From the Archives - The "Best" of Cloozoe

Being too lazy to write new stuff, from time to time we will re-publish some of Cloozoe's Greatest Hits. At the request of an overwhelming fifty percent of our readers (Zen Cane) we''ll kick things off with Part One of the longest story never completely told; Cloozoe's report on his May 2007 fishing trip to Michigan's Upper Peninsula with Black Hills Bills, Amazing Woody, and featuring a cameo appearance by Pmag.

Picture of Ohio, one of the top 46 most beautiful states in America

Trip to the UP, Part I

Apologies to all of you who understandably have no interest in hearing about someone else’s fishing trip. My companions insisted I produce this report since they apparently very much like to read about themselves. I warned them – sternly - that my version would contain truth of the un-shellacked variety, as I owed no less to both the historical record and my well-earned, unchallenged, and rigorously guarded reputation for exacting veracity. I further warned them that they might not even recognize themselves since they clearly share the rest of the human race’s capacity for self-deception and both harbor delusions of adequacy. They professed to be unconcerned: “Hell, there’s no such thing as bad publicity; just make sure you spell our names right”.

So, Emazzing Wouldie and Blak Hils Bil, here it is – you asked for it.

My journey began a week ago, last Thursday morning, with a drive northwest to Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania and – three hundred miles later – into Ohio. Only three things about Ohio piqued my interest:

1. They have the audacity to charge a toll on interstate 80 and they've renamed the section within their borders “The Ohio Turnpike”. I assume the reason they get away with it is because one doesn’t have to pony up until getting off the turnpike at one end of the state or the other and most people would gladly pay any fee within reason to leave.

2. In Ohio all the signs for roads with one or two digit designations indicate the route number inside an outline map of the state showing its proportions to be roughly square, whereas the roads designated with three digits show the proportions of the state as a pronounced rectangle, with the result that it is now much wider than it is tall. Apparently no one could figure out any other way to squeeze in the extra digit other than to distort the map.

3. Fulfilling a boyhood dream, I passed by the birthplace of Rutherford B. Hayes, near Sandusky. I didn’t visit it, since I had dreamt only of passing by.

Hayes, a Republican, was the nineteenth president of the United States and there are a couple of things you should know about him. He was the first and - until recently - only president to take office despite losing the popular vote which tallied 4,300,000 for Tilden to 4,036,000 for Hayes. Hayes's ultimate election depended upon contested electoral votes in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. If all the disputed electoral votes went to Hayes, he would win; a single electoral vote would elect Tilden. Months of uncertainty followed. In January 1877 Congress established an Electoral Commission to decide the dispute. The commission, comprised of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, (can you guess, dear readers, what happened next?) determined all the contests in favor of Hayes by – surprise! - a vote of eight to seven along party lines. The final electoral vote: 185 to 184. Then - as now - the big money was solidly behind the Republican party. Some things never change.

Hayes’s other notable achievement was his decision to withdraw federal troops from the south in the name of restoring "wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government", thus effectively ending the Reconstruction era. The "wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government" in turn paved the way for the Ku Klux Klan, wholesale lynching and other acts of terror, and ushered in nine decades of state sanctioned apartheid and disenfranchisement of black people. In the south, those nine decades are referred to as "the good old days". Hayes’s withdrawal of the troops was a manifestly political maneuver intended to bring southern voters into the Republican fold. But the Republican party at the time was too closely identified in the southern mind with the devil, Lincoln, and Hayes’s stratagem went for naught: the south remained solidly Democratic until 1964 and the passage of the civil rights act which was supported overwhelmingly by non-southern Democrats, 94%-6% (and to be fair, almost as overwhelmingly by non-southern Republicans, 85%-15%) at which point the always fragile coalition of northern liberals and southern Dixiecrats began to crumble and all them Yaller Dawg Democrats started jumping ship. Note: Only 7 southern Democratic Congressmen and 1 southern Democratic Senator (Ralph Yarborough of Texas) voted for the measure. Not a single southern Republican did so, further laying the groundwork for the seismic political shift of the south to the staunchly Republican region it remains to this day.

Ohio does, though, rank among the forty six most beautiful states in the country, albeit toward the bottom of that group.