Guys, I found out the juiciest little tidbit about a certain Mr. William Howard Taft over the weekend, and tried really hard not to immediately tell everyone I knew, but it’s just too good and I had to share.
For those of you just joining my Presidential Hot Goss sidebar, here are Parts I and II to catch you up. Please email me if you need more info about really any president up to 1926, though. I’ve got stories for days.
(At least one day. I’ve never been tested. But I welcome the challenge, believe me.)
Anyway, William Howard Taft had the ultimate honor bestowed upon him – the New York Pie Baker’s Union made him a 50-pound mince pie for Thanksgiving in 1909.*
*interesting to note: mincemeat pie contains no meat…anymore. It was originally just a good way of preserving meat (most often mutton, but also beef, rabbit, pork, or game), without having to salt, cure, smoke, or dry it. Meat disappeared from the equation whenever someone first realized there was a meat pie with raisins and shit in it, probably.
What shoots the story deadass past cool to phenomenal are a couple of things: first, the pie was stolen en route to delivery. I can’t decide if it’s better imagining that it was an inside job or just the best day ever for some rando thief. Second, what happened after that.
Not to be deterred, the New York Pie Angels (seriously, they’re called so many things on so many sites: New York bakers, New York bakers association, bakers from New York, but let’s cut to the chase: they’re the most ephemeral, yet substantive, beautiful, now-dead angel people since the guy who made donuts a thing) upped the ante and made a HOLY SHIT ARE YOU SERIOUS 92-pound mince pie for the president for Christmas of that same year.
And Taft, hereafter known as the Don’t-Fuck-With-My-Pie-Twice president, had that gargantuan delight locked in a giant ironclad case and escorted by armed guard straight to his loving arms.
Moral of the story: man, I really wish he was still alive, though he’d be uncomfortably old. While he didn’t realize his dreams of being on the Supreme Court since he couldn’t do that and make his wife happy (“President or GTFO” is what I think she said, paraphrased), he did the best he was willing to do, and that’s okay by me since I wasn’t alive then.
Movie of the day: Ghostbusters, 2016, Amazon Prime. Yeah, I said it. Maybe it’s because I’m thinking of dead presidents so much, or maybe it’s because I finally watched this yesterday after our film club group argued about whether or not it was good, but I loved that the OGs made cameos, I loved that the women cast were the women cast, and I only cringed more than a little at the very end.
Show of the day: Billions, Showtime (Hulu). I just got the add-on for Hulu yesterday, free trial, $4.99 after until the day before it goes up and I cancel it, and we watched about five hours of this last night. I still really like it.
Song of the day: Field of Dreams soundtrack. This is my all-time honorary favorite movie, and it’s neck-and-neck with The Jerk for my definitive favorite movie. NPR played part of the soundtrack today, and I wasn’t expecting it (obviously), and anyway I teared right up. It’s gorgeous. Also, in keeping with the dead stuff theme.
**Photo courtesy of the Online Archive of California