Random Remembrances for the New Year

I'm clicking into historical mode. Watch out. It could get a little dull here.

Let's see. A century ago we had just seen the last full year of the presidency of a great American: TR. He's another who was moulded by both suffering and success. When he was a young state assemblyman, his wife and mother both died within a few hours of each other. That was why he left for a year or two, went out west and worked as a cowboy on a ranch he owned but had never seen.

He spent 11 1/2 months after he left the White House hunting in Africa, bringing back "specimens" for the Smithsonian Institution. When he knocked down a rhino with his double-rifle, it "jumped up like a Polo pony" and he had to hit it again. He often read poetry in his tent at night.

The life expectancy back then was about half what it is today. Cars had been around for some years, but there were almost no paved roads. The Germans had been working for a long time already on developing submarines, but the British were behind, because Queen Victoria had said no gentleman would fight that way. So, in the first year of the war, 1914, the German "wolf packs" sank a lot of allied merchant ships, not to mention their victories over the navies of the day.

But it was awfully risky duty for the German boys. They called their subs "iron coffins," because the number of times they submerged and the number of times they surfaced didn't always come out even.

100 years ago tonight, my Swedish battle rifle (about which I wrote a couple of months ago) was only 8 years old. That old Duchess still shoots very well today.

In 1908 my father's birth was still 20 years in the future. My mother's, 25 years. My Granddaddy Templin was six years old, but his mother was already a young widow with two sons. I believe that my Grandmama's advent was still five years in the future. Nana (the original, not her very worthy successor, my sister Johanna) was still awaiting her earthly probation, I think. Her future husband must have been a child, for he served briefly in the U.S. Army during the Great War.

The newly elected president, William Howard Taft, appropriately called "Big Bill" at 337 lbs., was about to take the oath of office in March of 1909. Actually, 337 was a lifetime record. It had been as little as 270. When he left office in 1913, the comedian Will Rogers said, "We are parting with 335 pounds of pure Republican and love and affection for all his fellow men."

But TR had just been through a very strained period in his friendship with Taft, because Taft was so easy-going that he had allowed a number of the "trusts" (monopolies) to reform after TR had spent six years beating them down. About Taft's reluctance to fight his political foes lest he offend them, someone said, "If Taft were Pope, he'd want to appoint some Protestants to the College of Cardinals!"

TR was a "Progressive." When his fellow Republicans didn't nominate him in 1912, he formed a third party, nicknamed "The Bull Moose Party," and ran hard against both his old friend and former successor, Taft, and the Democratic nominee, history professor Woodrow Wilson. Splitting his party that way killed their chances for success, and Wilson was elected for the first of two terms. But in 1908, lots of Americans had never heard of him.

The famous German pistol, the Luger, was designated the P-08, because it was a pistol ("pistole") which came out in 1908. It might be the only famous thing Georg Luger ever did, but it was certainly enough to make his name immortal among aficionados of military history and firearms.

In 1908, the Springfield rifle had been our army issue rifle for five years (Model of 1903,) but the cartridge it was famous for introducing was not finalized in its design until 1906. It was a thirty caliber. Zero was often pronounced "ought" back then. (.30'06) And now you know the rest of that story.

In 1908 we were looking back only five years to the Wright Brothers' first heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But the first "dog fights" - aerial combat - were only six years in the future. Many veterans of the Civil War were still living, and even a few of the Mexican War (1846-48.) Many people then could still recall the use of flint ignition for firearms, but some of them lived long enough that they stood a good chance of being able to read in their newspapers about machine guns being mounted on airplanes by opposing "air forces," a whole new type of major service.

Today, most Americans can't tell you when TR lived. Or Woodrow Wilson. Or "Big Bill" Taft.

Our military aircraft can travel at twice the speed of sound (in some cases) and present no bigger picture on a radar screen than a sparrow. Rockets had been largely abandoned as too inaccurate for military service. Today, we depend on them to hit and utterly destroy targets on the far side of the globe. One of my former students is one of the USAF officers whose job it is to "turn the keys" to fire such weapons. Rocket propulsion carried humans to the moon and back several times over several years, beginning the year I was 18.

We have tens of thousands of miles of paved roads today. The very wealthy can buy automobiles which can approach or slightly exceed 200 mph.

As we entered 1909, no one would have questioned that this was a Christian nation which offered tolerance to other religions. Today, many would remove even the words "In God we trust" from our coins and they would chastise any child for proclaiming faith while in a public school. In 1909, the Titanic was still on the drawing boards. But most of us knew the song the band would play on her deck as she was sinking: "Nearer, My God, to Thee." I wonder whether half of today's Americans would even recognize the tune, let alone know some of the lyrics.

Twenty-nine minutes ago we began the year 2009. More changes are in store for us. But a few of the good old things still endure. Prayer is still an effective approach to problem solving. God still loves and cares for us. He still speaks to us by revelation through living prophets. And you can still buy rifles chambered for the "thirty ought six."