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Aww...Shucks!..
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3437
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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 RE: Aww...Shucks!.. (in reply to Pimientito)
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Hey, I'm really stoked about The Wedding! Wow! 
Many years ago, one of my old cousins who keeps track of such things breathlessly informed me that one of William's 17-times-great-grandmothers was a Jernigan! Such a distinction! 
Let's see now. you have four grandparents, eight great-grandparents....524,288 17-times-great grandparents, half of whom were women, for a total of 262,144 17-times-great grandmothers. Whew. 
But wait! In the fifteenth century there couldn't have been more than a few hundred marriageable women in that social set. So anybody in England who knows their family history for 20 generations is almost certain to be my cousin!
Err..including some of those upper-class twits we've been seeing on TV the last couple of weeks? For example the "former St Andrews student" with the weird standup hairdo and the necktie loosened just so? That is, I'm sure most of them are really nice people...aren't they? Hmmm...not sure how I feel about that... 
But Will and Kate seem nice enough.
And to be fair, working in England I met people from "old" families who were the salt of the earth.
RNJ
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Date Apr. 27 2011 15:10:21
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Ron.M
Posts: 7051
Joined: Jul. 7 2003
From: Scotland
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RE: Aww...Shucks!.. (in reply to Ruphus)
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quote:
How many hundred millions of tax pounds do these people eat yearly
Well I don't think they actually "earn" that, Ruphus.
But sure, the British Monarchy costs taxpayers a lot of money to keep going.
But it's an INDUSTRY that needs funded, with "born in" employees rather than individuals privately scamming funds for themselves. (although I'm sure they put a few bob away for a rainy day.. )
Personally, I cannot criticize the present Queen and that's the truth.
She has attended to State duties since a young girl and never brought shame or mockery on her office as Head of State.
Unlike her offspring.
The Head of State means that she is symbolically the head of the Army as Commander in Chief. Yet she has no political power. Only Parliament has.
This is the peculiar arrangement which keeps Britain the way it is.
British Soldiers swear allegiance to the Queen, but take orders from Parliament.
She has to appoint a Parliament of Ministers. Yet Parliament can overrule her.
(Don't try to understand it...It's a British thing...like Monty Python )
That way, nobody can set themselves up as a Gaddafi, or Mubarek, etc....having political control with army backing.
I'm quite comfortable with that.
I really do believe however that when our present Queen dies, then the Monarchy as we know it will die also.
It probably will remain, but in a much more diminished state of function attending and shaking hands etc etc.
But never like it used to be IMO.
Not like Queen Victoria, (when the sun never set on the British Empire... )
cheers,
Ron
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Date Apr. 27 2011 19:41:17
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3437
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Aww...Shucks!.. (in reply to Escribano)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Escribano
I was present as a young boy when Winston's funeral train passed through Reading and was on duty as a private mobile X-ray tech. when Charles and Di were married.
I was in a smart dark suit with a pager that matched those of the US security staff, so got very close to Nancy Reagan amongst others, at the rear of Claridges for the evening reception. It was so muddled, I am probably in some of the official photos.  Maybe I should have crashed the party?.
Lyndon Johnson's younger daughter got married the same day I did, lived around the corner from us, graduated from University of Texas same day as my wife, and had her first child same day as ours, stayed in the room next to my wife's in the hospital.
Lyndon spoke at the graduation ceremony. I dropped off my parents and my fiancee's near the outdoor seating area, and went to park the car. Somehow I got swept up in Lyndon's entourage as they moved along swiftly, headed for the outdoor dais.
I kept trying to break out of the Secret Service cordon, and they kept muscling me back in. At last I spotted Lyndon's uncle Huffman Baines, a good friend of my father.
"Hello, Mr. Baines," I called out.
"Why hello, Richard. Are you going to sit up front with us?"
"No sir. I just want to get loose so I can sit with Linda's and my parents."
Mr. Baines spoke to the President, who ordered the Secret Service to set me free. If it hadn't been for Mr. Baines, I'm not sure what would have happened when we got to the dais and I was found not to be on the seating chart.
It was bad enough living around the corner. The Secret Service had the house next to Lyndon's daughter. It's too hot to run in the daytime in Austin in the summer, so I would take off just after it got dark and cooled off a bit. Every time a new shift of Secret Service guys came on, one would pop out from behind a bush and stop me. I had to carry my passport and driver's license when I went running.
My boss, mentor and good friend had a good size boat on Lake Travis at Blackie's Boat Dock. One day we went there to go boating. Coming down the gravel road we encountered several Lincoln limos and assorted gray sedans--like the ones my son later called "narc-mobiles".
After finally getting through the checkpoints, we got up to the counter where Blackie himself, an old-style Texan, was holding forth. My friend hailed him politely.
'How are you today, Blackie?"
"Not worth a damn."
"Oh, and why not?"
"First we have a drought, and we have to drag the damn' [floating] docks out in the middle of the damn' lake, 'cause the water went down. Then we have a flood and the sons of b*****s float clear the hell away, and we have to go drag 'em back and tie 'em up again where they are now. And today? Why today we have the G*d-damn' President! Lord Jesus, how long must we suffer?"
I was eying the Secret Service a little nervously, but they seemed to be used to it.
At that moment Lyndon appeared. He knew the names of literally thousands of people. His memory for names and faces was truly astonishing. He had been a politician all his life, and so had his father before him. Lyndon knew my friend because he was one of the founders of a prospering corporation. He had met me once through his uncle. He walked over, shook hands and said, "Y'all want a beer? Blackie, give my friends Gene and Richard here a beer."
Blackie replied, "Whatever you say Mr. President. That'll be three dollars."
RNJ
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Date Apr. 27 2011 22:51:14
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3437
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Aww...Shucks!.. (in reply to Estevan)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Estevan
Huffman??!
Everybody addressed him as "Mr. Baines," even his wife, in public. His son, Huffman Baines, Jr. was called "Huff." It's an old Southern custom to give the surnames of ancestors to children as first names. Both were men of the highest reputation for probity and integrity.
Lyndon admired his uncle, who owned a small local telephone company, but he adored his aunt, Mrs. Baines.
One Sunday Mr. and Mrs. Baines were among my parents' guests for Sunday dinner. In Texas, Sunday dinner starts about one PM, after church lets out and the guests have time to assemble. The conversation turned to Lyndon.
"You may not know," Mr. Baines said, "that when Lyndon was making up his mind to run for President on his own, a group of us from here in Texas went up to the White House to try to talk him out of it."
"Why was that, Mr. Baines?" my mother asked.
"Not to put too fine a point on it, he lied too much," replied Mr. Baines.
Judge John Onion of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals took up the inquiry. "But Mr. Baines, isn't a politician at times practically obliged to color the truth a little?"
"Some people may think so. But Lyndon lies because he enjoys it."
When Richard Nixon told the nation, "I am not a crook," George Christian was already scheduled to give a speech the next evening at the Headliners' Club, the press club of the Texas capital. George was a man of the highest moral standards, a member of the vestry of our parish. I knew him pretty well. He was a warm and friendly man. He had been Johnson's Press Secretary, but like the rest of them, he resigned.
In his speech, reported in newspapers throughout the nation, Christian alluded to the Nixon crisis, then segued into reminiscences of Johnson, whose creative speaking talents were well known.
"Lyndon would hold a press conference in the morning, and announce a sweeping new major program. Then we would have to spend all afternoon and the next day running around trying to put together some kind of story to back him up."
The assembled journalists were left to draw their own conclusions about Presidential truthfulness, past and present.
For a few years Joe Kilgore's son worked for me as an engineer. Joe, senior was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas for decades, so he accumulated a certain amount of political power. When Pat Roberts, the TV preacher, announced that God had called him to run for President, Joe was interviewed on national TV.
"Congressman Kilgore, in your experience, has God ever intervened directly in American politics before now?"
"Why yes, I know of one instance."
"When was that, sir?"
"When Lyndon Johnson called me up on the telephone and told me not to run against Ralph Yarbrough in the Democrat primary election for the U.S. Senate."
RNJ
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Date Apr. 28 2011 5:41:18
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