Dave Barry Slept Here

by Dave Barry

  Another big flaw in the stock market of 1929 was the practice of “buying on margin.” To illustrate how this worked, let’s take a hypothetical example. Let’s say Investor A had x amount of dollars that he wished to invest in the stock market. He would pick up telephone B, dial 1234567, and tell stockbroker C he wanted to buy stock “on margin” in Company D. And the stockbroker would sell it to him, even though Company D did not really exist (Although as of yesterday it was up two points in active trading.). We just made it up, for this hypothetical example.

  Clearly, this kind of thing Could not go on forever, and on Black Tuesday, it did not. As stock prices plummeted, panic selling spread. A number of speculators, realizing that their dreams of wealth had turned to ashes and seeing no hope of repaying their debts, hurled themselves from their office windows. Even this failed to brighten the national mood. Because it was becoming increasingly apparent that the Roaring Twenties were over and that a new era had arrived: an era of unemPlOYment, poverty, social turmoil, despair, and—worst of all—Shirley Temple movies. And thus began what became known, following a highly successful “Name That Era” contest sponsored by the New York World Herald Journal Telegram Bugle and Harmonica, as:

  The Great Depression

  The Great Depression was horrible. Ask the people who lived through it. Or, don’t even bother to ask. Just stand next to them for more than two minutes, and they’ll tell you about it. “It was hard, during the Great Depression,” they’ll say. “We had nothing to eat except floor sweepings and we walked eighteen miles to school. Even if the school was only two miles away, we’d have to walk back and forth nine times, because times were bad, and you had no choice, so you worked hard for every nickel, which in those days would buy you two tickets to a movie plus four boxes of popcorn plus a used Buick sedan, but of course we couldn’t afford it because Dad only made two dollars and fifty-seven cents per year and our shoes were made out of grapefruit rinds, but we never complained, no, we were happy, because we had values in those days, and if you had values you didn’t need a lot of money or food or toilet paper, which was a luxury in those days to the point where we’d get through a whole year—this was a family of eleven—on just six squares of toilet paper, because we had this system where if you had to ... HEY! Come back here!”

  As the federal government began to recognize the seriousness of the situation, it swung into action with the historic enactment, in 1930, of ...

  The Hawley-Smoot Tariff

  Quite frankly we have no idea what this is, but we think it has a wonderful ring to it, and we just like to see it in large bold letters:

  THE HAWLEY-SMOOT TARIFF

  And yet, as the weeks dragged into months and the economy continued to founder, it soon became clear that some economic “medicine” even more potent than ...

  THE HAWLEY-SMOOT TARIFF

  would be needed to get the nation “back on its feet.” This paved the way for the historic election of 1932. The Republicans, showing the kind of sensitivity they are famous for, renominated President Hoover Dam, who pledged that, if elected, he would flee to the Bahamas. The Democrats countered by nominating Franklin Delanor Roosevelt—or, as he was affectionately known, “J.F.K.”—who ran under the slogan “Let’s Elect Another President Named “Roosevelt” and Confuse the Hell out of Future Generations of Students.” The voters responded overwhelmingly, and Roosevelt was elected in a mammoth landslide that unfortunately left him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

  Nevertheless he began immediately to Combat the Depression, implementing a series of bold and sweeping new programs that came to be known, collectively, as:

  THE HAWLEY-SMOOT TARIFF

  No! Sorry! We can’t control ourselves. The programs implemented by Roosevelt were of course called the “New Deal,” which consisted of the following:

  1. Bank Protection—A major problem during the Depression was that people kept trying to get their money out of banks. To put a stop to this kind of thing, the government instituted modern banking regulations, under which:

  The banks are never open when it might be convenient. The customer is never sure what his bank’s name is, since they keep changing it, usually from something like “The First Formal Federal National State Bank of Savings Loans and Of Course Trust” to something like

  “InterContiBankAmeriTransWestSouthNorthCorp.” There are always stupid people in line ahead of you trying to cash checks from the Bank of Ye men and using underwear labels for identification.

  2. Job Creation—The government instituted a massive program of public works, under which tens of thousands of men and women were put to work strewing barricades and traffic cones on all the major roads in America, then using red flags to give halfhearted and confusing signals to motorists and sometimes waving them directly into the path of oncoming traffic. These projects are still fully operational today.

  3. The Infield Fly Rule—Under this program, when there is a runner on first or second base and there are fewer than two out, and the batter is the son of the runner’s first cousin, then the batter and the runner are legally considered “second Cousins.”

  Not surprisingly, these programs had an immediate impact on the Great Depression. And although some members of Congress charged that Roosevelt was overstepping his legal authority, he was able to win them over by inviting them to the White House for a series of “Fireside Chats” (“Perhaps, Senator, You would understand these Policies better if Ernst and Victor moved you even closer to the fire?” “NO! PLEASE!”).

  But even firm measures such as this did not prevent huge clouds of dust kicked up by ...

  THE HAWLEY-SMOOT TARIFF

  from covering entire states such as Oklahoma and turning them into a gigantic “Dust Bin,” forcing tens of thousands of people to pack up and head toward California, lured by the hope of finding jobs and a new life and maybe some decent sushi. This troubled era was chronicled brilliantly by John Steinbeck in his moving novel The Grapes of Wrath, part of a series that also includes The Pinto Beans of Lust and Bloodsucking Death Cabbages from Hell. And we could go on for days talking about the contributions being made during this period by women and minority groups.

  But the bottom line was, things were still not going well. The only really positive aspect of the situation was that at least the nation was at peace. Yet at that very same moment, across the dark, brooding waters of the Atlantic, there was growing concern. “My God, look at those waters!” people were saying. “They’re brooding!” Clearly this did not bode well for the next chapter, which would see the outbreak of the most terrible and destructive event in the history of Mankind:

  THE HAWLEY-SMOOT TARIFF

  Discussion Questions

  1. Did you ever see the movie Attack of the Killer Tomatoes ? Explain.

  2. You know how on the evening news they always tell you that the stock market is up in active trading, or off in moderate trading, or trading in mixed activity, or whatever? Well, who gives a shit?

  Chapter Sixteen. Major Nonhumorous Events Occur

  While the United states was struggling to get OUt of the Depression, the nations of Europe were struggling to overcome the horror and devastation and death of World War I so they could go ahead and have World War II. By the 1930s everybody was just about ready, so Germany, showing the kind of spunky “can-do” spirit that has made it so Popular over the years, started invading various surrounding nations. Fortunately these were for the most part Small nations, but Germany’s actions nevertheless alarmed Britain and France, which decided to strike back via the bold and clever strategy of signing agreements with Adolf Hitler. Their thinking was: If you can’t trust an insane racist paranoid spittle emitting criminal dictator, whom can you trust?

  Shockingly, this strategy did not prove to be effective. In 1939 Germany invaded Poland in retaliation for Poland’s flagrant and provocative decision to be right next door. Britain and France then declared war against Germany, which immediately invaded France
and managed to conquer it after an epic battle lasting, by some accounts, as long as thirty-five minutes, with the crushing blow coming near the end when Germany’s ally, Italy, sent in its much-feared troops, who penetrated nearly two hundred feet into southern France before their truck broke down.

  At this point things looked pretty bleak for the Allied or “good” side. The last bastion of goodness was Great Britain, a feisty, plucky little island in the North Atlantic led by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had won the respect and loyalty of the British people for his ability to come up with clever insults at dinner parties. For example, there was the famous one where this woman says to him, “Lord Churchill, you’re drunk!” And he replies, “Madam, I may be drunk, but BLEAAARRRGGGHHH” all over her evening gown. Churchill used this gift of eloquence to rally his countrymen when Britain was down to a three-day supply of pluck and a German invasion appeared imminent. “We shall fight them on the beaches he said. “We shall fight them in the streets, and in the alleys, and in those things where it’s like a dead end, only there’s like a circle at the end, you know? Cul somethings.” Thus inspired, the British persevered, but by 1941 it was clear that they could not hold out long without military support from the United States. At the time Americans were strongly opposed to becoming directly involved, but that was to change drastically on the fateful December morning of October 8, when the Japanese, implementing a complex, long-term, and ultimately successful strategy to dominate the U.S. consumer-electronics market, attacked Pearl Harbor. And so it was time to have ...

  World War Ii

  The best evidence we have of what World War II was like comes from about 300 million movies made during this era, many of them featuring Ronald Reagan. From these we learn that the war was fought by small groups of men called “units,” with each unit consisting of:

  One Italian person

  One Jewish person O

  ne Southern person

  One Tough but Caring Sergeant (Played by William Bendix.),

  and of course

  One African-American.

  These men often fought together through an entire double feature, during which they would learn, despite their differing backgrounds, how to trickle syrup from the corners of their mouths to indicate that they had been wounded. In the actual war of course, real blood was used. In fact, the actual war was extremely depressing, which is why we’re going to follow our usual procedure here and skip directly to ...

  The Turning Point

  The turning point of the war came when the Allies were able to break the code being used by the Axis high command. The way this happened was, a young British intelligence officer was looking at some captured Nazi documents, and suddenly it hit him. “Hey!” he said. “This is written in German!” From that moment on, it was only a matter of time bef ore June 1944, which was when the schedule called for the Normandy Invasion. The Germans knew it was coming, but they didn’t know where; thus it was that when, on the morning of October 8, thousands of ships disgorged tens of thousands of troops on the beaches of NorMandy, the Germans felt pretty stupid. “So that’s why they were calling it the ‘Normandy Invasion’!” they said (In German.). Stunned by this blow, the Germans began a slow, bloody retreat before the forces of General George C. Scott, and within months the Americans had liberated France, whose people continue until this day to show their gratitude to American visitors by looking at us as though we are total Piltdown men when we try to order food.

  The Final Stages Of The War

  America entered the final stages of the war under the leadership of Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S Truman, a feisty, plucky little island in the North Atlantic, who ... No, excuse us, we mean: a feisty, plucky native of Missouri (the “Sho’ Nuff’!” State) who grew up so poor that his family could not afford to put a period after his middle initial , yet who went on to become a failed haberdasher. It was Truman who made the difficult decision to drop the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the rationale being that only such a devastating, horrendous display of destructive power would convince Japan that it had to surrender. Truman also made the decision to drop the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the rationale being that, hey, we had another bomb.

  When the war finally ended, Truman shrewdly realized that it was time to enter the Postwar Era. His first order of business was to work with the leaders of the other devastated and war-weary nations to establish some kind of mechanism to guarantee that there would be lasting world peace for a couple of months while everybody developed better weapons. It was this idealistic hope that gave birth to a noble organization that has survived and flourished to this day, an organization that affords an opportunity for representatives of virtually every nation on the globe to gather together for the purpose of freely and openly using their diplomatic license plates to violate New York City parking regulations. We refer, of course to ...

  The United Nations

  The U.N. consists of two main bodies:

  The General Assembly, which is, in the generous spirit of the U.N. Charter, open to just about every little dirtbag nation in the world. It has no power. Its functions are to: (1) Have formal receptions; (2) Listen to the Grateful Dead on headphones; and (3) Denounce Israel for everything, including sunspots.

  The Security Council, which is limited to nations that have mastered the concept of plumbing. It is very powerful. Its functions are to: (1) Pass sweeping resolutions intended to end bloody conflicts; and then (2) Veto, ignore, or walk out on these resolutions.

  But despite the presence of this potent force for peace, trouble was looming between the United States and the Soviet Union. Indeed, even as the final battles of World War II were still being fought, the battle lines were being drawn for yet another struggle—an epic struggle between the archenemy ideologies of communism and capitalism; a struggle that was to take many forms and erupt in many places; a struggle that threatened and continues to threaten the very survival of life on the planet; a Struggle that has come to be known as ...

  THE HAWLEY-SMOOT TARIFF

  No! Sorry! That’s it for the Hawley-Smoot Tariff; you have our word. The struggle we are referring to is of course the Cold War, which we will cover in extreme detail in the next chapter, but first let’s pause for this:

  Trick Discussion Question

  1. What did the “S” in Harry S Truman’s name stand for? (Hint: “Lucille.”)

  Chapter Seventeen. International Tension City

  The end of World War II brought an economic boom to America, as factories that had been cranking out tanks and planes for the war effort were suddenly free to produce for Mr. and Mrs. Joe Consumer (Not their real name. Their real name was Mr. and Mrs. Bob Consumer.). This made for some pretty exciting times, because Mr. and Mrs. Consumer had very little experience with tanks and planes, and sometimes tempers would fray in traffic. (“Hey, that’s my parking space!” “Oh yeah?” “Look out! He’s turning his turret!!” “KABLAMMMI!!” “AIEEEEEEE ...” But while things were doing well on the domestic front, problems were looming on the international front in the form of

  The Cold War

  The Cold War gets its name from the fact that it was formed first in the Soviet Union, also known as the “U.S.S.R.” or simply the “Union of the Society of Socialistic Soviet Union Communist Russians.” The Soviet Union had actually been our ally during World War II, although today many people do not realize this, in large part because we forgot to mention it in the last chapter.

  What caused the Cold War? Why did two nations that had both spilt so much blood in a common cause, suddenly become archenemies? And how come it’s acceptable to write “spilt”? We don’t write: “I was truly thrilt when the service-station attendant filt up my car with gasoline,” do we? Of course not! There are no service-station attendants anymore! This is just one of the grim realities that we have been forced to learn to live with in the Cold War era. But what—we are going to finish this paragraph if it kills us—caused this to come abou
t? Respected historians agree that many complex and subtly interrelated factors were involved, which is why we never sit next to historians at parties.

  Speaking of parties, the soviet Union at this time was being run by the Communists, a group of men fierce in their dedication to wearing hilariously bad suits. Their leader was Josef Stalin (Russian for “Joey Bananas”), who had risen quickly . through the party ranks on the basis of possessing a high level of personal magnetism, as measured in armed henchpersons.

  Stalin’s strategy at the end of World War II was to acquire a small “buffer zone” between Russia and Germany, consisting of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, and most of Germany. In an effort to garner public support in these nations, Stalin mounted a public-relations campaign built around the upbeat theme “Maybe We Won’t Have Your Whole Family Shot,” and in 1945 Eastern Europe decided to join the Communist bloc by a vote of 28,932,084,164,504,029-0. Heartened by this mandate, Stalin immediately ordered construction work to begin on the Iron Curtain, which was given its name by Sir Winston Churchill, who, in a historic anecdote at a dinner party, said: “Madam, I may be drunk, but an iron curtain has descended upon BLEAAARRRGGGHHH.”

  Alarmed by these prophetic words, the United States joined with eleven other nations to form the North American Treaty Organization, or UNICEF. Under this treaty, the United States agreed to station tens of thousands of troops in Western Europe. In return, the Western Europeans agreed to station tens of thousands of their troops in Iowa, but after a couple of weeks they got bored and went home to make imported cars. (Our troops are still over there; we keep trying to get them back, but they like the beer.) And thus the Cold War continued to deepen and broaden and widen and become larger, and by 1948 it became clear that some kind of confrontation was inevitable, and so the two Superpowers decided to hold one.