PANTALOONS

There I was, reading Maggie's Farm when all of a sudden, there appeared, like a quest, the idiot idea of delving further into the names and histories of the poltroons. And, so I did.

Sir Walter Raleigh

You really cannot imagine a man like that alive in this day and age.  I'm surprised nobody ever wrote a book about him. I'm kind of amazed that they put his face on the 20 dollar note rather than some old geezer nobody ever heard of.

OLD CALIFORNIA

We have a number of these boxes lying around the place. They were originally filled with pears of all things.

Naturally, there is an online market for this sort of fruit crate. Probably now worth more empty then when they were shipped filled with fruit. I wonder how many of them are authentic and how many were made by guys like my friend in southern California who would make just about anything along these lines in Mexico for peanuts and then turn around and sell it on ebay for a small fortune. As I recall, his big stock in trade was ship plaques for ships scrapped long ago. He'd make a mold, pour the bronze or brass in Mexico, age and distress the wooden plaque and sell them for 10 times what it cost to make. He had a mortgage in Coronado that needed paying.

The question we had though was more basic. Why is the box of fruit described as 4/5 of a bushel? Why not the whole bushel? Was the California government taking a tithe or the church, or was it the carrying charge?