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On this day in History

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Offline Svengarlic

November 6th, 1861 Jeff Davis is formerly elected as the president of the Confederate States of America, one year to the day after Lincoln was hired for HIS new job. Also from Kentucky, and bearing an odd resemblance to Abe, the similarities stopped there. Davis graduated from West Point and served in the Black Hawk wars in 1832 and fought and was wounded in the Mexican War 10 years later.


Cartoon ran by the NY Illustrated News depicting Lincoln as the towering benefactor and Davis the cowering, traitorous midget



His first wife was the daughter of General Zachery Taylor. After military service he was appointed to the Mississippi senate and later served as Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. After his election to lead the South he wrote  "Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits, and flowers, but beyond them I saw troubles and thorns innumerable."


Offline Svengarlic

Nov 7th, 1980 Steeve McQueen dies in Mexico, aged 50

 

1991 Magic Johnson stuns the B-Ball world announcing that he had "attained" HIV. He's had it for damn near 25 years and he still looks better than me.



1940 The new Tacoma Bridge, designed to resist 120 MPH winds was blown to pieces by a 42 MPH gust.



Offline Svengarlic

Nov 8th, 1847 Bram Stoker is born in Dublin. A sickly child, Stoker amused himself by writing. He wrote several tales of horror before striking gold with Dracula.




1900 Margaret Mitchel is born in Atlanta. Inspired by stories and conversations with older relatives she's inspired to write her great novel. Slaving over it for seven years she became frustrated and threw the gobs of manuscript into a box. A friend read it and coaxed her to complete the work.



1887 John Henry "Doc" Holliday is also born in Georgia. A cousin of Mattie Holliday, who was the inspiration for her 3rd cousin, Margaret Mitchel, for the character of Melanie Hamilton in GWTW.

Known as a scholar, dentist, gambler, drunkard and blood thirsty killer, he was mostly just a gambling drunk that preferred booze to Laudanum for his TB cough. His friend, Bat Masterson, started his "blood thirsty killer" legend with exaggerated published stories, which by association also made him a "legend".


Young Doc

He did appear in about six to eight gun related scrapes, but he rarely hit anything. He was deadly, of course, when his foe was sitting 4 feet away at the poker table. His only absolutely confirmed killing was of a man he stabbed to death in front of a room full of patrons. The fool jumped to his feet to clear his gun, but the Doc had his pig sticker in hand under the table.


Older, emaced Doc, around six feet tall, 120 lbs

If ever there was a fearless man in the Old West, it was Holliday. He carried 3 guns and a knife, knew well that he was dying and flat didn't give a shit. His only love in life was his common law wife of many years, Big Nose Katie Elder.



Just about everybody's favorite Holliday portrayer in film was my Huckleberry, Val Kilmer. Talk about lousy casting casting before Val, he was preceded by Samson himself, the hulking Victor Mature, and Ullysses/Sparticus himself, virile Kirk Douglas!





Offline Signor Spumoni

Big Nose Kate - - what woman wouldn't love to have that nickname? :-\  She was a Hungarian immigrant, just for information's sake.

Sven, your entry reminds me of the historical novel,  Little Big Man, by Thomas Berger.  He died this summer, and left the market wide open for a third novel following the sequel to LBM, just in case you're looking for a pastime.  :)


Offline Svengarlic

Big Nose Kate - - what woman wouldn't love to have that nickname? :-\  She was a Hungarian immigrant, just for information's sake.

Sven, your entry reminds me of the historical novel,  Little Big Man, by Thomas Berger.  He died this summer, and left the market wide open for a third novel following the sequel to LBM, just in case you're looking for a pastime.  :)
Little Big Man was my favorite movie western for about 20 years until Dances with Wolves joined it. Tell me about the sequel, Sig...I never heard of it.  :-\


Offline Signor Spumoni

Little Big Man was my favorite movie western for about 20 years until Dances with Wolves joined it. Tell me about the sequel, Sig...I never heard of it.  :-\

I saw "Little Big Man" when it came out in 1970, and not again since then.  A few scenes stay in my mind, and I was sorry to find that a couple of those are not in the 1964 novel of LBM.  But I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the novel.  It kept me occupied a long time as it is nearly 500 pages long.  I enjoyed the historical fiction and the humor.  I also enjoyed recalling many scenes from the movie as I read.  For what it's worth, I would watch LBM again if the circumstances were right.

Presumably Thomas Berger didn't anticipate writing a sequel to LBM considering how LBM (the novel) ended and how the sequel did not appear until thirty-five years after the original.  Jack Crabb sounds weary this time around, but that isn't surprising considering how eventful his life is and continues to be. 

This time around, Jack is recalling his life from the astonishing age of 112.  Once again Mr. Berger weaves a deft fabric of history and fiction with humorous accents.  Jack is present for Wild Bill Hickock's famous gun-slinging  trick at the saloon in Deadwood; he witnesses the events at the O.K. Corral; he is there when his old friend, Sitting Bull, is murdered.  Jack joins Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show, which not only takes him east for the first time, but takes him all the way to Great Britain to meet the royals and to perform (and to make merry) with some of them.  He is befriended by Annie Oakley and her husband, and almost seems to have a crush from afar on General Custer's widow.  He rejoins the Indians with whom he lived, at least for a time. 

As an aside, there are figures on the number of buffalo which thundered across the prairies before settlers and the railroad arrived.  This novel states that the buffalo would not cross the railroad tracks, which was part of the reason the Indians lost their means of living.  In fact, the book illustrates vividly the differences between the native way of hunting these animals and the newcomers' way.  I believe the figures in the book are correct when it states how the buffalos' numbers were slashed once they became valuable to the newcomers, and this real photo of the time backs that up:
  Those are buffalo skulls.  Astounding.

Jack Crabb finds a sweetheart in this book, a most unlikely one, in my view.  Jack is barely educated yet finds a lady love who is well-educated.  If you recall, in the movie Jack had a Scandinavian wife who was kidnapped by Indians, then ended up with an Indian wife plus her three sisters.  And here he is with a new lady love quite different to the others, a proto-feminist (suffragette). 

I enjoyed reading this book but not quite as much as the first one.  However, I had hopes of a third book because Mr. Berger ended this novel in a way which could leave things be at two books or which could pick them up again as Jack walked through history up to the middle of the twentieth century.  Of course, as we know, Mr. Berger passed away this year, and the second possibility was not to be.

So there you are, Sven.  It would make a good movie, or - - better still - - a series. 

Now, can you figure out why my favorite cowboy movie is "Escape From New York?"  My second favorite is "Silverado," by the way.