Sahib & The Franchise

Why we put  gunpowder on the tobacco.

The guy in the stovepipe hat said something about "emancipation", but most of
us only got to the fifth grade, so we hadn't had that word. Our whole regiment
had to keep marching, so I didn't get a chance to look it up untill later.

General Sherman had us to burn the tobacco barns as we passed them.

We didn't have many of the new self-lighting matches, so we rolled up some of
the partly dried tobacco in paper and put some gunpowder ingredients on them
so they would stay lit. The general didn't like it if we stopped to re-light, and the
saltpeter kept the little ciigars burning.

He said; "The military industrial complex is quiescent in times of peace, but 
becomes more energetic and structured when attacked".

We said, "do you mean the Union?". And the general replied, " I mean the 
Whole System."

We didn't know what he meant by that until later.

Someone asked, "why are we destroying all of the railroad tracks?" The general 
answered, "We will bomb them back to the Stone Age!" When I said 
"when was the stone age?", he answered, "pretty recent around these parts, 
I suppose."

General Custer came by, and he said he was going to help rebuild the railroads 
after the war, because the new railroads would get to own the land for a mile 
to either side of the tracks.

They pulled out a big map, and began drawing straight lines where the new 
states would be.

I figured we would just keep putting the saltpeter on the cigar-ettes, until the 
new roads was built. Recently, I hear that they still put gunpowder on the 
cigarette papers, you can test them by putting down the cigarette and watching
 it to see if it goes out by itself, or keeps burning.

Sahib & The Franchise


For a long tim we thought the natives were not able to run their own countries,
especially the nature preserves, which we Europeans enjoyed so much when
we had Safaris or photo journalism expeditions. But when the organized group
of fellows with sub-machine guns approached and explained that it was
"their" country, we soon came to realize that Thomas Jefferson was probably
right after all.
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