It's All (American) History

I’ve always loved American history. I’m terrible at dates, I can never remember where the Civil War started (was it Antietum or Bull Run?), and I forget the order of our first presidents after Jefferson. With that disclaimer, you can see why I didn’t major in history at BYU although I still think I’d make a great high school history teacher. It was tempting to switch my major from business to history once my roommate Kathy told me that history majors only had 32 credits in their department and us business majors had 52. That sounded more like a degree in electives to me than history! If it weren’t for my lack of gray matter in the memory department I would’ve signed up. I’m always up for less work.

I’m always telling Paul that he may be smarter when it comes to academics, but when it comes to mindless trivia, I blow anyone away. And American history is no exception. Thanks to my high school AP History teacher, Mr. Clark, my brain is infused with the nicknames of presidents and weird American catch phrases. Despite the widespread use of computers a decade earlier, his tests were always hand written and then copied for us students. A groan was always let out by our class when we would invariably get a nine page history test. We quickly scanned the test ‘packet’ and realized the length was due to his large male-style block print. And the tests were always chock full of American trivia, no doubt due to his love of American History magazine. We read more from that magazine than from our textbook. Because of his tests I still remember that William Henry Harrison’s nickname was ‘Old Tippecanoe’ and Andrew Jackson’s was ‘Old Hickory’. I’m good at phrases too. I can tell you that it was Teddy Roosevelt who made famous the phrase, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’ and we can thank Churchill for the phrase, ‘A riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’ I was definitely surprised when I took the AP History test and learned there were no questions on ‘Old Fuss and Feathers’ nor on ‘Lemonade Lucy’. Nobody passed the test that year. Maybe Mr. Clark revamped his curriculum and eliminated questions from tests like; “Southerners were known for sipping __________ out on the ___________. That honestly was on a test. The answer was, “Southerners were known for sipping mint juleps out on the veranda.” I still remember that and I don’t even drink.

The highlight of our class had to be our ‘fake’ news skits we put on. Our group was assigned to cover the burning of the White House by the british in 1814. I was an eyewitness to the event in character of SNL’s Grumpy Old Man. I wore a stuffed plaid shirt, donned crooked spectacles, hunched over, and said things in a raspy old-man voice like, “Why didn’t we just paint a bulls-eye on the darn house for the stinkin’ British? In my day, the president was a humble man, living in a humble house, AND WE LIKED IT!” I got an A.

Good times, Mr. Clark, good times.