The Amazement Book

     A friend of mine recently passed away. That seems to be happening more and more frequently these days, but when I see each obituary of a friend or relative and read through it, personal thoughts and remembrances of that person and our associations together, however brief, come quickly to mind and create my own personal highlight reel of events, conversations, recollections, meetings and shared experiences with them. This takes a little longer with some obituaries than with others, but this particular highlight reel in my mind included something my friend called “The Amazement Book.”  I never knew whether or not he had actually written down all the things he said he had put in his Amazement Book, and suspected that it was more of a statement of wonder from him than an actual book he had compiled. I did, however, resolve to keep those thoughts worthy of remembrance in a notebook and maybe craft them into a book one day.  After several false starts and dead ends and “where did I put that blue or the green or the red notebook” I finally found enough of them and decided to create my own uniquely personal version of the Amazement Book.

     Here are some of the things I have written over the years. I can assure you they were all amazing at the time, and sometimes you have to take into account that the amazement factor itself may wax and wane over long periods of time.

Mama raised 4 boys and our dad and never killed any of us. There were threats and near misses, but her patience proved to be wonderfully resilient and remarkably durable.

Cashews and avocados are fruit.

Tomatoes were once considered poisonous.

Sweetbreads are neither bread nor sweet. They are organ meat (usually pancreas) from lamb, beef or pork. Sounds like a parental con job to me.

Cleopatra was not Egyptian but descended from the Greek general Ptolemy.

Romans used baby urine as a mouthwash and tooth whitener.

The CIA, during the Cold War with the USSR, sent balloons over European Eastern Bloc nations containing extra-large condoms marked as “Texas Medium” in an effort to create an inferiority complex among Communist men.

Chitterlings are hog intestines. They are washed, boiled for hours, stink up the house for days and are served boiled with pepper sauce or battered and fried. Daddy had them every year for his birthday. We did too until they told us what they were.

Back in the days before refrigerators, people learned to smoke, cure, can or simply eat stuff quickly before it went bad. Most foods were what you grew or harvested yourself. Depression babies could and would eat things most people won’t. Just imagine not just enjoying but seeking out potted meat, head cheese, pig brains or spam.

My Daddy said more than once that he would give his left arm to be ambidextrous. He said stuff like that with a straight face just to make us think he was a little crazy.  We did.

People that study this sort of thing say that about ⅓ of the dust in your house consists primarily of dead skin, hair and cells shed by you, your pets and your family.

The drive-through ATMs at your local bank have Braille symbols under each number on the keypad on the driver’s side.

Benjamin Franklin recommended the national symbol for the new US be the wild turkey rather than the eagle.

Speaking of wild turkey, the US government intentionally poisoned enormous quantities of industrial alcohol during prohibition so it couldn't be stolen and sold for personal consumption.  It was stolen anyway. As many as 10,000 citizens died from its consumption.

There is a US Grant Presidential library in Starkville MS. It receives $6 million per year funding from the US government.

The US Governmental Accounting Office says our government has lost over $2.4 trillion dollars in mistaken payments, accounting errors and “lost money” over the last 10 years.  That means every US citizen pays $750 per year in taxes that our government manages to lose. 

In the 5th century the Roman Empire lost control of the immigration process. Their armies were no longer strong enough to enforce the assimilation of immigrants and the newcomers began to retain their cultural and political identities. They eventually became stronger than the Romans.

Rather than the “too big to fail” assumption for many companies, perhaps a view of “too big to effectively manage their business and be allowed to continue” might be a better option for both companies and governments.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was an advocate of eugenics and supported a selective breeding program designed toward “the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extermination of defective (breeding) stock” in humans. She spoke at several KKK meetings looking for support of her beliefs. She found it.

The Revolutionary War battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought on the next hill over - Breed’s Hill.

In the 1800’s, genuine Egyptian mummies were sold by street vendors to visiting Europeans, some of whom, upon their return home, staged drunken parties where the hosts and their guests watched as the mummies were slowly unwrapped. 

Mama said every person has a purpose, and sometimes that purpose is nothing more than to serve as a bad example. You, like me, are probably thinking of several friends that fit that description.

“My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. To tell the truth, there’s hardly a difference.”  Harry Truman

If you are the smartest person in your group, you need to find a new group.

Forget about George Washington and his wooden teeth. Many dentures were actually made from the teeth of dead soldiers.

The cell phones in our hands contain more computing power than the computers that sent NASA astronauts to the moon in 1969.  We manage to use this power to watch cat videos and share pictures of food.

To my junior high and high school math teachers: We DO have a calculator with us at all times.

Joseph Stalin received TWO nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.

There is a John Wayne Museum in my hometown of Ruleville MS. Luster Bayless left Ruleville in the 1950’s, became the Duke’s personal costumer for many of his movies, and saved some of his mementoes.

US Grant was well known for his “tin ear.” He once said he knew two songs: one was Happy Birthday and the other wasn’t.

The term “buccaneer” came from the wooden frames used to smoke (jerk) meat (wild pigs, cattle and manatees) often sold to corsairs and privateers sailing in the Caribbean.  The French term “boucan” (smoked bacon) was so popular with these pirates they became known as buccaneers.

Climate disaster prognosticators have prognosticated hundreds of “end of the world as we know it” scenarios since the 1960’s. We are still here, and the Obamas still have their house by the Atlantic. A government that can’t solve homelessness wants you to think they can change the temperature of the earth.

William Casey, former Director of the CIA, was asked how he would know when the agency’s “disinformation program” would be complete. His answer in 1981 was “we will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

Fill a tall glass with ice and add the beverage of your choice. Leave it on the table for several hours. When the ice melts, the glass does not overflow. The water level remains the same.

Our parents created each of us. The first time I realized exactly how they accomplished this was not a pleasant discovery I had to work for years to unimagine.

A clean, happy baby is the single most effective example of false and misleading advertising the world has ever known.

The older I get the more I believe that Schrödinger’s cat works in my brain’s memory storage, knocking short term memories off the shelf and into oblivion at inopportune times.

Some people believe that schedules are merely suggestions. Mama never allowed us to know this was an option.

The next time you get angry trying to influence someone’s behavior, remember that you are not generally motivated positively by anger. Neither is anyone else.  Fear can be motivational, but not for very long and not on a consistently productive basis.

“I think I fish because it’s an antisocial behavior that, when done properly, puts you forever outside the mainstream culture without actually landing you in an institution.” John Gierach.

Leadership is sometimes counterintuitive - to be heard, speak softly - to lead, start forward without waiting to see if you are followed - to inspire, exhibit the behaviors you expect to see in others - When you make a mistake, own it the first time and try not to make it again. Most importantly, give others a voice in your decisions.  I learned all this in band.

The first submarine to sink a ship in combat was the CSS Hunley in 1864. It had a bomb attached to a long pole and sank a Federal ship.  It seems the pole was not long enough and the Hunley was evidently damaged in the explosion and lost with all hands before it could return to base. It was recovered in 2000 from the Charleston SC Bay.

We used to go to family reunions when we were growing up. Mama took us and seemed to know everybody there. I remember her advice; “you are related to everyone here. Don’t do anything stupid to embarrass me, check with me before eating anything we didn’t bring, and these girls are NOT dating possibilities.  Ever.” I took that to mean many of our relatives had not gotten the same advice.

Beauty is in the ear of the be-hearer. Andrew Fox Sr.

Since the 1960’s and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, over $22 trillion dollars has been spent on related Federal programs, and mandatory Federal spending since then rose from 15% to over 60% of each year’s budget.

We should all be thankful it was an apple that fell on Isaac Newton’s head rather than a coconut. Gravity would still exist, but we wouldn’t know what it was.

In the heyday of the Royal British Navy, most seamen did not volunteer but were rounded up and forced to serve by “press gangs.” Captains were often hesitant to let sailors go ashore in ports for fear they wouldn’t come back, and instead hired dozens of “ladies of the evening” for an evening’s entertainment on ship. Common sailors met these courtesans on the gun decks, and the guns often served as platforms for sexual activities. Birth control being what it was at the time, pregnancies sometimes occurred. “Son of a gun” was a derogatory term for a child born of these or similar activities.

Sargon the Great, around 2340 BC is given credit for establishing the first professional military. Before his time, most male citizens served in armies when need arose.  Sargon created an army based on full time, professional units to which militia could be added quickly to keep other countries from invading. As a result, his kingdom not only expanded in area but in commerce and riches.

In the US, the standard width between two train rails is 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches. Most US railroads were built by Englishmen who built tramways in their own country, and they used the same tools they had used for building those wagons in England.  Those measurements were used because most long-distance roads in England had ruts spaced that way going back to Roman times.  The Roman chariots used by the Roman Legions had that exact spacing, and it was simpler to build the wagons that way than take a chance on wrecking your wagon wheels on roads that had the same ruts in use for over 1000 years.

Finally - The Scots invented golf. Legend says that golf courses have 18 holes because there are 18 shots in every bottle of whisky. Snopes says that legend is false. Of course it is. Every Scottish golfer would have to carry his own bottle if a foursome were playing 18 holes with one drink each for eighteen holes, and we all know the likelihood of that ever happening is small indeed, for a true Scotsman, golfer or not, will never bring his own bottle if he knows he can drink from another for free.

     Building your very own personal Amazement Book can be an enlightening process, especially if you start as I did by writing single notes on small pieces of paper and saving them in a variety of places, many of which remain undiscovered to this day. My suggestion, born of experience, is that you find one central notebook strategically located in one central spot and diligently transfer your daily notes, observations and amazements to that one notebook.  Once you embark upon this process, your history nerdom will be practically guaranteed.  It will be difficult at first, but then most things seem to be difficult at first. Not only that, but the illusion of knowing can sometimes be just as powerful as actually knowing.  There’s two more; Is this an Amazing idea or what?