Toilet Humor - Chapter One

 

“I advise you, if you are anxious to be read of, to look for some boozy poet of the dark archway who writes verses with rough charcoal or crumbling chalk which folk read while they shit”.

“Marcus Valerius Martialis” Rome, 70 C. E.

I am assured the average healthy human produces an ounce of poo for every 12 pounds of body weight, dropping a log anywhere between 3 times a day to once every three days. Our foul, stinking meadow muffins are so putrid a blind leopard with a head cold could track a human through a stink weed swamp. The only reason we were not hunted to extinction is that we used to live in the trees, where our “stinkies” magically disappeared when dropped.

“What hangs at a man’s thigh and wants to poke the hole that it’s often poked before?’ Answer: A key.”

Sumarian joke, 2, 500 B.C.

This “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” hygiene worked until 3 million years ago when we started to spend time on the ground. It must have been a short transition, as proved by our still smelly merde. But as long as our populations remained mobile we could usually outrun the lions and tigers and bears, and defecate away from where we hunted and gathered. When the ice ages restricted our outings, our Cro-Magnon siblings filled so many sheltering caves with aromatic and putrescent paleo-feces, we drove our Neanderthal roommates to prefer the cold outdoors to our proximity.

Strepsiades ; “Do you see this little door and little house?...This is a thinking-shop of wise spirits....

These men teach, if one give them money, to conquer in speaking, right or wrong.....They are minute philosophers, noble and excellent.”

Act I, Scene I. The Clouds by Aristophanes 424 B.C.

Then, about 10,000 years ago, humans settled down in settlements and started farming. Human populations mushroomed, as did our fecal matter. This led to the first great invention to deal with scheisse – sewage. Whoever was running things in the palace at Knossos on Crete 3,000 years ago, could pass a BM without ever having to see or smell it, as the constantly running water in the palace pipes instantly removed the royal turd from proximity to the royal nose. This may be the origin of the Robert's Supreme Court legal precedent that rich people's poop don't stink.  But, of course, the palace pipes had to end somewhere, and the property values just downstream must have plummeted, along with the the owner's odor and ardor.

“Eat lettuce and soft apples eat: For you, Phoebus, have the harsh face of a defecating man."

Marcus Valerius Martialis 70 C.E..

It was King Tarquin in 600 B.C.E. who first mixed socialism and sewage, when he built Rome's 16 foot wide Cloaca Maximum, aka the central sewer, aka “the big poop hole”, atop the cities' 100 foricae, public latrines, where King and commoner alike could discharge a brownie without having to give it a second thought. 

This sanitation reduced the city's death rate to a mere 30,000 a year, allowing the population to top one million during the first millennium. But that didn't last. After the Romans threw out the Etruscan Kings, they privatized new additions to the sewer system, producing some very rich crap merchants – from the Latin “crappa” meaning chaff, or rejected material. But squeezing every ounce of profit from the poop populi left the sewers leaky and often in disrepair and disconnected. Thus Rome suffered a series of plagues that killed over half the population every few decades. Where upon the patricians took their money and fled to the suburbs, like Ravenna and Constantinople, where they didn't have to smell poor people's poop.

“Apollinaris, doctor to the emperor Titus, had a good crap here.”

Graffitti on a wall in Herculaneum, Italy 79 C.E.

The fall of Rome brought on the dark ages, which meant even royalty were reduced to making night deposits in a chamber pot, a sort of portable latrine. Of course the wealthy had servants to dump their “cacha” (Latin profanity for poop) , usually in the nearest street, which became a sewer, from the old French “seuwiere”, meaning a drain cut in the ground. This was also the origin of the “High Street”, as the most valuable address, because, as any populist will tell you, shite runs downhill.

“With your giant nose and cock, I bet you can with ease When you get excited, check the end for cheese.”

Marcus Valerius Martialis 70 C.E.

By the 16^th century, the 200,000 subjects living in the fetid putrid sewer of London, then the largest city in Europe, were dropping dead daily from anthrax, measles, whooping cough, strep throat, syphilis, child bed fever, malaria, polio, tetanus, and cholera, to name but a few of the infectious endemic illnesses. In addition there was an epidemic of influenza from 1557 to 1559 that killed 5% of  the city. The first half of the century saw five waves of the “Dreaded Sweats” or “English Sweats” that killed tens of thousands within 24 hours of affliction. The Black Death or Bubonic Plague swept through London in 1563 (17,000 dead), 1578 (3,700 dead), 1582 (3,000 dead) and 1592 (11,000 dead). And the cause was obvious, even without a viable germ theory.

“This Nicholas just then let fly a fart, As loud as it had been a thunder-clap, And well-nigh blinded Absalom, poor chap; But he was ready with his iron hot, And Nicholas right in the arse he got.  Off went the skin a hand's-breadth broad, about, The coulter burned his bottom so, throughout, That for the pain he thought that he should die, And like one mad he started in to cry, "Help! Water! Water! For God's dear heart!”

The Millers Tale – The Cantabury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1478

By 1600, the largest tributary of the Thames, the Fleet River (old Anglo-Saxon “fleot”, a tidal inlet), once called “The river of wells”, had been an open sewer for two centuries. Ben Johnson, Shakespeare's contemporary, penned a tribute “On the Famous Voyage”, praising two lads who dared to boat down the 100 yard wide “ merd-urinous” stream. In the stone lined channel “Hung stench, diseases, and old filth, their mother...pills and eke in potions, Suppositories, cataplasms and lotions...the grave fart, late let in parliament.” At last a dead cat floats to the surface and curses the travelers. “How dare Your dainty nostrils (in so hot a season, When every clerk eats artichokes and peason, Laxative lettuce, and such windy meat) Tempt such a passage? When each privy's seat, Is filled with buttock, and the walls do sweat Urine and plasters?” But the waters of the Thames barely noticed the Fleet's filth, so contaminated were its own. The only thing more dangerous than being a child raised in sewage soaked Elizabethan London, was being Elizabeth in the the same place.

“In vain, the Workman showed his Wit, With Rings and Hinges counterfeit, To make it seem in this Disguise, A Cabinet to vulgar Eyes...So Strephon lifting up the Lid, To view what in the Chest was hid...So Things, which must not be expressed When plumped into the reeking Chest; Send up an excremental Smell, To taint the Parts from whence they fell. The Petty coats and Gown perfume, Which waft a Stink round every Room.”

Jonathan Swift “The Lady's Dressing Room” 1732

After years of living under the constant threat of a charge of treason, Elizabeth Tudor put on the crown in 1558 as a 25 year old paranoid anorexic, subject to panic attacks. Living just above the level of common sewage, the nobility survived eating slightly spoiled food, prepared by unwashed hands, unevenly cooked in polluted water. This lead to repeated bouts of stomach cramps, mild fevers, headaches, watery diarrhea and vomiting, which lead to dehydration. This gastroenteritis would rarely prove fatal to an otherwise healthy adult like Elizabeth, but it killed one in four of all infants and a quarter of all surviving children by the age of 10. However salvation from this rising tide of poo was offered in 1595 when a member of Elizabeth's court invented “The John”. Except he called it the “Ajax”, for a very punny reason.

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WONDERING ABOUT THE DEATH PENALTY

 

I might have voted guilty along with the rest of the judges in the Perry trial, even though one of the defendants had been charged with being a witch. That was Joan Perry. And she was hanged first. The authorities expected her eldest son, Richard, freed from Joan's witchcraft, would then confess. 

But to everyone’s surprise, after Richard, too, was dead, the youngest boy, John, whose confession had led to the execution of his entire family,  recanted. Still the judges remained certain. So John was duly hanged as well. If I had been the judge, I like to think that John's recantation would have led me to have second thoughts. Of course, by then it a little was too late. (http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/eggcorn.html)

The story behind this wonder takes place in Chipping Camden, in the Cotswold of England. "Chipping" is an old Welsh word for market, and “wold” is Welsh for an upland meadow, so this was a market town amidst the rolling limestone hills and open fields which were once the property of the Saxon King, Harold.

Under the invading Normans it became sheep country. In 1340, in Chipping Camden, the wool merchants were already so wealthy they built a hall on the High Street, using the honey-colored “Cotswold stone” as facing.

Even today the single street running through Chipping Camden looks as if it were untouched since the middle ages. In fact, this western corner of England was a violent incubator for the industrial revolution.

It is human nature that wealth surrounded by poverty seeks a moral justification. So it was no accident then that the Nuevo-rich Calvinist wool merchants in the Cotswold welcomed a belief in predestination – the certainty that they were wealthy because God predestined them to be wealthy before they had even been born. Thus the wealth of the cruel and vain was God’s will. Of this the Calvinists were certain. And they were certain that opposing them was to oppose God’s will.

In 1615, at the very start of the English civil war, the local lord, Sir Baptist Hicks, burned down his own manor house, rather than see it fall into the hands of the Calvinistic Parliamentarians who dominated Gloucestershire. Then  in 1649, these dead-certain Calvinists had grown so frustrated they beheading their intransigent King and suspected Catholic, Charles I.

 But the Calvinist experiment in government came to an end on New Years Day, 1660 when soldiers under Colonel George Monck crossed the River Tweed at the village of Coldstream, thus earning the regiment supporting the restoration of the monarchy the eternal and future title “The Coldstream Guards”.

A month later they were in London, and in late April, Charles Stuart, son of the last King of England, was crowned Charles II, the next King of England (above).  Monarchists returned to power all over country. In Chipping Campden it was Lady Juliana Campden, Baptist Hick's daughter, who occupied one of the few buildings not burned down by the Calivinsts (below).  But if anybody thought the restoration of the monarchy was going to return Britain to stability, they were about to suffer a very rude awakening.

Three months later, on Thursday, 16 August,  1660, the 70 year old William Harrison set out for an eight mile walk to collect rents for his mistress, the Lady Juliana Campden. His first stop would be two miles away in the village of Charingworth. And he expected to return home before dark with his purse filled with rent money. But come sunset, Mr. Harrison had not returned.

 At about 9 p.m. Harrison's servant, John Perry, was sent out to look for the old man at Charingworth and Paxford. The next morning Harrison’s own son went out to search for them both. The son found John Perry, who explained he had been looking all night for Mr. Harrison, to no avail.  Together they continued looking, and later that morning found William Harrison’s hat, slashed by a knife, and his shirt, caked in blood.

Suspicion quickly fell on Harrison's servant , John Perry.  Over several days of constant questioning and torture, John Perry told several stories but finally admitted he had suggested his own mother and brother should rob William Harrison and murder him.  And even though Joan and Richard both insisted on their innocence, the investigators felt certain that John had not lied, since he had implicated himself . No sane person would admit to that, even under torture.  Ponds and streams and wells were searched for poor Mr. Harrison's  body, or the rents he had collected. No trace of the old man or the money was found. The Perry family were held over the winter for trial.

On Sunday, 6 January, 1661, fifty lunatics (most of them ex-soldiers from Oliver Cromwell’s Calvinist army), stormed into St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and started roughing people up. They shot one poor fellow who talked back to them. They were preparing the way, they said, for the return of Jesus Christ, whom they intended to crown the next King of England.  It took an armed band of militia to chase the loonies out of the church.

Three days later the same loonies  stormed a prison and tried to free the prisoners. None were insane enough to come out of their cells. This time it took the loyal Coldstream guards to trap the loonies in a couple of taverns.  The leaders were tried for treason, hanged, drawn and quartered. It seemed there was such an air of un-certainty hanging over England, the citizens had become inspired to begin to demand certainty. 

In April of 1661 the Perry family were brought to trial, quickly convicted and duly hanged, one after the other. And if there were second thoughts after John's gallows recantation, they were put aside. Such was the need for certainty.

For even if Joan, Richard and John Perry had not killed poor Mr. Harrison, it was important that justice was seen to have been done.  And then in 1662, wonder of wonders, William Harrison walked back into to the village of Chipping Camden, certainly alive and allegedly well.

When questioned the old man (he was now seventy-two) told a murky tale of being set upon, stabbed, kidnapped, hustled aboard a ship, and sold in a Turkish slave market. He escaped, he said, when his new master died.  Mr. Harrison claimed he then became a ship hand, and the ship brought him back to England.   As others have noted, “The story told by Harrison is conspicuously and childishly false.”  And as a Mr. Paget noted, “much profit was not likely to arise from the sale of the old man as a slave…especially as the old man was delivered in a wounded and imperfect condition.”

So if not kidnaped to a Turkish prison, where did Mr. Harrison disappear to for 8 months in 1660?  Given that transportation in that age was mostly limited to “shanks mare”, William Harrison might have walked far enough that no one would recognize him,  But he must have been close enough to Chipping Camden to have heard, in those eight months, of the trial and hanging of his accused murderers. And yet the old man did not return to save those three lives.

But why did Mr. Harrison wait two years to return? Why not sooner? Why did Harrison return at all? And why did John Perry tell such wild tales?  Why did he send his own mother and brother to the gallows? Why did he not recant until the last moments of his life?  Could torture, the standard method used for questioning at the time, have produced  false testimony?  Perhaps the human soul is the real mystery, and not certain at all,   

In the end, all we know for certain is that John Perry, Richard Perry and Joan Perry were slowly strangled at the end of a rope, as punishment for a crime which they not only did not commit but which never happened.  Every thing else about this case is a mystery and a wonder. It is the Camden Wonder.

It is also a wonder that, 300 years later, juries remain so certain that they continue to take the lives of those accused, when they have no earthly reason to be so certain, and certainly no heavenly justification either.

http://www.campdenwonder.plus.com/

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MUSTANG - Man and Machine

 

The dull brown aluminum machine cut through the thin air like a pencil on a draftsmen chart. At the end of that finely drawn line was a lanky 31 year old pilot, Major James Howell Howard (above).  

The U.S. Navy had trained him to fly, but he became an combat ace, completing 56 missions over China with the Flying Tigers (above) in a P-40.  After Pearl Harbor he became a Major in the U.S. Army Air Corps. 

And, since shortly before 9:00 am, this Tuesday 11 January 1944, he had been squeezed into the 2 foot wide by 3 foot long cockpit of his P - 51 Mustang fighter. 

After four hours of cold tedium Howard's 356^th fighter group finally caught up with the 401^st bomb group they were assigned to protect. The 137 B-17 and B-24 bombers had just finished their runs over the Focke Wulf  factory in Oschersleben, Germany, and were turning for home.

Having divided his command to cover the lead and tailing bomber formations, Howard was now "jincking" back and forth at 250 miles per hour in the center of the 160 miles per hour bomber formations,  Howard noticed the bombers nearest him “...seemed to be under pressed attack by six single and twin-engine enemy fighters.” Signaling to his wing man on his “six”, Howard released his two 62 gallon drop fuel tanks, pushed his throttle and stick forward, and dived to the attack.

The machine Major Howard was flying was conceived in March of 1940. That month, with German bombers expected any moment over London, British industry produced just 58 front line all metal Spitfire single seat fighters, capable of 370 miles per hour (above). Little could be done to quickly increase its production rates, so desperation drove the British to look to the United States. 

They were disappointed to discover just one American fighter capable of speeds over 300 MPH, the Curtis Hawk P-40 (above), produced by North American Aviation in Inglewood, California. (The U.S. Army had to label their fighters as “Pursuit Aircraft” to placate isolationist politicians, thus the "P" in front of all fighter designations.)  But North American's production lines were already running at full capacity with P-40's, B-25 bombers and trainers. A new order would require an entirely new plant, which meant added expense and delay.

Major Howard first fell in behind an Me 110 twin tailed night fighter (above). The enemy crew were concentrating on their target, and did not notice the small fighters on their tail. “I waited until his wingspan filled my gun sight", Howard wrote later, "and opened up with a four-second burst.” The enemy plane went into a steep dive, and then fell from the sky as the wings broke off. 

With a flick of his control stick and kick at the rudder with his feet, Howard fell in behind an FW 190 single seat fighter (above).  “He pulled up into the sun when he saw me,” remembered Howard. A two second burst put 26 rounds from each of the six wing mounted 50 caliber machine guns into the target. The impact was instantaneous. Said Howard, “I nearly ran into his canopy as he threw it off to bail out”. And lastly Howard shot down a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter.

Legend has it that the 45 year old charismatic President of NAA, James Howard "Dutch" Kindelberger, approached his lead engineer, 41 year old German born Edgar Schmued (above), and asked him, “Ed, do we want to build P-40's here?” Schmeud replied, "We can design and build a better one."  Relying on Schmued, North American assured the British they could deliver a better fighter than the P-40 no later than January of 1941. The contract for 320 of the as yet to be designed Mustang Mark 1a fighters was signed on 24 April, 1940.

Returning to his station, jinking again, and now heading for home, Howard realized he had lost his wing man. Now alone at 26,000 feet above central Germany, still 500 mile from the Dutch coastline, he spotted some 30 German fighters gathering like vultures to feast on the bombers. Howard, confident in himself and the P-51 machine (above) he piloted, decided, as he put it, to “stick around”.

Engineer Schmued had reason to be so confident about his ability to design a batter fighter than the P-40.  In 1938 Federal researchers working in a wind tunnel in Langley, Virginia, discovered that softening the  “hump” on the wing top kept the air flow closer to the surface of the wing, which reduced drag by 50%  while not reducing lift. They called the design “laminar flow”.  The same team also learned that the standard rounded wing tips might look smooth to designers, but they actually increased drag . 

This new plane, with razor thin blunt squared-off wings, would be the first in the world to benefit from this research. And Schmued had a few ideas of his own. He insisted the aluminum skin on this new fighter be “entirely flush-riveted”, allowing the plane to smoothly slice through the air.

Diving again, Howard lined up behind another ME-110, this one throwing rockets into the bomber formations. A single burst sent the twin engine fighter spiraling down, trailing smoke. Then, remembered Howard, “It wasn’t long before I saw another Bf 109 (above)  tooling up behind the formation.” But this time the German pilot saw the brown fighter, and headed for the deck. Howard followed. “He stood out very clearly, silhouetted against the snow that covered the ground...” After another pair of short bursts the 109 began to smoke, and at 3,000 feet Howard was forced to pull back on the stick. “  The fellow went down in a cloud of black smoke and fire and hit the ground.” 

As the P-51 climbed at 4,000 feet per minute, Howard grunted while “G” forces drove him into the seat. But the same forces were pushing the bullets in the ammunition belts on three of Howard's machine guns out of their cloth sleeves. The next  time he fired, those guns would jam.

Basing the design on the P-40 saved time and retooling, as did using the liquid cooled Allison V-1710 engine from the P-40. This first new prototype, labeled the NA-73X , rolled off the production line on 9 September 1940, just 102 days after design work had started. And it displayed yet another major innovation. 

The radiator on P-40 sat behind and below the engine, which gave the "Tomahawk" it's squared off nose.  But the Mustang carried it's heat exchange below and behind the cockpit, where it could be fed fresh air via a ventral scoop. To the engineer's amazement, a minor alteration compressed the hot air escaping at the rear of the scoop, so it would function as a rudimentary ramjet engine, boosting speed even further.

“I climbed once more to the port side of the bomber formation,” remembered Howard. “I saw an 

ME 109 over on the starboard side getting into position...just underneath and a few hundred yards ahead of me. He saw me at the same time and chopped his throttle...It's an old trick. He started scissoring underneath me but I cut my throttle...Then we went into a circle dogfight...I dumped twenty-degree flaps and began cutting inside him, so he quit and went into a forty-five degree dive...I got on his tail and got in some long distance squirts from 300 or 400 yards.... I got some strikes on him but I didn't see him hit the ground.”

The first 95 of the new Mustangs arrived in October of 1941, but the Brits were not impressed. The Allison engines had no supercharger, which emasculated the planes at anything over 15,000 feet. So the British allocated the disappointing Mustangs to reconnaissance and ground attack. It was not until six months later, in April of 1942, that Ronnie Harker, chief test pilot for Rolls-Royce, spent 30 minutes flying the Mustang. It was Harker who pointed out to the Air Ministry that “...with a good engine, like the Merlin 61, it's performance could be outstanding, as it is 35 mph faster than the Spitfire V at roughly the same power.” But it was August before Harker was allowed to install 5 Rolls-Royce engines in the Mustangs, as an experiment.

“On the next trip up,” Major Howard explained, “I saw a Dornier 217 (above), I think it was coming alongside the big Friends (the bombers), probably to throw rockets. I had to work fast but when I dived on him he just left and I never did fire a shot at him.”

The high altitude performance of the Rolls Royce Mustang was now described as “spectacular”. The Mustang could now operate at up to 40,000 feet, at up to 432 miles per hour, making it the fastest propeller driven fighter plane in the world. It's aerodynamics gave the plane an amazing 3.3 miles per gallon, increasing its range to 1,650 miles with a pair of 62 gallon external drop tanks.  This meant it could fly all the way from British airfields to Berlin and back.

North American now installed the 1,450-horsepower Packard V-1650-3 Merlin engines, being built under contract by the Packard Motor Car Company out of Detroit. The P-51 was now lacking only one minor modification, which would make it the best propeller driven fighter in history. 

For another 10 minutes Major James Howard made repeated feint attacks on a Junker 88 bomber, forcing the blitz bomber to break off and dive away again and again.  By now Howard's P-51 had only one working machine gun, the other 5 having jammed. Eventually the frustrated German pilot gave up and banked away. Seeing no more fighters, and being dangerously low on fuel, Howard gave a farewell waggle of his wings,  collected three stray P-51s, and headed for his home base at Boxted, England. When he landed it was discovered Howard's plane had a single bullet hole in his left wing. Said Howard, “I don't know where I got it, or when.”

After the raid, the commander of the 401^st Bomber Group called Howard's defense  “...the greatest exhibition I've ever seen. It was a case of one lone American against what seemed to be the entire Luftwaffe. He was all over the wing, across and around it. They can't give that boy a big enough award." Howard was dubbed a “"One-man Air Force".  Andy Rooney, correspondent for the Army's Stars and Stripes newspaper called his feat “the greatest fighter pilot story of World War II.”

John Howard's Medal of Honor Citation reads, in part, “For conspicuous gallantry...above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy near Oschersleben, Germany, on 11 January 1944....he chose...to attack single-handed a formation of more than 30 German airplanes. With utter disregard for his own safety he immediately pressed determined attacks for some 30 minutes, during which time he destroyed 3 enemy airplanes and probably destroyed and damaged others...Major Howard continued his aggressive action in an attempt to protect the bombers from the numerous fighters. His skill, courage, and intrepidity on this occasion set an example of heroism which will be an inspiration to the U.S. Armed Forces.”

 Lieutenant Colonel Tommy Hitckcock , the U.S. Army Air Force attache in London, described the new Mustang as “Sired by the English out of an American mother...” In common parlance the new fighters would come to be labeled, “The Cadillac of the skies”.  Newly promoted Colonel Howard himself had one suggestion - improve the canopy of the P-51, to give the pilot a better view of the sky. Thus was born the final classic outline of the P-51 with the famous bubble canopy.   

Between 1942 and 1945 15,469 Mustangs were built by North American Aviation. They destroyed 4,950 German fighters in air to air combat, against 2,520 Mustangs lost. Born out of desperation, inspired by genius and technical innovation, the Mustang was the greatest, and the last front line,  piston engine, propeller powered fighter aircraft ever built.  But the pilots were always human..

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