History Warp (12/19-12/25): A Classic, A Purchase & A Travesty

There’s a regional theater in my town as I’m sure there is in yours. Or, at least you’ve got a Beef, Brew & Boards kind o’ place, at which, this time of year, the insurance salesman around the corner has been portraying Bob Cratchit for the last 23 Christmases running. One year he did it in a wheelchair with a broken leg.

And every year to make grannie happy, you schlep her and the kiddos to see what a great guy Bob Cratchit is. And to wonder how come the guy playing him looks older than Ebenezer Scrooge. And almost as cranky.

Anyway the whole “A Christmas Carol” thing started on December 19, 1843, when Charles Dickens’ now classic story of the season was first published.

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Thomas Jefferson was president. He needed something to do when he wasn’t diddling Ms. Sally Hemmings in the slave quarters. So he took a look at his domain and said, “I need more room to move. Let’s supersize this country.”

So he sent James Monroe to the Land of the Coneheads, France, to buy some land. Lots of land. 828,000 square miles. And cut a deal too, at only 3 pennies an acre.

Ah yes, the Louisiana Purchase. On December 20, 1803 that that expanse was transfered.

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It is part of rock & roll lore that the day Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper went down in that plane in snowy Iowa field was, all together now, The Day The Music Died.

It didn’t, of course, die that is, because, well, because as the song goes, rock & roll will never die.

But there was a day even sadder than that plane crash February night. It was December 22, 1958 when a heinous little ditty, “The Chipmunk Song” hit #1 on the Top Forty charts. It was the work of a fellow named Ross Bagdasarian, who didn’t even have the decency to use his real name, calling himself David Seville instead.