GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #777: METHUSELAH

 

How long would you say fish live? When I was a kid I always had an aquarium, and I'd say the oldest fish I ever had only lasted a few years. Maybe three? Shortest lived were always carnival goldfish, of course, but I'd be shocked to learn any fish could live longer than ten years.

Then, every once in a while, you learn about a shark in the wild that has lived for hundreds of years. And then there's Methuselah, pictured above. She's an Australian lungfish, and she's probably around 93 years old, which makes her the oldest living aquarium fish. Because her species hasn't evolved in 100 million years, she's considered a "living fossil." Meaning, by studying her we can have some insight into prehistoric life.

For example, the species is generally considered to be the first to have developed a spine in history. And like the name suggests, they can breathe oxygen. One source says it's "the closest living relative to the first fish that crawled out of the sea." It might even be possible that we are descended from them, if that is the case.

I can't help but think about super religious people who still, to this day, are offended at the very idea that we evolved from monkeys. I always think about how they would react when they learned that monkeys possibly evolved from lungfish, and that all creatures (including us) evolved from bacteria.

Methuselah lives at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco and has been there since 1938. Kind of weird to think of it that way. When she arrived the US was in the middle of the worst depression in its history. Nazis were just getting revved up with jerkoff fantasies of world domination. Orson Welles did War of the Worlds that year. The minimum wage was born that year. Hell, that was the year the ballpoint pen was invented. Methuselah is older than the fucking ballpoint pen and the US minimum wage.

But then again, well, you know the unofficial motto of Goodnight, Fuckers. You gonna make me say it?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #765: THIS NIGHT ONLY

 

Imagine getting tickets to go to a play. The tickets say THIS NIGHT ONLY on them. You find out that the president of the United States is going to be there, watching the play with you. Sounds pretty interesting, no? And then some fucker (not one of you reading these columns, I mean an actual bad fucker) shoots the president.

This night only takes on a different meaning.

The play in question was Our American Cousin. The theater, Ford's. The president was none other than Abraham Lincoln. And the picture you see above is of two used tickets to the show. They went up for auction a few weeks ago and sold for $262,500.

It's kind of weird to sell historical artifacts like that, but this is the world we live in. It's not even the weirdest historical artifact to be sold. Rasputin's penis, for example, was sold to a museum in Russia. A lot of people doubt its authenticity, but it was sold to the museum by Rasputin's daughter, Maria. If anyone was to sell it, I'm pretty sure it would be someone who knew him personally. I still have questions, as I'm sure you all do, but I lean toward it being legit.

If GF can be said to have a slogan, it's, "History is never far behind us." That these tickets to Ford's Theater on that tragic night have resurfaced is proof of that. And there's more. The bullet that killed Lincoln is still out there. I think the White House Historical Society has it. And the historical museum where Ford's used to be has the gun that fired it.

Hell, there are life and death masks of Lincoln out there, too, just in case we ever doubt what he actually looked like. We have paintings and photos and such, but there is no substitute for a 3D image to give a dead historical figure life.

When I was a kid the Fullersburg Forest Preserve had a walkthrough exhibit where you could see bones of a wooly mammoth that had been found there. They recently put it together, and now it towers in the exhibit they currently have there, but back then I'd reach over the ropes and put my hand on the mammoth's bones. It seems kind of silly, but it transported me back. I felt a thrill, like I was actually touching history.

There's plenty of history out there, and one person just paid a shit-ton of money to touch (and own) one grim piece of it. If I had the money, I might have done the same.

And then I think of centuries from now, whatever civilization that takes over from us might find my old bones. I wonder if one of their children might pick up, say, my femur and wonder who I was.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #740: NOTES FROM THE PAST

 I feel certain that I've mentioned here before that I'm somewhat of a used book detective. I like to find out about the previous owner of a book through the notes they leave or what they highlight or even the condition of the book. I'm 95% positive I've written about it before, but 740 GF columns are a lot to go through, and I'm not going to do that now. (Or ever, probably.)

I was going through my things, packing my books away, when I found this book. I don't recall how it came into my possession. It's not something I would have picked up at a used bookstore. I have a suspicion I inherited it from somewhere, which happens sometimes.

It's almost a hundred years old, so I'm thinking it might be something Mom had, possibly from her grandparents or great aunt or uncle. But the note left inside is pretty cool:

At first I thought it might have been my stepfather's parents, but the date is wrong. They would have been in Germany still. And I doubt they would have inscribed it in English. It's not from Dad's side of the family. There's no way it would have come to me through him. I doubt it's from Gramps's side of the family. They would not have written in English, either, back then. It would have been Greek. That leaves Grandma's side. Most of them were in America long before that written date, and none of them would have written in another language.

But who are Georgia and Frank? More importantly, who is Bada, aka the Old Puzzle Maker? All I know is that Bada would have been born in 1866, a mere few years after the Civil War.

I haven't said it in a while, so perhaps it bears repeating. History is never far behind us.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #690: WHO ARE THEY?

 If you follow my social media, you've seen all the pictures I posted from my youth as well as a bunch from my parents' and grandparents' youths. But you can only go so far back before you see pictures of people they knew well but you have no idea who they are. Of my relatives, the farthest back I can go is my grandparents on both sides. Their parents were long dead before I showed up except for Grandma's mom, who died a couple of months before I was born. So here are a couple of pictures I found. I know Gramps, Grandma, Mom and my Aunt Sue, but the others? I had to wonder who they were.

I puzzled over it until I came to the realization that I am very stupid. Why am I stupid? Because there is one person these pictures who is still alive: my Aunt Sue. So I sent them to her to see if she could remember.

And she remembered very well. In the first picture we have my great-grandmother on the left. I kind of thought it might be Gramps's mom because I saw older pictures of her, and she looked like a woman version of Gramps near the end of his life. Gramps is next to her followed by my great-grand uncle Theo, who I'd heard about quite a bit when I was a kid. I just didn't know what he looked like. At the end is my great-grandfather, Gramps's dad. The little girl at the bottom is my Aunt Sue, and she even remembered about her favorite teddy bear.

Knowing that, you can figure out the next picture. To the right of my great-grandmother is Mom, and there's Aunt Sue in Grandma's lap.

Longtime readers know I'm a firm believer in the idea that history is never as far behind you as you think, but sometimes it is. Maybe a lot farther. I do these columns not just to entertain the rest of you (although I certainly try to do that), but mostly as a journal of my life so if I find myself getting forgetful in my old age, I can read these and remember. And it'll be good to know some of the generation before the generation I met and knew.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #559: THE FILMWALKS

Theater no more.

You may have noticed that a friend of mine, Rob Tannahill, has been doing readings of my work and posting them to YouTube. I've known him for many years. Holy shit, I think it's been 30 years. Anyway, he started up a blog recently, and it's pretty good. However, I think you should read this one before continuing here.

So yeah. I'm Bubba. And I remember Glam Kid, though I have no idea what he's been up to. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen him since high school. And I remember that walk, although I'm pretty sure we didn't see Wayne's World. I remember that night specifically because on the walk back to Rob's, Glam Kid had to take a piss behind what I think was a White Hen back then. As Rob and I waited, a stranger came up to us with a lost dog poster. He asked us if we'd seen a Rottweiler, which we had not. When Glam Kid came back it was in a slight panic because he'd heard our conversation, and as he stood by a dumpster with his dick in his hand, all he could think about was a Rottweiler running at him in the darkness and biting his junk off.

There were two Hillside theaters, and neither of them are still there. Oddly, they're both churches now. Rob's thinking of Hillside Square Theater, and you can see the church that's there now in the picture above. And the nearby office buildings he mentions didn't become office buildings. There's an old folks home there now, but the weed smoking and the ghost stories are accurate.

Oak Brook also had two theaters back then, but neither one of them is there anymore. Even weirder, there are two theaters there now, neither where the old ones were.

The wilderness we walked through to get to Oak Brook.

Rob's talking about Harger Road. It's a shame that it's no longer the wilderness it was back then. There's a forest preserve nearby where I go to read sometimes, but a lot of the woods we walked through on that road are gone, replaced by homes. There's even a home where you have to cross a bridge to get to it. It's technically not a moat, but if I lived there, it would be a moat. Luckily there is a small stretch of woods still there, and I occasionally drive down there if I'm feeling nostalgic.

I remember one winter night when we went back there and saw the flashing lights of a couple of police cars. Rob got super paranoid, and I had yet to learn a healthy fear of the cops. They were not there looking for teenagers to hassle, though. A car had skidded on the ice so badly it had flipped over and was on its side. The cops were too busy with real shit to bother us that night.

I do remember the night of Se7en very clearly, though. I know exactly why he tried the running jump. Even back then it was very difficult for a horror movie to get to me. Very few of them do. But the Sloth scene in Se7en did the trick, and Rob was very pleased that something had finally got to me. He wanted to run and do a pirouette around an old fashioned street light near a bench in sort of a victory move, like he was in Singin' in the Rain or something, and that's when he tripped and fell. Much hilarity ensued.

Although he does exaggerate my fame maybe more than a little. Having said that, though, I would have never imagined, at that age, that I'd be in the position I'm in now, and that is very cool. People read my books. Strangers read my books, which is even more surprising. A few name horror authors have read my books, which I think is the most impressive thing of all.

But even if those places are gone, I'm certain that he's right. Our ghosts cavort in those places, and the people who live there have no idea. Unless they catch a whiff of Rob's weed . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #200: HISTORY IS NEVER FAR BEHIND US

I'm a weird bastard when it comes to writing. Very few of you know of my literary pieces. It's a shame that THE BRACELET CHARM Winter 2012 isn't available anywhere because one of my stories in there is germane to tonight's GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS. Anyone ever read "The Hand That Shook the World?" It's the story of a WWII soldier who comes home at the end of the war and tells a bunch of lies about what he did overseas to get free drinks. He was really just a paper pusher. He saw zero action. And then he sees an ancient man in a wheelchair who told him a story about being a drummer boy at Gettysburg and having actually seen Lincoln deliver his famous address. Later in life, our soldier realizes that the old man was just as full of shit as he was.


I kinda-sorta based it on a supposedly true story I'd read in READER'S DIGEST about a Civil War soldier meeting with someone who fought for George Washington. The major thing to take away from this is that both scenarios I have just described are POSSIBLE. Keep in mind that former US president John Tyler still has grandchildren alive today. He was the 10th president of this nation. He was a Whig, for Christ's sake.


The point is, history is never far behind us.


I was reminded of this recently when my grandmother found something in the backyard. She showed me the badge in the above photo. She thought it was from the Indian Wars. She thinks it was from a US soldier, who left it behind after they raided the Potawatomis in the area. However, if memory serves correctly, Elmhurst is one of the few areas around here that wasn't stolen from the Potawatomis (or anyone, for that matter). There never was a settlement here. In Oak Brook? Yes. Not here. It's possible that they passed through here, as it is possible that the US Army passed through here. Every once in a while the neighbor finds some arrow heads in her backyard, and they didn't just come out of nowhere.


But this? This is different. I looked this thing over and over, and I very quickly surmised that it never belonged to a US soldier from that time. Look at that gun. They didn't have weapons like that back then. But then something else caught my eye, and I almost wished that it *had* belonged to a US soldier. It would be so much easier to categorize, then.


Look at the eagle on top of the thing. Then look at what it's holding in it's talons.


That's right. A motherfucking swastika.


It would be so much easier to explain if it was a US Army badge. But a Nazi badge? That's a bit harder to figure out. That leaves me with an interesting mystery. I love mysteries, but unfortunately I can never solve this one.


That leaves me with speculation. What are the odds that it came from an actual Nazi who moved to the states after the war? It's possible, I guess, but it's wildly improbable. Maybe a WWII memorabilia collector lost it back there. Again, unlikely. But here's a very real possibility, and it's the only explanation that makes sense.


It was lost there by a WWII vet, and it was taken off the freshly killed corpse of a Nazi rifleman. Possibly the vet who dropped it was the one who killed the Nazi in the first place.


But who could that vet be? The house has only had one owner besides my family in its entire existence. There was a very old couple who moved in when the house was built in the 'Fifties, and they sold to my grandfather when I was a kid.


The man who lived here was EXACTLY the age of someone who would have fought in WWII. It matches perfectly. But . . . well, he's no longer around. Neither is his wife. There is no way for me to track them down and ask about it. I don't know if they have kids, but I don't think it would matter much. WWII guys just didn't talk about the shit they did over there. They needed their loved ones to think that it was a noble war, and that they were heroes. Real heroes in war are very, very rare, no matter what our government says. Why do you think so many soldiers become drunks or junkies or they commit suicide?


On a side note, before I get people complaining about what I just said, I *do* believe WWII was a noble war, but I'm not stupid enough to think that our guys didn't do a lot of scary, awful shit overseas.


If I'm right, this story died with him. I'm never going to know how that Nazi badge wound up in my hand. And I would love love LOVE to know. I'm a huge fan of history, and I would love the story behind this.


History is never far behind us. Only recently did the last WWI soldier pass away. The Greatest Generation is not quite as plentiful as they once were. Vietnam soldiers are old men, and Desert Storm soldiers aren't getting any younger. I held a piece of Nazi history in my hand, and it isn't the first time. My step-grandfather gave me a lot of old coins, and quite a few of them have swastikas on them. To say nothing of the arrow heads I've found since I was a kid. I have a bullet from the Civil War (unfired). I have a hunk of fossilized shit. Who knows what lies a mere foot under your lawn? Where I sit right now used to be a sea millions of years ago. I've held the fossils of trilobites that were found here. I touched the bones of a woolly mammoth from millions of years ago. It's all within our grasp.


But it's slipping.


Without history we have no future. #NeverForget has been applied to a lot of atrocities in our past, but it should be applied to everything. Even something as silly as the founding of Facebook will be important to the generations that come after us. I wonder what the future archaeologists will think of us. When I was in high school I used to joke that they would find all of these McDonald's golden arches, and they'll assume that these fast food restaurants were our places of worship. Maybe it's not so much of a joke than a pretty good guess.


Which is why #NeverForget is so important. If we forget, there is no reason for us to relearn. Let's make it easy on our descendants, huh?


This is the 200th episode of GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS. Thanks for reading, and I hope we're around for #300. Hugs and kisses to you all.