The Presidents and the Vice Presidents residence

Concerning the content of these pages.*

I don't ever remember that house being called the 'White House'. I called it my residence or maybe 'the residence' but the name 'White House' reeks of European customs and those customs were not PC for the time. So I don't recall that name being used. Possibly someone can inform me of it's name back then.

One of the strangest things.

Was that people often visited in order to complain about the neighbors dog. The even stranger part was that it was a lonely home and I often welcomed the complainers.

This was the first 'White House' and it used to be horrible. First, the circulation was terrible. In the winter you felt as if you were going to suffocate half the time because the fire robbed all the air (took the oxygen). If you opened a window to let in fresh air, no fresh air seemed to come in, but all the heat went out.

The building was designed for paintings and not for people. Let me explain. We had to establish that we were a legitimate government and part of it was to show that we were not savages that lived in stone huts and ate our young. The English told at least the first part of that lie often.

Ben Franklin came up with the solution. Windows were the key. Large panes of glass (over 3" square) were still fairly expensive even in Europe. Many of the buildings on the Continent were being modernized to have larger and larger windows as the technology progressed. So a building was considered more modern, the society more advanced and the people richer the larger the windows and the more of these there were.

Ben said the easiest way to overcome the European attitude towards us was to use a lot of large windows in the buildings, paint pictures of them and mint coins with them on it and send the information overseas that way. Everyone except Ben thought that was a flaky idea at best and wouldn't work (except me, George and Ben).

It worked phenomenally well. By 1795 we had achieved our goal and even impressed small windowed London (those in the House of Lords were not much longer than a mans thumb). Then we got ambitious. Our objective changed to having even more windows in our government buildings until they covered the entire face of all government buildings in the capital and by so doing, cause the US to be seen as far greater than the English in the eyes of Europeans. So many of the early government buildings had lots of windows on the front and none on back or side. You also ended up with a pretty white house but with horrible ventilation and circulation and it was a horrible cold in the winter because the air was always so wet.

This was William Stricklands painting of the White house in 1814, after the War of 1812. The slots on the roof were for cannon in case the English of French came back.

There were many threats not the least of which was another invasion and being so close to the river the they would have had a clear shot of any approaching ships.

What we called the bad air was another thing wrong with the 'palace' as some called the Vice President's house.

They drained the swamp for the capital district and all the good land was taken, mostly by Senators of course, and then someone mentioned that they needed a place for the vice president to stay. It was just an afterthought and I am sure they didn't spend more than a penny on it. Such as we had trained them all to disrespect anyone of too much authority that they had no interest in paying much for the land.

(This is hard to recall since I was not involved in any of it but I heard it second hand and I sure never thought about it even once when I left.)

They found some land into which all the water from acres around flowed into so it was filled in with sand that held lots of water** to act as storage. Then they topped it with a layer of dirt. They built a well lined with rock off to one side which is where it was the deepest.

Then the well got contaminated from outhouses and was closed and then filled in with dirt which ended up a pool of mud because it was fed by the underground water in the sand.***

Then they built the house over the sand (but not the well) with one inch thick floors and very thick walls when it should have been the opposite. All the water in the sand had no place to drain and just festered until it stank to high heavens because of the contamination and then came up through the floor boards. Since the walls held all the water that wanted to stay the house seemed like a huge underground chamber. In addition there was no circulation at all so it was damp in the summer, then dank in the winter and just plain waterlogged both spring and fall.

Living in that house was an agonizing slow death.

Later a canal or something similar was dug nearby and it unplugged the little aquifer under the house that was pooling all the water and had creating all the problems. Then it all drained and out went the problems with the water. So it became ok.

Many visitors made remarks about the molds on the ceiling, they found that those on the walls were not quite as interesting. Besides the ones on the ceilings gave them an excuse to lay back which was a finishing school 'no' of the first order of magnitude as it might stimulate any men that were around.

I thought at the time that there was a women's plot to find eligible women for the vice-president except I later on found out that they all took the incentive on their own to come visit. There was something going around about 'not letting any foreign alliance's take place with visiting foreign women late at night'. (See this for that answer in detail.) So the young ladies came visiting which was their pragmatic and realistic approach to limiting that issue. I can tell you it worked far better with me than any moralizing church crusaders could have done. Thomas Jefferson never would have bought that agenda.

The phrase that was flouted most often, even in my company, was that the 'vice president preferred variety over function' (although that last word sometimes was slightly mispronounced but I didn't think it was funny since it was a pun that is very wide of the mark and makes little sense said that way). So the local finishing schools would send over the girls in their last year just to visit and find out what government was like and I tried to explain it but that wasn't what they came to meet the vice president for.

Some of the ladies that visited, two or more at a time, would converse with each other pretending that I was out of the room. They tried to mangle the conversation into uncharted lewd areas using their skills of innuendo combined with observations about the molds on the ceilings. These girls often competed to see which one, with just words, could damage their own reputation the most in the shortest amount of time. It amazed me how a few of these audacious young ladies were so gifted in this area that they could completely destroy their reputation by the judicious use of less than eight words. And while using only proper English I might add. Those that spoke French had an edge in this race to disgrace of course since that language lends itself so readily to such causes. It is spiked with many words that have multiple meanings, all of which seem to conflict with their religion directly.

Nothing out of an ordinary work ever occurred during these visits nor was there ever any suggestion of impropriety. At least on my part but I am not saying what happened when they came back without their escort which was stationed outside the room. Plans were never drawn up, not even once with these young ladies. They showed up anyway as I had no way of controlling who knocked on my door late at night. Do you think I let them in? I won't tell you. Let's just say those visitors were a lot nicer and a lot more fun than the ones that complained about their neighbors dog and I never turned those people away either..

Why do you think Thomas Jefferson never remarried after his wife died? This went on even when I moved to the President's Mansion

Even the eccentric behavior that other people said I had wasn't at all what they thought, as in this statement.

His wine bill upon leaving the presidency exceeded $10,000. As a long-time widower, he cared little for formal dress and presided over state meals without wearing a "Federalist wig," and he often greeted his dinner guests in old homespun clothes and a pair of worn bedroom slippers. THE PHILOSOPHER PRESIDENT

Allow me to explain.

The president appearing in "old homespun clothes and a pair of worn bedroom slippers" means that I was not wearing anything and that the president was with a lady friend. What I should say is that what I was doing with whoever I was doing it with was more important than dressing for these visitors. I thought they would have taken the hint and left after dinner. I couldn't get rid of them for another three hours. I didn't trust them from the start. They were so dumb that even combining their mental abilities they could not figure out that the real story was in the president's bed and waiting quite patiently for my return.

Then they got what they wanted but not what was there, left and went running to the newspapers. It got printed but it was fluff and I inspected it very closely to ascertain if there was even a hint of libel involved.

My wine bill upon leaving the presidency exceeded $10,000 but no mention is made of who drank that wine. Do you understand this part?

Americans made some wine but it was with native grapes and the wine usually had a soapy taste so nobody who was cultured drank that wine. Few men ever drank wine in any case unless they had lived in France and had acquired a taste for it. American men drank patriotic whisky but it was very coarse and was stronger than it is today so most women didn't like it. (100 proof was low average not 90 proof which is the average today.)

Women got thirsty and they drank wine instead of whisky and they preferred the French wines. In today's money that is about a million dollars worth of wine and they were not all rare vintages. It was probably about 18,000 bottles and I was not an alcoholic..

The women that Jefferson entertained also entertained Jefferson right back and almost drank him into the poor house but there was not a single complaint at all from me or any of the ladies and that made our meetings nobody else's business at all. That is only one reason you never heard about any of those women or those affairs.

*These memories are all screwed up or should I say they got combined with my memories of the Vice Presidents residence until I realized it just now. I'm embarrassed that it took so long to realize that I had combined my memories of both the Vice Presidents residence and the 'White House' (It wasn't called the 'White House' back then, however for ease of association we will refer to it as that). I'll have to unravel this puzzle of memories when I can. Dolley Madison's statements are split. Some are about the Vice Presidents residence and some about the Presidents residents. The part below that about bad air involved my residence when it was kind of in a pit and 1600 Pennsylvania is on a gentle slope with a great view (or it did have a great view 200 years ago). The mold incidents (and the young ladies) was in the Vice Presidents house because that was the damp house (also pronounced in anger as damn house). Also, the kind of casualness that allowed visiting young ladies to lay on their backs on the sofas to look up at the mold did not exist as often in the 'White House'.

Past life memories are much more fluid because they are not associated with specific brain cells whose purpose seems to include but is not limited to providing an effective means of separating, locating and addressing those memories. Most past life memories are really just one big fluid mess that you have to figure out using logic.

In your present life you can not only remember what happened at the office yesterday by using time as a reference but you can remember events according to what happened. Examples: 'Do you remember what June did at the office party yesterday?' vs 'Yes, but do you remember that she did that same thing at three previous offices parties.'

A simile would be that memories of this life are like having all your family photographs sorted out and stored in albums based on date with cross referencing. Past lives are pretty much like all your families photographs are mixed together in one big box and you have to figure out which ones are associated and during what time period.

The bottom line is that my memories of those two residences are combined. As the memories become stronger I realize that the details are different. Like when I recalled my memories on the Alligator lady page it took place where I lived when there was a boarding house right across the street but now I don't recall there being a boarding house anywhere near the 'White House' so at least the first meeting with her occurred at the Vice Presidents residence. This also provides me another piece of the puzzle which where to place the event on a time line. So I first met her during my vice presidency which was 1796-1800.

After you get used to it past life memories start to form some kind of association and they become more like a library full of books that are in one big pile whereas present life memories are a very small library with all the books well organized and shelved according to the Dewy decimal system.

** They got it half filled and then they ran out of gravel so they had to use sand, or was it vice versa. Anyway it was part one and part the other. This is based on information that I recall from 200 years ago which I obtained second hand and I have no idea who told the person that I got this information from. The information was mainly given to my household staff who later told me. Then if I died of mysterious symptoms they would have sent a doctor around to the neighbors to see if one of them had died of the same symptoms before they hung my cook for poisoning me. That is how deadly that house was assumed to be because of the water under it. It was a humiliating experience to find out that your constituents were so concerned about your cooks life that it made me wonder if they were going to have the cook poison me and wanted him to feel as though he was safe doing it. So I had that cook removed right away.

*** I worked hard all day long for everyone's freedom and that included my own. After the day's work was done my time was mine. Again it's none of your business and doesn't concern who came up in the carriage bundled in white furs and perhaps with another girl bundled in green. And if you pursue it then you are stealing my privacy which is one of my freedoms for which I will have you up on charges before a magistrate. Believe this, the felony charges would have stuck.

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© 2004-8 John Pinil