November 2nd (first Saturday in November) is National Bison Day. The North American Bison is the Official National Mammel of the United States. He is on plenty of old nickles.
I have an interesting book “Buffalo Country” by Bob Duncan, 1959. In America, we seem to interchange buffalo and bison. They are the same animal. But there is a water buffalo from Africa, South America, and Asia that are a different animal.
In the book, there are some great stories of Buffalos, from mass slaughters from trains, to Indian stories of bravery. There is a story of a peg-legged old sea captain hunting buffalo from a wheeled sailing vessel, with a harpoon, and the immensity of how huge some buffalo herds were, at one time there were between 30 and 60 millian buffalo running wild. This is a great book to curl up and read on a cold evening.
On October 2nd, 1795, James Knox Polk was born. He became our eleventh president. I have a little information on him from “Lives of the Presidents of the United States” by Mrs. Helen W. Pierson, printed 1889.
During Polk’s time as president, the Mexican-American war broke out, battling land between Texas and Mexico. At the end, the United States now had California and New Mexico territories. Three states also became states under Polk: Texas, Iowa, and Wisconson.
Also during Polk’s tenure, the California Gold rush began. I have further information from my standby collection of Landmark books, “The California Gold Rush” by May McNeer, published 1950.
McNeer tells us that in the morning of January 24th, 1848, James Marchall found gold when building a saw mill for John Sutter. They became partners, and tried to keep the news quiet. It didn’t stay that way for long. Then the world was coming to California, the land that recently belonged to Mexico.
Another rush of gold happened on October 2nd 2016 (actually in the early morning of October 3rd), when the Cubs won the world Series. Hey, Hey and Holy Cow!
It had been a long time for us Cubs fans to see that…and it will probably be a long time before we see it again. Hope that gold wasn’t fools gold. We want more.
“One thing you learn as a Cubs fan: When you bought your ticket, you could bank on seeing the bottom of the ninth.”–Joe Garagiola
“People ask me a lot about the values I got from playing for the Cubs for so many years. The value I got out of it was patience. A lot of people these days are not very patient.“-Ernie Banks
“It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame… Let’s play two!“-Ernie Banks
Librarytomes 