Those sitting in the back would be hurled against the front seats, leaving nice impressions on their foreheads. Even so, my little group was willing to ride with me. One of this merry band spoke up while we were cruising through Greenup one spring evening.
”I can’t believe the things you get away with, Dan,” Dick said.
What things I wondered—I had the reputation of being a “good boy”, which was the kiss of death to a teen age guy. I guessed he meant that I was driving around downtown Greenup with no adult supervision. Not only that, I had a couple of guys in tow, Dick and his buddy, John, who was a year older than Dick. 
John had failed the book portion of Driver’s ED, but it wasn’t his fault: the class was held right after lunch when he was too sleepy to focus.

Dick couldn’t take driver’s training until he was a sophomore, which wouldn’t be until next fall, a long ways off.(At 15, he was in the throes of teen-age rebellion.) Dick’s sister, Linda, had her license, but didn’t have a car.  What she did have was a younger boyfriend who also didn’t have a license.  Such was my posse. 

Do you see a common thread here? I was the only one with wheels. This gave me a certain amount of status. Guys would ask me about my ‘51 Plymouth —they had heard it had a powerhouse motor.

 I was clueless: I was pretty sure it had a motor; it was always there when someone (not me)  opened the hood. Just before I blurted out something really stupid, Dick would rescue me by explaining the Plymouth’s V-8 Chevrolet motor, or whatever it was.

Dick also came to my rescue that afternoon at the filling station. I used to dread getting gas for fear an attendant would tell me my oil was a quart low, and ask what kind I wanted. I would try to think:  Gee, black, maybe?

Dick saw me struggling and said, “You use 10-30 don’t you, Dan?”  The gas jockey nodded as though I had made a wise decision.
And on this fine spring evening with 50 cents worth of gas—about two gallons—under the Plymouth’s belt we were going to the show. (It was usually called “the show”, not the movies, as in “Are you going to the show?”, or “Who are you going to the show with?”)  After cruising Greenup’s main drag a few times– a short trip, as Cumberland Avenue was only six blocks long–we pulled up in front of the Old Trails Theater.

At this time angle parking was the norm, which made it easier for me. Even so, I had gotten a couple of tickets within a week of getting my driver’s license. I had trouble staying within the lines. I was grateful we didn’t have parallel parking. I knew the only way I could manage that was to be helicoptered in.

Within minutes of buying tickets and loading up on popcorn, I lost Dick and John. Determined to catch up with them I did a quick search of the theater, using my pen-sized flashlight that was great if you wanted to zero in on a guy’s shirt button.
While trying to juggle my flashlight and a tub of popcorn, I managed to toss half of it in the face of Buzz Henry, a guy who had made a career of sleeping in class, but was unluckily semi-awake at the show. He came out of it and growled in my general direction.

“Buzz, you want the rest of my popcorn?”

He accepted the tribute. I think he had a soft spot for me, as I shared my lunch with him at school—I was a picky eater and often would have a entree for him. He would gobble it down and slump over to get a little rest so he would have the strength to sleep through his next class.
I was about to continue my search when I heard: “Hey, Wild Man, why don’t you sit down before you put somebody’s eye out with your pen light?”
It was my buddy, Malcolm, a preacher’s kid who liked to call me “Wild Man”–he signed my yearbook as “Civilized”. Malcolm’s Dad was also a English teacher at our high school; I think Malcolm chafed under this double burden, but he was very good humored about it.
The theater then got unusually quiet, for we were about to see Blue Denim, a movie about teen age love, which meant it would require our full attention.

Blue Denim, was released in 1959, but it didn’t make its way to the Old Trails Theater until 1963. Usually movies showed up on TV before they landed in Greenup. I suspected some movies were projected on bed sheets in Third World villages before we ever got them.

I quickly got absorbed in the movie, but I was shocked at some of the language. One of the characters actually swore: said “hell” and “damn”. I was stunned—what a corker of a show! I forgot all about looking for Dick and John.

Malcolm enjoyed the movie, too, but in a more sophisticated way. He didn’t elbow me when somebody said “pregnant”; he understood the phrase going “all the way”, which I thought was a Frank Sinatra song. Malcolm, at times, pitied me for being so clueless.
After Blue Denim was over, I was a little choked up—it was kind of sad.
“You’re not going to cry, are you, Wild Man?”

I got my hanky out: “It’s my allergies”.

Luckily, Dick and John interrupted us. I asked, “Hey, where were you guys? I looked all over for you.”

Dick winked at John and said, “We’ve been around. How was the movie?”
“Oh, it was good. Didn’t you watch it?”

“Nah, we had better things to do,” John said. “Dick, you really took that curve—thought you were going to lose it.”
“What are you guys talking about? Was this last week when you went to Toledo with Buzz?”
“No,” Dick said with a grin. “It was tonight.”
“You mean you left the show?”

“Yeah, we went to Newton”.

 I was staggered, as the county seat was a nine mile journey.  And even more stunned to realize that Dick and John had taken off in my car while I, clueless, watched the movie.
“But how did you get that far without the emergency brake acting up?”

“Didn’t have any trouble with it. It doesn’t do that for anybody but you, Dan.”

“Oh.”

The next Monday when I rolled up at school we had the usual crash landing.

“Gee, Dan, can’t you keep your knee off the emergency brake?” Dick asked while rubbing his head.
We then ran into Malcolm as he was getting off the bus.
He  glanced at Dick’s forehead: “I see you’ve been riding with Danny again”.

Preface, Introduction, Requests, and Dedications

Theodore “Teddy Roosevelt” was born in the wagon of a traveling show–his mama would dance for the money they’d throw.
Whoops! My research assistant tells me that’s Cher’s story. A natural mistake—- Cher sang at Roosevelt’s inauguration.

Chapter One: Year of Decision

Early in 1898 at half past the Ides of March, local time, Theodore Roosevelt gave up his cushy job as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and helped the Army form the Rough Riders.

The curious reader (you there with your hand up) may wonder why if Teddy were in such a lather to go to war he didn’t just have his chauffeur drop him off at the army recruiter’s office.

If Teddy had enlisted as a private (!), he would never have risen quickly enough to become the leader of men he was born to be. This was particularly true of the Spanish-American War, which only lasted three news cycles.

Teddy had to get cracking–he had just enough time to design his uniform and to catch up with his men. He cut such a fine figure that he was made a colonel on the spot.  A step up from private.
Chapter Two: Pull Up Your Socks

Roosevelt was only following orders, as was his Commander-in-Chief, President William McKinley. McKinley tried to avoid the war, but he was overruled by William Randolph “Remember the Maine” Hearst, the Fox News of his day.

McKinley was more than a little put out by Hearst’s war talk–he leaked the newspaper mogul’s actual weight in gross poundage to famous reporter Bob Woodward, who had his own bedroom at the McKinley White House.
It was McKinley’s contention that if there were a war going on, he should be the first to know about it. Hearst sent one of his reporters to the White House to tell McKinley to pull up his socks and whip Spain, as he (Hearst) was busy running the world. (This was a position later taken over by Dick Cheney.)

The important thing to remember–get your hi-liters ready–if Roosevelt had not won at San Juan Hill, America would have not become a world power; the Pentagon would have had to slash their gunboat orders. All movies featuring the Rough Riders would have had to have stopped production.

It would have certainly left a hole in Clint Eastwood’s plans to make two Spanish-American War movies, one of which was slated for overseas release with subtitles and closed captions performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Luckily, for Roosevelt, Eastwood, and the country, the Battle of San Juan Hill was held as scheduled. There was a slight hitch at the beginning, as Teddy led his men up the wrong hill. At the news conference after the battle, the blame was properly placed on Mapquest.

For the purposes of historical accuracy, we should probably call it the Battle of San Juan Heights, and Roosevelt’s famous charge occurred on nearby Kettle Hill (just off Interstate 57).  It wasn’t actually a cavalry charge.  It’s true Teddy was out front on horseback, but his men were on foot. Their horses called in sick when they heard they would be boarding a ship bound for the war zone.
We really shouldn’t be too nit-picky–the “fog of war” and that sort of thing. It does no good to speculate that Roosevelt should have called for air cover or done some things differently. Nobody likes an armchair general. The important thing was Teddy won the battle (unofficial score: America, 117, Spain, 3–they sneaked in a three-pointer).

And a little over a hundred years later, Roosevelt was awarded his long overdue Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton in 2001. This was one of Clinton’s last official acts that he managed to work in between stealing furniture and signing pardons.
At the Medal of Honor ceremony, Cher had planned to sing a new song for the occasion, but she forgot the lyrics and instead belted out “O Holy Night”.

If elected, I will go to Vietnam.

The date came about mainly because I had a car. A couple of friends, Mike and Sharon, wanted to double date. Sharon’s angle was she wanted to go out with Mike who didn’t have a driver’s license yet. Sharon set me up with Suzy, the new girl in town. This was big of her.

I had agreed to pick up everybody at Sharon’s house. I pulled up in my snazzy 1951 Plymouth and jumped out to open the passenger door for Suzy.

“What are you doing?” Mike asked. Sharon shot him a look as though he might take a lesson. Suzy didn’t seem to be impressed by my gallantry. She was a decent looking girl if you didn’t mind a few tattoos.

We were going to a movie at Casey’s Fairview Drive-in, a nine-mile trip. We had barely gotten out of the driveway when Suzy decided to light up. There was nothing wrong with that—I smoked myself.

I thought I was a pretty cool smoker. I had a pack of Marlboros hidden in my right sock, which made walking a little tricky. The preferred method, the coolest, was to have the pack rolled up in your T-shirt sleeve. That wouldn’t have worked for me, as I didn’t want my folks to know I was smoking.

Mike and I decided to light up as well. He had a decent lighter. I carried a box of matches, which meant my sock runneth over. Suzy dug an industrial strength Zippo and a pack of Camels out of her purse.

Of course I had to keep driving while lighting up–something I overlooked when I bent down to get my cigarettes. I felt a sudden flash around my eyebrows. Suzy’s lighter—a blowtorch really—had singed me.

I handled it well. My car was equipped with an emergency brake that I managed to engage while trying to see if I had any eyebrows left. The sudden braking pitched us all forward. Then the car, which seemed to be operating on its own, took off for a block or so before the brake kicked in again.

After a couple of blocks of me riding the Plymouth like a bucking horse, Mike finally yelled, “Shoot it—kill it—turn it off!” We were on a quiet residential street—nobody was hurt unless you counted my eyebrows.

We pressed on to the drive-in, which was just out of town next to the cornfields. I found a parking place and rolled the window down to attach the speaker that was mounted on a post.

The posts were planted in gravel with a splash of crabgrass that attracted local livestock, who generally grazed there during the day. Usually by show time they were in bed, but occasionally a cow would appear at the snack bar and order popcorn.

I had just got the speaker sound adjusted when Suzy announced she was going to the snack bar to make a phone call. Sharon tagged along.

The girls had barely got out of the car when Mike said: “You wanna kill her, or do you want me to?” He was speaking of Sharon, of course, who had engineered this double date from hell.

In a few minutes Sharon came back. She had overheard enough to learn that Suzy was planning to meet another girl who had just escaped from the State Home For Budding Gang Girls. Sounded like they had big plans to start their own sewing circle. Sharon said we had to get Suzy back to her foster parents and call them later about their would-be runaway.

We then sat through a double feature of “Reform School Girls” and “The Explosive Generation” shown in thrilling black and white. Suzy seemed to be rooting for the bad girls. During dramatic moments she would fish out her Camels. Just to be on the safe side, I hugged the driver’s seat window whenever she fired up.

We got Suzy back to her foster parents, but we weren’t looking forward to seeing her at school, as she would know we had turned her in. We figured she had gang member friends—Sharks or Jets—who would be looking us up. But we never saw her again. The rumor was she was sent up the river, or to reform school as we used to call it.

The following year I thought I saw her again; she seemed to be in a movie called “Gang Girls Behind Bars”. She was obviously playing herself. I noticed the other actors gave her a wide berth. Especially when she lit up.

“OH 5… is a fossilized skull… It was discovered…by Mary Leakey in 1959. It is estimated to be about 1.8 million years old”.

OH 5 was also known as Zinj, or the Nutcracker Man, for reasons best known to Mary Leakey, who discovered him, or at least dug up his bones.

Leakey and her husband, Richard, often appeared as guest stars on the Discovery Channel. They frowned thoughtfully while watching the little people do the actual digging. The Leakeys were a jealous bunch. They often elbowed Jane Goodall aside when she was carrying on about her monkey friends.

For them, Early Man (and Woman) took precedence over the chimps. Mr. Leakey was particularly sensitive about monkey pictures. It was rumored that his morals were no better than the chimps.

The Leakeys aside, Nutcracker Man left pictures of a different kind. Cave wall drawings. He seemed to have been chased by Early Woman, who had only one thing on her mind: getting Early Man out of the house.

It is clear from the surviving pictures—they were freeze dried—that Nutcracker Man often wanted to stay inside and brood about his troubles, which he couldn’t do if Early Woman continued to talk to him.

One panel of drawings showed his thoughts: Why, oh why, did women like to talk so much? Why couldn’t they just go to the mall and leave him and his friends alone?

In addition to drawing, Nutcracker Man seemed to have the gift of seeing the future in visions. He had a sense that he was suffering through the Ice Age just so his descendants could talk on cell phones. It was terribly unfair.

On one occasion (1.8 Million B. C., give or take a few days) he drew a picture with captions to cheer himself up (he was hoping to be syndicated.)

He was inspired by a vision of a time far, far away. He read a captain’s log that appeared in a slow-moving crawl: The Return of the Weirdly Dressed Beings, Chapter VII, or Love Will Find a Way.

He was then distracted by a competing vision that took him to Dodge City. Matt and Kitty were at the Long Branch, smoking L & M’s.

Next CNN reported the latest news, but he tuned it out. He realized he was lucky that all he had to worry about was being eaten by animals or starving to death. His day would never be ruined by higher gas prices or the fear of global warming.

But within a few minutes he had to give it up his happy reverie, as his Woman seemed to be nagging him about something. She was talking and following him around their two-bedroom cave.

Nutcracker Man decided to go out, even though blizzard warnings were in effect. He had no choice. He was out of cigarettes.

It felt good to be out in the storm—man against Nature. He stopped mid-way to the convenience store and admired the snow-laden trees. They might have been whispering sweet nothings to him except a gale force wind drowned them out.

Despite the near blizzard conditions, a little bird landed on his shoulder and radioed the tower for instructions. He was in route to Brazil. He dipped his wings, as he headed south. This brief encounter caused Nutcracker Man to see a tiny bird somewhere in time who appeared to be best friends with a Beagle.

He began working on a caption for the birdie picture as he walked. He took time to consult his day planner. Will draw this Friday, he thought, as the Woman has Girls’ Night Out.

Oh, peace and quiet. He loved the Woman, but he needed space. A man couldn’t be hunting and fishing 24/7; he had to have a little down time in his cave.

Tomorrow is another day, he thought. He looked into the future and saw Scarlett O’Hara. She appeared to be crying and eating dirt.

He thought of a new picture and caption: “As God as my Witness, I will never be hungry again!” He hurried home to find a post-it note, not even taking time to get his cigarettes.

As he ran through the snow, he caught a glimpse of Margaret Mitchell at her typewriter, swooning over Clark Gable. She would never know that he had met Scarlett O’Hara nearly two million years earlier.

Nutcracker Man, Early Time Traveler!

Dunne’s early education was skimpy, as was customary in the backwoods of Illinois. He borrowed Lincoln’s shovel and practiced writing excused absence notes on it for his parents to sign. He later attended the Miss Edith Brooks School for Unlikely Lads and Budding Humorists. What he mainly learned from Our Miss Brooks was that all 19th century writers had three names.

When he came of age, or at least was wearing long pants, he looked–not very hard– for work. He was a daydreamer, who was fond of making jokes. His family and friends liked to have died laughing at him.

Dunne decided to seek his fortune back East. Inspired by a local train wreck, he hopped a freight car on a circus train bound for New York City and had an overly close encounter with the MGM lion.

This adventure ended early when Dunne realized that the rails to New York hadn’t been laid yet. This put a crimp in his plans, as he had hoped to get booked in one of the popular comedy clubs. He was in fact standing on the site of his town’s future depot, which was then home to a family of squirrels.

But fate intervened in the form of the Civil War, which had to be fought to preserve the Union, free the slaves, and make it possible for Gone With the Wind to play to packed houses.

Dunne showed up for boot camp, but marched in the wrong direction for about thirty days. When he rejoined his regiment, he told how he had lived on tree bark and fought with tadpoles for a drink of branch water.

The regimental commander, General Buford Montgomery Logan, was so amused that he chose Dunne to be his aide and regimental clown. (Logan’s previous mascot, Buster the Bulldog, had crossed enemy lines in search of a French Poodle, a blonde last seen driving a T-Bird.)

After the war, despite entertaining the troops, Dunne’s comedy career seemed stalled. He began submitting funny articles to local papers (he shoved them under the door of various editors’ offices as his Internet connection was unreliable).

He was an overnight success at the Toledo Illinois Democrat (POP. 700 or 698 in winter as they had couple of snowbirds). At least a dozen people read his column–in time several other local papers picked it up.

Within two years, he was on the lecture circuit–he often opened for Ralph Waldo Emerson. His most famous oration was “How I carried the News from Bull Run to Washington”. This was an account of how he got separated from his regiment and fell into the Potomac River.

In time, the public grew weary of funny stuff about the War. Dunne lost his column and found comedy bookings harder to come by. He had sunk so low he nearly signed up for his own reality show as a D list celebrity.

But by chance an army buddy bought the Greenup (IL) Press, and gave Dunne a job. He contributed one-liners and paragraphs about his hometown. The New York Times later picked up his column and he became an overnight sensation–again.

Several collections of his works were published in the closing days (Friday and Saturday) of the century. But public taste soon changed again, as new columnists from the cities became popular.

He spent his last years as an obscure newspaper editor; all his books were out of print by the time of his death.

His complete works are now available online, but a survey of the site’s visitors indicated that they had landed on the address by mistake, as they were searching for Finley Peter Dunne, the Andy Rooney of his day.

Dunne did, however, have one last burst of notoriety in 1901 at President McKinley’s second inauguration. He tried to reproduce his famous Bull Run to Washington speech, but instead fell off the lectern and nose-dived into the Potomac River.

This caused quite a ruckus, as many onlookers thought Dunne was drunk. He was only awkward of course. But he told everybody how sorry he was and checked into rehab. It was the least he could do.

Dunne’s work may be forgotten, but he will live on thanks to Civil War buffs that look up the Battle of Bull Run. Google includes his dip in the Potomac as result number 1,720,000. A dedicated Civil War hobbyist will eventually reach that figure, although he might have to re-load his musket.

* * *

“Take that, Henry Wheeler ‘Josh Billings’ Shaw and all you three-named worthies!” said Mr. Dunne to himself as he closed down his study for the night.

He would have to be careful about the details of his personal life. What should he say of his romance with Greta, the A. P. photographer? Nothing. It never happened. At least, not to him. He could write about his friendships with Dan Rather and Morley Safer. Except that he never met them.

Mr. Dunne had actually spent the ‘60s back home in Illinois working at a bank. He had led a quiet life except for the splashy times when he was in rehab for his addictions (Folger’s Regular Coffee and Salem Lights).

As a young man, on one of the few occasions he left home, he had attended banking school for two weeks at Southern Illinois University. For him this was a considerable journey, over one hundred miles.

Mr. Dunne was not a good traveler. He went places without knowing where he was going. When he somehow arrived at a destination, he didn’t know how he had got there. When he returned home, he didn’t know how he had got back, or where he had been in the first place.

His poor sense of direction led him to places not on the map; local residents would giggle at his ignorance and tell him to go east two miles until he reached “the slab”, which was how the highway was described in their vernacular.

So exotic places and travel were not really on his agenda; he seldom left the cornfields of home.

Still there was his show business period when he worked as an extra at Universal Studios. His biggest role was the day he fell out of an upstairs window and landed on Audie Murphy’s horse.

How had he got to California? Plane. A further check of his diary indicated that he had only taken the Universal Tour, but he liked the Audie Murphy story better.

Mr. Dunne suddenly had an epiphany (after a spell-check): he had given up on his memoirs, because he had gotten weary of making stuff up.

It would be hard, however, to skip the Civil Rights Movement. But he wasn’t there—he had missed the bus. He had got home somehow, but was glad he didn’t have to explain the details– although hopping a ride on a freight car would have made a good story. He could have explained how he met Woody Guthrie and rode the rails.

What was that song they used to sing together? “This Land is My Land”?

So far Mr. Dunne has not been invited on C-Span’s Book TV to discuss his Presidential Biography, which is just the latest of a string of failures related to his so-called literary life.

Dunne is presently in Limbo (a location that is intimately familiar to him) and is not now taking questions from the press.

Informed sources indicate that he is thinking of forming a committee to see if there is any interest in his candidacy for the presidency. He would like to be elected long enough to dissolve Congress, and to declare that foreign policy is too difficult for Americans; and that the U. S. should now give it up, at least until its leaders could pass an eighth grade test in history.

At the same time Dunne admits he is apolitical, like the vast majority of Americans who do not vote. The last time Dunne voted he went with The Gipper, although his family had always voted for Democrats. His family had memories of the depression and of the man who saved us all , Franklin D. Roosevelt. His family was also in agreement on religion: there were no Christians among them–they were all Baptists. Christians went to the other churches in Hidalgo (POP. 100 then and now).

Dunne’s next project will be announced as soon as it comes up in Wikipedia’s random article, which is his current source of inspiration. Or he may return to Presidential History, if Wiki can come up with the dirt on Zachary Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready”, our twelfth President.

The next question (possibly should have been first question): What life? The main source is the Diary begun in 1989 that is the dullest imaginable reading. The author, as a rule, did nothing, went nowhere, and by all accounts, preferred that lifestyle.

Many details have been lost in “the fog of war”, but Harrison was clearly the hero on the scene thanks to a pool of embedded reporters. American was a young country that was nervous about its future, particularly in 1811 when everybody knew the War of 1812 was scheduled. So a future leader was born.

Thirty years later, Harrison became the first man to campaign openly for the presidency.[i] (He was out of a job at the time.) He had been in Congress and most notably had been the Governor of The Indiana Territory, which included the future states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the eastern part of Minnesota, the Land of the Lakes Trading Post and Souvenir Center, and anything else not nailed down.

The campaign was notable for suggesting that Harrison was brought up in a log cabin and was just an ordinary Joe. This was not quite accurate in that Harrison came from a Virginia family of means. He even went to a sort of prep school, something like the Leander Smith Fairchild School for Sissies. When Harrison was shown an actual log cabin of the type he had claimed to have lived in, he fainted dead away.

Harrison, our 9th President, set several records for the Presidency including dying in office after only 31 days. “Old Tipp” (short for Tippecanoe) was actually the oldest president elected (67), a record that stood until Ronald Wilson “The Gipper” Reagan was elected in 1980.

On a cold, windy March day Harrison made news again by giving the longest inaugural address in history, over 8,000 words. He would have gone on even longer, if his teleprompter hadn’t malfunctioned. It took Harrison over two hours to read his speech; he had forgotten his overcoat and managed to catch a very bad cold.

His advance men neglected to make arrangements for a canopy to shelter him, but the balloons they ordered showed up three hours after the speech was over, so it wasn’t a complete failure.

During Harrison’s brief tenure in office no states entered the union and he appointed no Supreme Court judges, so you can’t say he didn’t accomplish anything.

Much of his time was taken over by office seekers who stormed the White House the month he was President. (Several good post office jobs were up for grabs.)

But mainly he was trying to get over his cold. Many medical experts were consulted including barbers who did a little medical work on the side such as blood letting. One suggested therapy was the use of snakes. (A Harvard man thought this was a good idea.)

Eventually, however, nothing worked and Harrison went on to The Happy Hunting Ground of Warriors that he had fought against.

Harrison today is largely forgotten; a hint of his future obscurity was provided the day he died by ex-President Andrew Jackson, who was taking a nap at the time. When told the news about Harrison, Jackson said: “President Who?”

[i] The Founding Fathers had stayed at home and filed their nails, but they kept their cell phones handy so they could answer their country’s call.