Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States Read Free

looking for a new place to try to get to, and they came up with a new concept: the West. The problem here was that the immediate west was covered with the Atlantic Ocean, which represented a major obstacle because back in those days many people believed that the world was flat. Today, of course, we know that this is true only in heavily Protestant states such as Iowa, but back then people believed that if you went too far, you might sail right off the edge. In fact, you would probably want to sail off the edge, since the average sailing ship had about the same size and seaworthiness as a Yugo hatchback.
     
    THE FORTUNATE INVENTION OF CERTAIN NAVIGATIONAL AIDS
     
    Then, fortunately, along came the invention of certain navigational aids. Chief among these was a very realistic doll that, when you inflated it, could … WAIT! Wrong kind of aid! Our mistake! Chief among the navigational aids was the compass, a device that, no matter where it is, always indicated which way was north. This was a tremendous boon to early navigators, although its value was diminished somewhat by the fact that the early voyages always ended with the ship banging into the polar ice cap and everybody aboard freezing to death. But eventually the compass was improved by the addition of such features as: south, west, and even east again, and soon hardy (In the sense of, “not tremendously bright.”) mariners were able to venture far out into the Atlantic before getting lost. Still, it was difficult to recruit new sailors, even with the use of extensive advertising campaigns built around catchy themes such as:
     
    BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE!
    Become a Hardy Mariner
    “Get Lost and Die.”
     
    Eventually the breakthrough came that made modern navigation possible: the discovery of longitudes and latitudes. These are thin black lines that go all around Earth in a number of locations, so that all you have to do is follow them, and you have a surefire way of getting wherever it is they go. Of course they are difficult for the untrained eye to see; the early sailors had to squint at the water for hours, which is why so many of them ended up having to wear eye patches, especially in movies. But the hardy sacrifice those early mariners made for us will never be forgotten, not as long as we are reading this particular paragraph.
     
    Meanwhile, in nearby Italy, Christopher Columbus was forming. As a youth, he spent many hours gazing out to sea and thinking to himself: “Someday I will be the cause of a holiday observed by millions of government workers.” The fact that he thought in English was only one of the amazing things about the young Columbus. Another was his conviction that if he sailed all the way across the Atlantic, he would reach India. We now know, thanks to satellite photographs, that this makes him seem as stupid as a buffalo, although it sounded pretty good when Columbus explained it to the rulers of Spain, Ferdinand and his lovely wife, Imelda, who agreed to finance the voyage by selling six thousand pairs of her shoes.
     
    And so Columbus assembled a group of the hardiest mariners he could find. These fellows were so hardy that, had the light bulb been invented at that time, it would have taken at least three of these mariners to screw one in, if you get our drift. On October 8, 1492 they set out across the storm-tossed Atlantic in three tiny ships, the Ninia, the Pina Colada, and the Heidy-Ho III. Fortunately Columbus kept a detailed log, so we can get some sense of how long and arduous their journey was from revealing excerpts such as this:
     
    October 8—Boy, is this journey ever long! Also arduous!
     
    But finally, after numerous storm-tossed weeks, just when it seemed as if Columbus and his men would never see land again, there came an excited cry from the lookout.
     
    “Hey!” he cried. “we forgot to put up the sails!”
     
    And so they all had a hearty laugh, after which they hoisted the damned things. A few hours later, on