Excerpt from Satirical History of the Ewe-Knighted States
NEW “ALL-TOO-TRUE-BLUE” (ALTERNATIVE) STATE HISTORIES
PREHISTORIC TIMES
Before the Ewe-Knighted States became a country, the Indians who had lived there for thousands of years never did much that was interesting. In fact, about all they did was invent Lacrosse and popcorn. So their early history is pretty much left out of this comprehensive volume.
Things got interesting when the folks from Europe arrived, though.
First, though, it must also be noted that, contrary to popular opinion, Christopher Columbus is not really part of Ewe-Knighted States history, either. This is because although Columbus was in the general neighborhood in the late 15th Century, he was lost – he thought he was in India! Besides, “Old Chrisco” never set foot in what we now know as the Ewe-Knighted States at all, anyway.
Neither are the 16th and 17th-century settlements in North Carolina, Virginia, and Massachusetts truly a part of Ewe-Knighted States history, because the area was actually a British colony at the time. As we will see, the country didn't become independent until the Year of Our Lord 17 and 76.
These three settlements were actually a prehistoric part of the country. Just briefly, the first one was founded at Roanoke Island in North Carolina in 1585. It is barely worth noting, though, because the settlers didn't stick around. Once they realized they were too far from Mayberry to ever meet Andy, Barney, Aunt Bee, Floyd and friends, they relocated to Easter Island, where they whiled away their leisure hours making giant chocolate bunnies for the tourist trade.
The second colonial settlement was founded in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. The only striking event that occurred there was when the British colonist John Smith, a tobacco farmer, tried to get the Indians that lived nearby to start smoking the foul and malodorous plant he was selling. The beautiful Indian maiden Pocahontas got so mad at Mr. Smith for this treachery that she tackled him and beat him up.
Last but maybe not least was the settlement at Plymouth, in Massachusetts. In 1620, “Pilgrims” (who would end up playing bit parts in John Wayne movies) arrived from England on a ship called the Mayweed. They didn't do much besides fish, plant corn, and come up with excuses not to bathe, so there's not much to say about them, either.
HISTORIC TIMES (From 1776)
As far as real and interesting Ewe-Knighted States history goes, it all began with the naming of the place by the queen of England way back in 1776.
Here's what happened: The Queen of England had a pet sheep.The sheep was female. So was the queen. A female sheep is a ewe (pronounced “you”).
The British were great lovers of animals at the time, but they didn't like the people living in the colonies in America that much, so the queen wouldn't “lower herself” to deal with her American subjects directly.
But finally, she decided to knight one of them. Her reason for knighting this colonist was because she was so impressed with him for having invented the kite. The queen loved flying kites. People were always telling her to go fly a kite, and when she finally took them up on it and gave it a try, she found that she really liked it.
Since the queen didn't want to have contact with this person directly, she knighted him using her pet female sheep (the ewe) as a proxy, an intermediary.
How, you wonder? The queen had her royal veterinarian train the ewe to carry a sword (strapped to its back) to this kite inventor and “knight” him with it. When a queen knights someone, even by means of an animal mediator, it's her way of saying, “I will allow you to live on earth with me, and breathe the same air that I breathe – as long as you keep your distance.”
So this person (Benjamin Franklin) was “ewe-knighted.” The country he came from then got its name from this honor bestowed on him, as their representative. The land of Franklin's birth thereafter became known as The Ewe-Knighted States of America.
People all over the world made fun of the citizens of this new country, though, because they thought “Ewe-Knighted States” was a silly name. So the Ewe-Knighted Staters got into some big scrapes (fights) with other countries, and sometimes they got some boo-boos as a result. You can discern this from the picture below:
Journey of Discovery
In 1804, Ewe-Knighted States president Thomas Jefferson got mad at two guys named Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and told them to take a hike.
They thought he meant it literally and so, since he was president, they did. They headed west, where they saw lots of stuff, but eventually ran into the Pacific Ocean. They didn't know what to do then, so they turned around and came back, bewhiskered and bewildered.
War of 1812
After seeing how much fun people in the Ewe-Knighted States were having with tea partys and chopping down cherry trees in Washington State (where wooden-toothed “Gorgeous George” Washington even outdid Paul Bunyan in the lumberjack contests), the queen of England decided she wanted the country back, and sent over a boatload of horn-blowing redcoats to New Orleans in 1812. She chose this location to attack because she hated jazz, especially Dixieland jazz, and wanted her boys to drown out Satchmo and his friends with the incessant blaring of their fanfare.
Fortunately for the Ewe-Knighted States, though, when Andrew Jackson, the great-great-great-great grandfather of Michael Jackson, heard about this, he arrived on the scene and drove off the British brass band with a hoot and a holler. The queen went back to flying her kite, and Dixieland jazz continued unabated.
Notice the fancy duds some of the soldiers wore, including the big funky hats that hid their Mohawk hairdos:
The Trail of Tears
In 1831, most of the Indians in the Ewe-Knighted States decided to go on a road trip together. Some showed off by not taking jackets, or even shoes, along, as you can see in the picture below.
On seeing the scenic wonders of Oklahoma, the Indians decided to stay there forever. They rushed in and made their land claims (taking advantage of the Homestead Act).
Most of the Indians settled in Muskogee, where they spent most of their time holding hands, pitching wool, scanning the skies for white lightning (the Indians were really into astronomy), and generally having a ball.
Once they were all settled in there, the Indians elected Will Rogers to be their president (and poet lariat), and Wile E. Coyote their vice president.
The Alamo
In 1836, a few years after the Indians settled in Oklahoma, Mexico and the Ewe-Knighted States fought over which one of them had to keep Texas. They both considered it more trouble than it was worth, and a “poor man's Oklahoma.”
The Mexicans didn't want it because it was too flat and dusty. The Ewe-Knighted Staters didn't want it, either, because they were superstitious about rattlesnakes climbing into their bedrolls while they were out cowboying around.
So, to determine who would have to keep Texas, the Mexicans and Ewe-Knighted Staters waged a big battle to decide who would have to be the one to carry that albatross.
The way they determined who would lose and be saddled with the “booby prize” of Texas was to stage an epic Battle of the Bands. Mexico sent up a mariachi band from Santa Ana, California (Mexico owned the golden state at the time). The Ewe-Knighted Staters had on their side the wonderful country/pop duet of Randy Travis and Whitney Houston.
Once the two sides started simultaneously playing their music (the mariachi band playing “La Bamba” and the Ewe-Knighted Staters crooning out “Diggin' up Bones”), the cacophonous din caused a herd of armadillos to swarm down onto the prairie, overrunning the Ewe-Knighted Staters and squashing them flatter than the proverbial pancakes.
Thus, the Mexicans won, and the Ewe-Knighted States had to keep Texas. They then pretended they had wanted it all along (that's usually what politicians do when things don't go their way – they pretend that whatever ends up happening is what they had wanted and planned for all along).
Civil War / War Between the States
In 1861, Harriet Beecher Stowe stopped by her uncle Tom's cabin to borrow some sugar for a cake her mother was making. There she met a man named John Brown. To make a long story short, they got married and moved to Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
John got into trouble with the governor of Virginia, Robert E. Lee, for hunting squirrels out of season. The Brown's got so angry about this silly law that they seceded from Virginia and started their own state, breaking off to form the neighboring state of West Virginia.
Pretending to be a friend, Jefferson Davis visited the Browns, giving John a necktie as a belated wedding present. The necktie was poisoned with smallpox, though, and John died soon thereafter.
Harriet then moved to Connecticut, changed her name to Molly, and became famous for being unsinkable. This fame came to her because even though she didn't know how to swim, she could float in the Ohio River “till Kingdom come.” Apparently, she never lost her baby fat.
While doing some genealogical research (hoping to find that her late husband was somehow related to Buster and/or Charley Brown), she stumbled across some information that proved that Frederick Douglass and Stephen Douglas were long-lost cousins.
Mrs. Brown (who, by the way, now had a lovely daughter – she was pregnant at the time John died) wanted to let Ewe-Knighted States president Abraham Lincoln know about this, so she boarded a packet to New Orleans, and then took the Underground Railroad to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. During the idle hours of the journey, Molly entertained herself by writing a nifty little speech for Lincoln, which he delivered from the back of a train while munching on Stovetop Stuffing between paragraphs.
However, when Lincoln refused to credit Mrs. Brown for her authorship of the speech, she left (in a huff) for Appomattox to hire the Grant brothers (Lou and Bud) to represent her in a copyright infringement case against the mustache-challenged president.
Mrs. Brown lost the case. Everyone still thinks Lincoln wrote it (until now?). Molly got so mad about this that she joined forces with Jesse and Frank James and burned down Vicksburg and Georgia, just to show how put out she was over the whole situation.
However, it should be noted that Mrs. Brown always said “please” and “may I” before sacking or burning a town (or even an entire state). She never forgot to smile warmly and even affected a sweet southern accent. That's why it's called the “Civil” war – she was so polite in the way she conducted the various battles.
Due to Molly's politeness (and because she was a woman), the southerners she fought against eventually let her win the war (as you can see, chivalry was not yet dead at that time).
The end result of the war was that free agency became an accepted part of professional sports, and labor unions were allowed to take over the cotton plantations. Temporarily.
In the picture below, you can see a picnic that took place during the war. This is what happens when somebody forgets to bring the potato salad:
Custer's Last Stand
In 1876, one hundred years after the country was given its name by the queen of England, a crazed hippie named George Strongarm Custer opened a frozen custard stand in a remote part of the Montana plains.
This wasn't Custer's first custard stand. He had also tried selling his congealed concoction in West Point, California, and Monroe, Michigan, failing miserably both times.
Being the long-haired freak that he was, Custer erected his last custard stand smack dab in the middle of a buffalo herd, thinking he could sell grass-flavored custard to the lumbering and thundering herd by the bushel basket.
The Indians who lived nearby, hearing about the custard stand, came from miles around to give the new taste sensation a try. Sitting Bull couldn't wait to try some Canadian bacon pizza-flavored custard. Crazy Horse, a nerdy carrot-top (possible descendant of Thomas Jefferson) was intent on having some vanilla custard with hard tack and corn dodgers.
When the Indians found out the only flavor available was grass (specifically, the local “greasy grass”), they went on the warpath and burned Custer's custard stand to the ground.
This turned out to be Custer's last custard stand, because he was so disgusted at the poor reviews the Indians gave him on yelp that he gave up the business altogether and joined Buffalo Bill's circus (as a clown).
In the picture below, you can see the general melee that ensued when the Indians discovered Custer's measly mono-cultural custard offerings – they yelled, cried, stamped their feet, jumped up and down, and finally performed the Ghost Dance around Custer and his men until they dropped from sheer exhaustion.
Moon Landing
In 1969, Ewe-Knighted States president Richard Tollhouse Nixon got into a heated argument with Boris Pasternak. Nixon asserted that his book, Rich Richard's Almanac, had sold more copies than Pasternak’s light novel, Dr. Chicago.
Pasternak claimed that if all the copies of Dr. Chicago that had been sold were stacked on top of Fidel Castro’s head, they would reach all the way from Cuba to the moon.
Nixon misunderstood Pasternak, thinking that the Russian author was claiming that such a feat was already taking place in actuality – that the failed baseball player Castro was doing his darnedest to balance millions of books on his noggin.
Worrying about the strain on Mr. Castro’s neck from the weight of all those books, Nixon had his mad scientist friend Werner von Brain quickly build him a spaceship and then sent it up to the moon to check on Pasternak’s claim.
Finding nothing but rocks and flags blowing in the non-existent wind up there on the moon, Nixon mercilessly teased Pasternak and challenged him to a game of chess.
Pasternak accepted, but sent a proxy, Boris Spassky (most Russian men were named Boris back then) in his stead. Smelling a rat, Nixon countered by delegating Bobby Fischer to go in his place, who hitched a ride to Russia with F. Gary Powers. As a prank, Powers pressed the ejector seat button just as the minarets of Red Square came into view, and they parachuted together down into the land of vodka and furry hats.
Fischer won the match, and the world was forced to recognize the Ewe-Knighted States as landlords of the moon and masters of the chess board.
Below, you can see a picture of an astronaut looking in vain for Pasternak's books on the moon.
Watergate
In 1972, still feeling his oats after the incident with Pasternak, Ewe-Knighted States president Richard Tollhouse Nixon was caught on a surveillance camera dancing La Macarena in a room at the Watergate Hotel for 18 minutes straight. By himself. Naked. In those halcyon and conservative days of yore, this was not only considered excessive, but also just plain wrong (on multiple levels).
The news about this nasty dancing was leaked to Stan and Jan Berenstain at Bob’s Woodyard (a local watering hole in rural New York City) by a jealous plumber who happened to have been watching the surveillance footage.
Naturally, the news (and video) of this nocturnal booty-shaking ended up in the next Berenstain Bears book, and soon barely nobody hadn’t read about it.
The president denied that it was him on the tape, claiming it was really his body double, Little Richard, who had been cutting the rug that way. Over and over again, Nixon went on record saying, “I am not a dancer!”
Later, though, his buttprints were found on a chair in the hotel room where the exotic dancing had taken place, so he finally had to own up to his midnight shimmy.
Being that Nixon was normally such a wallflower at dances, a rumor got started that to act in this uncharacteristic way, he must have been impaired. So, he was impeached.
As embarrassed as he was about all this, Nixon resigned the presidency and became a tour guide at Hearst Castle. Some winters, he rented out his nose at Aspen and Vail, too, for extra cash (and tips).
If you look closely at the image below, on the 17th floor, in the 42nd window from the left, you might be able to make out a reflection of a mirror image of an impressionist painting by Salvador Dali of Nixon's famous faux pas, titled Dancing in the Dark.
. . .
Each Saturday and Tuesday an excerpt of one State’s (satirized) history will be posted here, in alphabetical order (from Alabama to Wyoming).
You can listen to this excerpt here.
Blackbird Crow Raven is also the author of the book “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle”