Yes, I Do Chicken Fat

The coveted Kennedy/LBJ-era fitness patch

Full-body exercise being what it is -- important -- I want to do it, but as briefly as possible, and therefore have returned, after 45 years, to exercising to the 6-minute 33-second sound recording called "Chicken Fat," written by the composer of "The Music Man," Meredith Willson, and performed by its star, Robert Preston, and released in 1961. It's on You Tube should you miss the Cold War era when Mrs. L put it on the turntable and forced your class to exercise to it. It gets the lead out on slow mornings. I do it daily and can now do those insufferable 10 pushups military style and have developed genuine see-able front delts.

Odd history, this song. Health people concerned that we kids were watching too much TV formed the President's Council on Physical Fitness, under President Kennedy. They commissioned the writing and recording of "Chicken Fat" and sent millions of copies of the 45 rpm disc to schools. Once past its corniness it isn't a bad little workout, but obviously the only model for physical fitness back then was military, so you get orders to march ("Left! Left! Left a good pound and a quarter; was it right? Right? Then it should be left!") interspersed with the jumping jacks, pushups, bicycle, deep breathing and arm circles. And when was the last time anybody told you to touch your toes ten times to get physically fit? Or to run in place, for heaven's sake (the culminating exercise)? It's a time capsule of WWII boot camp (Robert Preston was in the army for years; you can hear it in his voice).

Yes, it's dated, but it's simple and cheap. No equipment required and only a few square feet of space and costs nothing but willpower and discipline. There's been a call for the present government to commission and distribute a motivational exercise recording on the "Chicken Fat" model. Of course it could not be uncool, so it will never be made, because kids nowadays won't do anything uncool and that changes hourly, and no matter what, there'd be parents filing lawsuits about it. Back then we did what we were told or got sent to the principal who lectured us about the Soviet threat.

The Battle of Pacific

At sunrise on Oct. 1, 1864, Confederate General William Cabell and troops set fire to the then-new and modern railroad facilities at Pacific, Missouri, burning them to char, and looted the stores for good measure. They also burned two railroad bridges. On Oct. 4, Union army troops commanded by General A.J. Smith came by rail from St. Louis up to the first burned bridge, and then marched into town to confront the Confederates. The Confederates held the top of this very high hill atop the Pacific silica bluffs, and shot cannons down at the Union army. The Union army shot back. Eight Union soldiers were wounded but none killed. The Confederates withdrew (the number of their casualties is unknown), their work of interrupting Union supply lines already done. Smith's troops then joined in Sherman's March on Atlanta.

About two years ago this hilltop was officially recognized as a Civil War battle site and is now Blackburn Park. The cannon is marked "Steen Cannons, Ashland Kentucky." There's a cannonball welded just inside of the cannon mouth so that it can never be shot.

Doc Sargent, Revealed

Photocopied pages of a local-history book finally reveal the real Doc Sargent who gave his name to a nearby road. Dr. Jesse Sargent (1872-1952) was a country doctor who lived in a stone house with his wife on what became Doc Sargent Road; the house still stands. He is described as "a portly man with mustache and goatee who nearly always wore a gray suit" and drove a Pierce-Arrow. He loved children and from 1917 to 1923 held Christmas programs for them in his home; he also sang in the choir at the Presbyterian church. "For years," Doc got his "simple medicines" from the local "root digger," said to be a freed slave living in a log cabin no longer standing. He was, of course, sometimes paid in eggs or meat or whatever people had to trade for his services. Toward the end of his life, Doc Sargent moved to Springfield, MO, and died and is buried there.

Confluence of Missouri and Mississippi Rivers

View from the Illinois side of the confluence of two of the world's great rivers. Right here, Lewis and Clark camped out for five months in winter 1803-04, training -- yes, actually training and preparing -- for the big journey up the Missouri. Finally they set out on May 14, 1804. They called this area Camp River Dubois. Down the road a piece -- maybe a mile -- and looking like a big silver dart stuck partway into the earth, is a 200-foot-tall monument with three observation decks: 50, 100 and 150 feet. Duke and me went up for an even more dramatic view of the confluence, the levee, and the oil refinery across the highway; it just opened this summer of 2010. Worth your $4. Just to look at the confluence is free. Located along Illinois Highway 3, aka "The Great River Road," some miles south of Alton, Illinois.

Waldensian Presbyterian Church, Monett, MO

I like country churches. This one is on the National Register of Historic Places. Not the church, but the cemetery.