I Wish I'd Said That

The advent of the internet, with blogs and such sites as Google and Wikipedia, has been destructive regarding the historical record, nowhere more so than in the realm of reported quotes. Some people apparently feel that *they* can make a quote better, snappier, funnier, whatever, if they modify it juuuuuust a bit. Usually, the result provided by the vandal is not as good, not as snappy, not as funny. Always, the quote becomes historically inaccurate.

So . . . I've researched the quotes that follow, but they may not be precisely accurate, not word for word matches with the original spoken versions. The versions I chose were those that I first heard closest in time to their being said, or those that I found at sites I consider more likely to be reliable than others. In any event, it is the flavor that counts here.

• Just prior to the US assault on Baghdad, a news reporter asked Marine Major General John F. Kelly whether he had contemplated defeat. You may recall that those opposed to the war had predicted dire consequences - door-to-door fighting and very high casualty rates.
  
  "We are Marines. The Marines took Iwo Jima. Baghdad ain't shit."
  
  
• William F. Buckley Jr., during a debate at Harvard University: "I would sooner be governed by the first hundred names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard."
  
  
• This crossed my mind when Nancy Pelosi told reporters that the health care bill had to be passed so we could find out what's in it.
  
  H. L. Mencken: "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats."
  
  
• In 2006, a bail skipper was pulled over for speeding by a Polk County (Florida) deputy. The driver ran into the woods, was followed by the deputy and a backup deputy and police dog. The driver shot the dog and the second deputy, wounding him six times. He then approached the deputy and finished him off with two bullets to the head. He subsequently wounded the first deputy, who called for help.
  
  A SWAT team was called in and located the murderer the next morning, hiding under a fallen tree. He raised a hand containing a gun, the SWAT team opened fire, and he was hit and killed by 68 bullets.
  
  Asked why the killer was shot 68 times, the Sheriff replied, "That's all the bullets we had."
  
  
• Attributed to various generals: ""When you men get home and face an anti-war protester, look him in the eyes and shake his hand. Then, wink at his girlfriend, because she knows she's dating a pussy."
  
  
• Josef Stalin, prior to WWII, disussing the usefulness of acquiring Pope Pius XI as an ally: "The Pope? How many divisions does he have?" When he heard of this later, the Pope said, "Tell my son Josef that he will meet my divisions in eternity."

Memories of My Father - III

• This would have been shortly before or shortly after I was born - somewhere, then, in the period 1940 to 1942.
  
  Dad had applied for a civil service job at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, and was working as a cook at the Saugus Diner, on the rotary (traffic circle for you non-New Englanders) on Route 1 in Saugus, Massachusetts. (Is that still there?)
  
  The diner was sold and the new owner closed it for a week, but brought in all employees to clean the diner from top to bottom. They scrubbed floors, walls, and ceiling, the stove, tables, counter top, everything, cleaned the windows and the entry stairs, did some touch-up painting, etc. for the whole week.
  
  The owner wasn't there at week's end, so Monday morning the employees asked him about their pay for the preceding week. "Oh, no, you did that to keep your jobs."
  
  Dad kept an eye on the amount of business, and at mid-morning he took off his apron, walked over to the cash register, opened it, and took an amount equal to his week's pay. He then told one of the waitresses, "Tell him I quit and I took my pay for last week out of the register."
  
  When he got home the mail had arrived, and he had a letter saying that he had been accepted for the Navy Yard job.
  
  
• I once asked my father what it was like to grow up during the depression. He told me that he was mostly unaware of it because the family had circled the wagons and he lived with six adults on one floor of a house in Brockton, Massachusetts - his parents, two uncles, and two aunts, all sharing the rent, utility, and food bills.
  
  He said that he occasionally saw newspaper stories about people jumping out of windows and so forth, but nothing like that happened to any family he knew. For him, the biggest change was going to sleep at night in a bed and waking up in the morning on a couch.
  
  
• A few weeks after my twelfth birthday, Dad woke me up at perhaps 9:30 or 10:00 PM, and said, "Come on, let's go downstairs. I want you to see something." The television was on and he plopped me down in front of it, saying "Someday you'll be glad you saw this. Does the name 'Josef Stalin' mean anything to you?"
  
  It did. As I have mentioned, I began reading newspapers when I was in grammar school, and although I probably didn't know that his power stemmed from his position as Chairman of the Communist Party, I knew that he was a dictator, number one in Russia and the Soviet Union.
  
  The program was covering the announcement of his death, and showing the most recent film footage available, which was very recent indeed. There was footage of him walking around and standing still, clearly in a daze, surrounded by obviously obsequious people. I do not know who was pictured in attendance, but the most likely candidates were Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov, and Bulganin. The only name I would have recognized at the time was Beria. Although Stalin appeared clueless regarding his surroundings, his retinue looked skittish. Who knows what someone like Stalin will do when in such a state?
  
  I have since read and watched a very great deal about Russia, the Soviet Union, Communism, and Stalin. I *am* glad I saw it. Thanks, Dad.