James A. Garfield Extravangza Part 2: wordz n pix

Here are some extraneous facts that did not make the final cut of the video and some pictures of our tour of the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio. A super-sassy volunteer old lady gave us a kickass tour of the house. Highly recommended, but no sweet gift shop like the one at the Grant House. (frowny face) We drove there in torrential downpours and also BTW Cleveland is ugly. FACT: The Garfield museum featured a large mural comparing Lincoln and Garfield. They were both born in log cabins, see? Also, bearded. And assassinated. And the biographical video we watched suggested that the American public was more distraught when Garfield died than when Lincoln died and that Garfield was pretty much awesomer than Lincoln except for that he died too soon for us to find out. I find this hard to believe. I mean, Garfield was like a genius or whatever and had a better beard, but we're talking SAINT ABRAHAM "FREED THE SLAVES" LINCOLN here. Blasphemy, people.

Me & Ka$h reliving the magic of the 1880 front-porch campaign.

FACT: Part of the reason James and Lucretia bought their house at Lawnfield was because James thought his five sons were getting too soft living in DC or whatever and should have the experience of manly farm life like he did in his log-cabinning childhood.

Yes! We are here! See? Look at the sign! And the rain!

FACT: JAG is the only person to ever be elected to the office of the President directly from the House of Representatives.

This blurry photo of the I-Man features the sweet window in the crazy awesome library which had a crazy (like, actually crazy) concrete and iron vault that Crete had built to store Garfield documents and such. Technically this was the first presidential library, but it wasn't open to the public until after the Garfield family stopped living in the home in the 1930s. So Grant still wins.

FACT: In 1886, the U.S. Mint issued a $20 gold certificate featuring Garfield's face.

Awesome windmill Crete had put in in the early 1900s to pump water into the house. Genius!

FACT: An old sandstone statue of Pres. Garfield was donated to his alma mater Hiram College earlier this year, but was mysteriously decapitated in the night after being officially dedicated! The head and the beheader are still at large.