Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (45 page)

A:
A dog.

Q:
A job around the house that has to be done every fall.

A:
Spring cleaning.

Q:
Something you might be allergic to.

A:
Skiing.

Q:
Name a famous bridge.

A:
The bridge over troubled waters.

Q:
Name something a cat does.

A:
Goes to the toilet.

Q:
Name a song with moon in the title.

A:
Blue suede moon.

Q:
Name an item of clothing worn by the three Musketeers.

A:
A horse.

Q:
Name a famous group of singers.

A:
The Simpsons.

Two countries are actually smaller than New York’s Central Park: Monaco and Vatican City.

Thoughts and observations from the ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates.

“The only good is knowledge and the only evil ignorance.”

“Let him that would move the world first move himself.”

“What you cannot enforce, do not command.”

“Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.”

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“I know I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”

“Wisdom begins in wonder.”

“Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.”

“To do is to be.”

“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.”

“Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.”

“From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.”

“If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart.”

“Nothing is preferred before justice.”

“Better do a little well, than a great deal badly.”

“As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take the course he will. He will be sure to repent.”

“Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.”

Aristotle stuttered.

This is the story of Lincoln’s birthplace
—
built 30 years after his death! It comes from one of our favorite books,
Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong,
by James W. Loewen.

Thomas Lincoln bought Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky, in December 1808. His son Abraham was born in a small cabin on the farm on February 12, 1809. A little more than two years later the family moved to another farm 10 miles away. By the time Lincoln was assassinated, according to three different people who visited the farm looking for it, the cabin had disappeared. Either it had fallen into ruin or nearby farmers had recycled its logs into their buildings.

In 1895 New York entrepreneur Alfred Dennett bought Sinking Spring Farm and instructed his agent, James Bigham, to build a log cabin on it, according to National Park Service historian Dwight Pitcaithley. Bigham bought a two-story cabin from a neighboring farm and used the best of its logs to build a cabin on the Lincoln farm. Dennett then widely circulated photographs of this new cabin, which he tried to pass off as the actual cabin in which Lincoln was born.

“Lincoln was born in a log cabin, weren’t he?” said Bigham, defending himself to a skeptical newspaperman. “Well, one cabin is as good as another!”

Despite Bigham’s efforts, few made the trek to rural Hodgenville to see the “historic” structure. Undaunted, Dennett and Bigham decided to take the cabin to the people, so they took it apart and reassembled it at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville in 1897. To make the exhibit even better they bought another old log cabin and proclaimed it the birthplace of Jefferson Davis!

Next the cabins traveled to the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, where they found themselves between “Bonner, the Educated
Horse” and Esau, a trained chimpanzee billed as the “Missing Link.” As an added feature, 150 African-Americans billed as “Old Uncles and Aunties, formerly slaves,” were on display “living in the genuine cabins in which Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were born.”

Shut up! Giraffes have no vocal chords. How do they communicate? With their tails.

Then the cottages went to Coney Island, where the “Lincoln cabin” was to become an attraction. “But alas,” as Pitcaithley puts it, “during the journey to Coney Island, the logs of the cabins became intermingled.” So it became much larger and was briefly known as the “Lincoln and Davis Cabin!”

Meanwhile Robert Collier, publisher of
Collier’s Weekly,
acquired the farm in Hodgenville, set up a Lincoln Farm Association, bought the logs for $1,000, and shipped them to Kentucky. The train stopped in major cities along the way to let people touch the logs. The Association then selected architect John Russell Pope to design a memorial building in which to enshrine the reassembled cabin and engaged lawyers to produce affidavits from three residents that claimed the cabin was authentic. (No one now believes these affidavits, collected a century after the original cabin’s construction.)

The logs arrived in Louisville in June 1906, and the cabin was built in a local park. Because its logs were originally from two cabins it was twice as large as might be expected, in the tradition of the “Lincoln and Davis Cabin.” Nevertheless, it was so popular that an armed guard had to be posted to stop visitors from taking pieces off it as souvenirs. After just a week it was dismantled for safekeeping.

Three years later the association used some of the logs to reerect the cabin, now back to solo cabin size, at Hodgenville for the centennial of Lincoln’s birth in 1909. President Theodore Roosevelt came to lay the cornerstone for the Greek temple that Pope had designed to house it.

“The crude log cabin in which Lincoln was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, is a symbol of his bonds with the common people, and it has come to mean to them as Americans what the humble stable in Bethlehem means to them as Christians,” Roosevelt proclaimed. “But just as the world’s faithful have sanctified the birthplace of
Christ by housing it within an impressive Church of the Nativity, so the American people have ennobled the birthplace of Lincoln by housing it within a marble Temple of Fame.”

Abraham Lincoln was the first president to wear a beard in office.

When the temple was finished in 1911 however, it was too small to let visitors move easily around the outside of the cabin. Rather than enlarge the temple, Pope shrank the cabin! He took a couple of feet off its length and three or four feet from its width. Now just 12 by 17 feet, it fits fine. It also fits well with the nation’s ideological needs. Americans want to believe in the “log cabin myth,” and the tinier the cabin, the bigger the myth. Now the site offers the ultimate expression on the landscape of the “rags to riches” story that Lincoln’s life exemplifies: the cabin is even smaller than the one in which he was born, and the Greek marble-and-granite temple makes a grander effect even than the White House to which he rose. Also, the 56 imposing steps—one for each year of his life—symbolize Lincoln’s upward mobility.

Harold Holzer, writing in
The New York Times,
confirmed the power of the two structures in combination: “The shrine’s almost oppressive formality cannot mask the rawness and shockingly tiny size of the airless, one-room cabin it contains. Picturing a family living in such a place tests the imagination, and touches the heart.” But Lincoln’s own son Robert Todd Lincoln discouraged preserving the cabin, complaining that it falsely bore the “stamp of poverty” when in fact the Lincolns owned two farms, livestock, and a lot in nearby Elizabethtown.

For a time the Park Service was fairly forthright about the building it presents at Hodgenville. Now it pretends the cabin is real, even admonishing visitors not to use flash cameras—as if their light could damage logs that have seen so many journeys. The National Park Service labels the little building “Traditional Lincoln Birthplace Cabin,” which gives “traditional” a new definition: “hoax over time.”

Long ago, a lad at the University of Wisconsin answered a class assignment for Prof. Helen White with the blooper, “Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands.” The reality is even sillier: Abraham Lincoln had been dead 30 years when his birthplace cabin was built!

The geodesic dome is the only structure that becomes stronger as it increases in size.

Even more bizarre, Americans have built more birthplace cabins for him ever since—in Fort Wayne, Indiana; in heiress Mary Forbes’s backyard in Milton, Massachusetts—indeed, upon request the National Park Service will send you a handout so you can build one in your backyard!

Beginning in 1920, children built miniature replicas all across the country. In that year John Lloyd Wright, son of Frank, invented Lincoln Logs, named after these logs in Kentucky. Lincoln Logs originally came with instructions on how to build Uncle Tom’s cabin as well as Lincoln’s log cabin! The power of the icon is uncanny: Americans seem to need this structure, so we copy and cherish it even though it is fake.

“I share your view that the urgent problem of species extinction and the conservation of biological diversity should be addressed. The first step in saving any plant or animal from extinction is to become aware of and respect the fragile ecosystems that make up our environment.”

—Vice president Al Gore, in 1996, in a letter to a Dallas couple
who complained about the elimination of the “Texas Eagle.”
Gore didn’t realize the “Texas Eagle” was an Amtrak train
connecting Dallas to Chicago and the West Coast

“You know, I once played Grover Cleveland in the movies.”

—Ronald Reagan, 1981, commenting on House Speaker
Tip O’Neill’s desk, which had belonged to President
Cleveland. Reagan had actually played Grover
Cleveland Alexander, the baseball player

“An island of stability.”

—President Jimmy Carter, 1979, describing the Shah of
Iran, a few months before the Shah was overthrown

“The fire of an election no longer burns in me.”

—Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, 1990,
explaining why he would not run again

The common housefly can carry more than 25 different diseases.

If cream rises to the top, what sinks to the bottom? These do: records so bad, they’re good. Here’s this year’s official BRI countdown
—
and we do mean down. They don’t sink any lower…

10. EILERT PILARM:
Greatest Hits.
Anyone who’s expecting this Swedish Elvis impersonator to resemble the King will be very disappointed. Wearing white leather and rhinestones, he comes across like somebody’s Uncle Olaf after a drunken weekend in Vegas. His singing sounds as if he hit puberty around age 60. Our favorite: “Yailhouse Rock.”

9. MAE WEST:
Way Out West.
Is that an electric guitar in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me? On this 1969 album, the then-70-year-old former sex symbol tries to prove she’s still relevant by talking her way through rock classics like “Day Tripper” and “Twist and Shout.”

8. PADDY ROBERTS:
Songs for Gay Dogs.
Roberts sings about the sex life of fish in “Virgin Sturgeon” and serves up a steaming pile of potty humor with “Don’t Use the WC,” a song about dirty bathrooms. It’s not just in bad taste—it’s bad. By the way, this LP has nothing to do with Spot’s alternative lifestyle. So what does the title mean? Well, most of the songs are drinking songs—maybe he was under the influence when he picked it.