Ghosts of White House past

KIDDIES, class will come to order. To honor Donald — our father who art almost in the Oval Office — comes a lesson on White House predecessors:

G. Washington refused his 25grand-a-year salary. Could be he didn’t need it because he also grew cannabis. As in hemp. As in marijuana. As in maybe George was one happy contented forefather.

Six of our former fathers-in-chief were named James: Madison, Polk, Monroe, Buchanan, Garfield and peanut farmer

Carter. And they weren’t all political pros:

Licensed barkeep Honest Abe co-owned Berry and Lincoln, a Springfield, Ill., tavern. Tailor Andrew Johnson only wore suits he made himself. Grover Cleveland? Former sheriff, in New York he was Erie County’s official hangman (perfect advance rehearsal for the DC job). And National Park ranger Gerald Ford used to feed the bears (primed him for Democrat donkeys). Herbert Hoover previously earned a dollar a day for picking insects off potato plants. A buck a bug.

Oddities? The “S” in Harry S Truman stood for nothing. That’s why it’s sometimes written with no period after it. Thomas Jefferson visited Stratford-upon-Avon, where his knife hacked souvenir chips out of Shakespeare’s chair. Violating state laws, a Sunday carriage ride in Vermont got Jefferson and Madison arrested. Ulysses S. Grant smoked minimum 20 cigars a day. Martin Van Buren’s autobio never mentioned his longtime wife.

University of California 1940 voted Reagan the Most Nearly Perfect Male Figure Award. Poker player Warren G. Harding bet a whole set of priceless White House china and lost it. Harding was also first to own a radio. Teddy Roosevelt’s final deathbed words were “Please put out the light.” Also, Teddy and his first lady owned and used stilts. Woodrow Wilson painted golf balls black so he could play in wintertime snow. I hear he also told racist jokes in an Irish accent.

Wait. Calvin Coolidge liked his head rubbed with Vaseline while eating breakfast in bed.

One more wait. John Adams lisped and wouldn’t wear dentures.