Archive for the ‘history’ Tag
I grew up during the post WW II era period and I remember seeing Kilroy graffiti many times as a kid and later after my enlistment in the Army. I never knew the history behind it and never felt the need to find out. There was even a time or two when I painted that logo on a wall while stationed on bases in the US and even after my assignment to Korea I managed to leave Kilroy here and there. I’m sure many of you have seen Kilroy over the years and now it’s time to tell the whole story. Thanks to my friend Park from Kansas City who supplied much of this information.
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You can find his likeness engraved in stone in the National War Memorial in Washington , DC at the rear of a small alcove where very few people have seen it. For the WWII generation, this brings back memories. For us younger folks, it’s a bit of trivia that is a part of our American history. Anyone born in 1913 to about 1950, is familiar with Kilroy. No one knew why he was so well known but everybody seemed to get into it. So who was Kilroy?
In 1946 (the year I as born) the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America ," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article. Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax , Massachusetts , had evidence of his identity.
‘Kilroy’ was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, MA . His job was to check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework pay scale and got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn’t be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, some larcenous riveters would erase the mark. Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through again and count the rivets for a second time, resulting in double pay for those cheating riveters.
One day Kilroy’s boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on. The many tight spaces he was required to crawl into didn’t lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his check mark on each job he inspected but added ‘KILROY WAS HERE’ in king-sized letters next to the check. He eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message.
Once he did that, the cheating riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks. Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint but with the war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn’t time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy’s inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships that the yard produced.
His message apparently rang a bell with our servicemen because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific.
Before war’s end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo . To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.
Kilroy became the U.S. super- G I who had always "already been" wherever GI’s went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest , the Statue of Liberty , the underside of the Arc de Triumphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.
As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI’s there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo!
In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its’ first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"
To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy yard in Halifax , Massachusetts .
And The Tradition Continues…
EVEN Outside Osama Bin Laden’s House!!!
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There you have it. Now you know.
I’ve always been a lover of quotations for many years regardless of the time period from which they’ve sprung. I’ve discovered quotes from politicians in ancient Greece that remain totally applicable to the nonsense we witness every day in Washington. I’ve even found myself shocked and awed that occasionally someone I disagree with politically will say something noteworthy. The old adage that “Even a blind man will find a pearl eventually” remains true. So here are a few of my favorites that most of our current pols should be required to read and memorize before running for office.
“There are two parts of good government; one is the actual obedience of citizens to the laws, the other part is the goodness of the laws which they obey.” Aristotle (384-322 BC)
“The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable; of a bad one, to make it less valuable.” Henry David Thoreau 4 Jul 1874
“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul”.” George Bernard Shaw 1944
“In this [economic] crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” Ronald Reagan 20 Jan 81
“Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” Thomas Paine, Common Sense 1776
“A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.” Barry M. Goldwater 21 Oct 64
See what I mean? Almost everything we say or do had been said and done already. It makes reading them, listening to them, and understanding them even more important today. I’ll leave you with that thought as I head out the door for a day of relaxation at a local church fair and then later to the beach to cool off. I hope your weekend is a good one as well.
Everyone these days is constantly harping for me to partake of this festival celebrating the birth of Christ. Just to let most of you know, I’m what I would call a recovering Catholic. I was baptized and confirmed against my will at a young age but was able to distance myself over the next few decades. I feel I’ve gained a better perspective of things and since I’ve never rejoined the church you may consider me a righteous religious independent.
That explains my position towards organized religion and the related holidays they claim as their own. In an attempt to be fair I decided to do a little research into Christmas to determine if it was the actual birthday of Jesus Christ. It didn’t take terribly long to find out that December 25th is not the correct date of the birth but one selected by the Catholic Church to compete with certain other pagan celebrations that also took place in December. As best I could determine the actual season of Jesus’s birth was thought to be sometime in the spring. The church in its infinite wisdom took the same approach to scheduling that holiday as they do in handling everything else. They make it church doctrine regardless of the facts and their billions of believers follow right along.
In the early years of the American colonies, Christmas was considered a pagan festival and wasn’t too well received by the colonists. There was even a time between 1659 and 1681 in Massachusetts where anyone caught celebrating Christmas would be fined five shillings. Our current war on Christmas and religion led by our socialist friends at the ACLU pales in comparison to that carried on by our colonist forefathers.
I think my problem of developing a true Christmas spirit has finally been solved. I dislike the materialistic style of Christmas that many people celebrate these days and I’ve always disliked anything forced on me by any organized religion but the pagan holidays I think I can get on board with.
I’d make a great pagan. I love really big bonfires, and long’s slinky robes, and even the occasional orgy or two. Say what you want about those pagans, they really know how to party. I’m sure there are many pagans in this country who maintain a really low profile due to all of the hateful and discriminatory things said about them over the years by the Christians. I truly feel their pain and still don’t understand why “we all can’t just get along”. Special thanks to Rodney King for that quote, he was always my hero and role model.
So take heart all you pagans, stand up, be recognized, and be proud of your rich heritage. I think next year I’m going to start a campaign for the creation of a new holiday where all of those people who feel disenfranchised by their organized religions can jump on board my pagan bandwagon. We’ll have Christmas trees but just so we can set them on fire because everyone knows it’s no fun to dance and frolic naked in the dark. I also hear that dancing naked around bonfires in December can be a bit hazardous. The pagans report a huge increase in frostbite occurrences during the holidays, so be careful out there.
I’m starting to get that old tingle of holiday cheer again. You just never know when you’re going stumble into a genuine religious epiphany. It’s a freaking Christmas miracle and I’ve been saved.
Well, we’re ten days into the month of November and it’s hard to believe that just a few short weeks ago I was sitting on my deck wearing a T-shirt and shorts and enjoying the warm weather. In my attempt to be optimistic I refuse to think that for the next long, boring, and weather beaten five months I’ll be housebound.
Today is a day of odds and ends. I first went to the granddaddy of all retailers, Walmart, to pick up a few things and to enjoy a reasonably nice day. Walmart as usual is a freaking zoo. Just pulling into the parking lot is an adventure where all those years of amusement park bumper cars finally paid off. It’s a Friday morning in November at 7:15 am and I was hard-pressed to find a decent parking spot. The lot was full, people wandering everywhere, and none paying the slightest attention to the moving vehicles. It was a good morning to play “idiot hockey” and test the reflexes of all the late night partiers stumbling into the Dunkin Donuts inside the Walmart. They were pretty nimble and were still moving quickly enough to avoid a vinyl bumper up their ass. I guess I’m showing my lack of patience but I really don’t care. The only thing worse than a discourteous driver is a discourteous pedestrian and I’m surprised and shocked that more of them aren’t seriously injured on a regular basis. Oh well enough of my complaining it’s time to get into the store, do my shopping, and get the hell out.
The store was fairly crowded with the normal oddballs and yahoo’s roaming around and giving us other humans something to talk about. I needed a few dietary supplements so I wandered over towards the pharmacy. As I’m walking down the aisle near the condoms I overhear two women in a rather heated discussion about which ones were the best? Should we get ribbed or lubricated? You can’t buy that size, he’s not that big. This went on for a few minutes and I found a label to read on a nearby product because I didn’t want to miss anything. I had to chuckle a few times and try not to be too obvious but my presence didn’t seem to faze them at all. They were reading the box descriptions out loud to each other, comparing notes, and laughing hysterically. Gone are the days when we men were forced to sneak into drugstores and buy condoms on the QT. I suppose it’s only fair these days that I’m occasionally required to buy feminine hygiene products for my better-half.
I thought about those ladies and their conversation all the way home. I’ve never been a big fan of condoms and when possible I wouldn’t use them. Fortunately for me when I was acting wild and crazy STD’s weren’t as a big an issue as they are today. All I had to do then was determine if the woman I was pursuing was on the pill or not. If not, I proceeded on to the next possible partner. The way things are these days I wouldn’t attempt sex with a any partner unless I wore a body condom. Bearing all that in mind when I got home I decided to do a little research on condoms. I have a fairly extensive library of books containing tons and tons of totally useless information and trivia. It took me about 10 min. to find what I was looking for and I’m making it available to you free of charge. You just can’t have enough information about condoms.
Condoms have been with us much longer than you might have imagined. Condoms are supposedly named after the apocryphal,”Dr. Condom”, or Conton, who is supposed to have made them for Charles II, out of lamb’s intestines, which were dried and then well oiled. The mail sheath, however, had been around long before the time of Charles II. Before the time of Christ, the Chinese made them with oiled silk paper (the first lubricated condoms). It is rumored that Roman soldiers would make condoms from the muscle tissue of their defeated foes. By mid-evil times, the spread of syphilis increased the use of condoms greatly. In the 1800s condoms were made from animal intestines that were soaked in an alkaline solution, scraped, disinfected with the vapor of burning brimstone, washed, insulated, dried, cut to approximately 7 inches, and fitted with a ribbon on the open end. The Catholic Church wasn’t too crazy about this prophylactic profusion and in 1826 Pope Leo the XIII condemned their use. Despite the objections of his Holiness, condoms were here to stay!
Making this detailed history of condoms available should be considered my November public service announcement.
You’re very welcome.
