“My choice in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. To tell you the truth, there’s hardly any difference.”---Harry S. Truman
Ask any old gaffer, it wasn’t always like this. There was no President’s Day, just Abe Lincoln’s birthday on February 12, followed by that of George Washington on the 22nd. Troublemaker that he was, Abe did not even get a federal holiday but merely recognition in several states. Then, in 1968, the Government Committee on Consolidation and Retrofitting decided to create as many long weekends as possible for bankers and government employees. Adapting the same modus operandi as the Justice Department with its Witness Protection Program, they altered the identity of the holiday and moved it to a different place. When the law first took effect in 1971, the new holiday was snugged into the third Monday of February and popularly called President’s Day in honor of both Washington and Lincoln. Diehard supporters of short-lived President William Henry Harrison, also a son of February, applied for admission into the club but were denied. Officially, the name was never changed from Washington’s Birthday.
When we were kids, we knew two absolute truths about the Father of Our Country---he had wooden teeth and couldn’t tell a lie. Neither of these two things were even conceivable to your average child. Did the teeth stay in all the time or did they come out for occasional painting? And how could any self-respecting kid ever make it through childhood without manufacturing a whopper or two? Then, there was the story about the cherry tree which young George admitted to chopping down. What kind of parent gives their kid an axe? And if they do, what do they expect him to do with it? It’s an axe, right?
Abraham Lincoln was a notorious story-teller, a dog-lover as well, who at one time or another possessed almost every breed. He was fond of incorporating man’s best friend into his tales, one of which involved Union generals with a penchant for exaggerating their bravery.
“Those generals,” claimed Lincoln, “remind me of the fellow who owned a dog which, he insisted, liked to fight wolves. The owner would tell you the animal spent his entire day tracking down and killing wolves. One day, a group of the dog owner’s friends decided to organize a hunting party and invited him and the wolf-killing dog to go with them. The man seemed reluctant but was met with such scorn he was forced to go. The dog, on the other hand, was excited to be out in the woods and the hunting party was soon on its way.
Wolves were in abundance in the area and it wasn’t long before a pack was discovered. The dog saw the wolves, they spotted him and the chase was on. Pretty soon, they were all out of sight, but the party followed the sounds of the chase, eventually coming upon a farmer who stood leaning on his gate. ‘Did you see a wolf-dog and a pack of wolves run through here?’ they asked. He nodded in the affirmative. ‘How were they going?’ the hunters wanted to know. Pretty fast, said the farmer. ’And what was their position when you last saw them?’ The farmer chuckled. ‘Wal,’ he said, ‘the wolf-dog was running just a bit ahead.’
“And gentlemen,” chortled Lincoln, “that’s exactly where you’ll find most of those generals.”
The Rest Of The Stories
John Adams, the second president of the United States, would be the first chief executive to live in the White House, as yet unfinished. Adams was so excited by the prospect, he moved in while the paint was still wet, but only after enduring several hours lost in the woods of southern Maryland searching for the Executive Mansion. “It’s a large place,” he told the natives, looking for directions. “White. Big flag on top.”
Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams, was the sixth president. Every day, he would march down to the Potomac promptly at 5 p.m. for a nude swim. Anne Royall, the first female journalist, had often begged Adams for an interview but he always refused, leaving her with but one option. Anne went to the Potomac, took the president’s clothes from the river bank and refused to give them back. She went down in history as the first female to get an interview with a president. “He also had a small mole just below his….”
Andrew Jackson was the first American president to survive an attempted assassination. An unemployed house painter named Richard Lawrence approached Jackson as he left a congressional funeral and took one shot, then another, but his gun misfired. Jackson ran over and bopped him on the head with his cane.
Jackson, a notorious prankster, liked to amuse himself by moving his outhouses around so that needy people racing outside to use them would not find them in their usual spots. The president also had a pet parrot with an extensive vocabulary learned from his owner. When Poll (the parrot) was brought to his master’s funeral, he began spouting so many curse words he had to be quickly removed.
William Henry Harrison, our ninth president, was the only chief exec who had studied to be a doctor. He goes down in history as having the longest inaugural speech at 105 minutes. He also goes down in history as having the shortest term as president. During his windy inaugural message, he caught pneumonia and died 32 days after he gave the speech.
Rutherford B. Hayes was the 19th president of the United States, from 1877-1881. He won the presidential election by ONE electoral vote. Alexander Graham Bell personally installed the first telephone in the White House during Hayes’ tenure and the president never once forgot his number. It was 1.
“When is someone going to invent the Secret Service?”---James Garfield
James Garfield, the 20th president, had to be one of our favorites. The street we lived on as kids was named after him. Garfield, a man of many talents, was a big hit at parties with his ability to write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other, though who’d know what the hell he was saying? Alas and alack, Garfield was shot in 1882. For some reason, doctors couldn’t find the bullet. Alexander Graham Bell tried to find it with an electric probe he had invented, but no dice. Doctors kept probing the wound with non-sterile hands until Garfield was infected and died a few weeks after he was shot. Medical experts contend the president would have been just peachy if everyone had left him alone.
Grover Cleveland was both the 22nd AND the 24th president. How about that? He was also the first president to be married in the White House and the first to have a child born there. Cleveland is also the chief executive who dedicated the Statue of Liberty. Despite all the hubbub the office demands, Cleveland insisted on answering the White House phone himself. “Yes, this is Grover. No, I am NOT kidding! Really! No, I do NOT know what one little moron said to the other little moron….”
Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president, was the first and only whose grandfather, William Henry Harrison, was also president. His great grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence. He was the first president to be present at a baseball game and the first to install electricity in the White House. When Harrison was shocked by a jolt of electricity, no one in his family would touch the light switches any longer. They all went to bed with the lights on all night rather than regress to oil lamps.
Rub-a-dub-dub. Plus one.
William Howard Taft, the 27th president, was the first chief executive to own a car and the first to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game. He was also the heaviest president, weighing over 330 pounds at 6-2. He had to order a jumbo-sized bathtub after getting stuck in the original model. The new tub was thought to be big enough for four average-sized men but the White House staff could never prove it, being unabe to find four guys interested in frisking together.
Warren Harding, a gambler who once bet the White House china and lost it, was the 29th president. If you care, he had the biggest feet of all the presidents with a shoe size of 14. His administration with filled with scandals and he died in office, some say of a heart attack. However, rumors persist that his wife poisoned him for his (Hey Melania—Get this!) womanizing habits.
Calvin Coolidge was the 30th president of the United States and the first to light the National Christmas Tree. Coolidge was a quiet guy, didn’t like to talk much, even refused to speak on the White House telephone. Silent Cal, they called him. Once, a dinner guest bet another member of the dining party that she could get Coolidge to say more than two words. When she told the president about the bet, he said “You lose.”
Coolidge had an army of pets at the White House, including two white collies, an Airedale terrier, a Shetland sheepdog, 2 chows, a bulldog, a bird dog, two cats, several canaries, a mockingbird and a partridge in a prune tree. He also had a raccoon named Rebecca who was walked on a leash, another raccoon named Horace, a donkey, a bobcat, lion cubs, a bear, a wallaby and a pigmy hippopotamus. No….really….he did. Okay, except for the partridge.
Harpo Marx with President Truman
We’re Just Wild About Harry
When President Harry S. Truman returned from his famous Wake Island meeting with General Douglas MacArthur, a new issue of Newsweek magazine contained a remark attributed to Groucho Marx: “We wouldn’t have this mess if Truman was alive,” it read. Sounds like Groucho, right? He denied making the remark and wrote to the president telling him so. Truman wrote back thanking him for his correspondence. Later, Groucho had lunch with Truman at the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City. When Truman was operated on in 1954, Marx wrote to say “I don’t know if you will remember me but I am the chap with the black moustache, glasses and increasing baldness who, I hope, convulses you every Thursday night on television.” He wished Truman a speedy recovery and invited him to visit him on the West Coast. “I can put you up. I have a swimming pool and a pool table. I shoot very badly and if you are any good with the cue, you could possibly win enough to pay your expenses.” Harry declined the invitation but assured Groucho he could never forget the Marx Brothers.
Truman is famous for his remark, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Groucho referred to this in a 1967 letter to HST. Marx had sent Truman a copy of his book, The Groucho Letters, and Truman wrote back “I have been flipping through the book with a great deal of amusement.” This was an unsatisfactory response for Groucho, who wrote back “You said that you have been flipping through the pages with a great deal of amusement. Read it, Harry. It’s full of wisdom and if you can’t stand the heat in the kitchen, read it in the living room.”
Harry Truman had long been an advocate for Holocaust survivors and the displaced Jews of World War II, earning himself the Harry S. Truman Forest in Israel. Groucho’s brother Harpo sent Truman a letter and photo of himself standing there in 1963. “There were several reasons for taking this photo---mostly my great pride in there being such a place as this forest and a man such as you. My reason for sending it is simpler. I thought you might like to know how tall and strong the trees have grown.” Harpo died a year later, Truman died in 1972 and Groucho in 1977.
A lot of Americans took to Truman because in him they saw a fellow just like themselves. But Harry was a sharp cookie. Consider some of his remarks:
“All the president is, is a glorifed public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.”
“I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.”
“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.”
“It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.”
“When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It’s for the Presidency.”
“The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.”
“Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.”
“May the sun never set on American baseball.”
And, of course, our favorite:
“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Republican. But I repeat myself.”
Where have you gone, Harry Truman-o, the nation lifts its weary eyes to you….
That’s all, folks.
