Issac Millsaps:
So, Davy, all your Indian fightin'... you ever get into a scrape like this?
Davy Crockett:
I was never in but one real scrape in my life, fella.
Issac Millsaps:
Yeah, but you was in the Red Stick war.
Davy Crockett:
Yeah, it's true, I was in that. I sure was. I was just about your age when it broke out. The Creeks, uh, boxed up about 400 or 500 people at Fort Mims and, uh, massacred every one of 'em. 'Course this was big news around those parts, so I up and joined the volunteers. I did a little scoutin', but mostly I, I just fetched in venison for the cook fire, things of that nature. Well, we caught up with those redskins at Tallushatchee, surrounded the village, come in from all directions. Wasn't much of a fight, really. We just shot 'em down like dogs. Finally... what Injuns was left, they crowded into this little cabin. They wanted to surrender... but this squaw, she loosed an arrow and killed one of the fellas, and then we shot her, And then we set the cabin on fire. We could hear 'em screamin' for their gods in there. We smelled 'em burnin'. We'd had nary to eat but parched corn since October. And the next day, when we dug through the ashes, we found some potaters from the cellar. They'd been cooked by that grease that run off them Indians. And we ate till we nearly burst. Since then... you pass the taters and I pass 'em right back.
He himself, he realized, had always been most abominably frightened, even at the height of his divine power, a frail god upon a rickety throne, afraid of opening letters, of making decisions, afraid of the instinctive knowledge in the eyes of mules, of the innocent eyes of good men, of the elastic nature of the passions, even of the devotion he had received from some men, and one woman, and dogs.
Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink
