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Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House

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An Odd Couple For most of his life, Washington was in love with a woman named Sally Fairfax, wife of George William Fairfax -- Washington's neighbor and best friend. Although his passions for the worldly and beautiful Sally probably never waned, Washington settled for a much more practical match: the widow Martha Custis, whose considerable holdings made him the wealthy gentleman he longed to be. The two were married in January 1759 and made an odd couple indeed -- George, a giant for his time at about 6' 2", towered over his portly bride, whose head didn't make it to his shoulders.   -- Cormac O'Brien,  Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House   Do you remember your American History classes in high school or college? Remember having to take notes full of dry facts and statistics about such topics as the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Smoot-Hawley Act,...

Things I Remember: In the 1970s (Cont’d)

1. Wacky Packages: Topps, the trading card company which also published Star Wars trading cards and stickers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, introduced these graphic spoofs of well-known consumer products and brands, e.g. Spam = Cram . The cards and stickers – which we kids called “Wacky Packies” – were drawn by professional comic book artists and often featured violent, gross and scary images in a sardonic, almost gallows humor that, like the later Garbage Pail Kids cards, appealed to tweens’ often quirky sensibilities. Between 1973 and 1976, I used to go to the Seven-Eleven store close to the Tamiami Trail and SW 97th Avenue every Saturday and buy five packs for a quarter, which back then seemed to be a lot of money for a kid. I was such a big fan of “Wacky Packies” that I saved up $5.00 of my allowance and bought an unopened box. Unfortunately, I lost my entire collection when we moved to our present house; apparently, the movers “lost” some of our boxes during the four-m...