[Leica] Billy Bryant, Free Silver, the Lone Ranger, and Ted Grant ....

[msmall at infionline.net (Marc James Small)]

At 09:21 AM 10/1/04 -0700, Peter Klein wrote:
>
>Brian:  But of course there's overlap.  Just the other day, William
>Jennings Brian was telling me about the spirited but refreshingly
>civilized debate he had with Marc James Small back in '02.  And he
>remembers Ted Grant fondly as the man who held him at his christening. . .
======================

Bian and Peter

I had not realized the course this thread was taking, as I had thought that
it was an effort to get us to contribute to ransoming the Lone Ranger's
trusty steed and I am rather strapped for funds at the nonce.

Now, Bill Bryant in his youth was taught by Ted Grant to intone, "You Shall
Not Crucify Mankind Upon A Cross of Gold".  Bill learned it well and Ted,
with a grin on his elderly chops, then skipped northwards across the line
into Canada.  As the old Vaudville Song set it out:  "While the ticker-taps
are tickin' and the sirens roar,/I'll be hopping on a freighter for that
Lawrence shore."   And, back around 1970 or '71, Brewer & Shipley were
chanting a song about "one toke over the line, Sweet Jesus" a song which I
understand Ted had a part in developing.  Ted Grant obviously learned, back
about the time that he was told off to pull KP at the Last Supper, that the
best way to be clean with John Law is to be clean gone when he starts
asking about you -- cw?th John Cleese in that fine film, SILVERADO, "today,
my jurisdiction stops here!"  Ted learned how to play boundary games early
on and does so today, though he now has to slip between nations which do
not acknowledge the authority of Interpol.

It is rumoured -- though, listen, you! -- I have not yet obtained
documentary proof of this, albeit that I am told that documents are "in the
Royal Mail which will prove this --   that the source of the vast Grant
fortune was the result of his honest dyslexia during the USian Civil War.
Ted accepted large amounts of cash from the Confederate States of Amrica
for the purchase of arms and he bought the cheapest guns he could find but,
in a fit of dyslexic absent-mindedness, sent them to the "Confederation of
Canada".  The Canadian authorities, being as restrained, plesant, and
gentle as are all Canadians at all times, simply belched out the standard
"eh!" and said nothing else, as they had not the slightest idea whence came
this gift of what can only be called "Saturday Night Specials" with some
abuse to the English Language, given their low quality of construction
(wooden barrels on a  revolver?  How innovative!) and design (a
Congregation of Cherrystone Clams probably could have whumped up a design
superior to Ted's pathetic effort, but, then, what the hey -- he was a War
Profiteer and deserves acclamation for getting away with it!).

Once the US Civil War had ended, it is said that Ted Grant posed repeatedly
in questonable poses on top of the pile of monies he had accumulated.  But
the records were sealed for all time, alas! to the public's right to know,
in the linked cases of CROWN v. VARIOUS PORNOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHERS and
GRANT v. VARIOUS PORNOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHERS.   While the pictures of Ted
entering and leaving the Courthouse in East Ridd, Lower Kneebone District,
are priceless, as he constantly holds up a mouldy kipper to cover his face,
a novel solution to a problem shared with Al Capone and John "the Teflon
Don" Gotti, in the end, Ted managed to squeak out of this with an award for
damages of one Canadian Pound.  Unfortunately, the verdict came down the
week AFTER Canada had renamed their currency as the "Canadian Dollar"
(generally referred to today as the "US half-dollar" but Ted had no conrol
over that -- and it is most delightful to discover a point of failure,
despair,and enquity in which he does not appear).

Ted Grant's name appears in some of the more obscure records recovered
after that mysterious fire at Professor Moriarty's abode, the fine in which
a tall, thin, cloaked fellow wearing a Deerstalker hat was seen dancing
about before the fire erupted, intoning chants along the lines of "take
that, you physicist bastard!  English majors rule!" and the like.  A
bystander, one Proffessor George Edward Challenger, of rather shaky
academic repute, later stated that he had had noted a "low, hulking, and
animal-like creature, snorting heavily, who might have set the fire, as he
was tossing lighted lucifers about, but then I recognized that he was a
Canadian and therefore harmless, though more than a bit odd."

Ted's activities from this 1887 event until this day are truly mysterious
and fraught with awesome accomplishments -- while the estate of MS Child
prevents me from speakng of Ted's relations with the young Julia, let us
simply say that, well,"there is steam seeping through the seal on that
pressure cooker",  as MS Child herself confided at one point.  But, to do
Ted justice, we probably should include his dalliances with Madame
Pompadour and Mrs Kepple but, in the interests of those still living, we
shall OMIT and EXCLUDE from this discussion Ted's reputed trysts with Mrs
Wallis Warfield Simpson -- though I should note that a contemporary was
confused to note in 1932 the "attention paid to this elderly and rather odd
Canadian by the lithe, active, and rther energetic Mrs Simpson --  it was
not unusual to note that this Canadian gentleman was often found dozing
from his superannuation in the corner and, when the Prince of Wales
entered, he would jerk himself awake, stand to attention, and salute, and
then inform the Royal David that 'there was nothing between himself and Mrs
Simpson'".  

But to balance things, there was that Major Grant who dealt so wonderfully
with the panic of  Lt-Col Washington  and Capt Fraser when the Braddock
force was ambushed in 1759.  There are indications that this MIGHT be Our
Ted, as the survivimg records seem uniform in describing this Major Grant
as his 1755 military evaluation sets out,  "elderly, gap-toothed, doddery,
slack-jawed, subject to drooling and to fits of phantasia when he mumbles
on and on about some former lover of his called Leica, and such a barbarous
name it is."   Major Grant was, of course, recommended for promotion at the
next opening.

Marc

msmall@infionline.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!