Tony the ‘Boner’s kid

Yesterday marked the 152nd birthday of John Philip Sousa, beloved American composer, best known for marches like Stars and Stripes Forever. In this spirit I decided to learn a little bit more about this Paul Bunyan of cavalcade-dom. I headed down to the local bibliothèque to snatch up as many delightful tomes as I could fit into my wheelbarrow. After a brief disagreement with the librarian about the distinct lack of wheelbarrow access to the bulk of the library, and a bloodied lower lip, I returned home to my apartment to spend the day wading hip deep in tales of the Sooze (as his compatriots at Gonzaga College High School called him). I fired up the old Wurlitzer, poured myself a nice tall Patriot’s Cough Syrup (that’s 2 parts moonshine, 1 part molasses; served in a wooden pail) and entered a world of information that blew my mind eight ways from Sunday. The following is just a smattering of the mendacities I became conversant in.

Portugese Man ‘O War
While most people know about Sousa, the little Portuguese-Bavarian scamp who tried to join the circus, few people know that during the 1870s Sousa made the bulk of his living wage through fisticuffsmanship. He is purported to have battled “hobos, laudanum addicts, mental deficients, bears and Irish children” under the moniker John Pugilist Sousa. It was during one of his more storied fights, The Baltimore Bloodletting Ballyhoo, that JPS met Jane van Middlesworth Bellis; a comely young lass he would wed before the end of the decade.

Pseudo-mustachioed
The mustache seen on Sousa after 1886 was in fact a prosthesis! This was the end result of The March King’s early tinkerings with an instrument he dubbed the fluffernutter. In the 1890s J.W. Pepper redesigned and renamed this instrument the sousaphone. The term fluffernutter wasn’t heard again until after the First World War.

Cherry trees and Sousa
On November 14, 1794, George Washington, drunk on his own homemade whiskey, wrote in his ledger “In approximately [sic] sixty years a child [sic] shall be borne unto this great nation [sic]. He shall possess [sic] the gift to tell of our country’s splendors through [sic] the marvels of ballad [sic] and hymn and the citizens [sic] will embrace [sic] him for it. I have seen this in my dreams. I WILL kill this child [sic], if it is the last thing I do.” One month later Washington died of a throat infection, potentially originating from a Bavarian gypsy's curse.

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