Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (77 page)

THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT

It was there that 41 Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact—the first set of written laws in America. The Pilgrims realized during the voyage that if they were to survive in this new land, their congregation would need to form a government and draft laws. They didn’t want a repeat of the lawlessness they had heard existed in Jamestown. And, in spite of their faith, they knew they were only human—a few squabbles had already broken out between the London and Leiden Separatists. These power struggles, they felt, would only escalate without a governor and arbiters.

Washington, D.C., has one lawyer for every 19 residents.

In the hopes of creating a “city upon a hill” that would serve as a beacon to the rest of the world, the Pilgrims elected the most learned and respected member of their group, William Bradford, to be governor. “This day,” he later wrote,

before we came to harbour, observing some not well affected to unity and concord, but gave some appearance of faction, it was thought good there should be an association and agreement, that we should combine together in one body, and to submit to such government and governors as we should by common consent agree to make and choose, and set our hands to this that follows, word for word.

Bradford then drafted what he called “An Association and Agreement” (it would be renamed the Mayflower Compact in 1793). The document set forth that

in the name of God, Amen, We, whose names are underwritten… during a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid.

BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE

The Mayflower Compact was a covenant so well conceived that its basic principle would later be written into the United States Constitution: For a government to be legitimate, the people who are being governed must first agree to the structure of that body and pledge to follow its laws. Without that agreement firmly in place, the government will founder.

As important a document as it was, though, the Mayflower Compact lasted only a year. It was a temporary fix designed to get the community through those first few difficult months while maintaining civility. And although the Pilgrims all agreed to the terms of the Compact, it lacked one important detail: the approval of the British government. So a year later they drafted the 1621 Pierce Patent, a more detailed contract that was approved by the Crown, and enabled the Pilgrims to live peacefully in the place newly christened “New England.”

Largest art museum: the Hermitage, in Russia (322 galleries; nearly 3 million works of art).

FINDING HOME

But back to that first winter of 1620. The joy of having reached the New World safely was short lived. Because of the delays the Pilgrims encountered leaving England, the bite of winter was already in the air when they arrived in America. They had to find a home—a place with reliable food and shelter—fast.

The Pilgrims spent the first few weeks exploring the sandy beaches and inlets around Cape Cod, and then the
Mayflower
took up anchor and sailed farther north up the coast until they found an inviting harbor. According to a surveying map, the harbor had been visited by Captain John Smith seven years earlier. He named it Plymouth, the same name as the town in England from which the Pilgrims had set sail more than three months earlier. Plymouth Harbor, it was agreed, would be their new home. They landed there on December 21, 1620…the first day of winter.

While the snow fell, the colonists quickly sawed lumber and built clapboard houses. The
Mayflower
’s crew dropped anchor off shore, judging that a return trip to England in winter would be too dangerous, and they spent that winter with the Pilgrims. Neither group fared well. Food supplies ran perilously low and more than half of those who arrived—including Oceanus Hopkins, the baby boy who was born on the
Mayflower—
did not survive to spring. (The other
Mayflowe
r baby, Peregrine White, lived into his 80s.)

MEET THE LOCALS

The English settlers referred to their new home as Plymouth, but the area was known as “Patuxet” to the native people. Only one member of the Patuxet nation remained, however; the rest had been wiped out by smallpox two years earlier. The lone survivor, a man named Tisquantum—the Pilgrims called him “Squanto”—had spent several years in Europe after being kidnapped by British sailors (which is how he avoided the smallpox outbreak). Squanto befriended the Pilgrims and became their interpreter, helping them negotiate with the two other area tribes—the Nauset and the Wampanoag.

Only winner of a Golden Globe award for “Most Glamorous Actress”: Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Also aiding the Pilgrims was a professional soldier named Myles Standish. The Pilgrims weren’t fighters, but, because they were going into unknown lands, Pastor John Robinson thought it prudent to hire a military captain. The decision turned out to be crucial to the Pilgrims’ survival. Although Standish lost his wife that first winter, he remained loyal to protecting those who made him their captain. Standish also impressed the neighboring Indians with his wisdom and prowess as a warrior, and even fought alongside them when another tribe attacked…a tribe who had vowed to wipe out the English next.

THE FIRST THANKSGIVING

Without the aid of Squanto and Captain Standish, the Pilgrims would not have been safe in their new home. But, thanks to their protection, the Pilgrims lived in peace with the Indians for nearly 75 years, until the Wampanoag challenged the Pilgrims’ claim to the land. In the meantime, they coexisted, traded goods and services, and in 1621 they celebrated their first (and only) Thanksgiving together. It wasn’t a solemn religious affair, as many history books have portrayed it—it was a lively three-day harvest feast. The Pilgrims, having survived the journey over the ocean and the harsh winter that followed, were very thankful for their new home—and new friends—in Plymouth.

An account of that Thanksgiving survives, and it sheds even more light on what life was like for these early Americans. The celebration was described by a Pilgrim named Edward Winslow in a letter dated December 12, 1621.

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

The Three Wise Men (not Moe, Larry, and Curly): Melchoir, Gaspar, and Balthazar.

THE FATE OF THE
MAYFLOWER

Master Jones and his beleaguered crew set sail for England on April 5, 1621. The
Mayflower
never carried Pilgrims again. She returned to her life as a merchant ship, but for only a short time—after a few more trading runs, Christopher Jones died in 1622. The battered ship was docked for more than two years in an English harbor, then appraised for probate while Jones’s estate was settled. The ship’s official condition: “In ruins.”

So in 1624 the
Mayflower
was sold as scrap. A farm in the Quaker village of Jordans, in Buckinghamshire, England, claims that the
Mayflower’s
hull and keel still exist in the barn’s frame and outer walls, but no evidence exists to support this claim. The barn is definitely made from an old wooden ship, but no markings verify it was the
Mayflower
. Still, the “Mayflower Barn” remains a popular tourist destination.

DESCENDANTS AND LEGACIES

The Pilgrims’ journey to the New World was a major turning point in history for both England and North America. It marked the beginning of structured society in America, as well as the beginning of a mass exodus of English people to the new land of opportunity. And to say the Pilgrims were fruitful and multiplied would be an understatement: Experts say that as many as 35 million people around the world are descended from those few dozen who settled in Plymouth in 1620.

Today, a state park in Plymouth with a monument to those who landed there memorialize the Pilgrims’ accomplishments. And although Pilgrim Memorial State Park is the smallest state park in Massachusetts, it is by far the most visited, receiving more than a million tourists every year—people who want to stand in the same spot as those weary travelers whose only wish was to create a society where the citizens were free to live and worship as they chose.

*        *        *

“One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.”

—
Grace Hopper

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest, Slaughter, Famine, and Death.

VAUDEVILLE

If you’ve ever faked a soft-shoe or yelled out, “One more time!” at the end of a song, you’re doing vaudeville—America’s favorite form of entertainment for half a century.

B
OWERY BOY
Although theater-going has been part of American cultural life since the 18th century, it was a pleasure reserved mostly for the upper classes, and found only in major cities like New York and Philadelphia. Most Americans lived in rural areas, with neither the time nor the money to attend shows on a regular basis. The Industrial Revolution changed all that: By the mid-1800s, more Americans were living in cities than on farms and, more importantly, they had extra money and one day off every week to spend it.

Tony Pastor was a New York entertainer and entrepreneur who produced raunchy variety shows in the city’s working-class Bowery district. Pastor knew that the big money to be made in show business lay in getting the growing middle class into the theater. But few respectable New Yorkers, especially women and children, would be caught dead at Pastor’s bawdy shows. So he created a new kind of variety show in a “clean”—meaning no sacrilegious language or overtly sexual content—family-friendly format. And he moved it uptown.

In 1881 Pastor opened the 14th Street Theatre in New York City’s Union Square and launched a style of entertainment that dominated American theater for the next 50 years—vaudeville.

FAMILY FUN

Strictly speaking, vaudeville was a variety show: seven or eight acts, featuring singers, sketches or routines by comedians and actors, and novelty acts like escape artists, high divers, quick-change artists, strong men, jugglers, and animal acts.

The origin of the name itself is obscure. It may be a corruption of the phrase
voix de ville
, French slang for “songs of the town,” or it may have come from
vau-de-Vire
, a valley in Normandy that became known for satiric songs full of double-entendres written by street singers in the 15th century.

Hey, sports fans—how big is an NFL football field? (It’s 360 feet long by 160 feet wide.)

But Tony Pastor never called his shows “vaudeville.” The term was given to the new form of entertainment by impresarios Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward F. Albee. Keith and Albee were two of the most cutthroat producers in a business full of rascals and sharks. In 1883, using money they’d made with unauthorized productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, they built a chain, or “circuit,” of lavish theaters across the northeast. Then they stole Pastor’s format, instituted the practice of playing two shows a day, and called it vaudeville. Other producers jumped on the bandwagon, and soon there were other successful vaudeville circuits—the Pantages and Loew’s, to name two—but Keith and Albee dominated the industry, gobbling up the other circuits one by one.

HULLY GEE!

Not only did Keith and Albee control the theaters, they also controlled the performers. Acts were required to uphold strict codes of behavior. Fred Allen, the radio superstar who started out as a juggler in vaudeville, recalled a warning sign posted backstage:

Don’t say slob or sonofagun or hully gee [19th-century slang for “Holy Jesus!”] on the stage unless you want to be canceled peremptorily. If you are guilty of uttering anything sacrilegious or even suggestive you will be immediately closed and will never again be allowed in a theater where Mr. Keith is in authority.

They meant business. Acts that violated the rules were black-balled from the circuit. Keith and Albee eventually controlled the bookings in most of the 17,000 vaudeville theaters from coast to coast. Acts who didn’t play by their rules didn’t work.

BIRTH OF “BLUE”

Over time, as social conventions relaxed, the rules were bent, especially for big stars like Sophie Tucker and the Marx Brothers, who made pushing the envelope part of their act. But that process took years. In the meantime Keith and Albee dutifully watched the Monday matinee of every new act. After the show, they wrote out terse instructions on what improper line or scene each performer was to cut before the evening performance. Those instructions were put in little blue envelopes, which would appear in the performers’ mailboxes backstage. To this day, raunchy jokes and sketches are known as “blue” material.