Things You Didn't Know

12/16/2025

Finally the awaited release of Our Friend and Author Jim Nesbitt 's new Ed Earl Burch detective Novel "THE FATAL SAVING GRACE" has arrived Just in time for Christmas.

"Dear Santa,
I have been very good this year so please leave a copy for me under the Christmas Tree."

If you like hard hitting suspense, Good cops, Bad Cops, fast cars, tough guys and gals and gun fights with despardos where lives hang in the balance then I'll bet this book is for you.

Get your copy ASAP while it is smoking hot of the press like a just fired C**t 1911.

"Honest" Jim Nesbit is a good friend of our page and one good Hombre.

Merry Christmas Amigos !!!

Your's truly
Stan Hitchins

Today ain’t another dreary Monday. It’s Launch Day for The Fatal Saving Grace: An Ed Earl Burch Novel, my fifth hard-boiled Texas crime thriller featuring this battered but unsinkable shamus and resurrected lawman.

It’s a damn fine tale and I’m damn proud of it.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what other authors have to say:

“Nesbitt delivers a scorched-earth tale set under the vast dome of West Texas sky, where every shadow conceals an ambush and every road bleeds history. He paints Texas in colors of rust, smoke and whiskey, and the result is a story that feels carved in stone. This is cowboy noir at its finest.”
—Baron Birtcher, Will Rogers Medallion winning author of Knife River

“Ed Earl Burch, who’s partial to Lucky Strikes and Maker’s Mark, makes Mike Hammer look like Miss Marple. Jim’s novels offer wicked humor, an eye for detail, brass-knuck action and language that would strip the paint off a Hummer.”
—Noel Holston, author of Life After Deaf and As I Die Laughing

“Jim Nesbitt knows his Texas crime and writes one fine line at a time. Hard-boiled with prickly pears, old leather boots, a bit of to***co, freshly spit of course, he gets it right.”
—Joe R. Lansdale, champion mojo storyteller and author of the Hap ‘N Leonard crime thrillers

“A gritty and deadly must-read, THE FATAL SAVING GRACE cements Nesbitt’s standing among the best writers in the pantheon of Southern noir.”
—Bruce Robert Coffin, bestselling author of the Detective Justice Mysteries

“Ed Earl Burch is back, and that’s great news for readers who love classic hard-boiled noir, colorful characters, crackling dialogue and plenty of action. Highly recommended!”
—R.G. Belsky, author of the Gil Malloy and Clare Carlson mysteries

“This is powerful stuff. The action is hard and quick. And often final. There is smoke and guns and whisky and women. And a world full of payback. Ed Earl Burch will not go quietly into that good night. This old lawman stays loud and proud.”
—Michael Ludden, author of Alfredo’s Luck, Tate Drawdy and The Street King

“Jim Nesbitt’s new novel, The Fatal Saving Grace, continues the gritty, hard charging Ed Earl Burch series--as hard-bitten and hard-boiled as its West Texas landscape, serving up a tale of revenge, unfinished business and murder. Grace, like most everything in West Texas, will be hard to find and bitterly won.”
—James McCrone, author of The Faithless Elector, The Bastard Verdict and Witness Tree

Pick up a copy and see for yourself:

Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Saving-Grace-Hard-Boiled-Thriller/dp/0998329479

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Saving-Grace-Hard-Boiled-Thriller-ebook/dp/B0FZXKHF83

01/01/2025

Happy New Year to you from
"Things You Didn't Know"

11/28/2024

How did Abraham Lincoln come to start the tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November ? According to Fred Seward, the Son of Secretary of State William Seward , it was his Father who suggested it to Lincoln.

So it was one October morning in 1863 that William Seward came into Lincoln's office where the president was as usual busy at work and said “They say Mr. President, that we are stealing away the rights of the States. So I have come today to advise you , that there is another State right that we should steal.” Putting down his pen Lincoln gave his secretary his full attention and asked, “Well Governor (Seward had at one time been Governor of New York), what do you want to steal now ?” Seward's reply, “The right to name Thanksgiving Day!”

Up until this time there was no hard and fast rule about when to celibate Thanksgiving. In the past Presidents like Washington , Adams and others would from time to time declare a day of Thanksgiving and States Governors would eventually take over picking days for their respective States to celebrate it .

William Seward was suggesting that Lincoln make Thanksgiving a national holiday. And Lincoln agreed saying “I suppose a President had as good a right to thank God as a Governor .“

Seward presented Lincoln the proclamation that he had already written for the president to sign . The proclamation asks that every citizen in every part of the United States to set aside the last Thursday in November to give thanks to “Our beneficent Father” and to remember all those who are suffering from the ravages of the War such as widows , orphans, mourners and “ to heal the wounds of the nation” and restore it “to peace, harmony, tranquility and Union”

Seward new what he was doing and the time was right for it being right on the heels of two great victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. The idea of this proclamation met with Lincoln's immediate approval because it embodied all of Lincoln's hopes for the country. The Thanksgiving Proclamation would be from him as the President of the entire country to all of it's citizens even those living in the rebellious States. Contained in it also the message of reconciliation of the nation in peace and the reestablishment of the Union, that thing Lincoln longed for more than all else. Lincoln put his hand to it and made it so.

Having once been rivals Seward and Lincoln had bonded and became fast and devoted friends. Seward knew intuitively the desires of his Friend and President and out of this friendship a national tradition was born.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Stan Hitchins
Things You Didn't Know

11/19/2023

On this day November 19, 1863 Abraham Lincoln delivered the most profound speech ever delivered.

Once again I post some of my thought for your consideration;

What made Abraham Lincoln tick? What was he thinking about during his years as president ? I think there is a giant clue in His Gettysburg Address especially the last line.

From what I can tell Lincoln seemed to be obsessed by the importance of the Declaration of Independence and how that document is the foundation upon which all of our freedoms are built .

I think Lincoln realized that our Democratic Republic is vulnerable and its existence can be threatened if we are not vigilant or fail to remember it's roots in the Declaration. I also think that he believed that the freedom of the United States will continually be tested.

Lincoln became President in 1860 and was immediately faced with the very destruction of the United States. Southern States were seceding from the Union because they saw Lincoln as the ultimate enemy to their way of life and their slave economy. Abraham Lincoln realized that if those southern states were allowed to leave the Union the United States would be destroyed and the experiment that the founding fathers started would cease to exist eventually devolving into multiple independent Countries with their own forms of government.

Lincoln saw no other alternative but to save the country by fighting to preserve it . He believed so deeply in the principles set down in The Declaration of Independence that he would do anything to keep the dream of America alive . Lincoln needed to save the Union with all of it's flaws because he believed that the only way to make the country a more perfect union was if the United States were to stay intact.

Lincoln did not go to war to free the Slaves but to preserve the Union believing that a truly free country based upon the premise that all men are created equal would eventually see the institution of slavery as a hideous abomination to mankind and put an end to it in time. However if the Confederate States were allowed to break away mankind would be deprived of it's one hope at freedom in the example of the United States perhaps for centuries to come.

So when one reads the last lines of the Gettysburg Address we see a window into what drove Lincoln and what he believed.

“That we here highly resolve that these dead will not have died in vain- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom- and that, government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Stan Hitchins

07/05/2023

Pauline Cushman (born Harriet Wood; June 10, 1833, December 2, 1893) was an American actress and a spy for the Union Army during the American Civil War. She is considered one of the most successful Civil War spies.

𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞

Harriet Wood, who later adopted the stage name of Pauline Cushman, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on June 10, 1833, the daughter of a Spanish merchant and a Frenchwoman (daughter of one of Napoleon Bonaparte's soldiers). Harriet and her brother William were raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her parents moved there to establish a trading post with indigenous peoples. In 1862, she made her stage debut in Louisville, Kentucky, a Union-occupied city. Later, she would travel to New York where she would take the stage name Pauline Cushman. Over the course of her life, Cushman was married to Jere Fryer, Charles C. Dickinson, and August Fichtner. She had three children: Charles, Ida, and an adopted daughter, Emma.

𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐬𝐩𝐲

After a Northern performance, Cushman was paid by two local pro-Confederate men to toast Confederate President Jefferson Davis after the performance. The theatre company forced her to quit, but she had other ideas. She had decided to ingratiate herself with the rebels by making the toast while offering her services to the Union as a spy.

By fraternizing with rebel military commanders, she managed to conceal battle plans and drawings in her shoes but was caught twice in 1864 and brought before Confederate General Braxton Bragg, tried by a military court, and sentenced to death by hanging. Though she was already ill, she acted worse off than she was. The Confederates had to postpone her ex*****on. Cushman was spared hanging by the invasion of the area by Union troops. She was also wounded twice.

Some reports state that she returned to the South in her role as a spy, dressed in a male uniform. She was awarded the rank of brevet major by General James A. Garfield, made an honorary major by President Abraham Lincoln for her service to the Federal cause, and became known as "Miss Major Pauline Cushman." By the end of the war in 1865, she was touring the country giving lectures on her exploits as a spy.

𝐋𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞

Because her undercover activities on behalf of the government were secret, there is a lack of corroborative information about her life at this time. After the war, however, she began a tour celebrating her experiences as a Union spy, working at one point with P. T. Barnum. In 1865, a friend, Ferdinand Sarmiento, wrote an exaggerated biography titled The Life of Pauline Cushman: The Celebrated Union Spy and Scout, detailing her early history, her entry into the secret service, notes, and memoranda.

She lost her child to sickness by 1868, and married again in 1872 in San Francisco, but was widowed within a year. Sources state that in 1879 she met Jere Fryer, and moved to Casa Grande, Arizona Territory, where they married and operated a hotel and livery stable. Jere Fryer became the sheriff of Pinal County. Their adopted daughter, Emma, died on April 17, 1888, at 6 years old of a seizure. As a result, the Fryers separated in 1890.

By 1892, she was living in poverty in El Paso, Texas. She had applied for a back pension based on her first husband's military service which she received in the amount of $12 per month beginning in June 1893. Her last few years were spent in a boarding house in San Francisco, working as a seamstress and charwoman. Disabled from the effects of rheumatism and arthritis, she developed an addiction to pain medication, and on the night of 2 December 1893, she took a suicidal overdose of morphine. She was found the next morning by her landlady.

𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐜𝐲

She died as Pauline Fryer at the age of sixty. The time of her Civil War fame was recalled at her funeral, which was arranged by members of the Grand Army of the Republic; Cushman was buried with full military honours. "Major" Cushman's remains now rest in Officer's Circle at the Presidio's National Cemetery. Her simple gravestone recognizes her contribution to the Union's victory. It is marked, "Pauline C. Fryer, Union Spy."

In 1961, the television series Rawhide aired an episode, "The Blue Spy" with Pauline Cushman as the central character, portrayed by veteran actress Phyllis Thaxter.

A road at Fort Ritchie, Maryland a now decommissioned Army Post, was named in her honor.

(𝐈𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞: 𝐏𝐚𝐮𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦, 𝐜𝟏𝟖𝟔𝟓)

(𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞: 𝐒𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐝: 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐥 𝐖𝐚𝐫 & 𝐖𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚)

06/07/2023

On this 79th anniversary of the DDay landings of June 6, 1944 it seems to me that this important day is quietly slipping into history and very much out of today's social conciousness .

Why is this day so important to us ?

Over 2,500 United States service people were killed on that day, not to mention the many thousands more that were injured and maimed.

For who ? For what ?

I am saddened by what seems to be the narrowing view that people have today of what it took (and takes) to keep the hope of freedom alive.

I am constantly bombarded with self serving partisan politics of this "Culture War" from both the left and right. At a moment in time when we need unity the most our Nation has never been more devided except for the era of the Civil War. We need to cool down the vicious hyperbole and respect each other's right to hold differing opinions . To open our ears more and our months less. Think a bit deeper.

So I am posting this photogaph of dead U.S. servicemen awaiting burial on a beach in Normady, France and I want someone to point out to me which of these heroes are Republicans and which are Democrats ?

Moses asked his followers to "Chose a blessing or a curse?"

Benjamin Franklin told us "We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

Abraham Lincoln asked us to "Listen to our Better Angels".

Choose , hang , and listen wisely.

God Bless this wonderful Nation, God Bless those who suffered and Died on DDay and countless feilds around the world to keep us free and God Bless everyone of you.

Stan Hitchins

04/04/2023

The PONY EXPRESS was established 163 years ago today on April 3 ,1860 as the fastest means of communication between the eastern part of the United States and the new state of California. Starting in St .Josephs Missouri and ending in Sacramento, California , about 1900 miles .

Riders would ride between 75 and 100 miles a day changing horses about 8-10 times a day . It took about 17 -19 days for a letter to travel end to end . There were about 186 Pony Express stations the were located about 10-12 miles apart on the trail. Riders could weigh no more than 125 pound , most were in their 20's and some were teenagers. The riders earned about $125.00 per month , a very good wage for that era. The future Outlaw Jesse James was a teenage Pony express rider . Buffalo Bill Cody promoted the Pony Express extensively in his Wild West Shows of the late 1800's but was never a Pony express Rider himself.

Pony Express Riders carried three things with them on their rides , a specially designed letter pouch , a gun and a Bible.

The fastest delivery of a letter was a copy of Abraham Lincoln's first Inaugural Address at 7 days 17 hours. At it's peak of operation the Pony express had about 80 riders and between 400-500 horses.

Although the Pony Express had a short life span of only about 18 months, shutting down in October 26, 1861 due to the completion of the first transcontinental telegraph system, it looms large in the National psyche and heritage of the United State of America.