Smokin Joe

I love the pressure that New Years puts on us to be better. There’s something unique about an entire country collectively trying to be something more. If you stick to it, you can move mountains in 365 days. You just need to know how to make the proper resolutions.

Jim Thorpe, age 24, at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm.

Born on Indian territory to parents of mixed ancestry, Thorpe won gold in the pentathlon and the decathlon, dominating eight of the fifteen events. 

He was later was stripped of both medals when it was revealed that he had played professional baseball before the Olympics. After the games, he played professional football, baseball, and basketball until the age of 41, when the Great Depression ended his athletic career. 

“Someone had stolen his shoes just before he won his gold. He found a mismatched pair in a trash bin and wore extra socks because one shoe was too big.”

There are two versions of the story as to why a pig and chicken will prevent a sailor from drowning. The first is just that pigs and chickens do not like water, so they would like to be out of the water as soon as possible. A slightly more plausible explanation is that pigs and chickens were often carried on deck in wooden pens. In a shipwreck the pens would often wash ashore with the other debris from the ship. Pigs and chickens were at times th only survivors of ship wrecks. A more prosaic explanation was that having a pig and chicken tattoo would guarantee that a sailor eats well as he carries his hams and eggs with him at all times.

One variation was to have a tattoo of a pig on the left knee and a rooster (cock) on the right foot signified “Pig on the knee, safety at sea. A cock on the right, never lose a fight.”