A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION,
an OVERVIEW OF A LIFE-updated June 2009 I have written this book neither for money nor fame. I am writing this book for the most important reason of all - because it needs to be written. I am writing this book because my medium is truth. A potter has his mud, a jazz musician his heroin, and I, my truth. It is time that the world know of Jonas Mayfew Higgenbottom and the history that he created and left behind for all of us to wallow in.
“Why Higgenbottom?” you’re probably asking.
Well, let me answer your question with another: “Does the world need another fawning Thomas Paine biography or FDR ‘lost memoir’ around which the Ed Begley Jr.’s of the world will try to rally their ultra-liberal, wealth-redistributing base - knowing full well that the pretentious tome will inevitably sit, unopened, in the glove box of a used Toyota Prius purchased to impress one’s neighbors in Westport?”
No, of course not.
Instead, this nation needs to be reminded not of its rabble rousers but of its nobler heritage, of its noblest era, of the Gilded Age – America’s most American age! The history of our nation is the history of those who, as it is sometimes said, "moved and shaked." I'm speaking about the wealthy, of course. I know, it seems a controversial thing these days to state the obvious, that the wealthiest among us have had a disproportionate impact on the direction our nation has taken over the last 233 years. But that is the truth, and to deny the truth is to lie and to lie is to sin and to sin is to be unAmerican. So let us move forward as a nation and accept the fact that wealthy people are who they are not because of their money but because they inherently deserve that money, and the unassailable power that goes with it.
Having accepted the necessity for and the praise deserved to those who have more, we must turn our minds to the question of who was the wealthiest, and therefore the most deserving of praise? Thankfully, this question has a quite simple answer.
Of those great men who did gild our cities and industries with the blood and tears of laborer after sooty laborer, none of them is responsible for more gilt than the
Dr. Rev. Jonas Mayfew Higgenbottom. That is “
why Higgenbottom,” dear reader. Yet scarcely is this great man’s name even found in our historical accounts, save for a few fringe printings from obscure boutique scholars like the stealthy Derwood Phillips’ “Standing on the Shoulders of Migrant Labor: the Higgenbottom Legacy”
(Harvard University Press, 4th printing, Pulitzer edition) and the elusive Anderson Tristam’s “Top to Higgenbottom: a history of the abuse of power”
(Harvard Graduate University Press, 6th printing, Nobel edition).
Fortunately for our great nation, my tenure at the ultra-selective
Goldwater-Koch Institute for Charity Through Fiscal Discipline, located in a highly guarded, secretive locale by a lovely placid lake, has awarded me the academic leisure to discover the real history behind Higgenbottom, as well as those other purportedly titanic personalities most commonly associated with the Gilded Age. The conclusion I’ve come to is that although Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan,
par example, were interesting in their own tiny and spiritually misshapen ways, none could stand un-singed before the glorious and uncompromising light of Jonas Mayfew Higgenbothom.
* I expect you will require further proof of this claim than merely my word, however, as any careful reader of history should. Very well, I offer up to you the following indisputable facts as indisputable evidence. I have even employed bullet points to draw the reader’s attention in case this letter finds itself on the desktop computer screen of someone who enjoys "graphic" novels or anyone else less accustomed to seeing the written word not encompassed by a white speaking bubble.
Did you know that:
- In 1905 Higgenbottom became the first man to circumperambulate the globe?
- An avid cartographer, he was commissioned to redraw the borders of the civilized world’s maps, settling scores of regional disputes with but a few pen strokes? **
- He put an end to the dreaded Aztec Menace?
- He single-handedly repopulated Burma?
- He built what is still the world’s largest structure? ***
- He was the sole source of employment in New England from 1900-1906?
- He mounted a successful private war against the Flemish, paying his mercenaries solely with compliments?
- He discovered over 100 medicinal uses for tobacco - and debunked two uses for penicillin?
- He redefined philanthropy with his revolutionary work-to-live incentive programs for the many orphans of his time?
- He converted the Canadian Druid population to Christendom in one afternoon and still had time to dam a river in Nova Scotia?
- He was elected for life to the Senate and for decades defeated every socialist bill that came up for a vote, including the bloated Minimum Nutritional Supplement Program Act which would have crippled the economy by dumping millions into the coffers of “fat cat” Philippine-American War veterans too lazy to go out and get new jobs which didn't require the use of all one's legs or arms?
- He subsidized the building of America’s first and only Slingshot Transit System ?
- He was also the creator of America’s then-favorite pastime, the Redman Toss?
Yes, Jonas Mayfew Higgenbottom was less a man than an epoch unto himself. With his passing in 1917, the last and best of the Gilded Age’s legends vanished, yet it is my sincere hope that this tome of scholarship, "
A WEALTHY PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES," with its hundreds of letters, reports, and images documenting Jonas’ deeds, will reignite America’s love affair with her most exceptional citizen – her most American American! It is my sincere hope that this history will serve you as complete a repository of the Higgenbottom legacy as possible and live on past one and all of us that it might teach another generation the credo of this unique man:
IN MEMORIAM
Dr. Rev. Jonas Mayfew Higgenbottom
1855-1917
Yours,
Lewis Thynebury, PhD (honorary)* This statement is both figurative and literal, since in his late 40’s Jonas purchased a chain of islands off the coast of Jakarta where he ordered the construction of a series of 50-foot statues in his likeness, the eye pieces of which were comprised of powerful magnifying lenses which were permanently focused on a singular point in the Indian Ocean. He did this in order to burn off the billions of gallons of ocean water necessary to maintain the proper level of humidity among all his islands which Jonas believed was best for his health. Travelers who passed through this particular latitude and longitude when the sun had reached the appropriate height however would be accosted by the equivalent of 80,000 lumen (or 200 sunrises) simultaneously. So it is entirely possible that Rockefeller or any other industrialist of the era who happened to be passing through the area could have quite literally visited a portion of the Higgenbottom Empire and been horribly singed by Jonas’ lights.
** Though the maps later turned out to be in error due to Jonas’ mistaking of Florida’s Seminole tribesmen for West Africans, this error does not diminish the fact of the profound trust in which world leaders held Higgenbottom, enough to allow him to redraw their maps and borders during which several nations’ square acreage increased by billions of square feet while others ceased to be entirely.
*** Manhattan’s HIGGENBOTTOM CASTLE is still the only man-made structure visible from the moon, taking up a full 10-block diameter in New York’s Material Wealth District and rising an unbelievable 250 stories mostly straight up (and another 100 below ground!). Surprisingly as large as this structure is, tourists and even local New Yorkers have a commensurately difficult time locating the Castle as the darkness imposed by its sun-blocking prowess is often described as “chilling” and “complete.”
Labels: A People's History of the United States, A Wealthy people's History of the United States, Howard Zinn, Independence Day, July Fourth, Matt Preskenis, Sean Crespo
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