Reserved Parking
We saved a spot for a retired Space Shuttle and these three states.
Friday is here, Okay History friends! It’s also payday which means another paycheck has already been spent!
It was ten years ago today that NASA Space Shuttle, Endeavour, reached its final destination when we drove it through the streets of Los Angeles and parked it at the California Space Center.
Endeavour is the fifth and final shuttle of the renowned Space Shuttle program, made famous by the movie Spacecamp, starring Lea Thompson. Don’t believe me? Well, we started building Endeavour in 1987, a year after this movie came out.
There was a national competition to come up with the name, and Endeavour was chosen over Optimus Prime, Snowball, and WOW!, among others. I’m fact-checking these other names, but schoolchildren came up with them, so I’m pretty positive I have the losing names correct.
Endeavour was assembled with spare parts of other shuttles, which reminds me of how my father used to construct the car to drive us to school when my sister and I missed the bus. In one memory, we missed the bus by seconds because that bus driver hated our guts and my mother screamed at us that “YOUR FATHER IS PUTTING THE CAR TOGETHER TO TAKE YOU TO SCHOOL!”
Just think, my dad could have worked for NASA!
Completed around 1991, Endeavour was launched into space a year later, and with it, the first African American woman astronaut Mae Jamison, who lists engineering and being a physician as other career accomplishments. On the other hand, I list Traffic Coordinator as having previous experience.
Endeavour went around fixing things, like satellites and space stations. It didn’t discover water on another planet or aliens who may or may not be living as bus drivers in rural Ohio. No, Endeavour just did its job. Get up to space and let our NASA people do some NASA stuff.
The final flight was in 2011 and immediately decommissioned. NASA then decided to park it in California because it was made there or something. We strapped this sucker on an even bigger shuttle and flew across the country. I remember seeing it in the sky as it passed the Washington Monument. I think that happened. I’m pretty sure it did, so I’m going to go with it.
The best part was driving Endeavour through the streets of LA to get to the Space Center. Driving in LA is terrible to begin with. Imagine getting to work while a giant aircraft tries not to cut into buildings. LA had to remove about 400 trees but told everyone they were mostly old and ended up replacing them with younger trees because younger is better. Just ask Anonymous.
Okay, let's go to the next round of state rankings! This time we have three to chime in on!
28: Illinois
Founded: December 3, 1818
21st state
Do I know the state capital off the top of my head? Springfield
Have I been there? Yes.
Do I want to go back? Sure!
The Good:
Three US presidents have been elected from Illinois. There’s Barack Obama, Ulysses S. Grant, and of course, Abraham Lincoln.
Ronald Reagan was born there but moved to California so he could become a B-list actor and then obviously launch that into becoming president.
Illinois is also the first state to ratify the 13th Amendment. That’s pretty good.
The Bad:
Illinois is the 5th worst state for tax inequality. This is based on a flat tax, which is something Steve Forbes ran for president in both 1996 and 2000. I have no idea what the flat tax is because math is magic, but it sounds as educational as a flat earth.
The flat tax idea is implemented due to their constitution, which means it takes some effort to get rid of it. Bad.
The Ugly:
Everyone who works in the Illinois government appears to be corrupt. Especially in Chicago and guys who have served as governor. It’s a pretty bipartisan thing.
Six governors of the state have been charged with a crime, usually dealing in corruption, and four have been convicted. The state had back-to-back governors go to jail in the 2000s; the last was Rod Blagojevich, who used the open Senate seat from Obama’s ascension to the White House as a personal financial enrichment program. Rod got caught, convicted, and went to prison.
Of course, Rod later appeared on Celebrity Apprentice, a show no one would ever admit to watching, but a connection was made with the host and producer, who ten years later commuted Rod’s sentence because he was president of the United States.
How is this real?
Why did I rank it here?
Illinois has Chicago, and Chicago is a great city for our four months a year. I do enjoy Deep Dish pizza, and the Cubs were fine right up until November 2, 2016.
I have a friend who used to teach at Southern Illinois, then Western Illinois. I bring this up because spelling Illinois is a significant challenge for me. That makes it a high-20s kinda state.
27: Indiana
Founded: December 11, 1816
19th State
Do I know the state capital off the top of my head? Indianapolis? (YES!)
Have I been there? Yes.
Do I want to go back? Why not?
The Good:
Indiana is home to Sylvanus Freelove Bowser. Who is Sylvanus Freelove Bowser? Good question. He is an American inventor who came up with the idea of a gas pump for cars. As we learned with our friends in New Jersey, the gas pump is a thing I now care deeply about. In Indiana, you are free to pump your own gas, just like the man whose middle name is Freelove would want.
The Bad:
The Hoosier state ranks 41st in the Well-Being Index. The Well Being index is just like it sounds; people of the state feel good overall about living in their state. I can’t help but laugh at those states who ranked toward the bottom and whom they voted for in the 2020 presidential election.
It’s like…you did this to yourself, people.
The Ugly:
During the dead of night on March 28-29, 1984, Robert Irsay, owner of the Baltimore Colts, one of the storied franchises of the National Football League, packed up his team into Mayflower moving trucks and headed west to Indianapolis, where they were renamed the Indianapolis Colts.
This was such a brazen, surprising move that even my mother still talks about it to this day. My Mom, who has probably watched five football games from start to finish, couldn’t get over the idea of a football team vanishing in the night and appearing the next day in another city.
A few weeks later, my Dad and I were at the mall, and he bought me an Indianapolis Colts hat because it was so strange.
Twelve years later, my Cleveland Browns uprooted and moved to Baltimore.
This has been your good times in sports moment for the day.
Why did I rank it here?
Indiana was a huge state back in the Civil War. It had a large population, extensive agriculture, and could build stuff quickly.
One thing they also did was quickly get behind the war movement. When news reached that South Carolina had planned on succeeding, the good folks of Indiana were immediately mobilized to say, “I don’t think so, ya’ll.” They sent troops and supplies to correct the situation by sending Confederates to their maker.
Other than that, Indiana is pretty boring. Just outside the top 25.
26: Massachusetts
Founded: February 6, 1788
6th State
Do I know the state capital off the top of my head? Amherst (Man, I know that’s wrong. It’s Boston? That seems too easy. I blew this guess.)
Have I been there? Yes.
Do I want to go back? Yes, but not in the winter.
The Good:
Massachusetts is the bastion of patriotism. They have Patriots Day. They even named their football team the Patriots and, more importantly, kept them there.
Sam Adams, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Abigail Adams, Freelove Adams, anyone named Adams is a force for freedom in our country’s revolutionary days, and they all come from Massachusetts.
The people there threw tea into the harbor, burned stamps that I’m sure people wanted to collect, and shot British soldiers when they saw the whites of their eyes. All of this so we could finally have a country that has never elected a woman president. AMERICA!
The Bad:
Everyone argues that their state has the worst drivers. Here in the DMV, the people of Maryland get my vote. If I were ranking all the state drivers, South Carolina would be #1 because all they do is hit people, myself included. I was drilled by another driver while getting into a left-hand turn lane at a red light!
But according to the Insurance Research Council, Massachusetts is number 1 in motor vehicle insurance claims.
I have this image in my head where 1980s Buick model cars are running into each other all over Charles Town because everyone is on the way to Dunkin.
The Ugly:
April 15, 2013, over 23,000 woke up, ready to run the 117th edition of the Boston Marathon. Boston, of course, is the capital of Massachusetts.
The race takes place on Patriots Day. The Red Sox, the baseball team, also plays on this day. It’s a huge day to celebrate all things Boston.
Except for this year, two terrible brothers decided they would kill as many people as possible that day. I’m calling the brothers Diz and Tam because they don’t deserve full recognition.
Here’s the short version of the Boston Marathon Bombing:
1. Diz and Tam plant homemade bombs stuffed into backpacks and place them near the finish line
2. Bombs go off, killing three people and injuring hundreds more
3. Manhunt begins, and they find these idiots, and a shootout begins
4. Diz runovers his brother Tam with his car, probably not on purpose, but who cares? Tam is dead
5. Diz is found later hiding in a boat
6. Diz is now sentenced to die.
7. Mark Wahlberg makes a movie about the manhunt called Patriots Day
The end.
Why did I rank it here?
I just can’t make Massachusetts a top-25 state. Most of that has to do with Boston because one of my previous experiences was right after a major blizzard hit.
It was January of 2014, and I went to Boston for a job interview for some international relief organization, whose office looked to have been built in 1856. As someone who enjoys history, this might be a cool thing, being in a building constructed in 1856. And it was. It was really, really cool—Super duper cool, in fact.
It was freaking freezing.
The interview itself was not great. I met with the founder, whom I guess didn’t think I was passionate enough about the mission. He is probably right because I can’t think of the mission, but after the interview, the Chair of the Board, a man who was my biggest advocate, asked me to write the founder a letter stating my passion.
I politely declined. Passion for the job is not a skill set. I don’t need passion to ensure the coversheets are correct on my TPS reports. I sat in that freezing office, being quite passionate about getting some heat into the place, that’s for sure. Maybe the founder could write me about how passionate he is about heat.
How did we like having three states ranked this week? Good? Bad? Whatever?
We are halfway ranking the states if I did the magic math correctly. Any guesses who the next few states will be?
Until Monday. Happy Weekend, everyone.
Cheers!
Love your content, as you know, but wanted to point out one very important (in my mind at least) correction for you for the next time you write about the Civil War. States wanted to secede from the Union, not succeed.
The word would be seceding for South Carolina. Xavier edumacation showing up again! ;-))