Dave Barry: Dave Barry Slept Here

One morning the colonists noticed that the New World contained a number of products that were not available in Europe, such as turpentine, which could easily be obtained in the colonies simply by boiling trees. Soon the colonists were sending barrels of turpentine across to England, where the English people would dump it on the ground, because, let’s face it, a little turpentine goes a long way. Then the English people would fill the boat up with some product they had a surplus of, such as used snuff, and they’d send it back to the colonies; and then the colonists would retaliate with, say, barrels of dirt, and so on, until trade had escalated to the point where the two sides were sending entire boatloads of diseased rats back and forth.

But life was not all hard work in the colonies. Culture was also starting to rear its head, in the form of the Early American Novel. The most famous novelist of this era was Cliff, the author of the famous Cliff Notes, a series of works that are still immensely popular with high school students. The best known, of course, is The Scarlet Ladder, which tells the story of a short man named Miles Standish, who lived in a tall house with seven people named Gable, only to be killed in a sled crash with an enormous white whale. This was to become a recurring theme in colonial literature.

But little did the colonists realize, as these cultural and economic developments were taking place, that they were about to become involved in friction with the French. The cause of this was ... Hold it! We have just received the following:

EDUCATIONAL ADVISORY ALERT

A REVIEW COMMITTEE CONSISTING OF EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS WITH DOCTORATE DEGREES AND INITIALS AFTER THEIR NAMES HAS DETERMINED THAT, SO FAR, THIS HISTORY BOOK is NOT MAKING ENOUGH OF AN EFFORT TO INCLUDE THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF WOMEN AND MINORITY GROUPS. UNLESS SOME EFFORT Is UNDERTAKEN TO CORRECT THIS SITUATION, THIS BOOK WILL NOT BE APPROVED FOR PURCHASE BY PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEMS IN ABSOLUTELY VAST QUANTITIES.

Another important fact we just now remembered is that during the colonial era women and minority groups were making many contributions, which we are certain that they will continue to do at regularly spaced intervals throughout the course of this book. But right now, let’s get back to:

French traders came to the northern part of the New World to barter with the Native Americans for their pelts of beavers, minks, otters, elks, muskellunges, and so forth. The two sides quickly learned to communicate with each other using a stripped-down bartering language, as shown by this painstakinly researched historical re-creation:

FRENCH TRADER: How does this look?

NATIVE AMERICAN: Honey, that pelt is you!

FRENCH TRADER: Really, Red? You don’t think it’s too bunched at the hips?

NATIVE AMERICAN: Listen, bunched at the hips is the look in the New World.

FRENCH TRADER: I’ll take it!

Soon the French, aided by Native American guides, were penetrating deep into North America in search of matching belts, shoes, and other accessories. By the late seventeenth century, pioneering French designers such as Marquette

and Joliet (most of them went by only one name) had made a number of major fashion advances in the New World. The basis of the entire French colonial philosophy was natural fibers, in stark contrast to the British, who were already using water-driven looms to make primitive polyesters. It was only a matter of time before friction broke out in the form of:

The French and Indian War is highly significant because, as David Boldt (A friend of ours. You don’t know him.) points out, it had a stupid name. It sounded like the French were fighting the Indians, whereas in fact they were supposed to be on the same side. The British didn’t even realize they were supposed to be in this war until several years after it started, by which time the French and the Indians, totally confused, had inflicted heavy casualties upon each other. So England won the war, and on October 8 the French king, Louis the Somethingth, signed the Treaty of Giving Away Canada, under which he gave away Canada. “Que enfer,” he remarked at the time, “cest seulement Canada” (“What the hell, it’s only Canada.”).

1. How come, if the country is called “Holland,” the people are called “Dutch”?

2. Have you ever noticed that on those rare occasions when you do need turpentine, the can, which you bought in 1978 and have been moving from household to household ever since, is always empty?

3. Do you feel that people who insist upon referring to themselves as “doctor” simply because they hold Ph.D. degrees, which are about as rare as air molecules, tend to be self-important weenies? And what about the use of the word “professional,” as in “automotive sales professional”? Does that make you want to puke, or what? Explain.

What caused the American Revolution? This is indeed a rhetorical question that for many years historians have begun chapters with. As well they should. For the American Revolution is without doubt the single most important historical event ever to occur in this nation except of course for Super Bowl III (Jets 16, Colts 7. This historian won $35.).

One big causal factor in the Revolution was that England operated under what political scientists describe as “The Insane Venereally Diseased Hunchbacked Homicidal King” system of government. This basically means that for some reason, again possibly the food, the English king always turned out to be a syphilitic hunchbacked lunatic whose basic solution to virtually all problems, including humidity, was to have somebody’s head cut off. There was one king, Henry “Henry the Eighth” Viii, who could barely get through a day without beheading a wife. It reached the point, with Henry, where the clergyman had difficulty completing the wedding ceremony:

CLERGYMAN: I now pronounce you man and ... WATCH OUT! (SLICE)

This style of government was extremely expensive, especially in terms of dry-cleaning costs, and as a result the kings were always trying to raise money from the colonies by means of taxation. This was bad enough without representation, but what really ticked the colonists off were the tax forms, which were extremely complicated, as is shown by this actual example:

To determineth the amounteth that thou canst claimeth for depreciation to thine cow, deducteth the amount showneth on Line XVLIICX-A of Schedule XIV, from the amount showneth on Line CVXILIIVMM of Schedule XVVII ... No, waiteth, we meaneth Line XCII of Schedule CXVIILMM ... No, holdeth it, we meaneth ...

And so on. In 1762 the king attempted to respond to the colonists’ concerns by setting up a special Taxpayer Assistance Service, under which colonists with questions about their tax returns could get on a special toll-free ship and sail to England, where specially trained Tax Assistors would beat them to death with sticks. But even that failed to satisfy the more radical colonists , and it soon became clear that within a short time—possibly even in the next page—the situation would turn ugly.

One afternoon some freedom-loving colonists known as the Boston Patriots were sitting around their locker room, trying to think up ways to throw off the yolk of colonial oppression. Suddenly one of them, Bob, had an idea: “Hey!” he said. “Let’s dress up like the locals and throw tea into the harbor!”

Instantly the other Patriots were galvanized. “What was that?” they shouted. “A galvanic reaction,” responded Bob. “Named for the Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), who conducted experiments wherein he sent electrical currents through the legs of frogs.”