CHAPTER ONE Deflowering a Virgin Continent HUNDREDS of thousands of years ago, America was very different. There was no civilization: no roads, no cities, no shopping malls, no Honda dealerships. There were, of course, obnoxious shouting radio commercials for car dealerships; these have been broadcast toward Earth for billions of years by the evil Planet of Men Wearing Polyester Sport Coats, and there is nothing anybody can do to stop them. But back then, you see, there was no way to receive them, so things were pretty peaceful. The only inhabitants of America in those days were animals such as the deer and the antelope, who were engaged primarily in playing; and the buffalo, or "bison,"1 who mainly roamed. The bison must have been an awe-inspiring sight: millions of huge, majestic animals, forming humongous herds, their hooves thundering like, we don't know, thunder or something, roaming from the Mississippi River all the way across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains, which they would smash into headfirst at speeds ranging upward of thirty-five miles per hour, then fall down. They were majestic, those bison, but stupid. But all of this changed twenty thousand years ago with the construction of the Land Bridge to Asia, which was completed on October 8. Suddenly, the ancestors of the Indians and the Eskimos, clans who called themselves "The Ancestors of the Indians and the Eskimos," had a way to get to North America. Still, it was not an easy trek: They had to traverse hundreds of miles of frigid snow-swept wasteland, which was cold, and each was permitted to carry only two small pieces of luggage. Eventually they arrived in an area very near what we now know as Kansas, and they saw that it was a place of gently rolling hills and clear flowing streams and abundant fertile earth, and they looked upon this place, and they said, "Nah." Because quite frankly they were looking for a little more action, which is how come they ended up on the East Coast. There they formed tribes and spent the next several thousand years thinking up comical and hard-to-spell names for major rivers. Also they made a great many Native American handicrafts such as pots, although at the time there was not much of a retail market for these, so the Native Americans wound up having to use them as household implements. During this same period another group of early Americans, the Mayans, were constructing a culture down in Mexico featuring a calendar so advanced that it can still, to this very day, tell you where various celestial bodies such as Venus and the Moon will be at any given moment. They will be out in space, states the miraculous Mayan calendar. Meanwhile, way the hell far away in someplace like Finland, Vikings were forming. These were extremely rugged individuals whose idea of a fun time was to sail over and set fire to England, which in those days was fairly easy to ignite because it had a very high level of thatch, this being the kind of roof favored by the local tribespeople--the Klaxons, the Grurnseys, the Spasms, the Wasps, the Celtics, and the Detroit Pistons. No sooner would they finish thatching one when the Vikings, led by their leader, Eric the Red (so called because that was his name), would come charging up, Zippos blazing, and that would be the end of that roof. This went on for thousands of years, during which time the English tribespeople became very oppressed, not to mention damp. Then there arose among them a young man who many said would someday become the king of all of England because his name was King Arthur. According to legend, one day he was walking along with some onlookers, when he came to a sword that was stuck in a stone. He grasped the sword by the handle and gave a mighty heave, and to the amazement of the onlookers, he suddenly saw his shadow, and correctly predicted that there would be six more weeks of winter. This so impressed the various tribes that Arthur was able to unite them and drive off the Vikings via the bold and resourceful maneuver of serving them relentlessly bland food, a tradition that remains in England to this day despite numerous armed attempts by the French to invade with sauces. Thus it was that the Vikings set off across the Atlantic in approximately the year 867--on October 8--to (a) try to locate North America and (b) see if it was flammable. Did these hardy adventurers reach the New World centuries before Columbus? More and more, historians argue that they did, because this would result in a new national holiday, which a lot of historians would get off. But before we can truly know the answer to this question, we must do a great deal more research. And quite frankly, we would rather not. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS Would you buy a car from a dealership that ran one of those obnoxious shouting radio commercials? Neither would we. Have you noticed that you hardly ever see Zippo lighters anymore? Explain. Are you aware that there is a traditional British dish called "cock-a-leeky soup"? Really." CHAPTER TWO Spain Gets Hot FOR MANY HUNDREDS of years, European traders had dreamed of discovering a new route to the East, but every time they thought they had found it, they would start whimpering, and their wives would wake them up. So they continued to use the old route, which required them to cross the Alps on foot, then take a sailing ship across the Mediterranean to Egypt, then take a camel across the desert, then take another sailing ship back across the Mediterranean, then change to the IRT Number 6 Local as far as 104th Street, and then ask directions. Thus it would often take them years to get to the East, and when they finally did, they were almost always disappointed. "This is it?" they would say. "This is the East?" And so by the fifteenth century, on October 8, the Europeans were looking for a new place to try to get to, and they came up with a new concept: the West. The problem here was that the immediate west was covered with the Atlantic Ocean, which represented a major obstacle because back in those days many people believed that the world was flat. Today, of course, we know that this is true only in heavily Protestant states such as Iowa, but back then people believed that if you went too far, you might sail right off the edge. In fact, you would probably want to sail off the edge, since the average sailing ship had about the same size and seaworthiness as a Yugo hatchback. THE FORTUNATE INVENTION OF CERTAIN NAVIGATIONAL AIDS Then, fortunately, along came the invention of certain navigational aids. Chief among these was a very realistic doll that, when you inflated it, could ... WAIT! Wrong kind of aid! Our mistake! Chief among the navigational aids was the compass, a device that, no matter where it is, always indicated which way was north. This was a tremendous boon to early navigators, although its value was diminished somewhat by the fact that the early voyages always ended with the ship banging into the polar ice cap and everybody aboard freezing to death. But eventually the compass was improved by the addition of such features as: south, west, and even east again, and soon hardy1 mariners were able to venture far out into the Atlantic before getting lost. Still, it was difficult to recruit new sailors, even with the use of extensive advertising campaigns built around catchy themes such as: BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE! Become a Hardy Mariner "Get Lost and Die." Eventually the breakthrough came that made modern navigation possible: the discovery of longitudes and latitudes. These are thin black lines that go all around Earth in a number of locations, so that all you have to do is follow them, and you have a surefire way of getting wherever it is they go. Of course they are difficult for the untrained eye to see; the early sailors had to squint at the water for hours, which is why so many of them ended up having to wear eye patches, especially in movies. But the hardy sacrifice those early mariners made for us will never be forgotten, not as long as we are reading this particular paragraph. Meanwhile, in nearby Italy, Christopher Columbus was forming. As a youth, he spent many hours gazing out to sea and thinking to himself: "Someday I will be the cause of a holiday observed by millions of government workers." The fact that he thought in English was only one of the amazing things about the young Columbus. Another was his conviction that if he sailed all the way across the Atlantic, he would reach India. We now know, thanks to satellite photographs, that this makes him seem as stupid as a buffalo, although it sounded pretty good when Columbus explained it to the rulers of Spain, Ferdinand and his lovely wife, Imelda, who agreed to finance the voyage by selling six thousand pairs of her shoes. And so Columbus assembled a group of the hardiest mariners he could find. These fellows were so hardy that, had the light bulb been invented at that time, it would have taken at least three of these mariners to screw one in, if you get our drift. On October 8, 1492, they set out across the storm-tossed Atlantic in three tiny ships, the Ninja, the Piña Colada, and the Heidy-Ho III. Fortunately Columbus kept a detailed log, so we can get some sense of how long and arduous their journey was from revealing excerpts such as this: October 8--Boy, is this journey ever long! Also arduous! But finally, after numerous storm-tossed weeks, just when it seemed as if Columbus and his men would never see land again, there came an excited cry from the lookout. "Hey!" he cried. "We forgot to put up the sails!" And so they all had a hearty laugh, after which they hoisted the damned things. A few hours later, on October 8, they came to an island, where Columbus and a convenient interpreter waded ashore and had the following historic conversation with a local tribal chief: COLUMBUS: You guys are Indians, right? TRIBAL CHIEF: K'ham anonoda jawe. ("No. We came over from Asia about twenty thousand years ago via the Land Bridge.") COLUMBUS: Listen, we have spent many weeks looking for India in these three storm-tossed, vomit-encrusted ships, and we have cannons pointing at your wigwams, and we say you are Indians. TRIBAL CHIEF: B'nomi kawa saki! ("Welcome to India!") Thus the white men and the Native Americans were able, through the spirit of goodwill and compromise, to reach the first in what would become a long series of mutually beneficial, breached agreements that enabled the two cultures to coexist peacefully for stretches of twenty and sometimes even thirty days, after which it was usually necessary to negotiate new agreements that would be even more mutual and beneficial, until ultimately the Native Americans were able to perceive the vast mutual benefits of living in rock-strewn sectors of South Dakota. Excerpted from Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States by Dave Barry All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
