No canary deaths were reported following this month’s presidential inauguration.
That, unfortunately, wasn’t the case more than 140 years ago when a former Vancouver soldier was the focus of similar festivities.
As we first noted eight years ago, Capt. Ulysses S. Grant arrived at the U.S. Army’s Vancouver post in 1852 as regimental quartermaster and was elected president 16 years later.
Grant’s first inaugural ball in 1869 did not go well, historians say. Illiterate workers mixed up everyone’s coat-check claims.
The confusion led to fights among the men and tears among the women, said Jim Bendat, author of “Democracy’s Big Day: The Inauguration of Our President 1789-2009.”
It got worse the second time around. “Grant’s second ball proved a disaster,” reported a Department of State website devoted to inaugural history.
Grant kicked off his second term on March 4, 1873. The noon temperature was 16 degrees, and nobody had thought to heat the inaugural ballroom. The temporary wooden ballroom building was so cold that champagne turned to slush, violin strings snapped and the stuffed boar’s head was too cold to eat.
Partygoers wore their hats and coats, we wrote in this column in 2009. It solved the coat-check-related violence but was a bad way to waltz. People who tried to dance in their long overcoats wound up tripping over each other, Bendat said.
And then there were the 100 caged canaries, brought in to add a cheerful tone to the festivities.
That was the plan, anyway. Unfortunately, Bendat said, “The poor canaries froze to death.”
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story, or just tell a story.
