Author Archives: bpriddy

The Dark History of Missouri’s first Thanksgiving

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s the day.

Your obedient servant hates to be at home for much of Thanksgiving Day. Working in the newsroom on Thanksgiving morning was a refuge.  The Missourinet always worked holidays because news happens on holidays, too (a major oil spill at Christmas during the Ashcroft administration, for example), so the news staff split the day with one person on duty in the morning and a second one working the afternoon.

The reason for seeking refuge in the newsroom?   To avoid the hours of agony of smelling the turkey being cooked.  Better to get home about 1 p.m. so the torture would last only a short time.  Giving thanks on Thanksgiving Day for the opportunity for newsroom refuge all morning was never publicly expressed but was an unspoken message from your servant to his ultimate master.

Missouri did not formally celebrate Thanksgiving until 1844.  And there is a tragic part of that story.

Governor Thomas Reynolds, a Kentucky native who had been the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois and after that, served three terms in the Illinois House.  He moved to Fayette, Missouri and quickly was elected to the Missouri House where he immediately became the Speaker.  After a few years as a circuit judge, he became our seventh governor in 1840. His greatest achievement as governor was eliminating imprisonment for debt.  And on October 16, 1843 he proclaimed the official celebration of Thanksgiving in Missouri:

WHEREAS, it is considered right and proper that we should gratefully acknowledge the goodness of God, displayed in the preservation of our lives, our civil and religious liberties, and our republican institutions, and for every blessing, temporal and spiritual, which we enjoy, and

WHEREAS, the protection of the State from invasion, insurrection and intestine commotion, and the citizens from pestilence and plague, equally demands a return of thanks to Him whose arm has brought this protection;

Now, THEREFORE, under a full sense of obligation and duty, and in accordance with the request of various religious denominations, I, Thomas Reynolds, Governor of the State of Missouri do by this public proclamation recommend to the people of the State, that, without any distinction of sect, denomination or creed, they observe Thursday, the thirtieth day of November, next, as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God, for his favor extended to us nationally and individually. “Duly signed and sealed under date October 16 1843.

What was the first Thanksgiving like in Missouri?  Amitai Etzioni and Jared Bloom, in their 2004 book, We Are What We Celebrate: Understanding Holidays and Rituals, offer William J. Hammond’s account in the Missouri Republican:

It was the first Thanksgiving Day observed in this state…and you may suppose the most was made of it…There was all sorts of frolicking…

In the morning the…Churches were thrown open for religious exercises and all were crowded to overflowing. The afternoon was observed by the gathering together of all the members of families…as I had no fireside to go to…nor no relation to talk with…the afternoon was spent with me walking like a lost sheep waiting to be gathered into the fold. But the afternoon would not last always, and night came, and with it, my time for fun. There were Methodist Sewing Societies, Presbyterian Tea Parties, and Balls in abundance and it was some time before I could make up my mind which to attend. I finally decided to stick to first principles and go to a Methodist Sewing Society.

The one which I attended was held at Mrs. McKee’s…At an early hour quite a company was assembled…All passed very pleasantly until about 8 o’clock, when Miss Mary took a particular spite against the Piano and commenced hammering it, with vocal accompaniment, which frightened me considerably and I sloped. The evening not being far advanced, I…[gave] the Presbyterians a pop by going to their Tea Party; they had a splendid supper, good speeches were made by several gentlemen, and I regretted that I did not go there first as I never spent my time more agreeably.

Governor Reynolds did not live to celebrate the first official Missouri Thanksgiving that he had proclaimed. On the morning of February 9, 1844, after breakfast and a prayer, Reynolds retired to his office at the first Executive Mansion.  He put a rifle to his forehead and pulled the trigger. He left behind a note: “In every situation in which I have  been placed, I have labored to discharge my duty faithfully to the public; but this has not protected me for the last twelve months from the slanders and abuse of my enemies, which has rendered my life a burden to me. I pray God to forgive them, and teach them more charity…Farewell.”

Walter V. N. Bay, who wrote a history of Missouri’s early judges and lawyers, said, “At the time of his death his prospects for distinction were greater than those of any man in the state, for his finial habits, pleasant demeanor, and unquestioned integrity had made him exceedingly popular, and it was a mere question of time as to his elevation to the Federal Senate.”

Bay, however, suggests “truth and candor force us to state that many of [his] friends attributed the suicide to a very different cause…To be more specific, they believed it grew out of his domestic troubles.”

He is buried in the Woodland-Old City Cemetery in Jefferson City, not far from the grave of Governor John Sappington Marmaduke, whose father, M. M. Marduke, finished out Reynolds’ term.

While there was much “frolicking” in Missouri on that first state-declared Thanksgiving Day, there undoubtedly were several people who recalled the governor who had so little to be thankful for that life was no longer possible.

(Photo Credits:  Missouri Encyclopedia/State Historical Society of Missouri; Bill Walker (tombstone in Woodland Old City Cemetery, Jefferson City).

Racing: Back to a Pre-pandemic NASCAR

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NASCAR)—NASCAR is going back to its long weekends.

Practice and qualifying, which have been casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic for most of the last two seasons, will return in 2022.  NASCAR had eliminated practice and qualifying for most races because of the need to cut back on the number of people at the track during the social-distancing era.

But qualifying is being changed to the knockout format.

Much of the new format is designed to give more broadcast time to FOX, NBC and other broadcast partners.

The announcement has come as NASCAR heads for its championship week, which starts in Nashville a week from today and goes through December 2.  The week not only will recognize NASCAR champions in its three touring series, it also will honor champions in three ARCA series, NASCAR’s Modified Tour champion and the Weekly Series national champion.

NASCAR has held special awards ceremonies for forty years, beginning in New York in 1981, continuing in Nashville in 2009, and moving to Nashville in 2019.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen has become the hunted.  Lewis Hamilton has become the hunter—and shows signs of being a relentless one.

Hamilton led from start to finish in the inaugural Qatar Grand Prix to finish 26 seconds ahead of Verstappen, his second straight win over the F1 points leader.  The win cuts Verstappen’s points lead to just eight, with two races left on the schedule.  Mercedes team leader Toto Wolff says the previous race’s penalties that relegated Hamilton to the last starting position, from which he charged to victory, “have woken up the lion.”

“He’s absolutely on it—brutal, and cold-blooded,” he said.

Hamilton was 19 points back after Verstappen had won two straight races.

Two-time Formula 1 Champion Fernando Alonso snagged the final podium finish, his first since 2014. F1’s statisticians say his 105 races between podium finishes is a record and says he’s only the third driver older than 40 in the last 35 years to have finished in one of the top three positions in a race.

F1’s season finishes with races in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.

(INDYCAR)—Put the name of Alexander Rossi in the racing history books as the only driver to win an Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 24 hours, and the Baja 1000 off-road race.

His “wild ride” (his term) victory in the 54th Baja, the most prestigious off-road race in North America, came at the wheel of a highly-modified Honda Ridgeline was shared with three other drivers and a navigator. The race is 1,226 miles long, from Ensenada, California to Lapaz, Mexico. He described the ride as “equally chaotic, awesome and terrifying.”

He also used the words “insane” and “really cool” in describing his drive in the daylight and the dark and the ocean fog—and in the dust from hundreds of other vehicles in the race.

Rossi’s overnight stint covered 251 miles and built his team’s lead to 100 miles.

-0-

This year’s Indianapolis 500 winner, Helio Castroneves, who returns to fulltime driving in the INDYCAR series next year, is not abandoning the sports car racing that he has done for the last couple of years.  He’ll drive Meyer Shank Racing entries in both open wheel and sports car races in 2022, running the full INDYCAR schedule and picking up stints in MSR sports cars in the four endurance races on the IMSA circuit.  He’ll try to be a repeat winner in the Daytona 24. He was part of the winning team with Wayne Taylor racing this year.

-0-

When we talked with INDYCAR President Jay Frye in August, we talked about the hybrid powerplants coming to the series in 2023. But Frye suggest it will be a long time, at the least, before the internal combustion engine disappears from INDYCAR.

But if electric-only cars are far off in the series, electric car drivers might not be.  Two Formula E teammates from Europe will test INDYCARS on December 6 at Sebring.  Stoffel Vandoorne and Nyck deVries, teammates in the Mercedes EQ Formula E program will be in cars from the Arrow-McLaren and the Meyer Shank racing stables.  DeVries won the Formula E championship for 2020-21.  Vandoorne was second in the 2019-20 Formula E Season and ninth in the most recent season.  Mercedes is withdrawing from Formula E.

(Photo Credit: Bob Priddy)

 

THANKS AND GIVING

Posted on by
Reply

(Thousands of people will not gather around a sumptuous Thanksgiving table this week.  They will be serving a meal to many thousands more who cannot afford even a modest Thanksgiving table at home—or even afford a home.  Or a table. Perhaps, says Dr. Frank Crane in this column from the first year of the Woodrow Wilson administration, those who are serving and those who are being served understand the day the most)

LEARN THANKSGIVING FROM THE HAVE-NOTS

The President has proclaimed the annual day of Thanksgiving.  Probably that comes to you as a joke. ”What have I to be thankful for?” you ask and then begin to run over the list of your grievances.

But go and see the have-nots, and maybe you will learn something, if you are not a hopeless whiner.

Visit the have-not nations.  Live a while in Russia or Mexico, have your opinions suppressed, your property confiscated, your life threatened, all without justice; perhaps then you may get a few thrills when you look at the American flag.

Return in your mind to former ages. Feel how it seems to have the nobility despise, curse and rob you and treat you as a dog; to have a state church clap you in prison or roast you in the public square for daring to think; to have solemn magistrates condemn your mother to be hanged as a witch; to have your daughter outraged by the lord of the manor and your sons killed fighting his battles.

If your skin is black, go back…and live among the have-nots of Liberty, and be sold in the market place as chattel.

If you are well, turn to the have-nots of health to the hospitals where the crowded prisoners of  pain would give the world to walk and eat and work as you now do. Go to the dim chamber of the invalid and listen to the consumptive’s cough, the dyspeptic’s groan, the ravings of the fevered and the suffering and smitten. Then, if you are anything of a man, come out and hire someone to kick you for complaining, ever.

The have-nots of sound; observe the deaf and dumb not to gloat over your advantages, but to realize what music and the voices of people and the gift of speech mean to you.

Watch the pathetic faces of the have-nots of light; and, seeing the blind, learn to be humbling grateful toward the fate that grants you the light of heaven.

Do you know the have-nots of love? Consider them and if one heart ever so simple loves you, be thankful.  Mark the deserted wife, her dreams shattered, her heart broken, her children fatherless, and the burden of care upon her shoulders; and if you have a husband that’s half decent, be thankful.

Go to the wrong, betrayed husband; look upon him; and if  you have a faithful wife who believes in you and is glad because of you, be thankful.

Little girl, little boy, have you and mother that hugs you up and a daddy that’s proud of you? Think of the have-nots, the boys and girls whose mother is still and gone or whose father is no more, and be as thankful as you can.

Have you children?  Call to mind the have-nots, the mother whose loneliness is most bitter of all, the loneliness is that most bitter of all, the loneliness of empty arms, of a breast where once cuddled a curly head.

Then think of the worried, wretched, remorseful, perverted of those whose conscience stings them and if you have the comfortable self-respect of decency, be thankful.

Visit, in your mind, the wide realm of the dead. You have the unspeakable gift of life. You walk in the sun, and breathe the sweet air, and get the message of the trees, the mountains and oceans; for you the flowers blow, and the snow falls, and the hearth light burns, and children’s voices sound and the light of love kindles in someone’s eyes.

Be thankful for life.

Think of the have-nots and reflect. Who am I that I also should not also be among them?

 

A Decision

Posted on by
3

I have pretty well made up my mind how I will vote in 2022.  I have decided because I remember.

—I remember November 22, 1963 when I had returned to my apartment house in Columbia after student-producing the noon newscast at KOMU-TV, during which we reported President Kennedy had gone to Texas to assure Texans he was not going to dump Lyndon Johnson from the ticket in 1963, and one of my housemates shouted down the stairs as I came through the door, “You better get up here. The President’s been shot.” I was drawing a paycheck from KFRU Radio as assistant news director under Eric Engberg (who went on to a long career as a CBS correspondent) and immediately went to the newsroom where we started gathering reaction stories to put on the air when ABC Radio broke for local coverage. It never did, not for three days.

—-I remember April 4, 1968 when a phone call to my apartment told me Martin Luther King had been shot, and another call later that he had died. I was in my first months as news director of a radio station that used to do news in Jefferson City. It was a daytime-only station and I had to wait until the next morning to report the story. And a few days later I was inside the Jefferson City News-Tribune building when Lincoln University students turned violent outside the newspaper’s doors when the editor refused to retract an editorial run a few days earlier critical of Dr. King.  A flying piece of glass came within inches of hitting me in the eye.

—-I remember June 5, 1968 when another call came to my apartment, early in the morning. “Kennedy’s been shot,” said the newstipper.  “Which one?” I asked because just a few days before handsome, young Ted Kennedy had strode into a room at the Holiday Inn to speak on behalf of his brother. “Robert,” said the caller.  The morning newspapers that had gone to press the night before were reporting that RFK, as he was being called, appeared to have won the California Democratic Primary. He was shot at 2:15 a.m., our time. Radio news people like me delivered the shocking news heard by those having breakfast that Kennedy was in critical condition.

—I remember June 6, 1968, when the phone rang again in the darkness.  “Kennedy has died,” said the caller.  He died at 3:44 a.m., our time.  The newspapers that morning reported he was still critical.  I joined other broadcasters breaking terrible news for a second straight morning to thousands of people again having breakfast.

—I remember September 22, 1975 when the national networks’ evening newscasts were interrupted by word that a woman had tried to assassinate President Ford in San Francisco. We later learned that the first of two shots she fired from only forty feet away had missed the president’s head by only five inches.

—I remember March 30, 1981. It was just before 1:30 in the afternoon in the newsroom of The Missourinet when the UPI wire machine bells began ringing with the bulletin that President Reagan had been shot and others had been wounded.  Throughout the afternoon, we were reporting reactions from our people in Congress as well as our state leaders, knowing no more than most other reporters how close we were to losing another president.

I remember these events vividly, maybe more vividly than many because, as a reporter, I was instantly and intensely involved in telling the stories to others.

I remember fears, especially in the 60s, of where our country was headed, fears that were rekindled in 1975 and in 1981.

They were nothing like the fears today.

Nothing, because the fear did not originate within the government.

Yesterday I watched the United States House of Representatives censure Republican Congressman Paul Gosar for his Twitter video showing an animated attack on Democratic Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and an attack—with swords—on President Biden.  Majority Democrats forced the action after Republican leaders in the House refused to publicly say one critical word about Gosar’s action.  His “apology” during discussion of the censure resolution was no apology and was instead an attack on Biden administration immigration policy.

Only two Republicans voted for the censure resolution, which also takes away Gosar’s committee assignments: Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who will leave the House at the end of this term, and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, whose courage in standing against the “Big Lie” has led the Wyoming Republican Party to say it no longer recognizes her as a Republican.  Kinzinger had argued that failure to hold Gosar accountable “will take us one step closer to this fantasized violence becoming real.”  It is difficult to disagree with that fear as we continue to watch the violent rhetoric that dominates one side of our political spectrum today.

Gosar reportedly told his caucus he doesn’t support political violence. He said he had not seen the Tweet and he pulled it from his account when he learned about it.

So far we have not heard any of the leaders of Gosar’s party express any misgivings about his video or disagreement with their former president’s comment that “it’s only natural” that some of those storming the capitol in January wanted to “hang Mike Pence.”

The failure of party leaders to show any spine in the face of intentional and ongoing stoking of barely-latent fires of violence and their groveling at the feet of a man who is a stranger to honesty, empathy, courtesy, respect, and other Christian values leaves me with no choice.

In normal elections my votes are scattered on both sides of the ballot. As of now, I will fill in the little box next to only one Republican’s name next year.

Only one.  Because I am so terribly disappointed in those for whom I might otherwise vote in their reluctance to stand for the values I thought they had.

I remember 1963.  And ’68 and ’75 and ’81. Never then was I so fearful for our freedoms as I am now. Never have I had so little faith in those I should trust to be servants of the people.

They cannot be servants of the people if they are slaves to one who demands their obedience and countenances every vulgarity that stems from his gross failures of character.

I am but one voter and I am easily dismissed.  But I doubt that I am just one.

I desperately hope that I am not just one.

 

 

Racing: Hamilton’s stirring drive tightens chase

Posted on by
Reply

by Bob Priddy, Missourinet

Before we launch into covering the only remaining major racing series still generating heat, we pause to mark the death of champion driver-turned-teacher Bob Bondurant, who helped teach race driver-wanna-be people such as Paul Newman, James Garner, and Clint Eastwood how to drive a race car and who taught racers such as Dale Earnhardt, Sr., and Jeff Gordon how to fling a stock car around a road course.

Bondurant was 88 when he died during the weekend in Paradise Valley, Arizona.

He won a world sports car championship while driving Cobras for Carroll Shelby (right) in Europe.  He founded the Bondurant Racing School after a His Lola T70 Mark II broke a steering arm at 150 mph in a 1967 Can-Am race at Watkins Glen and flipped eight times.  Bondurant suffered serious back, rib, leg and foot injuries and was told he might never walk again.

But he did and in 1968 founded his racing school that is now considered the top racing school in the world.

And he kept racing.  And winning.  His last championship was in the 1997 World Cup challenge.  He ran his last race at the age of 79—and won—driving and ERA reproduction of the GT40.

His school filed for bankruptcy in 2018, was sold earlier this year, and is now known as the Radford Racing School.

While NASCAR is planning its championship celebration to be held next month in Nashville and INDYCAR is in its silly season of team realignments, Formula 1’s closest championship contest in years is down to its last three races.

(FORMULA1)—Lewis Hamilton overcame two major setbacks to win his 101st career grand prix by running down points leader Max Verstappen in the Brazilian Grand Prix, getting past him and pulling away to a ten-second win.  Some observers think it is one of his greatest races.

Hamilton led all qualifiers but was penalized for a rear wing rule violation and started Saturday’s qualifying race dead last, 20th.  He sprinted to fifth place at the end. But then he had to take a five-place starting grid penalty for an engine change that buried him midway in the pack, tenth, for Sunday’s race.

Hamilton climbed to second behind Verstappen and the two spent several laps in intense competition before Hamilton got past his rival on the 59th lap of the 71-lap race.

“This has definitely been one of the best weekends, if not the best weekend I’ve experienced, probably, in my whole career,” he said afterward.

Hamilton’s win comes at a time when Verstappen was in position to build a strong points lead. Instead, he has seen Hamilton cut his 19-points lead cut to 14 with three races left, two of them in Qatar and Saudi Arabia on new tracks on which neither driver has competed, and their in Abu Dhabi on a track that has been changed since they drove on it.

(Picture Credit: Bob Bondurant Official Fan Page)

 

Heal Thyself

Posted on by
Reply

(Six centuries, or so, before the Gospel of Luke was written, the sentiment, “Physician, heal thyself” was part of literature.  Aeschylus, the Greek dramatist, in Prometheus Bound has a chorus tell the title character, “Like and unskilled doctor, fallen ill, you lose heart and cannot discover by which remedies to cure your own disease.” Whether it is a twelve-step program, or through various self-help gurus, the thought continues that the solution of many of our problems lies, as Dr. Crane puts it, in—-)

SELF-CURE

“How,” writes a lady to me, “can I remove the following difficulties from my path?

“How can I overcome the lazy habit of oversleeping in the morning—laziness in general, in fact?

“How can I overcome the fear and worry habit?

“How can I ‘let go’ of the thoughts of past disappointments, mistakes, etc.? I have tried all manner of ways to divert my mind by work and study.

“Do you believe in confession, in the case of a non-Catholic, for the purpose of relieving the mind?

“How can I overcome prejudice? I find I am prejudiced against certain sects and races.”

Rather a stiff task, to answer all these questions. Of course, I cannot “answer” them fully. All I or anyone can do is to give a few hints which may be useful.

Oversleeping is not necessarily laziness. Go to bed earlier, if you have to rise at a certain hour. It’s a safe rule to take all the sleep you can get. The rule in my own family is, “Let the sleepy sleep.”

Laziness is not a bad quality always. A lazy body often houses a most energetic mind. The real cure for physical laziness is fun; find some form of exercise that lures you. Mental laziness is a more difficult disease, and you can only cure it by taking yourself severely in hand. Usually, I should say, it is hopeless.

Fear can generally be mitigated, if not altogether removed, by intelligence. It is a by-product of ignorance, as a rule. We are afraid of what we don’t know. Science (knowledge) has done much to alleviate superstition (ignorance).

Worry can only be remedied by adopting some rational theory of life, some common-sense philosophy. Maeterlinck and Emerson have done me more good, as worry-antidotes, than any other masters.

How to “let go” of bedeviling thoughts is a hard problem. Thoughts that burn, stew, ferment, and torment—who has not suffered from them? About all I can do is to let them run their course. I say, “This too shall pass!” and try to bear up against the pestiferous imaginings and memories until they wear themselves out.

It is also a good idea to have some attractive, interesting, fascinating vision, of a pleasant nature, to which we can turn our minds when annoying suggestions persist. The author of “Alice in Wonderland” (who was a great mathematician) used to work out geometrical tasks, which he called “pillow problems” (and wrote a book of that name), to get himself to sleep. Can’t you find some alluring things to think of when wooing slumber? Call for them, and by and by they will come.

Do I believe in confession? Nothing can so purge the soul. Still, it must be exercised with the extremest care, judgment, and discretion, else you may harm others in pacifying yourself.

“How can I overcome prejudices against such and such sects or races?” Just repeat over and over to yourself that all prejudice is stupid and ignorant. By and by you will, by auto-suggestion, get it into your subconsciousness that prejudice shall have no place in you.

Prejudice means “judging before” you have the facts. Never judge till after you have the facts.

Nothing is so utterly devoid of reason as a passionate hatred of any race or class. All men are much the same when you come to know them. Class or race faults are superficial. The human qualities strike deep.

 

Eyewitness to the end

Posted on by
Reply

Every war has its “last” events and on this 103rd anniversary of the end of The Great War, we have one for you, with the account of a former Jefferson City resident who was part of what arguably was the final American artillery attack on German positions.

Missouri’s own John J. Pershing found Private Henry N. Gunther of Baltimore, Maryland, died at 10:59 a.m. on November 11, 1918 in an unnecessary one-man attack on a German machine gun emplacement.

But another Missourian was involved in another “last,” or at least a “last of the last.”

Germany surrendered at 5 a.m. that day but French General Ferdinand Foch demanded the shooting stop six hours later so the message of the surrender could be distributed to the front lines on both sides.  Author Joseph Persico in his book, Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour, calculated there were 11,000 casualties in those last six hours, including the deaths of 3,000 soldiers.

Former Jefferson City resident Charles D. Capelle, was with the American Red Cross.  He sent a letter home describing his day, the last day of the war.  The Daily Capital News published it on Christmas Eve.

I was sleeping in a dugout several miles beyond Verdun, with the commanding officer of an ambulance train. At eight o’clock, when we were still in bed, the telephone rang. The captain answered and the operator said, “I am asked to tell you that the armistice has been signed and that hostilities will cease at eleven this morning.”  We told all the soldiers nearby, who at once set up a great yell and then refused the good news.  After breakfast alI went up to a battery of 155’s nearby, knowing that if the news were true, the battery would cease firing at eleven o’clock.  About ten they began firing all the guns regularly and sure enough, at five minutes before eleven they prepared to fire the last shot.  The full gun crew at each gun took hold of hands and they put in the line on one gun, and with watch in hand all awaited the hour.  “Then all pulled the lanyard together. “One last can for Jerry,” said the gunners, and then howled and skipped in their glee like a crowd of Indians.  You may be sure, too, that I was as happy as they were. 

            For a long time none could realize that the whole thing was over. Out of the mud and cold, out of the holes in the ground, out of the shrapnel and machine-gun fire, and back to the real bed without “cooties”—finally—and that thought was in everybody’s mind—back in the U. S. A.

His letter continued for several paragraphs, describing pulling back to “shell-torn” Verdun, then farther to “a considerable town” where there were “all sorts of civilization” including an officer’s club where there was “wonder of wonders—a chance to take a bath.”

Capelle, a Jackson County native, had lived in Jefferson City while he was an assistant reporter for the Missouri Supreme Court, 1909-1915 and then a member of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles until 1917. He was about 35 when he went to France with the Red Cross and was attached to the 26th Infantry (Yankee) Division from Massachusetts (which included the 51st Field Artillery Brigade), where he witnessed the last shot of the war.  He returned to Jackson County after the war, served as Mayor of Independence, 1922-24 and was elected in 1932 to a term in the Missouri House.  He died at the age of 56 in 1939.

National Museum of the United States Army credits the final round of the war being fired by Battery E of the 11th Field Artillery, which fired a round from its 155 mm artillery piece, nicknamed Calamity Jane at exactly 11 a.m. on November 11, one minute after Capelle’s unit fired its last shot. We suppose there could be some discussion of whether a round fired at the precise second the armistice went into effect was fired during the war. The shot from the 11th FA landed after the war.  The shot fired by the 56th FA probably landed before the official time of the Armistice.  We’ll let World War One historians argue that.  From a parochial standpoint, we come down in favor of Capelle’s account.

 

Larson Seals the Deal

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NASCAR)—There are all kinds of clichés that tell the story of Kyle Larson’s NASCAR Cup championship this year:

—from the outhouse to the penthouse

—outcast to king

—when one window closes, another opens.

—Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement.

So on and so forth. Don’t call it a “Cinderella story” either.  Cinderella and her pumpkin/coach have no comparison to what Kyle Larson and his team did this year in a sport that is too tough for sloppy sentimental comments and fairy tales.

A year ago, Kyle Larson watched NASCAR’s championship race from North Carolina, sitting out his indefinite suspension for using a racial slur during a computerized race during the temporary pandemic shutdown of Cup racing.

At Phoenix he did what Kevin Harvick couldn’t do last year—seal a championship deal.  Like Harvick, Larson had nine victories, going into the final race. Unlike Harvick, who had not made the final four despite all those win last year, Larson was there and snagged his tenth win and the championship.  Eleven wins if you count the non-points all-star race.

He’s the first Cup champion since Jimmie Johnson in 2007 to have ten more wins and only the seventh NASCAR champion in almost fifty years that are considered the modern era with ten wins or more.

(Jeff Gordon in 1998 and Richard Petty in 1975 have the record, 13.)

Larson, running fourth with the other title contenders, Chase Elliott, Martin Truex Jr., and Denny Hamlin, ahead of him took the lead when his pit crew turned in its second-fastest stop of the year. He beat Denny Hamlin on the restart and then had to hold off Martin Truex Jr., for the last 24 laps to claim the championship by four-tenths of a second.  Hamlin finished third and last year’s champion, Chase Elliott, came home fifth, edged out by Ryan Blaney.

Hamlin remains the active driver with the most wins who has never won a championship. His 46 wins trails only Junior Johnson’s 50. (Incidentally, Columbia’s Carl Edwards ranks fifth with 28 victories. He finished second twice.)

Larson feared his career among elite big-time racing drivers might have been over last year.  But Rick Hendrick watched as he quietly worked to redeem himself and signed him to drive in 2021 after NASCAR reinstated him.

He is the first minority champion in NASCAR history as the first Asian-American (his mother is Japanese-American) and the first graduate of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program to win the NASCAR Cup, a status significant in light of last year’s events.

“I didn’t even think I’d be racing a Cup car a year and a half ago,” Larson said after the win. “to win a championship is crazy.”  After thanking Hendrick and co-owner Jeff Gordon and NASCAR, among others, He told interviewers “Without my pit crew on that last stop, we would not be standing right here. They are the true winners of this race. They are true champions. I’m blessed to be part of this group. Every single man and woman at Hendrick Motorsports, this win is for all of us, and every one of you.  This is unbelievable.”

(FORMULA1)—The last of the major motorsports championships won’t be decided for another month but Max Verstappen has made it clear it’s his to lose.  Verstappen’s 16-second in over rival Lewis Hamilton extends his points lead to 19 points with four races left.

Sergio Perez, Verstappen’s teammate, grabbed third place to become the first Mexican driver to land a podium finish in the history of the Mexican Grand Prix.

Verstappen seized the lead on the first turn although starting third when pole sitter Valtteri Bottas and Hamilton gave him room on the preferred outside line. With late braking, he stormed past the first two starters and gave up the lead only during pit stops.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR will return to the streets of downtown Detroit for the first time since 1991 when the Detroit Grand Prix moves from Belle Isle Park in 2023.  INDYCAR competitors ran on a temporary downtown circuit in 1989-91.  They’ll run at Belle Isle next year. The series ran two races there this year with Marcus Ericsson an Pato O’Ward the winners. Only one race will be run there in 2022 as INDYCAR makes adjustments to its schedule.

(Photo Credit: NASCAR/Christian Peterson, Getty Images)

 

Take it Easy

Posted on by
Reply

(Last week, Dr. Frank Crane urged us to be active, to sell ourselves, to take command of our lives and expand our future opportunities.  This week, he suggests there’s another side to the story as he ponders—-)

IDLENESS: THE MOTHER OF PROGRESS_

Idleness is the mother of progress. So long as men were busy they had no time to think of bettering their condition.

Idleness is the mother of art. It was when men had leisure from the chase that they decorated the handles of their hunting-knives and the walls of their cave-dwellings.

Idleness is the mother of religion. It is in the relax and rebound from toil that men think of God.

We talk of all men’s right to work. There is a deeper right than that. It is the right to idleness.

The value of what we put upon the page of life depends upon the width of the margin.

The great, useful, redeeming, and lasting work of the world is that work which is a reaction from idleness. The continent of labor is barren. It is the little island of labor that is green and fruitful in the sea of leisure.

The curse of America is its deification of labor. Our little gods are the men who are ceaselessly forthputting.

Most of all we deify capital, which never rests, but goes on producing day and night.

We are so occupied in getting ready to live that we have lost the art of living.

With us a man is a fool if he sets about to enjoy himself before he has laid up a fortune. We count the woman happy when she has married money, and the child accursed when he has no inheritance.

Every morning we arise from our beds and charge bloodthirstily into the struggle. We all do it, millionaires and paupers. In his office the trust magnate sits at his scheming until his nerves are loosed, his arteries hardened, and his soul caked. The slaves of Rome never worked so hard as many of our laborers in mines and factories.

“After the Semitic fashion,” says Remy de Goncourt, “you make even the women work. Rich and poor, all alike, you know nothing of the joys of leisure.”

There ought to be two leisure classes, yea three: all children under twenty-one, all women, and all men over sixty.

The work of the world could be easily done by males between the ages of twenty-one and sixty. To accomplish this, all that is needed is to abolish militarism, that insane burden of men in idleness, abolish all piled-up wealth-units that keep husky males workless, and abolish our worship of activity.

Then there would be plenty of work for every man to keep him from want, and plenty of leisure for every man to preserve in him a living soul.

If I were czar of the world, no woman should work except as she might elect for her amusement; no child should do aught but play.

Among savages the women do all the work. In the coming civilization they shall do none. The progress of the race is the progress of the female from toil to leisure.

Every woman is a possible mother. She should have only to grow and to be strong. She should be the real aristocracy, the real Upper Class, to give culture and beauty to life. She should have time to attend to the duties of her eternal priesthood.

As for man, little by little, he also would lift himself from the killing grind of monotonous exertion. For he would make Steam and Electricity, and other giants not yet discovered, do the dirty work.

To bring all this to pass, you do not need to devise any cunning scheme of government, nor to join any party or specious ism. You need do only one thing.

And that is to establish Justice.

The end of fraud and wrong is fevered toil. The end of justice is the superior product of skill and genius, and their mother, leisure.

Who should control sports wagering?

Posted on by
Reply

Kurt Erickson’s article in last Friday’s Post-Dispatch should be a warning that the state’s control of casino gambling is in danger.

Erickson wrote that four of our professional sports teams are launching a petition campaign to legalize sports wagering, an issue the legislature has talked about for several years but has been unable to get out of its own way and approve.

The St. Louis Cardinals, the St. Louis Blues, the Kansas City Royals, and the St. Louis City soccer club have filed nine proposed petitions with the Secretary of State. One of them will become the focus of a campaign to amend the constitution to allow sports wagering. The proposals also establish various tax rates and earmark revenues from sports wagering.

Some of the proposals will lower the overall tax on casino gambling by creating a super-low rate on sports wagering revenues. The proposals also change the way funds from gambling taxes are allocated.

Both are issues of legislative concern—-and of concern to educators in particular.  Both are issues the legislature dealt with in the 1990s when casino gambling was first legalized. The earmarking of funds from casino gambling has been a legislative prerogative from the beginning. The legislature changed the earmarks once, moving portions of casino admission fees from support for early childhood education to support for nursing homes and cemetery development for Missouri veterans.

Legislative leaders need to protect the general assembly’s authority to determine the best interests of the people of Missouri—the people who send their representatives and senators to the capitol on their behalf.

The only way to do that is to approve sports wagering during the 2022 legislative session.

The BEST way to do that is to recognize that casino gambling laws enacted in the 1990s are no longer adequate thirty years later at a time when casino gambling as an industry and  public access to casino gambling are changing.

Additionally, it is time the legislature recognize that the two-dollar admission fee established in 1993 has become a multi-million dollar liability to the state and to the casinos’ own host communities.

Proposed legislation has been written, but not introduced, that addresses all of those topics.  One of the major provisions is increasing the admission fee to a contemporary amount that is the equivalent of 1993’s two dollars. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics says the equivalent for this fiscal year is $3.67.  A new estimate will be released in February, during the legislative session.

The proposed legislation increases the admission fee to $3.50, leaving seventeen cents unclaimed.

The proposed legislation increases the admission fee to $3.50.  We know the casinos will vehemently oppose this provision because they like to keep a dollar-67 in 2021 dollars for every two 1993 dollars they give the state (which have a purchasing power of only a dollar and nine cents now). They’re happy getting richer and richer while the state gets poorer and poorer

The proposal leaves seventeen cents unclaimed. The filing of the possible petitions has prompted a suggestion for the remaining seventeen cents.

We know from past experience that the private owners of professional sports teams will expect the legislature to put up state taxpayer funds to help pay for a new stadium. The tub-thumping for a downtown Kansas City Royals stadium is well-underway, in fact. The state does not have the major funds the teams want it to commit without cutting funding for other state programs.  A provision not yet in the suggested gambling reform bill could direct the unclaimed seventeen cents into a state fund for construction and renovation of professional athletic facilities, alleviating the inevitable pressure on the state for help with new professional facilities.

With wagering being permitted on sports, it is only proper that part of the proceeds from that activity be directed in that direction.

One reason sports wagering legislation has struggled and foundered in past legislative sessions is the effort to bring so-called grey-market gambling machines in convenience stores under state regulation. Efforts to make the two issues run in tandem have been counterproductive.

There is no doubt that it is important the state regulate those machines. But the stakes have been increased enough on sports wagering with the proposed petition campaign that the two issues should be separated and sports wagering should be a higher priority.

Nothing in what has been written today should be considered as opposing either sports wagering or regulation of the grey market convenience store machines. The author does not oppose either but does believe our gambling laws are outdated and are costing the programs the state once promised would be funded by those taxes and fees tens of millions of dollars a year.

The governor and the legislature have many issues to consider as priorities in the 2022 session. One of them is changing the law to make it harder to circulate petitions. We hope that issue will not obscure the importance of the sports wagering effort.

The proposed petition campaign should make state authority to regulate gaming and to appropriate the proceeds from it one of the major issues as a stand-alone matter that will not be endangered by other issues.