EP256: In His Father's Shadow, From High School Dropout... To Owning D.C.'s Best Taco Chain! and Why Are Bananas So Cheap? (History Guy)

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This is our American stories we tell stories about everything here on the show from the arts to sports and from business to history and everything in between. Clerestory seven American stories.com. Some of our favorites and all of our history work is brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. By the way, go to Hillsdale.edu to sign up for their terrific and free online courses in her neck story comes to us from a man who simply known as the history guy's videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages over you to history guys also heard here in our American stories in this next story the history guy remembers the 16th president's son, Robert Todd Lincoln because of his father Abraham Lincoln, Robert Todd's life has been largely forgotten ears. The history on April 9, 1865 Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union Gen. Ulysses S Grant.

Following the defeat of the Confederate Army at the battle of Appomattox Courthouse.

The surrender documents were actually signed in the parlor of a home owned by a man named William McLean and they were witnessed by both grand families, staff the last survivor among those witnesses lived all the way until 1926 and by coincidence, was a very famous person. One of the most important statesmen of his day. Robert Todd Lincoln was Abraham Lincoln's firstborn son, and the only one of Abraham Lincoln's children survive to adulthood. His younger brother Edward died of fever just the age of three. Robert grew up at a time when his father was practicing law on the circuit and thus was probably gone most of the time and so the relationship was distance.

Not very close.

Robert once noted that his most vivid memories of his father growing up was Abraham packing his saddlebags. By the time that Robert's father was elected president, Robert was attending Harvard University.

He described his father's being so busy that they scarcely had 10 minutes quite time together during his entire presidency. Robert graduated Harvard in 1864, and briefly attended law school there. He felt compelled to join the Union army and share the risk that everybody else was taking at first. His mother resisted his little brother Willie had died in the White House of a fever. In 1862 and his mother Mary Todd Lincoln fear that she could not withstand another loss but Robert eventually prevailed and his father asked Gen. Grant if Robert could be assigned to his staff. Robert was made an assistant adjutant, and given the rank of Capt. and that is why he was present to witness Lee's surrender. Robert had traveled to Washington to visit his parents on April 15 and his parents invited him to go to the theater with, but he declined. He had been traveling on horseback all day and needed a rest and so Robert narrowly missed his father's assassination. Robert moved with his mother and his younger brother Ted to Chicago and he continued his lost docs he was admitted to the bar in 1867 in 1868 he married the daughter of United States Sen. They had three children. In 1876. Robert was elected town supervisor of the town of South Chicago, a town that was eventually absorbed into the city of Chicago.

That was his only elected office of his career in 1877 he was offered the position of assistant Secretary of State by Pres. Rutherford B Hayes, but he declined. Although he remained active in Republican politics, and then in 1881 he accepted a cabinet appointment as Secretary of War in the new cabinet of Pres. James Garfield. He was with Garfield in the train station in July 1881 and witnessed Garfield's assassination, Robert continued to serve as Secretary of War in the cabinet of Pres. Chester a Arthur where he was involved in many military reforms he left the position in 1885 and then in 1889 he was appointed to the important position of minister to the United Kingdom under Pres. Benjamin Harrison. He served for four years when he returns United States. He became General Counsel of the Pullman Palace car company at the world-famous maker of railway cars and when the founder George Poland died in 1897 Robert was made president of the Pullman car company he served in that position until 1911 when he left due to ill health, but he stayed on as chairman of the board clear until 1922, despite his very accomplished life Robert Todd Lincoln is often remembered for three things. The first was a coincidence.

Somewhere in 1863 or 1864 Robert Todd Lincoln was riding a train from New York City to Washington DC and while in Jersey City, New Jersey.

He was bumped off the train platform landing and the dangerous spot between the platform and the train a stranger reached down and pulled him out. And when Robert looked up he realized that his Savior was the most famous actor of the day a man named Edwin Booth.

Only later did Edwin Booth find out that the young man that he had saved was Pres. Lincoln's son, and that is said to have offered Edwin Booth some solace as he was personally devastated when his younger brother John Wilkes Booth murdered resident Lincoln second in 1875, Robert had his mother Mary Todd Lincoln committed to an asylum.

He was concerned about erratic behavior after the death of his younger brother Taft the age of 18. Mary was able to get some letters out to her attorney.

He was able to convince Robert to let her leave the asylum and live with her sister, but it included some public embarrassment for Robert and he and his mother never fully reconciled and finally Robert Todd Lincoln is sometimes described as being somewhat unlucky because of his proximity to three presidential assassinations. He just missed his father's assassination.

He was there when James a Garfield was assassinated and he was just getting off the train going to visit Pres. William McKinley when McKinley was shot in 1901, he was there for three presidential assassinations because he was proximate to power during a tumultuous time but Robert Todd Lincoln lived an extraordinary life. He was born poor and it found great success and died very wealthy.

He was an elder statesman. He was a leader in his party, who was suggested as a candidate for president or vice president many times but always declined. He was the president of one of the largest corporations in the country. He was likely one of the most accomplished men of his era. His last public appearance was May 30, 1922 when he appeared with Pres. Warren G. Harding and former president and chief justice of the Supreme Court, William Howard Taft at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial. He passed away in 1926, just a few days shy of his 83rd birthday and started he deserves to be remembered as more than just his father son and those words are true and spoken beautifully by the history guide. This is Robert Todd Lincoln story here on our American stores box if you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past. Know that all of our stories about American history from word innovation culture and faith are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that are good in life.

If you can get the Hillsdale bills that will come to you with their free and terrific online courses go to Hillsdale.edu to learn more and this is our American stories all around this great country well in great cities, and more and more in suburbs food trucks popping up all over the country. Osiris oil was one of the many in Arlington, Virginia to run such a stand called district taco Monty Montgomery brings us the story here is Osiris my name is Osiris Hoyle from Mexico. I very much grew up in a farm where I had to do a lot of things on my own when I was, I think maybe 11 years old was selling newspapers, popsicles flowers on my bicycle. And of course helping my dad farm and I learned how to cook with my mom very much every single day. She will wake me out and and asked me what I want to eat as a helper in a way that I need to cook it with her. I need to get ingredients for my my mom. She's extremely picky. That's why her food is so delicious she's disseminated to the yard right, and Celtic tomatoes habaneros anything that she needed a meal and come with tomatoes and shall feels them just like this is not right and I like what it is not scared, as you feel like this is Philip and I am so soft and for me I get on the same thing with lines she wishes.

See it and am feeling and just like no negative capital get more standers were so high and sees that my standards are in Mexico you cannot choose what life you want to leave me. I remember they didn't know I was poor until I met the rich kids when I went to my friend's brother when I was maybe 1413 years old. I realize that they had the toys and games or have a better bathrooms than we did. And then I was like man I think you know we struggle so when I can't United States I can with a tourist visa and then I decide to stay was 2000 I was working as a dishwasher and I was making minimal wage about point and I met my wife at work and she was a waitress and I need to learn English so I can master out right so I decided to learn to assist them in a sort of peace with lumbar in Denver Colorado.

And even though I was on the age. They let me stay at the bar right because I was helping them with the decay you now and bring in an I wasn't drinking by stay at the bar talking to drunk people.

There were did my best teachers I remember you know I was asking questions like I said is in the and then I'll write it down for some reason date. I think they felt important Yanni butter knife you drinking every day at the bar. Something's going on right so they feel important. I think they liked the way that I was asking them questions and best features. Now I me the first week, I thought all of it and I hated then and now it's was very welcome in I did it for silver years to get to the point where my birthday Jennifer said they want you doing today going to go for lunch and I was like yeah I cancel it and you know, so I went for it was asking her out during that time forth two years three years. I think Dana and she never accepted it for some reason, probably to his English was not good was try right and sees Dan. We got Marianne. Now we have three kids and was very and who thousand six we moved to DC you noticed things were going well and I was excited to try something new in my fondest construction job was paying a lot more than if I was just cook those great, you know, I took the job even though I didn't have 1/2 that much experience with the construction company so my potential day so that I could do more than just be a service die, so they say me to schools I can actually mean I start seeing potential to be something else than just cook in the kitchen, something professional where I can be the superintendent company and I can run projects and I feel good.

Everything was going well, you know I ID project where I actually was finishing before schedule on the budget, working my butt off and I felt like you… Will come in. This is great. So we bought our house in 2007 and ending.

You know we had a baby, everything was going so well, but in 2008 I got laid off when the economy was really really bad. I still remember the moment because it wasn't on a Friday afternoon, I was sweeping the project because Ward their wedding just was leaving and I like to keep my projects clean for the weekend in the actual owner of the company came any damaging years.

It was very emotional. I started crying. I never, never, never been fired before in you know I I asked for my child, my health insurance was through the company. As I fell, defeated.

II fell, not being a man anymore demand that my parents raising kids in all the responsibilities all my heart, Ward branches happen. I did understand it, so I said look just pay me. Would everyone pay me interest to me on the payroll.

But to my insurance right my wife she's pregnant figured out later in ditches and kidney on their payroll took my truck drove away and I had to park in a parking lot was actually crying. The moment because how I'm going to go to my life right now and tell her that I just lost my job. How do I do that I'm never right have a house key. She's pregnant to say so I went to her job and said Jenny and he talked to you and I say I got I got laid off fire and the only thing that she came out of her mouth.

She hugged me. She said don't worry will be okay not know was that was so powerful you know it was so powerful for six months, seven months, maybe I was an employee. I was looking for construction job because I knew I know how to read blueprints now, but there was nothing available was getting depressed right is getting extremely depressed because I have a job babysitting my son in the weekends I'll invite my friends so we can have some beers and make cars in DeSales as so my my friends used to say all services is so good. You should model these you know and and sell anything, my unit is an go home and I'll tell my wife. People like my food when I have some going on here itself and then I was making for Mark Wallace to a man on round on Osiris is not there was one day I was drinking beer and eating CMH with Mark and he said Cyrus Leonel want to go to Austin, Texas. There's there's always food trucks trying to sell these amazing Mexican food breakfast tacos you know you know that so delicious and so I turned around and slide size you want to do it now if you know me and trucks a lot of moderate Pakistanis on $25,000 is well if you want to do it out and I'm like weight you want to give demonic yeah like what Curtis and give you you know that much money for so I didn't finish my high school okay.

I went home and I couldn't believe it right. I talked to my wife about it and at that point I didn't have anything else going on. So when Dr. Mark and I say this is a let's do it, indeed.

And what a story this is so far when we come back more from Osiris oil and district taco and how that all happened here on our American story, and we returned with our American stories and the story of Osiris oil, which is been given a generous gift from his friend Mark Wallace to start his own taco stand and at the lowest point of his life is a site by the Pakistan yell when naming district taco and was born in 2009 and I went straight to Roslyn Roslyn, Virginia Delos refers place we went and I didn't going to research the only thing I knew, buildings, nozzle what I like. There's been dealing with a lot of people here and we are to be here, but there was bullet right next door to me okay and it was Baja fresh I saw was in the middle man. I was like when I'm doing here today that you know like I said before, great sales guy and I think I can I can sell doctors and I'm a pretty good practice started to two people inside the card in. I was the cashier I had one forerunner one guy that was helping us someone else that he was just making sure nothing is missing the first week started making breakfast tacos the morning 6 AM right and he wasn't working.

You know people around DC don't know about breakfast tacos, but it makes you will receive back it out so you know, and I grew up with it then run a professor and you know they goal Oregon and/or you know or I don't know or something else to write for breakfast.

Not a breakfast tacos. So I said okay. Well, breakfast is not helping me all the way.

You know, many means introducing really good at for lunch people to want to breakfast tacos on the knife.

The making for the asylum today.

I was making more the poblano every single day I was changing the main just like how my mom would ask me what you want to eat today. I would change right and I figured Alice cow when I'm want to make my comments so I pretty much a welded grill that I bought a Home Depot you know is like a small rail so I was really you know being in front of people and people walking into their job to the office manual grilling out there right grilling North, South, Susquehanna table will blending the sunsets you know where tomatoes and everything was a party. Oh my goodness not everything you know worked perfectly for two months wasn't making any money because I pretty much was making everything fresh so was making my guacamole fresh.

I was making my pico de gallo fresh so I was going to restaurant depot every single day and I'll get back to watch the Pakistan and drop everything, eat dinner with my family and then whatever it takes time.

My refrigerator full of avocados and my wife don't like that very much. Question that knows the only option we these and I think I should shrink so I can go sleep all have flight couple of years right one beer and one night I was cooking beans and attended to be on right 8 PM fall asleep sleeping around 11 o'clock I know about you but burn beans and he donned his so bad right just to smell.

It's really bad and and I will cop and I'm like oh my goodness what a non-waste of product units. Money and couldn't just burn the house my family you know what I'm doing was pretty angry, but at that moment I was extremely tired extremely disappointed right and I was just praying because I was like what I'm doing. I'm just wasting my time here okay I burned the house and the entire overweight because you know it's just been eating a lot, exercising, working long, long, long hours and this is how to know is not working so was praying and I said Dodge and Simeon message case. I don't know what else to do and then my daughter started crying like I guess that's the message have to continue for the family right side tie my shoes same back to location, location, location. It's something realtors say matters in the value of a house or a property but it also turns out it matters if you own. Say a food truck or a taco stand immovable location became the key to Osiris's success. So we assume set up so early and we used to sit up is the ABC channel 7. We used to get there like 550 and in the weatherman will get out right that telling about the weather and there were cooking bacon right old man were cooking bacon and I don't know about you while you cooking bacon smell so good right so he's always talk about us like a 6 AM flight deal turned the cameras you and I and would like cooking bacon were like saying hi now and Phyllis mandalas Ray great times and things are going so good long lines to order from us were like six people in the tacos and working in the probably surf about 20 people and the actual press that writing about this and from being laid off. You have a talk with Stan, I think that was a wake-up call that actually can be done and then I do not came to my business partner Mark Wallace and I say marketing got something going on right here, which is open a restaurant open the restaurant.

2010 Arlington, Virginia, and from there you know we we bought a lot of equipment from chrysalis much fielding restaurants by ourselves we didn't know. I remember reviews online that said something because he came from a type of thing to be able to control a restaurant, but those reviews I remember I was like okay shortly and then after a year felt like okay we have a model then we hire forsaken Laura in DC.

We hire contractors okay to build a store and then I was like well you know maybe you should call the guys that you know me off and see if they want to work with me so I went and hired him back is fine because I used to be the employee and now on the client. The way things worked out.

And from there you know.

Now we have 12 stores open and over just over 450 employees and will go from there.

I think all my life is was being about what other people had it in half and I think I'm really thankful I didn't have it all. Beginning and you been listening to the story of Osiris oil and district taco is in 20+ storefronts around Washington DC 150 employees.

My goodness, what a story, and it's every immigrant stories.

In some ways the same right from different places, but everyone can track it in their own families. This story started in Yucatán, Mexico, and boy when he was young he didn't have anything sold newspapers and flowers on a bike by the way, he said. In Mexico you can't choose the life you want to lead three came to the United States versus dishwasher earning minimum wage learn how to speak English so we could well ask his wife out on a date 2008 12 the ceiling dropped on the economy in his job working construction. All that was over, he just had to do something he'd been laid off and had that moment that while no one wants to have started that food truck thanks to the generosity of a friend and look where we are in the story and its story that happens time and again in this great country Osiris oil story district taco story have one.

If you're in DC dear on our American story, and we continue with our American stories in her neck story comes to us from a man simply known as the history guy's videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages over on YouTube in the history guy is also heard is a regular contributor dear our American stories. If you think of the quintessential American fruit would probably be the but apples are not our cheapest fruit bananas. But why, here's the history guy with the story of the banana. Here's an interesting trivia question. Do you happen to know what item is most sold at Walmart. I'll give you a hint it's a berry that grows from an authority come from the United Kingdom up herb here's another hint that the herb is in the family, Melissa K. And the most popular version of this very is called Cavendish and if you still don't know doesn't help to know that it was among the first fruits to be domesticated by humans, that it is so historically important that empires have been built on it in government overthrown because of it, and that comedians have made entire careers slipping on its appeal. Some scientists estimate that the banana was domesticated as early as 8000 BC and there is written evidence that the cultivation of bananas had reached India by 6000 BC dust bananas were possibly domesticated approximately the same time as rice and potatoes predating the domestication of apples by millennia. The banana fruit is produced from the ovary of a single flower in which the outer layer of the ovary wall develops into an edible fleshy portion dust. Bananas are by the botanical definition of Barrett. There are more than a thousand species of wild banana in southeast Asia, China and the Indian subcontinent, producing a staggering array of fruits that most of the Latina, for example, produces a bright pink fuzzy banana and that goes so species is so aromatic that each Chinese name literally translates as you can smell it from the next mountain bananas were likely first domesticated in southeast Asia, Europe, New Guinea, Arab traders carried bananas back home and introduce the fruit to the Middle East in the first or second millennium BC and then took the fruit to the East Coast of Africa fit was then traded across the continent eventually been cultivated in Western Africa infected two competing stories for the etymology of the word banana one posits that it comes from the Arabic word banana for finger because early bananas with a bit about the size of your finger. The other posits that the word was derived from a West African language 327 BC Alexander and his armies discover the banana during one of the campaigns in India and introduce the delicious fruit to the Western world, particularly to Mediterranean countries in the six century the Portuguese discover bananas on the Atlantic coast of Africa. They been cultivated for the Canary Islands. From there it was introduced to the Americas by Spanish missionaries early cultivated bananas will not like what we buy at the supermarket today.

Rather, while bananas are full of seeds part of the breaker to what been smashed conceived to eat the soft fruit.

Over time farmers will selected those bananas that had fewer seeds, but such bananas eventually would become so seamless that the could not be grown from seeds in the plan to be reproduced a sexually banana rich culture we have today, the average American eats 28 1/2 pounds of bananas each year was the product of the 19th century while bananas were being cultivated in plantations in the 15th and 16th centuries, those are red or green bananas that included a lot of start showing today would be called plan taints for the most part they had to be cooked to be softened and eaten in 1936, a farmer in Jamaica named John Prescott, Peugeot discovered a banana plant on his plantation that the result of random genetic mutation was producing yellow bananas. The fruit was naturally sweet and soft enough to be eaten without cooking. This banana grew in tightly packed budgets and had appeal that resisted bruising facilitating transport hundreds of cultivars of this banana mutation involved to give the world one of the greatest breakthroughs in history supplying the world with the number one fruit grown to feed Earth's population. The modern yellow banana.

The banana region called the Martinique banana was so popular that the writings cultivated all along the Caribbean coast in Central America. The type became known as the gross Michelle or that big Mike was a game changer American to see bananas imported from Cuba early in the 19th century, but those are seen as merely a novelty. Likewise, bananas had been displayed in London in the 1600s, but again the fruit was little more than an oddity, economic, and dietary changes combined with the characteristics of the gross Michelle created a massive trade important to the US gradually increased, especially the end of the Civil War, but interesting imports really took off in the 1870s and 1871 banana exports to the United States were valued at around $250,000 by the first year of the 20th century banana traded exponentially balloon the $6,400,000, 10 years later, it effectively doubled again so many bananas were imported onto the docks at the tip of lower Manhattan. That the old slick peers became known as the banana dogs fast sometimes refrigerated boats built especially carry bananas without spoiling recalled banana boat. At one point the United fruit company now known as Decatur Brands International and the world's largest private fleet.

The big Mike facilitated the worldwide banana market and created the American and European love for the fruit in 1904, 23-year-old apprentice pharmacist at Castle pharmacy in Metro Pennsylvania named David Evans Strickler invented the banana base triple ice cream sundae, better known as the banana split one of America's most popular desserts. The banana in that split was a big Mike and then a banana crisis. The gross Michelle become a classic example of a model crop.

Big Mike for grown from thousands of genetically identical plants that allow the specialization.

The facilitated mass production and distribution that reveal the vulnerability. If one tree was susceptible to a past or blight. They all would be that light came the form of sorry Moxie spore fungus to cause the banana plant a rock with what is commonly called Panama disease was first identified in the 1870s and the gross Michelle was partly vulnerable to the plight by the 1950s did it spread all over the banana producing world as suddenly, it is risen, banana market crashed. Some claim that the decline of the big Mike inspired the popular song. Yes, we have no bananas first recorded in 1923. The song was the single best selling piece of sheet music for many decades. The solution to the problem came from an unexpected source, Derbyshire, England in 1834 of the Duke of Devonshire received a shipment of bananas from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. The Duke's friend and chief gardener Sir Joseph Paxton cultivated bananas in the greenhouse at Chatsworth House that determine Derbyshire Paxton named the variety of music. Kevin dishy named after the Duke William Cavendish. The variety was in cultivated in the Canary Islands and commercially cultivated by 1904, but the Cavendish could not compete with the big mind which had a better flavor and a thinker peel that made it easier to ship the Cavendish turned out to have one great advantage.

It was resistant to Fusarium Moxie spore because it was not as hard in the Cavendish cannot be is easily shipped in the natural cluster like the gross Michelle the clusters had to be broken into bunches and then Bob McTavish were costly to ship. Still Cavendish bananas represent nearly half of the bananas produced in the world today, nearly all of the export market.

If you buy a banana.

Outside the tropics. It is almost certainly Cavendish the banana trade is so lucrative that is driven more than a century of politics, especially in Central America and the Caribbean, American-based companies corrupted local governments in order to obtain exclusive production rights and rent huge swaths of central American countries as virtual corporate nations economic exportation gave rise to violent labor movements through the United States government into a series of conflicts throughout the region. Although the words were not exclusively driven by the economic demands of the fruit companies.

The series of conflicts became known as the banana wars in 1911, a private army financed by the fruit company orchestrated a coup taught in Honduras over conflict with rival United fruit company for an exclusive contract for hundred bananas the unstable economies and governments caused by these interventions let American writer Henry coined the term banana republic today. The banana is the world fourth major food behind rice, meat and milk Americans alone eat more than 3 million tons of bananas each year more than apples and oranges combined but we all might again soon be singing yes we have no openings at the Cavendish is proving vulnerable to mutated strains Panama disease. Once again the world export bananas are tied to a single species and that supplies under threat might come in the form of genetically modified Cavendish's, or even the return of the big Mike is tightfisted in trying to breed a fungus resistant version of the big Mike ever since the first like the cold. In the 1900s or perhaps a new banana will rise to become king of the export market and once again will have to get used to a new banana and a great job as always by Greg Engler in the production. A special thanks this great storytelling about of all things.

The banana and by the way, you can hear the history guy on his own YouTube channel history guy history deserves to be remembered. It's Walmart's biggest selling item. Who knew 28 1/2 pounds each year is what each American consumes.

Who knew that my goodness, I know I play my part way higher than 28 1/2 pounds each year. The story of the banana. The story of America's and the world's most popular fruit here on our American stories