Unlce Archie's Meandering Tales of Dubious Coherence: Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin

So, you have a History report? I bet you’re just going to go on the computer and use the googles on the Wikipedia! You damn kids are all too reliant on the devil-boxes these days. When I was your age, we used books damn it! I didn’t fight the god damn Viet Cong so you could have a magic box tell you all the answers! And besides, you don’t need a god damn computer, you have me! I lived History, and I can tell you all you need to know about “Eli Whitney and the Invention of the Cotton Gin” I remember Eli Whitney, Bear of a Man! Fought with him in the war! We really showed Hitler what was what! No, I don’t think it’s god damn implausible that I fought in both WW 2 and ‘Nam, God damn it! Now shut up and listen! Don’t think cause we’re related that I won’t cut you! See this bayonet? I killed 14 Japs in six hours at the Battle of Normandy using this bayonet! I will kill you where you stand! Where was I? Oh yeah! Eli Whitney was born in a small mountain town in the frozen wastes of El Salvador. His Father was an Ice Fisherman, and his Mother stayed home to work on the plantation. Because back then, they had a real notion of what work was! Not like this office crap with you’re My Space and your iPods! We worked nine long hours of backbreaking work, then ate lunch, then worked another nine hours, then we got to go home to rest up for the next day and listen to Chuck Berry on the radio, now he may have been a colored man, but he could really sing, not like the god damn Soulja Boy Biggie Smalls crap you damn kids listen to! Anyways, in 1895, Eli had moved to New York to find his fortune, as you did in those days, when he was approached by a man named Nikola Tesla. Now Tesla, was developing a new Death Ray to kill Commies in Korea but he needed help defending his lab from that carpetbagger Edison! Oh that Edison was a right hoodlum! Always stealin’ ideas and corruptin’ the youth! It’s because of that bastard that we have the god damn television in the first place! Course he stole the idea from Farnsworth, like all his inventions. The man couldn’t invent his way out of a paper bag! He was just a god damn thug who stole ideas. Like this one time I came up with this idea for an electrical light bulb and that bastard just came and stole it! Claimed he came up with it too, the bastard! It was a glorious day when Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders finally took him down when they stormed his Menlo Park “laboratory”. Now Eli was one of only three men in charge of Tesla’s security, because Tesla had a thing with threes, crazy he was, but a damn genius, and so Edison always sent at least ten of his thugs in an attack, because the devious bastard didn’t believe in a god damn fair fight! Edison’s thugs came at him and the other two lads ran scared, as you would if you saw ten big jumped up hooligans coming toward you with pipes and chains and whatnot, but Eli stood his ground! He picked up a horse’s jawbone and beat em down like they were children! Of course, this was after they stopped using children as thugs in the 1870s. After the sound whuppin’ Eli gave ‘em, Edison’s boys slinked off to their master like whipped dogs and Edison threw himself a temper tantrum! What? What the hell is an “Industrial Revolution”? I’m getting to the damn Cotton Gin, god damn it! Kids today don’t know how to tell a god damn story! With their damn moving pictures, all these damn kids want is explosions and harlots! That god damn Michael Bay is a joke! D.W. Griffiths, now that was a director! So he had a few men in blackface and glorified the Klan, so what? He made some damn fine movies! Where was I? You keep interrupting me! So now Edison’s ragin’ like an Irishman and so he sends a hundred men to take out Eli and ransack Tesla’s lab. Tesla knows they’re comin’ and so he lets Eli use some of the stuff he was working on for the U.S. Army. Edison’s three-hundred men come moseying on down the street, with chains and pipes and whatnot, when they see a sight that shakes the bravest of ‘em to the bone! Eli comes stompin’ down the street in one a Tesla’s steam-powered battle suits! He wades into the crowd and starts roughin’ em up left and right, batterin’ and layin’ about with his big metal claws! He takes out five-hundred in less than an hour and the rest just ran on home. That rat bastard Edison didn’t come round Tesla’s lab after that! Now it just so happens that Teddy Roosevelt himself witnessed the fight from the observation deck of his war zeppelin. What’s that? You don’t tell me who did and didn’t have a war zeppelin! Roosevelt saw Eli’s tremendous bravery and thought that a man like this was needed on the front lines! So he recruited him right then and there to help fight the communist French! That’s where I first met him. I was in his unit when he led the charge up Jean Paul Hill and when he led the charge back down the hill right into the French capital! We showed those Krauts what they get when they mess with America! Now, after the war, came the Great Depression. Makes this silly Recession you damn kids are complaining about seem god damn prosperous in comparison! Hell, I would have given my left foot to grow up nowadays! When I was a kid, we didn’t have god damn Wal-Mart and Costco to buy food, we ate whatever the hell dad brought home, food or not! I remember one day he brought home a soiled newspaper that he had found in a puddle, and we dug in like it was a god damn thanksgiving turkey! Of course we had to save some of it, to patch the roof with, because we didn’t have Mexicans layin’ about everywhere to fix everything, we did everything ourselves, like god damn Americans should! Teddy Roosevelt got us out of the depression when the damn Viet Cong bombed Pearl Harbor and we had to go bail out the Irish again. Once again I found myself serving under the legendary Eli Whitney. We were on a commando raid, to plant one of Tesla’s lightning bombs right in the Fuhrer’s command center! Those French bastards almost got us a couple times but we planted it alright. That’s right, we took down Jean-luc Hitler himself! After the war, we went our separate ways. Eli decided to return to his roots in El Salvador to take over the family cotton plantation. It was there that he invented the cotton gin to improve the efficiency of their workforce. There! Are you happy! Tell that to your god damn Hippy teacher. I hope you learned some god damn history today you little bastard. Yes I’m sure that was how it went down! What do you mean it’s impossible for me to have fought in World War One and grown up during the Depression? I don’t need any of your god damn Sass! Now fetch me a sandwich and some whiskey!