Hail to the Chiefs
Homage to a Neglected Holiday
by Elmo (Old Hickory) Spludd
Ah, yes, another President's Day has come and gone.
I had the day off, hee hee.
So now you know I must be some kind of parasitic "public-sector"
worker. Hey, I've got a right to it, I'm a registered Democrat.
Naturally, I spent my leisure time thinking about my favorite
Chief Executives. What else are you gonna do on President's Day, if
you don't have to work? Unless you hit all those President's Day
sales at the furniture stores.
President's Day is a good time to remember all those unsung heroes
of the White House. Forget Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and all
those other legendary figures we see all the time on our currency.
How about Zachary Taylor? Or William Howard Taft? Or Chester
Arthur? Those are my kinda guys.
About five years ago they exhumed Zachary Taylor's body, or what
was left of it. I'm not kidding. It actually happened. Zachary
Taylor died in office, and some historian had developed a theory that
Taylor had been poisoned. Taylor's descendants graciously agreed to
have old Zack's bones dug up and tested for traces of various lethal
substances. The tests were negative. We all breathed a big sigh of
relief, knowing that President Taylor was not the victim of foul
play. More likely he just ate a bad pork chop. Meat preservation
was a major problem back in those days.
I always liked President Taft. He's the only really fat guy ever
to occupy the Oval Office. And by all accounts, he was a decent
fellow to boot. After he lost his re-election bid to Woodrow Wilson,
he became a Supreme Court Justice. He must have liked the food in
Washington, because he hung around for a long time. By then they
didn't have as many troubles with trichinosis.
Chester Arthur? Don't know a thing about him. That's what's cool
about the guy. No one knows anything about Chester Arthur, and he
was the President of the United States.
When you were a kid, odds are that a parent or a close relative
looked at you playing in the sandbox or smearing your feces on the
walls and thought: "There is a potential future President of the
United States." Heck, remember Billy Carter? He was the
President's brother, for heaven's sake.
Which just goes to show you, that while it may not be true that
anyone can become President, just about anyone can grow up to be a
President's sibling. It's true, folks, this is without a doubt the
greatest country on the face of the earth.
Happy President's Day.
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