great many achievements.
   But getting back to the Boston Patriots: Later that night, they boldly carried out Bob’s bold plan of dressing up as Native Americans and throwing tea into the harbor, but for some reason this did not result in Independence. “Maybe we should also toss in some lemon,” somebody suggested. And so they did this, and then they tried some Sweet ‘n’ Low; still no sign of Independence. Also the harbor was starting to look like a toxic-waste dump, which did not go unnoticed by early ancestors of future president George Herbert Walker Piedmont Harrington Armoire Vestibule Bush.
   This angered the king, so he ordered Parliament to pass the Stamp Act, under which every time the colonists made a purchase, the cashier would give them some stamps, and they had to paste these into books, which was even more boring than churning butter. When the colonists had acquired a certain number of stamps, they were required to go down to the Royal Stamp Redemption Center and exchange them for cheap cookware (4.5 million) or tacky folding card tables (13 billion). As you can imagine, this was less than popular with the colonists, whose anger was eloquently expressed by Tom Paine in his fiery pamphlet Common Sense, which, in its most famous passage, states: “How many fondue sets does any one colonial family need?”
   This further enraged the king, who, as you have probably gathered by now, had the political savvy of a croissant. He ordered Parliament to pass the Irritation Acts, whose entire purpose was to make life in the colonies even more miserable. These included:
   1. The Sneeze Shield Act, requiring that all colonial salad bars had to have shields suspended over them—allegedly for “sanitary” purposes, but actually intended to make it difficult for short colonists to reach the chick-peas.
   2. The Pill Blockade Act, requiring that colonial aspirin bottles had to come with wads of Cotton stuffed in the top, making the aspirin virtually inaccessible, especially to colonists with hangovers.
   3. The Eternal Container Act, requiring that colonists who purchased appliances had to save the original packing cartons forever and ever, passing them down through the generations, or else they would void their warranties.
   All of these factors caused the tension in the colonies to mount with each passing day.
   It was amid this climate of rising tension and anger, with a 50 percent chance of lingering afternoon and evening violence, that the First Continental Congress was held. It met in Philadelphia, and its members, realizing that the actions they took in this hour of crisis could very well determine the fate of the New World, voted, after many hours of angry debate, to give themselves a pay raise. There was no turning back now. Clearly, the stage had been set for the Discussion Questions.

Discussion Questions

   1. Do you think Unitas should have started for the Colts?
   2. What the hell are chick-peas, anyway?

Chapter Six. Kicking Some British Butt

   The Revolutionary War began with the famous Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, immortalized in the well-known verse:
   Out of the bed and onto the floor; Fifty-yard dash to the bathroom door!
   Whoops! Our mistake. This verse comes from the famous song “Midnight Attack of Diarrhea,” which used to absolutely slay us when we were campers at Camp Sharparoon (1953-1956.). The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere is also very inspirational. By day, Revere was a Boston silversmith (A person who smithed silver.), but by night, like so many patriots during the Revolutionary era, he had insomnia. He would lie awake, tossing and turning, until finally one night, irritated by lights that somebody kept shining in his window from the Old North Church, he just flipped out. He leaped onto his horse and raced off into the night, shrieking. This infuriated a group of British soldiers, who marched out after him, but they, too, were noisy, because in those days—remember, this was literally centuries before the discovery of the Rolling Stones—the British had a terrible sense of rhythm (they were mostly white guys) and could march only with the aid of drums.
   So what would happen is, Paul Revere would come shrieking through a picturesque slumbering New England town at 2:30 A.m., and the townspeople, who were already uptight because of the mounting tension described previously, would come rushing out in their pajamas, really ticked off, and the first thing they’d see were these British soldiers barging down the street, whanging on their drums as though it were halftime at the Rose Bowl, and as you can imagine it was not long before violence erupted in the form of the Battle of Lexington.
   Battles in those days took longer than they do today. First off, it took a while for the British to form into strict military formations, which, when viewed from the air, spelled out nationalistic slogans such as GO BRITS! This delay caused a great deal of irritation among the patriots:
   PATRIOTS: C’mon! Aren’t you guys ready yet??
   BRITISH: Not yet! Say, can you chaps give us a hand? We need two more men to cross the “T.”
   Another problem was that the guns they used in those days, called muskets, took forever to load. First you had to put your powder in, then you had to put in a little piece of flint, then you had to ram some wadding down there, then you had to put in about a quarter teaspoon of paprika, and finally you had to put in your musket ball, which usually popped right back out again because there was hardly any room. It took so long to complete the Battle of Lexington that the two sides were nearly four hours late to the next scheduled event, the Battle of Concord. This was where the Americans invented the innovative guerrilla tactic of rushing up to the British, who were still dithering around with their formation (“Dammit, Nigel! You’re supposed to be part of the ‘O’!”), and bonking them manually over the heads with their unloaded muskets.
   And thus the first round of the Revolutionary War went to the rebels. But Independence was not to be bought cheaply, for soon the king was sending reinforcements, seasoned troops who could form not only words, but also a locomotive with moving wheels. The rebels, realizing that they were in for a long, hard fight, decided to form the Second Continental Congress, whose members voted, after a long and stormy session, to grant themselves only a cost-of-living increase.
   But this Continental Congress also knew that they would need an army, and they knew just the man to lead it—a man who was universally respected and admired, a man who had the experience and leadership needed to organize troops and lead them into battle. That man, of course, was: Dwight Eisenhower. Unfortunately, he would not be born for at least another dozen chapters, so they decided to go with George Washington, known as “The Father of His Country” because of such exploits as throwing a cherry bomb across the Potomac.
   As leader of the American forces, Washington faced a most difficult task, because the Continental Army was poorly equipped. Just to cite one example, it had no soldiers. When Washington wanted to do the “Cadence Count” marching song, he would have to do both the “Sound off.” and the “One! Two!” part.
   Eventually, however, Washington was able to recruit some troops via a promotion wherein if you enlisted in the army, you and a friend got an all-expenses-paid Winter for Two at Valley Forge. Nonetheless, the American troops were poor and ill trained. Many of them wore rags on their feet. They also wore their shoes on their heads. These were not exactly nuclear physicists, if you sense our meaning. But they were patriotic men, and they had a secret weapon that the king had not bargained on: “Yankee Doodle.” This was the Official Theme Song of the American Revolution, and when the Americans Marched into battle singing the inspirational part about how Yankee Doodle “stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni,” the effect on the British troops was devastating. “He called it what?” they would ask each other in confusion, thus giving the Americans the opening they needed to rush up and whack them with muskets.
   This forced the king to try a new ploy: He sent over the Hessians, who spoke no English and consequently paid little attention to “Yankee Doodle.” That was the good news for the British side. The bad news was, the Hessians were actually German, which meant that the words they formed in their battle formations were humongous. For example, their equivalent Of GO BRITS! was: WANN FAHRTDERSUGAB EIN UMWIEVIELUHRKOMMTERAN! It would sometimes take them days to form a simple preposition.
   Meanwhile , in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress, in an atmosphere of crisis, was trying to write the Declaration of Independence. The responsibility for this task had originally been assigned to the Special Joint Committee for Writing the Declaration of Independence, whose members immediately voted to go on a fact-finding mission, with their spouses, to the French Riviera. It Soon became clear that it was going to take them a long time just to declare their souvenir purchases, let alone independence, so the task fell to Thomas Jefferson. On a historic night in 1776, the lanky red-haired Virginian picked up a quill pen and began scratching on a historic piece of parchment. He worked all night, and by morning he was ready to show his results to the others.
   “Aren’t you supposed to dip the pen into the ink?” the others asked.
   And so the lanky red-haired Virginian went back to work for another historic night, and by dawn he had produced the document that has come to express the ideals and hopes and dreams of an entire nation.

The Declaration Of Independence

   When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them,
   a decent respect to the opinions of mankind require that they should get some sleep. Because I have been up for two nights now, declaring independence, and I may be a lanky Virginian but I am not a machine, for heaven’s sake, and it just doesn’t make sense to sit here scrawling away these compound-complex sentences when I just know nobody’s going to read them, because nobody ever does read all the way through these legal documents. Take leases. You take the average tenants, and you could put a lease in front of them with a clause about halfway through stating that they have to eat toasted moose doots for breakfast, and I guarantee you they’ll never read it. Not that it would make any difference if they did, because tenants ignore most of the rules anyway, such as the rules about not flushing inappropriate objects down the toilet. Ask any landlord what he spends most of his time doing, and the odds are he’ll answer, “Pulling inappropriate objects out of tenants’ toilets.” I know one landlord who found a gerbil in there. Who the hell would do a thing like that?
   A cat, yes. I could see that. I could see giving a modest rebate for that. But not a gerbil. I gotta lie down.
   The members of the Continental Congress were extremely impressed by what Jefferson had written, at least the part that they read, and on the following day, October 8, the nation celebrated its very first July Fourth. The members took turns lighting sparklers and signing their John Hancocks to the Declaration, with one prankster even going so far as to actually write “John Hancock.” But soon it was time for the Congress to return to the serious business at hand: issuing press releases.
   Meanwhile, women and minority groups were making many important contributions. So were the French, who supported the patriot cause and sent over many invaluable fashion hints. But still the American troops were badly outnumbered, and they probably would never have won if not for the occurrence of:

The Turning Point

   This turning point occurred in Trenton, New Jersey, where the Hessians had decided to spend Christmas, which should give you an idea of how out of it they were. As night fell, they got to drinking heavily and singing “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” which takes forever in German, so it was the ideal time for the Americans to attack. Unfortunately, the ice-infested Delaware River lay between the two armies. The situation looked bleak, and all eyes turned to George Washington.
   “We’ll row over there in boats,” he said, displaying the kind of leadership that he was famous for.
   And so they climbed into some boats, and, after pausing briefly to pose for a famous oil painting by Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868.), they captured Trenton while suffering virtually no casualties, although a number of them did get urinated on. It was a major victory for the Americans.
   But the Revolutionary War was not over yet. No, the historic Treaty of Ending the Revolutionary War was not to be signed for five more long years, years of pain, years of sacrifice, and—above all—years that will not be included in this book, because at the rate we’re going through history here, we’re never even going to get to the Civil War.

Discussion Questions

   1. Have you ever flushed anything inappropriate down a toilet? Explain.
   2. How come, in the famous oil painting by Emanuel Leutze, it looks like George Washington has a group the size of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in his rowboat?
   3. Whatever happened to the Hessians, anyway? You never see them around.

Chapter Seven. The Forging Of A Large, Wasteful Bureaucracy

   Against all odds, the colonists had won the war against England; now they faced an even greater task: planning the victory party. Who should be invited? Where would they put their coats? These were just two of the questions confronting the leaders of the fledgling nation. Also, extreme factions in several states felt that there should be some kind of government.
   And so the leading statespersons from all thirteen states gathered in Philadelphia for a Constitutional Convention. There, over the bitter objections of conservatives, they voted to approve the historic Fashion Statement of 1787, under which delegates were required to wear knee pants, tight stockings, and wigs accessorized with ribbons. It was a radical pronouncement, and the delegates paid a high price for it—nearly half had to purchase completely new wardrobes. The convention had established that the old way of doing things was not going to be acceptable, which meant that they also had to come up with a bold new designer look for the government.
   But there was much disagreement among the delegates about exactly what this look should be. Some wanted a weak president and a strong legislature. Some wanted a smart president and a dumb legislature. Some wanted a very short president and a deaf legislature. The New York delegation, typically, wanted a loud president and a rude legislature. Day after day the delegates argued, but they seemed to be getting no closer to agreement, and the new nation was in danger of collapsing before it ever really had a chance to get started. But just when the convention appeared to be at a total impasse, the aging statesman Benjamin Franklin rose to his feet and, as the other delegates listened raptly, emitted a three-foot streamer of drool. The others alertly took this to be a sign from the wily veteran Communicator that it was time to ratify the U.S. Constitution, and so they did.

The U.S. Constitution

   The Constitution divides the federal government into three equal branches:
   1. Mammoth, labyrinthian departments set up for purposes that no individual taxpayer would ever in a million years voluntarily spend money on.
   2. Mammoth, labyrinthian departments set up for purposes that probably made a lot of sense originally, but nobody can remember what they are.
   3. Statuary.
   This separation of powers creates a system of checks and balances, which protects everybody by ensuring that any action taken by one part of the government will be rendered utterly meaningless by an equal and opposite reaction from some other part.
   The highest-ranking officer in the government is the president, who is elected to a four-year term after a three-year, nine-month campaign in which he is required to state that he has a Vision and plans to provide Leadership. The president’s primary duties are to get on helicopters; bitch about Congress; and send the vice president abroad to frown with sorrow at the remains of deceased foreign leaders.
   The Constitution also provides for the election of a Senate, which consists of two white men in gray suits from each state; and a House of Representatives, which consists of three or four hundred men named “Bob” or “Dick” with blond wives whose hobbies are gardening, furniture, and the mentally retarded. The primary duties of the members of both houses of Congress are:
   1. Running for reelection.
   2. Having staffs.
   3. Getting subsidized haircuts.
   4. Sending out newsletters featuring photographs of themselves standing next to the president, designed to create the impression that the president is relying upon them for advice and counsel, when he is in fact trying to remember who the hell they are.
   How a Bill Becomes a Law
   First the bill secretes a substance that it uses to form a cocoon, and then it ... No, sorry. That’S how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. The way a bill becomes a law is:
   1. A member of Congress notices that there is some problem afflicting the nation. For example, he might notice that the nation is not observing a sufficient quantity of idiot official days and weeks, such as National Tractor Mechanic Awareness Week, and so he introduces a bill to correct this problem.
   2. The bill is referred to a committee, which forms a subcommittee for the purpose of going to Geneva, Switzerland, to see if there are any facts there that might be useful.
   3. The bill is reported back to the committee, which holds hearings and receives testimony from interested parties such as the American Aspirin Bottle Manufacturers Association.
   4. Needed amendments are attached to the bill, for example an amendment designed to protect the American consumer from the potential dangers of aspirin bottles manufactured by unfair foreign competitors.
   5. The bill is reported out of the committee.
   6. Everybody goes on vacation for a couple of weeks.
   7. The bill is reported back to the committee.
   8. The bill is reported to the police.
   9. The Supreme Court declares the bill to be unconstitutional.
   10. The Cheese stands alone.

The Bill Of Rights

   The first ten amendments to the Constitution are known as “The Bill of Rights,” because that is what everybody calls them. These amendments spell out the basic rights that all of us enjoy as Americans:
   The First Amendment states that members of religious groups, no matter how small or unpopular, shall have the right to hassle you in airports. The Second Amendment states that, since a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, you can buy high-powered guns via mail order and go out into the woods with your friends and absolutely vaporize some deer. The Third Amendment states that you don’t have to quarter troops inside your house. “You troops are just going to have to sleep on the patio” is a perfectly constitutional thing for You to tell them. The Fourth Amendment states that if your aunt had testicles, she would be your uncle. The Fifth Amendment states that your Fifth Amendment rights cannot be violated until you are advised of them. The Sixth Amendment states that if you ar accused of a crime, you have the right to a trial before a jury of people too stupid to get out of jury duty. The Seventh Amendment states that if you are in the Express Lane, and you have more than one item of produce of the same biological type, such as two grapefruit, you have the right to count these as one item in order to keep yourself under the ten-item limit. The Eighth Amendment states that if You are seated directly in front of a person who has to comment on every Single scene in the movie—and we are talking here about Perceptive Comments, such as when a movie character is getting into his car and the person behind you says, “He’s getting into his car now!”—then you have the right to go “SSSHHHHH?” two times in a warning manner, after which you have the right to kill this person with a stick. The Ninth Amendment states that you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. The Tenth Amendment states that, OK, if your neighbor’s wife is dropping a lot of hints, really coming on to you, that is a different matter.
   Ratification of the Constitution
   it took a long time for the states to ratify the Constitution, because in those days communication was difficult. After a state legislature had voted for ratification, a messenger would be dispatched on horseback to carry the word to the new nation’s capital. Often he would ride for days over poor roads through sparsely populated wilderness areas until he realized that the new nation had no capital. “Ha-ha!” he would remark to his horse. “That darned legislature has tricked me again!” Then he would be attacked by bears. Clearly a capital was needed. The logical choice seemed to be Washington, D.C., a city blessed with a natural beltway teeming with consultants.
   Also we should keep in mind that women and minority groups were continuing to make some gigantic contributions.

The Election Of The First President

   The leading contender in the first presidential election race was George Washington, who waged a campaign based on heavy exposure in media such as coins, stamps, and famous oil paintings. This shrewd strategy carried him to a landslide victory in which he carried every state except Massachusetts, which voted for George McGovern.
   And thus it was that on October 8, the newly sworn-in president stood before a large cheering throng of his fellow countrymen and delivered his famous inaugural address, in which he offered the famous stirring words “We cannot [something] the [machines? birds?] of [something] will never [something]. As far as I know.” Unfortunately, there were no microphones back then. This was only one of the problems facing the fledgling nation, as we shall see.

Discussion Questions

   1. How come history books never have sex scenes? You know, like: “James Madison, unable to restrain his passion any longer, thrust his ink-engorged pen into the second draft of the Federalist papers.
   2. Scientists tell us that the fastest animal on earth, With a top speed of
   120 feet per second, is a cow that has been dropped out of a helicopter. How long, traveling at top speed, will it take the cow to travel 360 feet?

Chapter Eight. A Brash Young Nation Gets Into Wars And Stuff

   Once the federal government was organized, the biggest problem was how to pay off the fledgling nation’s massive war debt. The Founding Fathers were starting to get disturbing letters like this:
   Dear Mr. Father:
   This is the fourth time we’ve written regarding your outstanding balance of $23,784,982.34. While we certainly value your fledgling business, we must inform you that unless you immediately make arrangements to repay this amount, we will regretfully have to return you to British rule.
   Sincerely,
   The VISA Corporation “More Powerful than God”
   Fortunately, one of the Founding Fathers was a shrewd financial thinker named Alexander Hamilton, who came up with an idea for repayment of the debt based on a concept so brilliant—and yet so simple—that it remains extremely popular with governments to this very day.
   “Let’s print money with our pictures on it,” Hamilton suggested.
   And so they did. The hardest part was deciding which Founding Father would get to be on which denomination of bill, an issue that led to the infamous duel between Hamilton and Aaron Burr, both of whom wanted to be on the fifty. Burr won the duel in overtime, although years later he died anyway, little realizing that his great-great-grandson Raymond Burr would go on to become one of the widest actors in American history.

The Election Of 1792

   George Washington decided to run for reelection in 1792, because he felt that his work was not finished. In fact, it wasn’t even started, because, the roads being what they were, he had spent his entire first term en route from his Virginia home to the temporary U.S. capital in Philadelphia. His slogan was:
   VOTE FOR GEORGE WASHINGTON
   “He’s Almost As Far As Baltimore.”
   Washington was reelected unanimously and reached Philadelphia several months later, only to learn that the capital was now operating out of Washington, D.C., which he managed to reach just in time to deliver his famous farewell address, containing the prophetic warning “We should get [something] has to [something] these darned [something] complex all over the place.”

The Rise Of Political Parties

   With Washington no longer on the scene, political parties began to form, the main ones being the Republicans, the Federalists, the Sharks, the Home Boys, the Del-Vikings, and the Church of Scientology. The major issue dividing these parties was whether the United States should enter into an alliance with France in its war with Britain. It was not an easy decision: On the one hand, France had provided invaluable support during the Revolutionary War, support without which the colonies might never have achieved their independence from the brutal tyranny of England; on the other hand, France contained a lot of French people. You tried to form an alliance with them, and all they did was smirk at your pronunciation. Ultimately a compromise was reached under which the United States signed a treaty with brutal, tyrannical old England, and sent the wily veteran diplomat Benjamin Franklin over to mollify France with a nice basket of apples, which he ate en route.
   In 1796 John Adams was elected as the nation’s second president, thanks to the support of the Anal Compulsive Party, whose members believed that henceforth presidents should be elected in alphabetical order so that it would be easier to remember them all during history tests. It was during Adams’s administration that the famous “XYZ Affair” took place. What happened was, Adams sent a diplomatic mission over to France to protest the fact that the French were seizing American ships and redecorating them by force. When the Americans got to France, the French foreign minister told them to meet with three secret agents, known only as “X,” “Y,” and “z.”
   “If you can guess their real names and occupations,” the French foreign minister said, “you’ll receive diplomatic recognition and the Brunswick pool table!
   Unfortunately the Americans could correctly identify only one agent (Kitty Carlisle.) and never reached the bonus round, but they did receive some lovely consolation prizes.
   Another major event to occur around this time was the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it illegal to engage in acts of sedition with an alien unless you were both consenting adults. This so enraged the voters that they elected Thomas Jefferson as the third president, thus ruining the alphabetical-order concept and plunging the nation into what historians refer to as the Era of Presidents Whose Names Nobody Can Remember, which did not end until President Evelyn Lincoln.
   But this did not stop women and minority groups from continuing to achieve many noteworthy achievements.
   Meanwhile, Jefferson faced the issue of what to do about the Barbary States, a group of small pirate nations on the Mediterranean that were preying on international commerce by sailing out to passing merchant ships and demanding spare change. Most major nations were paying bribes, or “tribute,” to the Barbary States in exchange for safe passage, but Jefferson angrily rejected this idea with his famous epigram “The hell with those dirtbags.”
   So he sent some warships over there to explain to the pirates, in diplomatic terms, the various international diplomatic implications of having their bodies perforated by eight-inch cannonball holes, and the pirates agreed to cool it. This bold action by Jefferson established an honorable American tradition of “getting tough” with terrorists that continued in the United States until the latter half of the twentieth century, when it was replaced by the tradition of “calling a press conference and threatening to get tough” with terrorists.

The Louisiana Purchase

   While this was going on, England and France were at war with Spain. Or perhaps England and Spain were at war with ... No! This is it: France and Spain were at war with England. But only because Germany did not exist at the time. As far as we know.
   Anyway, the result was that for some reason France decided to sell a large piece of property in North America. The French government put the following advertisement in The New York Times real estate section:
   NICE PIECE OF LAND approx. 34 hillion jillion acres convenient to West perfect for growing nation.
   So Jefferson did a little checking and he found that this property was in fact zoned for Westward Expansion, and he made an offer of $12 million. The French countered with $15 million, but they also threw in the appliances, and they had themselves a deal. After the closing ceremony, Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark off to hold the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It was hard going: The land was wild and untamed; there were hostile Americans around; and Clark bitched constantly because he thought it should be called “The Clark and Lewis Expedition.” Nevertheless, they were able to explore the entire region, and when they returned to Washington on October 8 they reported that it contained not just Louisiana; but a whole bunch of other states as well, although some of them, such as South Dakota, needed work.
   Meanwhile, in Europe, the situation worsened as England joined France in declaring war against Spain, unaware that France had joined Spain in declaring war against England, and that Spain, acting in haste, had accidentally declared war against itself. The United States tried, by depressing the clutch of diplomacy and downshifting the gearshift lever of rhetoric, to remain neutral, but it became increasingly obvious that the nation was going to get into a war, especially since it was almost 1812. A worried nation turned its eyes anxiously toward Thomas Jefferson, then had a good laugh at its own expense when it realized that he was no longer the president. He had been replaced by President James Something, Monroe or Madison, who immediately placed the country on a war footing (Whatever that means.).

The War Of 1812

   The War of 1812 began very badly, with British troops marching right into Washington and setting fire to it, severely disrupting restaurant operations and forcing hundreds of lobbyists to eat in the suburbs. But soon the tide started to turn the Americans’ way, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the nation’s first defense contractor, Ye Old General Dynamics Corporation, which signed a $23.7 million contract to produce a vital new weapons system, the X-97 laser-controlled “Thunderfire” Musket , an innovative concept that promised to give U.S. soldiers a real technical edge on the field of battle. Unfortunately it was not ready for actual testing until 1957, when it blew up.

The Treaty Of Ghent

   This sounds pretty boring to us so we’re just going to skip right over it.

Discussion Questions

   1. Define the following: “dirtbag.”
   2. Just who is Kitty Carlisle, anyway?

Fascinating Historical Sidenote To History

   During the War of 1812, a young poet named Francis “Scott” Key watched the battle for Fort “Mac” Henry, and he was so moved by the sight of the American flag still waving in the dawn’s early light that he wrote the immortal words that Americans still proudly sing today:
   Take me out to the ball game Take me out with the croooowwwwd ...