Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (44 page)

Andorra is a small country between Spain and France. In the 1970s it reported an annual defense budget of $4.90. The money was used to buy blanks to fire on national holidays.

What's white and black and read all over? This page of riddles. Here are some BRI favorites. Answers are on page 517
.

1
. Just two hairs upon her head But she wears a flowered gown And dances in the flower bed The prettiest creature in town.

2
. I am a word of letters three. Add two, and fewer there will be.

3
. My life is measured in hours, I serve by being devoured. Thin, I am quick… Thick, I am slow… A gust of wind is my greatest foe.

4
. When I am filled I can point the way, When I am empty Nothing moves me, I have two skins—One without and one within.

5
. I appear once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years.

6
. I am placed on the table, then cut, then passed around to everyone present, but I am never eaten.

7
. We are identical twins who see everything in front of us, but never each other.

8
. I am the only place where you will find yesterday after today.

9
. To use me you must throw me away, but you will retrieve me when I am no longer needed.

10
. I can circle the globe while never leaving a corner.

11
. I am lighter than the lightest feather, but no matter how much strength you have, you couldn't hold me for more than a few minutes.

12
. Without wings I fly, Without eyes I cry.

13
. I am only a head; I have nothing within. I've got no mouth; I speak with my skin.

14
. Red and blue, purple and green, no one can touch me, not even a queen.

15
. I go up and down the hill, yet I'm always standing still.

16
. Two bodies have I Though both joined as one The stiller I stand The faster I run.

In Part I of the story of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 (page 45), we told you how the quake set off massive fires around the city. Here's how the flames were fought.

Within hours after the San Francisco earthquake, fires had broken out all over the city. The fires had many allies: the San Francisco hills, a steady breeze, the slow-burning redwood that composed 75% of the city's structures, numerous aftershocks, and insufficient water to fight them. So as a last resort, Mayor Schmitz decided to fight fire with fire.

What San Franciscans
did
have a lot of was dynamite—so they used it to build firebreaks, the theory being that disintegrating a building before the flames could reach it would cut off the fire's fuel supply. But this plan only partly worked; new fires sprouted up from the explosions. By noon much of downtown was engulfed in flame.

The destruction continued: The Army Medical Supply Depot went up in flames, taking with it material that could have been used in the disaster. One of the city's highest skyscrapers, the Call Building—which had withstood the quake—was reduced to ashes. Also leveled were the St. Ignatius Church (which housed a priceless pipe organ), the Examiner building, the Emporium department store, the Hall of Justice, Chinatown, the Columbia Theater, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Opera House, where world-famous Italian tenor Enrico Caruso had sung the previous night. One by one, San Francisco's most beloved buildings, including more than 30 schools, were destroyed. By midnight on Wednesday, most of the downtown district was in ruins, and there was more destruction to come.

Wherever firefighters stopped the path of the fires, other avenues of fire opened up. The city streets were so narrow and the buildings so close together that there was more than enough fuel for
the flames. One place where firefighters almost got the upper hand was Powell Street. Because it was very wide, the flames couldn't reach both sides and couldn't create the dangerous tunnels of fire that were spreading elsewhere in the city. And the massive St. Francis Hotel formed a huge firebreak. Surrounded by vacant lots, it gave the firefighters room to work and the flames no place to go. It looked like the fire might run out of real estate.

It would have, too, if it hadn't been for a few tired and hungry soldiers on the other side of the firebreak. They went into the empty Delmonico Restaurant to rest and find something to eat. They decided they wanted hot food, so they built a small fire to cook with. Bad idea. The “Ham and Eggs Fire,” as it was later called, got out of hand and quickly spread. Soon the entire restaurant was in flames, followed by the Alcazar Theater next door, followed by every building on Geary Avenue. Then it headed toward Powell Street, scattering enraged firefighters and forcing them to regroup elsewhere.

At this point, Mayor Schmitz decided the next fire line would be drawn at Van Ness Avenue. He ordered troops to start dynamiting homes to form another firebreak—an unpopular decision because many of the town's wealthiest and most influential people lived there. While one Army officer was sent to begin evacuation procedures, another was sent to take the fastest boat to the nearest city to replenish the town's exhausted stock of dynamite.

But somehow the message was misconstrued and the boat never left. With Van Ness Avenue completely evacuated and firefighters forming a line, they waited for the arrival of the dynamite…and waited…and waited. In disgust, Brigadier General Funston finally commandeered another boat and sent it on its way—but by then it was too late. In desperation, some firemen tried to set a backfire, but it failed to stop the advance of the flames, and Van Ness was on fire before the boat returned.

Next, the firefighters fell back to Franklin Street. It was narrow, but it was their only hope. Once again, residents were evacuated and firefighting forces were gathered. Demolition teams detonated home after home. Then the wind changed and it appeared that the fire was stopped. Bystanders rejoiced—until
they realized the flames were just being pushed in a new direction. The exhausted firefighters had to drum up the energy to make yet another stand.

On the other side of the city, 20th Street was chosen as a firebreak. It was a fairly wide street with some open ground downhill from a large cistern that still had some water in it. Buildings on the north side of the street were quickly dynamited, and the engines pulled by horses were taken up the hill to the cistern. When the horses gave out, dozens of citizens pushed the engines up the hill themselves to get the water. Their efforts worked. The fire was stopped at 20th street.

After four days of battling the blazes, the firemen slowly began to get the upper hand. By Saturday, only remnants of the great fire were left smoldering in pockets around the city. Late that night a much-needed rain began to fall, and the smoke finally began to clear.

About 700 people died as the result of the quake and the fires, but countless more were saved by General Funston, Mayor Schmitz, and all of the brave men and women who stayed to fight the fires and help others. Property losses topped $500 million. Some 497 city blocks covering 2,831 acres lay in ruins. Twenty-eight thousand buildings were gone. Half of the city's population, amounting to a quarter of a million people, were homeless. But San Franciscans were determined to save their city; rebuilding began almost immediately.

Secretary of War Taft rushed a bill through Congress requesting half a million dollars in relief funds for the city. It was passed the same day. He ordered 200,000 rations sent from the Vancouver, Washington, Army Base, and ordered every military post in the nation to send all tents without delay. Then he sent another bill through Congress increasing his request for financial aid to $1 million. It was approved. In addition, $10 million more poured in from 14 nations.

Fundraisers for San Francisco were held all over the nation. Songwriter George M. Cohen sold souvenir newspapers for $1,000 per copy, and boxing champion Jim Jeffries sold oranges for $20 each. Relief distribution centers provided aid—the Red Cross served over 313,000 meals on April 30 alone.

Ten days later, water service was restored. Soon after came the lights along the main streets and the trolley cars. And the rebuilding continued nonstop. Within three years, 20,000 of the 28,000 ruined buildings had been replaced, and this time most of the buildings were made of brick and steel—not wood.

In 1915 San Francisco hosted the World's Fair, and by then there was barely any evidence left of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and fires.

San Franciscans got a rude reminder of the big quake on October 17, 1989. An earthquake hit the area, and although it was much smaller, it was still big enough to cause extensive damage.

Way back in 1915 when they were still rebuilding, many new structures were built in the Marina District. Engineers used rubble, mud, and sand to fill in the shallow bay. But the new land wasn't properly compacted before the buildings went up. After the Exposition ended, homes and other buildings were constructed on top of this unstable base. Without solid ground to stand on, the Marina District was severly damaged in the 1989 quake.

Schmitz and Funston weren't the only heroes. Turn to page 349 for some of the other stories.

Here's a U.S. Postal Service ad from 1996, defending its policy to raise the price of stamps:

“In 1940, a one-pound loaf of bread cost 8 cents, and in 1995 cost 79 cents; a half-gallon of milk went from 25 cents to $1.43 in the same period; and a first-class postage stamp went from 3 cents to 32 cents. Which, bottom line, means that first-class postage stamps remained well below the rate of inflation.”

Do the math:
Actually, those figures prove that the price of stamps rose 9% faster than the price of bread and 105% faster than the price of milk.

Remember the saying “Judge not, lest ye be judged?” These men in black would have done well to follow that advice.

Douglas County judge Richard Jones was suspended by the Nebraska Supreme Court after an investigation into 17 complaints concerning his conduct, both on and off the bench. Among the findings: Judge Jones had taken to signing court documents with names like A. Hitler and Snow White (he says he did it to keep court personnel on their toes), and setting bail amounts in the form of “a gazillion pengoes” and other imaginary currencies (he says it's “a matter of opinion” whether the fines are nonsensical or not). He was also accused of urinating on courthouse carpets, making an anonymous death threat against another judge (he says it was a “prank that went wrong”), and throwing firecrackers into the same judge's office. Judge Jones contested a number of the charges but admitted he threw the firecrackers. “I was venting,” he explained.

In August 1998, a Missouri judicial commission found Associate Circuit judge John A. Clark guilty of misconduct. The charge “most likely to be remembered,” according to the
National Law Journal:
sentencing defendants to community service… and then allowing them to “do their time” by working in his yard.