What Grandpa Could Recite

Old Trunks was amazed at how my grand father could name the president's from the time he was born. I wondered if when I got ‘old’ I would have memorized them too. But it wasn’t about memorizing, as I have learned, it is about living. I would learn over time something about each president from grandpa. I would also learn about the president’s that were in office from my birth on.. Regardless of your own political affiliation, old trunks is certain you have some opinion as well.


My grandfather’s favorite was “give them hell, Harry” Truman. Harry Truman as we know, took office when FDR died, then ran for one term. The next election, he declined to run. That year, Eisenhower and Stevenson ran. For those of us born in the mid-40s in Thief River Falls may remember the little trailer which sat next to the Pennington Hotel. That was a local Eisenhower campaign office. The outside of it was covered with "I like Ike" stickers. I was in third grade when Ike was elected to office. We did a straw poll in our classroom at Washington grade school and Ike won. It was no surprise to me that he became the new president after all he’d won in third grade! Grandpa didn’t like that much, he was a Democrat what was a Republican doing in office?

Benhard was born in 1879, the presidents he recited were:
Rutherford B Hayes
James Garfield
Chester Arthur
Grover Cleveland
campaign slogan, Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine. Continental Liar from the state of Maine.

Benjamin Harrison
campaign slogan, Rejuvenated Republicanism

Grover Cleveland (second term)


William McKinley
campaign slogan Patriotism, Protection, and Prosperity also a full dinner pail


Theodore Roosevelt
campaign slogan, "A Square Deal for Every Man"

William Taft
campaign slogan, Mmmm, pork chops."


Woodrow Wilson
campaign slogan, he kept us out of war


Warren G Harding
campaign slogan, return to normalcy


Calvin Coolidge
campaign slogan, be cool with Coolidge


Herbert Hoover
campaign slogan a chicken in every pot a car in every garage


*Franklin D Roosevelt
campaign slogan,Better a Third Term Than a Third-Rater.


*Harry Truman
campaign slogan Give 'Em Hell, Harry!
What about this middle name thing, did President Truman really say, “"Very few people know that my middle initial is not, in fact, an initial, but rather a one-letter middle name, assigned to me in honor of two grandfathers whose own names both began with 'S.' Sixty years from now, it will piss Tyler Weaver off whenever nobody makes note of this. Vote Truman."


*Dwight D. Eisenhower
campaign slogan, I like Ike


*John F. Kennedy
campaign slogan, “We stand on the edge of a New Frontier.”


*Lyndon B. Johnson
campaign slogan, all the way with LBJ


*Richard M. Nixon
campaign slogan, Nixon’s the one


*Gerald M. Ford
campaign slogan, he’s making us proud again


*Jimmy Carter
campaign slogan, not just peanuts
Jimmy Carter took office in January 1977 and grandpa died in February.


*Ronald Reagan
campaign slogan,Are you better off than you were four years ago?


*George H. W. Bush
campaign slogan, a better America


*Bill Clinton
campaign slogan, Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow


*George W. Bush
campaign slogan, no Child left behind

How many do you remember? Can you name the presidents in the order of their office and the time you were born?

e.

* president in office since old trunks birth.