Now I Know More

by Lewis, Dan

  Despite his apparent madness, Norton was eminently likable and well received by the community. A local army post gave him a uniform befitting a commander of a real army, not just the one in his own head. Norton, being a sovereign, issued his own currency, and local citizens and businesses used it in day-to-day transactions.

  Norton is buried in Colma, California. His gravestone memorializes him as “Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico,” just as he lived.

  BONUS FACT

  Norton I isn’t the only person buried in Colma, California—also buried there are Joe DiMaggio, William Randolph Hearst, Wyatt Earp, and Levi Strauss. The town, founded in 1924 (Norton’s remains were moved there in 1934), was designed to be a necropolis; it is made up mostly of cemeteries or land designated as future cemeteries. The residents of the town take their role in life (and death) with humor. In 2006, the mayor of Colma told the New York Times that the city “has 1,500 above-ground residents and 1.5 million underground,” while the town’s official website motto is, “It’s Great to Be Alive in Colma.”

  THE ODYSSEY

  THE MOVE THAT SAVED A CITY

  “A City on the Move.”

  That’s the motto of the town of Ulysses, Kansas, which has about 6,000 residents. It’s named after Ulysses S. Grant, the eighteenth president of the United States (not the Homeric hero). It’s the largest municipality in Grant County (also named for the president) and is home to about 75 percent of the county’s residents.

  And that motto is to be taken literally.

  Ulysses was founded in 1885 and, according to newspaper reports from that era, was well situated for growth. Not only did it sit on the east-west rail line of the time, but unlike many surrounding areas, the water table was only about thirty feet down, allowing for relatively easy access to fresh well water. (Many other areas required wells a few hundred feet deep.) By 1889, the town had a large schoolhouse, four hotels, twelve restaurants and another dozen saloons, six gambling halls, and an opera house. Nearly 1,500 people had moved to Ulysses.

  Then the droughts came, turning this once-thriving boomtown, colloquially, to dust. By 1906, the town’s population hovered around 100—a far cry from its peak nearly two decades prior.

  To make matters worse, the boom years of the mid-1880s were partially financed through a public debt offering. To meet the infrastructure needs of this growing city, town leaders issued municipal bonds, amassing well over $80,000 in debt. (Accounting for inflation, that’s the modern-day equivalent of more than $2 million.) As was probably common for that era, the town’s leadership didn’t use that money to dig more wells (which might have staved off a drought) or other such improvements. Instead, they pocketed the money and never paid down the debt. Bondholders were less than pleased, and the next generation of Ulysses residents paid for their predecessors’ sins via sky-high property (per one report, a 600 percent levy) and residency taxes.

  Often, when things like that happen—when taxes get too high—residents move. That’s kind of what occurred in this case. But there’s a big difference: the people took the town with them.

  Toward the end of 1908, Ulysses’s remaining townsfolk purchased a new area of land about two miles west of Ulysses itself. In February 1909, the people started to move. Buildings were placed on horse-drawn skids and wagons and pulled to the new location of Ulysses. One of the hotels was cut into two parts and, over the course of several days, transported to the new site. By June of that same year, all the residents had moved, as had many of the municipal buildings, and the old town of Ulysses became a bondholder-owned ghost town.

  BONUS FACT

  Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. When he was nominated to attend West Point, the nominating congressman accidentally wrote his name wrong. Grant adopted the incorrect name, likely hoping to avoid confusion at the academy (and not, as some sources suggest, because his birth name bore the initials “HUG”). The middle initial, therefore, doesn’t stand for anything, but as his mother’s maiden name was Simpson, many sources assert that is Grant’s middle name.

  GENERAL ORDER NUMBER ELEVEN

  WHEN JEWS WERE BARRED FROM AMERICA

  General Order Number Eleven was short. Three items were wrapped into one edict. It read:

  “The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.

  “Post commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and anyone returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.

  “No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.”

  In short, “no Jews allowed,” effective nearly immediately.

  But the “Department” wasn’t a section of Nazi-controlled Europe or Inquisition-era Spain. The edict wasn’t issued by Adolf Hitler. It was issued by Ulysses S. Grant, who would later be president of the United States. The year was 1862, and the “Department” was the “Department of Tennessee,” an area consisting of western Tennessee, western Kentucky, and northern Mississippi.

  In the spring of 1862, Grant, then a general of the Union army, made great advances in the American Civil War, taking control of many of the areas listed previously. His next goal was to march south, with Vicksburg, Mississippi, in his sights. But commanding the army wasn’t his only job. Despite the war, the North and South continued to have some limited economic activity between them; the North bought cotton from Southern plantations. Grant was also charged with enforcing the Union-set limits on the amount of cotton that could legally be imported into the North. Illegal cotton dealings were rampant and legal ones were a bother; merchants would come to Grant’s headquarters seeking permits, as one historian noted. Grant viewed most of these merchants as war profiteers, and on December 17, he decided to ban them from the region by proclamation. But for some reason—Slate notes that most of the “smugglers and traders [. . .] were not Jewish at all”—Grant’s order targeted Jews, and all Jews in the area, for that matter.

  The order was of limited effectiveness (against Jews, that is; it was almost entirely ineffective against smugglers because most weren’t subject to the order) for two reasons. First, the order didn’t get distributed immediately, as communications lines were disrupted by Confederate raids just hours later (unrelated to the order, though). Second, word of the order spread throughout the country and eventually to President Lincoln, who ordered Grant to rescind it. He did so, officially, on January 18 of the following year. Many Jews in the area were indeed displaced during the month the order was in force, however, and it kindled fears of anti-Semitism throughout the country. As Slate further said, “It brought to the surface deep-seated fears that, in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, Jews might replace blacks as the nation’s most despised minority.” Further, for perhaps the first time, American Jews needed to openly consider whether to vote for candidates who were good for the country but bad for Jews themselves.

  Grant, for his part, claimed he had not intended the anti-Semitic aspects of the order. His headquarters showed some surprise when Jews who were not smugglers were relocated, even though the plain language of the order included all Jews. Grant also later stated that he didn’t draft the order and hastily signed it without reviewing it, but other communications by Grant around that period also singled out “Jews” or “Israelites.” To his credit, though, during his term in the Oval Office, Grant became the first U.S. president to attend a synagogue service.

  BONUS FACT

  The synagogue Grant visited, Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, DC, has two other historical firsts in its history. According to its website, it was the first synagogue in the United States to be addressed by both
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Dalai Lama.

  INKOSHERATION

  WHEN DIETARY LAWS AND PRISON DON’T MIX

  Depending on one’s definition, there are roughly 5 to 10 million Jews living in the United States, constituting about 2.5 percent of the population. A smaller sub-group—perhaps as many as a million—keeps kosher, which means they follow a set of religious dietary restrictions to some degree or another. With many different customs and interpretations of the law, the rules about what’s kosher and what’s not are complicated—too complicated to detail in these pages. However, there are a few things that most agree upon: You can’t eat pork or shellfish, and there’s no mixing milk and meat (sorry, no cheeseburgers). And the whole idea that a rabbi has to bless the food? That’s a myth.

  In general, the food is supposed to be supervised. The rabbi watches its preparation and the processes involved to ensure that nothing disallowed happens. When the food is shipped after preparation, it is typically sealed so that the end consumer knows that nothing has been introduced since. That’s why kosher airplane food, you may have noticed, is served in foil or plastic wrap, while typical in-flight meals are served already open.

  It also may be why kosher meals are unusually popular in prison.

  In the spring of 2013, the Jewish Daily Forward noted that an estimated 24,000 inmates ate kosher foods in American prisons, but only 4,000 considered themselves Jewish before their incarceration. The New York Times published an article in early 2014 suggesting that nearly 5,000 inmates in Florida alone requested kosher meals, with only a fraction having claimed to be Jewish prior to that request. Kosher meals, when in prison, aren’t just for those who subscribe to certain religious beliefs.

  Media reports suggest that the reason ostensibly non-Jewish prisoners prefer the alternative menu isn’t only because of taste. Some feel the fact that the meals are pre-prepared and wrapped makes them safer to eat. As one prison chaplain told the Times, inmates are often concerned (rationally or otherwise) “about how the food could be adulterated, how the prison uses out-of-date products, how they use things that don’t meet U.S.D.A. standards, how sex offenders may be handling their food.” Pre-packaged, sealed meals make all of that less likely.

  It also makes the meals tradable commodities. Citing the practice at one Californian prison, the Forward notes that “prisoners who keep kosher receive three daily meals in a sack that they bring back to their cells. [. . .] Inmates frequently trade kosher food for prison-issued paper money, which can be used to buy items in the facility’s canteen.” Kosher food, in an ironic twist, fuels the black market for contraband items.

  Unfortunately for taxpayers, the kosher food isn’t cheap, costing two to three times that of non-kosher meals. While some states try to identify opportunists, it’s hard to do so. After all, and for good reason, American laws and culture generally allow people to be part of whatever religion they want, without any second-guessing by the government.

  BONUS FACT

  Ever notice a circled “U” on your food packages? That’s one of many symbols that certify the food is kosher. In that case, the certifying organization is the Orthodox Union, or “OU” for short—the circle around the “U” is actually an “O.” If you see a “D” next to the circled “U,” that means from a kosher certification standpoint, the food item is dairy, which, as noted previously, kosher-keeping Jews do not combine with meat.

  TEXAS’S LAST LAST MEAL

  WHY DEATH ROW INMATES IN TEXAS DON’T GET TO PICK THEIR LAST MEALS

  On June 7, 1998, a forty-nine-year-old African-American man from Texas, named James Byrd Jr., was brutally murdered by three men. While Byrd was still alive, the perpetrators tied his ankles to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him for three miles; Byrd was decapitated in the process. Byrd’s murder resulted in legislation, both on the state and federal level, that addresses criminal activities typically called “hate crimes.” Two of Byrd’s three assailants were sentenced to death, with the third sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Of the two given the death penalty, one still sits on Death Row. The other, Lawrence Russell Brewer, was executed by the state of Texas on September 21, 2011.

  Brewer’s ritual “last meal” was Texas’s last such “last meal.”

  The origin of the traditional “last meal” of the condemned person’s choosing—a final rite of passage before the inmate’s final passing—has been lost to antiquity. But most U.S. states with the death penalty still allow those about to be executed a special meal beforehand (albeit not always as their true “last” meal). Texas, until Brewer, was no exception. Some requests were basic but high-end, with at least two men (Ronald Clark O’Bryan in 1984 and Dennis Bagwell in 2005) asking for, and receiving, feasts with steak and french fries. Other requests were just plain strange. In 2001, a murderer named Gerald Lee Mitchell requested that the state give him a bag of assorted Jolly Ranchers as a last meal; this request was granted. In 2000, a man named Odell Barnes asked for “justice, equality, and world peace.” In 1990, James Edward Smith requested a lump of dirt used for voodoo rituals, as a way of marking his body for the afterlife. His request was denied, and he was given a cup of yogurt instead.

  Brewer’s request? Per the New York Times, he asked for:

  two chicken-fried steaks with gravy and sliced onions; a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger; a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapeños; a bowl of fried okra with ketchup; one pound of barbecued meat with half a loaf of white bread; three fajitas; a meat-lover’s pizza; one pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream; a slab of peanut-butter fudge with crushed peanuts; and three root beers.

  The state provided him with this meal, costing hundreds of dollars and consisting of thousands of calories. Brewer, claiming he was not very hungry, ate exactly none of it.

  The next day, state legislators asked the Department of Criminal Justice to end the tradition of “last meals.” One lawmaker stated, “It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege. It’s a privilege which the perpetrator did not provide to their victim.” The Department of Criminal Justice chairperson agreed, and the tradition ended. Since then, per the Houston Chronicle, “Last meals will consist of whatever is on the menu for all prisoners”—with no special adjustments for those about to be executed.

  BONUS FACT

  In 2007, Tennessee executed a man named Philip Workman. For his last meal, Workman requested that a vegetarian pizza be donated to a homeless person (no one specifically), but prison officials, per CNN, denied that request, telling the news agency that “they do not donate to charities.” Nevertheless, Workman’s last wishes were carried out many times over by others. According to the same CNN article, donors from around the country rose to the occasion, donating hundreds of pizzas to Nashville-area homeless shelters.

  PRISON PINK

  THE COLOR OF CALM

  In the 1960s, a Swiss psychotherapist named Max Lüscher developed what is now known as the Lüscher color test, a system to help describe someone’s personality. Dr. Lüscher would give the person eight cards, each of a different color—blue, yellow, red, green, violet, brown, grey, and black—and ask the subject to put them in order from most preferred to least preferred. Figuring that our taste in colors was something created by our subconscious selves, Dr. Lüscher further surmised that people of similar personality types would rank colors similarly.

  The Lüscher color test is not often used anymore, since its validity has been widely questioned and its results do not match up well with better-received personality tests. However, Dr. Lüscher’s work ushered in other research into the role color plays in our psyches.

  Which is why it may be a good idea to paint prison cells pink.

  In the 1970s, Alexander Schauss, a scientist in Tacoma, Washington, began exploring whether seeing a certain color could cause our emotional states to change. After a series of tests, he concluded that a certain shade of pink—#FF91AF if you�
��re a web developer, CMYK 0-43-41-0 if print is more your thing—has a calming effect, taking the edge off of those who are overly aggressive. Specifically, Schauss noted that this shade of pink caused a measurable physiological reaction; there was “a marked effect on lowering the heart rate, pulse, and respiration as compared to other colors.”

  In early 1979 a local naval prison put Schauss’s finding into action. The experiment was a simple one. The naval officers painted the walls of an 18' x 24' cell a bubblegum-like, Pepto Bismol–ish shade of pink recommended by Schauss. Some inmates were confined in the cell for a short time, as inmates would typically be in any prison cell. According to the follow-up report, the experiment worked: not only were there “no incidents of erratic or hostile behavior during the initial phase of confinement,” but the navy reported that even fifteen minutes of exposure to the pink-walled room resulted in a noticeable reduction in aggressive behavior after release from the cell. Schauss, as reported by USA Today, claimed that before the introduction of the pink cell, the naval correctional center averaged one assault on staff per day. After? Only one such assault over the next six months.