The first "Old Worlders" to discover the Americas was Hiram Ben Dan the Levite and his wife (some months pregnant) Yehudith. The unknown history begins with Jesus driving the money changers from the temple. (Check BIBLE, "New Testament"...it's in there.) When Hiram arrived home early that afternoon, almost catching Yehudith in flagrant dyslectic with a Baal fanatic, Yehudith looked him sternly in the eye (Hiram had only one eye, but that is another story) and said, "Schmuck! This is the third time some prophet or messiah has whipped you like a dog. What is it with having to do your money exchanging INSIDE? It's hanging out with some of those Pharisee gangsters. I told you did I not, they were trouble. Always the Law, the LAW, and ME, ME, ME. You heard about the publican the other day? His wife tells me..."
Some hours passed.
Hiram saw the sand running out of the hourglass; he had lost count. "Yehudith. What, my own darling kosher feast, do you want me to do?"
We need to go to Athens. Lots of action there. Or maybe Rome. Yes, Rome! All roads lead to Rome. It should be easy to find."
The next morning Hiram Ben Dan the Levite met with the other members of the burnt flesh offering cartel to discuss losses. They agreed. By Monday with the houses packed, sold as the lowest bid for a Roman Housing Project to be called the Giatto, the burnt flesh offering cartel met at Tyre where they rented a boat. They set sail. They were not good at it. They were accountants at sea. Many had never stepped donkey out of Jerusalem. All of them were tired of being beaten and doing community service time. Business stunk. Always had. Forever and Ever.
After four days at sea, Shem Ben Tsipi looked up from the deck and said, "Storm." Shem was a man of few words. Many said it was because of his stature: less than one Cubit tall, people remarked (as people will do), that Shem Ben Tsipi had no room to store words so kept only a few well-chosen words to use regularly. Actually, Shem got the habit of few words from his father who was a drunken storyteller. He would tell exotic and fantastic tales of lost reptiles of gigantic size being brought back to life, or ships at war among the stars, or tales of things descending out of nowhere to land here in Israel. Shem sat at his father's knee and remembered always the refrain, "Well, to keep a long story short.&" No one had ever before heard him say "storm." To keep a long story short... Shem looked up from the deck and said, "Storm."
By the time one of his shipmates would have read the previous paragraph, the storm was upon them. It was THE PERFECT STORM. Maybe only one showing at the Coliseum and a short tour through some of the far provinces where there were makeshift amphitheaters with little to do but have folk spend their week collecting cowpats, sheep droppings, or badger smidge - depending on where you were. It was a long and stormy night. Forty days and forty nights it rained. Actually, their small boat was repeatedly blown by this one weather front, clear across the Mediterranean (Roman) or Damn Big Water (vernacular), between the pillars of Hercules where Yehudith tried to look up Hercules' loin clothe, and across the Atlantic Ocean which was then called Ocean, or - because only dumb asses went there fishing, "Oceanus"
. Luckily they had brought lots of matzo, thinking ahead to start a chain of hot dog and matzo shops up and down the coast of Italy. They had the matzo but still had not figured out how to make the hot dogs. A Sephardim Jew, Coney Ben Cojones was working on that. They ate lotsa matzo (sorry, couldn't resist).
Finally, as must happen in all stories, the ship ran aground. Hiram and Yehudith were the first off the ship. They were thrown off because the others were tired of their bickering. Seeing that no bears came out of the woods to eat them, the others followed Hiram and Yehudith. Immediately they began to discuss a name for this place they'd never seen before. Some wanted to call it "New Lebanon" because the trees were larger than the cedars of Lebanon. Right away they agreed: NEW this and NEW that just wouldnt look good on the maps and who would want to live in a place named for another place it would be like calling a place Second City . Yehudith pressed for "Yehudithia" but that was soundly rejected. No one wanted a grandchild to be called Joshua Ben Ebenezer the Yehu or Elihu the Yehu. They were just about convinced to called it "Hiram" when it occurred to a lisping fellow to note that the name allowed him henceforth to use the name Percy the Hirammer. Hiram Ben Dan the Levite looked around and sternly proclaimed: "that settles it... 'Levittown'." And so, Levittown was founded.
The sons and daughters of Levittown eventually moved west. You know how it is with kids. Got to explore those places where mom and dad say don't go; some just run off for a little hanky panky in the woods and lost their way; some just got up one morning and said, "Whoa! I'm outta here." These young intrepid explorers "intreprideurs" they were called, settled on an island the locals called "Manhattan" where a thriving center of barter and theft was established. The first great First Nations Council agreed to meet there and confine the foreigners as best they could to the island as the foreigners had frightening and distasteful habits like bris. Besides, the natives figured that if you could do that to a baby, what would you do to an enemy. So, they built the United First Nations teepee and settled in for a long long long winter with the folk they chose to call High Rammers.
Bears.
The Jews of Manhattan were the first to have a bear market. They exchanged matzos at first for bear skins, blankets, hats, you know, the usual. The locals called matzos "fishes I hate" which the Levittowners translated as "pieces of eight". That's one of the big problems with having a bilingual nation. Joe says, "I need to go to the Laboratory," so Ed sends him to a rest room. Someone says something about a broken bonnet, then a friend sends a pretty new one in gingham and lace. But that doesn't fix the broken hood. Then another friend sends a head covering from a monk's robe. Very confusing. At any rate, they were running out of matzos. So they invented the first paper currency. For X bear pelts the natives received Y miniature paintings of the Levittown young women buck naked on said bear pelts. But it soon got to the point that bears were becoming extinct around those parts.
Enter the Dutch.
Dutch traders had become the Newest Seafaring Rage around the thirteenth through sixteenth century AD of which of course the Levittowners knew nothing. Didn't know AD from DC and of course the United States hadn't been established yet so there WAS no DC (and no one would want to call it the District of High Rammers anyway); well then, no DC so everyone used alternating current. Soon the Dutch took over. As soon as the Dutch arrived, the Levittowners withdrew into their own part of town where gentiles were not allowed. This, historically, would prove to be a terrible mistake. And, after the Dutch, came the English. The English were looking for the famous Dutch Treat much as the Spanish were elsewhere searching for the less famous El Dorado which wouldn't be built until the mid Twentieth Century.
And there were ships from all the nations of the world docking in what was now called New York. Sailors, knowing they were in New York, walked the streets seeking fur. As they found no bears, they turned their attention to women. A guy's got to do something with shore leave. Thus began the great intermingling of nations upon these western shores. Motel Mayflower was perhaps the best known sailor snuggery on the East Coast. Meanwhile, bear had become more and more rare.
The China trade opened.
Why was the Yankee Clipper called a Clipper? You doubtless never asked yourself this question. Have had no cause. If you should ever ask yourself (or if you just now did because you're one of those slope-headed dimwits that has to read aloud) the answer is simple. The Chinese did not want to trade fur nor claw nor hide. Ground bear testicles are a Chinese cure for many things (for example, even the thought of admitting you are ill will vanish at the thought of swallowing two crushed bear testicles then seeing the doctor on the next morning - stay with me, this has ramifications for national health care!). So the Yankees, who rushed to get porcelain toilets and other such oriental exotica, ran from forest to ship with clippers in hand. It wasn't so much TRADE that made them rush. You'd run too if you'd just clipped a bear out of his treasures.
Not wanting to go extinct - And really getting fed up with Mrs. Bears bitching "you'd lose your head if it wasn't tied on!" - Bears moved north. Even today in reaches above the United States, on a frosted over great white out, United Staters can hear the howl of the hunter breaking across the ice...."More BEEEEEEEEEEEEAR!"
Also, people have been known to jump out of the woods and scream at tourists: "This bear's for you!"
Well now, those are the bear facts. Since Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple there have been entrepreneurs ('intrepideurs' sounds stupid) in the West. Along with them you get sailors and the fur exchange. Along with the fur exchange, people are making babies so they too can have snapshots of their little boy/girl, boy, or girl naked on a bear rug. And as bears get more and more rare, men will take on any substitute fur available. I know one fellow who has married a moose though that is STILL against federal law (he says, "thank god for division of church and state," and I says, "Amen to that"). So that means today from Key West to Upchukit and from San Diego to Magawditskold, we are slowly becoming a metissage. Get used to it. There are no foreigners; there's only Lowlife Bears and High Rammers.
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