My "I Was Not Aware of That Moment"

A facebook friend of mine just posted something about how she hoped people would pronounce Roosevelt's name correctly, with the Burns series coming out. I was all set to drop this little fact on her when I thought I should google it, and found that Teddy also pronounced it as "Rose".

TR Center - How do you pronounce Roosevelt


Thanks for setting me straight. I guess I did not know that.
 
My grandmother claimed that those who liked FDR pronounced it "Rose..." while others said "Roos...".
 
I knew a guy who's first name is "Roosevelt". He preferred pronounced as "Rose". All a matter of personal preference I guess.
 
My bold. This goes back to ~1970. I was a "car guy" but couldn't afford a "nice one". I was attending a convention in my town and had bussed to work and walked to the location. I had invited another out-of-towner to stay at my place. When we left, she borrowed a colleague's car for the night so we could get home. It was a GTO convertible 4-speed. When we got there we couldn't get the key out. Finally, we parked in my driveway and I put my car behind it so that even if someone saw the key and tried to steal it, it was going nowhere. Next morning I stayed with the car while she went in and found her colleague. He came out and showed us, you have to have it in reverse to remove the key. My car was a Japanese 4-speed at the time.
I borrowed an old truck to do some hauling and couldn't get the key out. Had a gas cap lock, do had to fiddle with the key ring while the ignition key was still in the ignition. But having to park and leave the truck, I found a button on the top of the steering wheel shaft housing that allowed the key to be removed. You've got to wonder why they rigged all of these key removal tricks!
 
About 30 years ago, I once forgot to put a day camp minibus into Park when I removed the key (on some of those older vehicles, this was possible). When I tried to start the minibus up later, it would not start. On this minibus, the transmission gear selector was in the steering column so it was not easy to spot the little vertical line and the letter it lined up with. Also, while I had driven cars with the gear selector in the steering column, I hadn't done so in a while.

I needed someone from the day camp to drive over and discover this right away, leaving me rather embarrassed.
 
I've been reading "Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography" This is a free Kindle book on Amazon.

The sections on his life as a cowboy in North Dakota, African safaris, The Spanish War, the national parks and forests, conservation, Panama Canal, equal rights, and the history of the administration of public lands are especially interesting to me.Some parts are self-serving, as you would expect from a consummate politician.

He spends a lot of time on local New York politics, which has very little interest to me.
 
Sometime during the '80s a rental company rented me a Mustang. Little did I know it had a key removal button hidden under the steering column. I'd never seen a car with that, so had to leave it parked with the keys in the ignition. Why such a button was needed remains unclear to me even now.
 
Plus


John Quincy Adams was the son of John Adams
Benjamin Harrison was a grandson of William Henry Harrison

and of course everyone should know that: George W. Bush is the son of George H Bush

I've read that several others are related (distantly) by blood and some by marriage.

Barbara Pierce Bush (GHWB's wife) is a descendant of Franklin Pierce's brother.

Eleanor R. Was Teddy's favorite niece and he gave her away at her wedding to his distant cousin. He had offered to have her marriage at the White
House.
 
I have one of those "I didn't know that" moments several times a day. When I tell someone I start with "did you know that ....". Half the time they say "Of course I knew that ! I thought EVERYONE knew that". 25% of the time they say "yeah, I think I heard that somewhere" (which I think is the polite version of "Yes, I thought EVERONE knew that !). The other 25% of the time they didn't know it either.

I didn't know the Eleanor was related to Franklin until I recently read an article.

The first time I couldn't get the key out of the car I called DH in a panic. He told me about holding the brake down and wiggling the steering wheel.

It's nice to know that even as I grow older there is still so much to learn !
 
I've come across people who didn't know that while it's easy to unlock the driver's door with the button on the key fob, they didn't know that the all the other doors can be unlocked, too.
 
When I was young, I was sharing my history skills with my grandmother - told her that I was born when Eisenhower was president. I asked her who was president when she was born - she said Roosevelt. I said wow - that's a long time ago - being born during one of FDR"S terms. She said no - she was born when Teddy was in office. That's when I knew she was old.

Another Teddy fact - I read that he was at the Abraham Lincoln funeral procession.
 
I remember being in a very long discussion one evening around presidents.
Someone started the "Who was President when you were born?" thing, and it eventually got to "Who was Vice President?"

In my case, there was no Vice President. When Truman took over after FDR's death, there was no mechanism (at that time) to select a new Vice, so he went the rest of the term without one.
 

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