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Speaker 1: All right. Imagine a powerful guy who likes to regularly

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Speaker 1: get his hair pulled or get vasileene rubbed into his

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Speaker 1: head every day, or who relieves himself in public. How

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Speaker 1: about one who carries loaded guns onto the Senate floor.

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Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele. Weird stuff about our presidents. Next on

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Speaker 1: the backstory. We're back with the backstory now. For the

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Speaker 1: most part, we think of people that run our government,

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Speaker 1: like them or not, as having just a little bit

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Speaker 1: of decorum. Right, But we all have our quirks, and

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Speaker 1: our presidents have been no exception. President Lyndon Baines Johnson

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Speaker 1: aka LBJ, was a guy who never worried what anybody

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Speaker 1: thought of him. One of his most unusual traits. If

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Speaker 1: he had to relieve himself, he would do so no

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Speaker 1: matter who was around. He was known to have conversations

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Speaker 1: with men and women and just suddenly unzip what he

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Speaker 1: called jumbo and do his thing. LBJ did it in

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Speaker 1: front of staff, he did it while doing interviews with journalists,

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Speaker 1: and he even did it while chatting with diplomats. Insiders

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Speaker 1: say he often did it to gauge how people felt

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Speaker 1: about him, actually invading their personal space in order to

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Speaker 1: size them up. On one occasion, he actually took aim

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Speaker 1: at his secret service agent's leg, drenching him, and the

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Speaker 1: agent just stood there as if he didn't notice. Now,

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Speaker 1: speaking of power plays, our eighth President, Martin Van Buren

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Speaker 1: was kind of a little insecure about his personal safety,

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Speaker 1: despite having been in politics in New York State since

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Speaker 1: he was in his mid twenties. When he was vice

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Speaker 1: president under Andrew Jackson, he always brought a pair of

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Speaker 1: loaded pistols into the Senate assemblies, claiming it was a

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Speaker 1: precaution against the frequent outbursts of violence there. Apparently the

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Speaker 1: Senate was even more exciting back then than it is now.

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Speaker 1: Van Buren was kind of a weird guy anyway. He

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Speaker 1: wrote an autobiography after he was out of office and

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Speaker 1: never once mentioned in it his long dead wife, despite

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Speaker 1: having children with her. Some presidents used competitive sports as

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Speaker 1: a way to prove themselves, including Abe Lincoln, who's actually

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Speaker 1: in the wrestling Hall of Fame. In twelve years of

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Speaker 1: wrestling even while practicing law and early in his political life,

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Speaker 1: he racked up three hundred wins and only one defeat.

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Speaker 1: Maybe his strength had something to do with how carefully

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Speaker 1: he ate, I say he rarely had more than apples

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Speaker 1: and grapes, along with nuts and occasionally a biscuit. He

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Speaker 1: never touched anything to drink but water, and in the winter,

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Speaker 1: only a glass of milk. Another healthy president was Teddy Roosevelt,

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Speaker 1: who loved physical activity. He was big into boxing and

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Speaker 1: even working out with weights, which, if you know anything

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Speaker 1: about the early nineteen hundreds, was pretty unusual at that time.

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Speaker 1: But he especially loved walking on stilts. When he and

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Speaker 1: his six kids moved into the White House, every member

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Speaker 1: of the family had a pair of stilts, including his

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Speaker 1: wife and Teddy and crew would walk through the hallways

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Speaker 1: and even up and downstairs on their stilts in a

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Speaker 1: little less standard activity. There was our twelfth President, Zachary Taylor,

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Speaker 1: who treated chewing tobacco as a sport. He was only

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Speaker 1: in office for sixteen months before he died, but he

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Speaker 1: was noted for his ability to spit tobacco juice ew

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Speaker 1: and hit a target across huge distances without so much

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Speaker 1: as a drop of that nasty juice missing either the

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Speaker 1: spittoon or his intended target. Then there was President number seven,

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Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson. He was a party animal and allowed the

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Speaker 1: public to regularly drop into the White House for some

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Speaker 1: raucous and pretty destructive parties. One report said he once

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Speaker 1: had a fourteen hundred pound wheel of cheese brought in

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Speaker 1: for one party and was gone within two hours. Jackson

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Speaker 1: also was a big fan of cock fighting. He held

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Speaker 1: those cockfights all the time at his estate in Tennessee,

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Speaker 1: and once he was in the White House, he would

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Speaker 1: clear out big rooms to set up an occasional cockfight. Yikes, no,

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Speaker 1: thanks to that. Here's a weird skill. President number twenty

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Speaker 1: James Garfield not only was ambidextrous, meaning he could write

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Speaker 1: with both hands, but he loved to show off the

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Speaker 1: fact that he could write in Greek with one hand

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Speaker 1: and in Latin with the other at the same time.

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Speaker 1: Wonder if that even came in handy as a president. Now,

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Speaker 1: one really odd president was number thirty Calvin Coolidge. He

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Speaker 1: had been an avid horseback rider before becoming president, but

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Speaker 1: of course, once elected, the Secret Service said, Nah, no

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Speaker 1: more horses, way too dangerous. We don't want to lose

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Speaker 1: a president who falls off the horse. He was broken hearted,

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Speaker 1: so a doctor friend rigged up what may well have

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Speaker 1: been the first electric mechanical horse, and Coolidge wrote it

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Speaker 1: while in the White House three times a day. He

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Speaker 1: claimed it was good for his liver. In addition to that,

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Speaker 1: he had a decent head of hair, and every pick

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Speaker 1: that you see of him shows it perfectly slicked back. Well,

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Speaker 1: now we know why it was slicked back. It seems

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Speaker 1: that every morning while he ate his breakfast, he had

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Speaker 1: someone rubbed vasilene all over his head and threw out

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Speaker 1: his hair. And finally, another president obsessed with his due

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Speaker 1: was John F. Kennedy. He was noted for having one

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Speaker 1: gorgeous head of hair. Well, it turns out he had

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Speaker 1: a White House barber who kept it looking perfect. But

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Speaker 1: word is jfk loved to have his hair pulled really

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Speaker 1: hard while he was getting it cut. Why for relaxation,

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Speaker 1: stress and pain relief, Because he believed it would make

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Speaker 1: his hair follicle stronger. Seems like it apparently worked. I

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Speaker 1: guess we all have our little oddities, but most of

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Speaker 1: us don't have to share him in the spotlight, right.

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Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,

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Speaker 1: the Elvis Duran Group and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer

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Speaker 1: is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new

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Speaker 1: episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out

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Speaker 1: to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram

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Speaker 1: at real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the

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Speaker 1: pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.