Guys Day
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History June 1 - 7.
We had absolutely fantastic weather in the nation’s capital this past Saturday. After traveling for most of the last four weeks, I planned to take advantage of being home and was grateful that the weather cooperated. The agenda was packed with a little grilling and with not one, but two Washington, D.C., sporting events.
But first, there is a little bit of bad news - our oven broke. This meant we needed the Oven Guy to come over and give us his diagnosis. We had a two-hour window for his arrival, which made the morning a little bit hectic. You can’t effectively plan and execute when you don’t know when Oven Guy is going to show up.
Fortunately, I didn’t even need the oven, because I’ve been wanting to grill a whole chicken since it’s now “grilling whole chicken” season. Longtime subscribers will remember our epic turkey roast from 2023, back when the oven was functional. But this time, I tried my hand at spatchcocking a chicken and then throwing it on the grill with some potatoes.
The first step was understanding the word “spatchcock.” It didn’t take me too long, but there is still a part of me that wondered why we can’t just say “butterflied.” Who decides what words mean, anyway?
Next, I pulled out an old recipe featuring Mediterranean seasoning, and what was cool about this project was that it required a brick to press down the chicken once it had been spatchcocked.
Now that we have the bird split in two, here’s how it looked on the grill with a brick that I pulled from my embarrassingly small front yard, cleaned off, and wrapped in foil.
Blue was my assistant, but when Oven Guy eventually made it to the house, he was more focused on what was going on inside than on what was going on outside.
Even though I was a bit rushed, I do believe the bird turned out quite well:
With the accomplishment of grilling, it was on to celebrate SPORTS! We had excellent seats for the Nats and the visiting San Diego Padres. My buddy and I did our best with our 50-plus dad vibes and kept score throughout the game, and were rewarded with a very engaging, if complicated, scoring exercise. We were a bit rusty, so thank goodness for the ESPN app, which let us keep the scorebook without errors.
I even brought a little bit of my grilled chicken to the game.
The game went a bit longer than we had hoped, but after the home team secured the win, we trekked the short distance from Nats Park to Audi Field and took in the Washington Spirit match. We met up with Anonymous, who was overjoyed to learn from Oven Guy that we need to purchase a new oven.
Despite missing the first half, we were fortunate to witness another DC win.
All in all, a great Saturday. It was a day of learning new words, the constant vigilance required to watch a grill with a spatchcocked chicken and a brick on top, and how expensive appliances can easily break.
Okay, let’s get to what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark anniversaries ending in 5 or 0.
1. Uncle Tom’s Cabin Begins Serialization on June 5, 1851. The National Era was a weekly abolitionist newspaper. Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Christian abolitionist from Connecticut, was also an author who began to pen stories depicting the horrors of slavery. Beginning this week, Stowe would publish a story centered on a main character, Uncle Tom, an enslaved person who experienced the cruelty of being sold repeatedly.
The story became so wildly popular that the National Era and Stowe agreed to keep it running. A publisher convinced Stowe to turn it into a book, and in March 1852, the hardcover volume was published and sold over 10,000 copies in its first week. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is widely regarded as the most influential protest novel of the pre-Civil War Era. It became the second best-selling book in the United States during the 19th century. Only the Bible sold more copies – but it also had a fifty-year head start.
2. The Basketball Association of America was founded on June 6, 1946. A bunch of hockey owners got anxious that their arenas sat empty during the winters when their teams were away, so they decided to create a basketball league for the growing sport to fill in the nights and make more money.
Eleven teams took the hardcourt that season for the BAA, with the Philadelphia Warriors winning the first title the following Spring. Three years later, the league would merge with the National Basketball League, which was founded in 1937.
This new super basketball league would now be known as the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Six teams from the original BAA are still in existence – The Atlanta Hawks, Detroit Pistons, Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers, Golden State Warriors, and Philadelphia 76ers. One team from the NBL that did not survive the test of time- the Akron Firestone No-Skids. I’m not kidding. “No-Skids” is a reference to the team’s owners, the Firestone Tire Company, founded by Harvey Firestone, who died in 1938. The NBA Finals get underway this week, and the local team, the Washington Wizards, has the first pick in the 2026 NBA Draft in a couple of weeks. Their nickname really needs to be “Nothing But Skids.”
3. The Lee Resolution was passed on June 7, 1776. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a resolution in the Second Continental Congress calling for America’s independence from Britain. It had three parts: breaking from the British Crown, engaging with foreign countries and developing formal diplomatic relations, and establishing a confederation of the Thirteen Colonies to govern properly.
On July 2, 12 of the 13 colonies voted to pass the resolution – only New York abstained, because the guys sent there hadn’t been given instructions on what to do, much like when Anonymous sends me to the grocery store.
Two days later, Thomas Jefferson presented the final draft of the Declaration of Independence, and a group of guys adopted it and began to rally the idea of the nation - the United States of America.
The Nats game reminded me of what a group of guys can accomplish when they all get together to show unity and inspire confidence. During the game, a small yet rambunctious group of young men began to assemble in the empty upper deck of right field. It was here that they began to rally the fans – mostly by taking their shirts off and yelling.
Over the course of a few innings, the crowd had doubled. Just rows and rows of shirtless guys whipping their clothes above their heads in the sweltering heat. I imagine the gentlemen in Philadelphia 250 years ago did the same thing – rallying the votes.
Does anyone doubt that John Adams, a fierce proponent of Independence, took off his wig, multiple wool shirts, and just started whipping his clothes over his head while screaming as the votes came in? I mean, come on, of course he did.
Hope your first week of June is just as fantastic. Thank you for your support of Okay History and I will eventually at some point get back to ranking the Vice Presidents.
Okay, Chris
