BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: AMERICANA

“I never saw an American man walk or stand well;…they are 
nearly all hollow chested and round shouldered.”
                                   Francis Trollope (1780-1863)
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GROUCHO MARX SEES JOE DIMAGGIO

‘P.S. I saw Joe DiMaggio last night at Chasen’s and he wasn’t wearing his baseball suit. This struck me as rather foolish. Suppose a ballgame broke out in the middle of the night? 
By the time he got into his suit the game would be over.”

Groucho Marx in a letter to Ace Goodman (January 18 1951) 
The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967)
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN-- TOO BIG TO CRY


"A few minutes after the Illinois Legislature elected 
Stephen A. Douglas rather than Lincoln Senator in
1858, the latter was asked by a friend, 'How do you 
feel? ' Said he: "I feel like the boy who stubbed his
toe; I am too big to cry and too badly hurt to laugh.'"

Paul F. Boller,Jr.  Presidential Anecdotes (New York:
Penguin Books, 1981)

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DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER & THE UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY

Dwight D. Eisenhower finished 1st in the competitive exam to gain entrance to the United States Naval Academy, but his application  was rejected because he would have been too 
old by several months when the next Academy year started.
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HERE LIES
A.TOOMB.          --The grave-marker of Andrew Toomb
BENEATH            in Scroto County, Ohio
A TOMB

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POLITICS & JOURNALISM

" If one morning I walked on top of the water 
across the Potomac River, the headlines  that
 afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM."
                                               
 Lyndon B. Johnson

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ON CASEY JONES

"Often regarded as a mythical folk hero, Casey Jones was actually an engineer, and from all accounts as brave as 
the song makes him out to be. His first name, however, 
does not derive from 'K.C.' for 'Kansas City' as often 
said; he waa born near Cayce, Kentucky, promnounced in 
two syllables , and from this fact came his nickname. 
(His real name was John Luther Jones.)
  " Nor was he a 'rounder,' in spite of the words of 
 the ballad ('Casey Jones was the rounder's name'). A 
'rounder' in railroad is a worker who moves from  job 
to job: but Casey Jones stayed with his line, the 
Illinois Central, until his death."

Tom Burnham. The Dictionary of Misinformation 
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1975)
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ON THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD DOUGHBOY-- SLANG FOR 
AN AMERICAN SOLDIER 

doughboy (n.)
"U.S. soldier," 1864, American English, said to have been 
in oral use from 1854, or from the Mexican-American War 
(1847), it is perhaps from resemblance of big buttons on 
old uniforms to a sort of cookie or biscuit of that name, 
a boiled dumpling of raised dough (attested from 1680s),
but there are other conjectures.

ONLINE ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY
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"During the Mexican campaign the American soldiers  called 
the Mexicans 'Adobe Boys' because their uniformds covered 
with mud, were the same color as the adobe huts. Then, 
during WWI, the word spelled 'doughboys' was used by 
American soldiers to describe themselves after they were
 covered with mud during the battles in France."

Sidney Skolsky 
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CHARLES G. DAWES & AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC

Not many Americans know the name Charles G. Dawes today,
 but they should. As one of only three U.S. Vice Presidents
 to receive the Nobel Peace Prize during their lifetimes 
(for his work to preserve peace in Europe), he’s reserved a place in the history books alongside Theodore Roosevelt 
and Al Gore. But perhaps even more notably, he’s also 
the only veep with a No. 1 hit pop song. Dawes was a self-trained pianist and flautist as well as a banker, and 
in 1911, 14 years before he’d become Calvin Coolidge’s
 Vice President, he wrote a short instrumental piece 
titled “Melody in A Major.” The song received some 
attention during Dawes’ lifetime, but it wasn't until 
1951 — the year he died — that American songwriter 
Carl Sigman put lyrics to Dawes’ creation and called it
 “It’s All in the Game.” Seven years later, Tommy Edwards
 became the first Black artist to reach No. 1 in the 
U.S. with his doo-wop-influenced rendition of Sigman’s
 song."

Interesting Facts (June 27, 2023)
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THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 1948

Thomas E. Dewey
To Truman said "Phooey!"
Harry S Truman 
to Dewey said  "&"∂$$%@&&*¢™#@*.

LJP

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