The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center

I was driving through Fremont, Ohio when I saw a sign for the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center. I’m a sucker for dead presidents and I pulled in.

One of the buildings had a library full of a lot of books. Musty, dull looking books. Back in the 1800s, books were not entertainment. They were lifelessly packed dully dense fact containers. Most people back then were illiterate, so books were relegated to holding open doors.

I happened to notice the ghost of President Rutherford B. Hayes perusing the books. I asked if he was a big reader. President Hayes said that he rarely read. But the books in this library were a replica of everything in his brain. For his two terms in office, he had a team of scribes write down everything he thought. These thoughts were put into book form and placed in his library.

I asked President Hayes the purpose of a replica of his mind. Hayes felt the reason people got old was there were so many pieces of information in their brain, that over time the mind wore down and eventually broke, and the body followed suit. Putting his mind in the books was a way to lighten the load.

I asked President Hayes what he was reading when I came upon him. He said he was reading his theory that women were puppets men created to keep them company, and the puppetry was so amazing that men forgot that the women were puppets, and they forgot to set the puppets down, and soon descended into madness.

I asked what his wife thought of this theory. President Hayes said that his wife pointed out that what we think of others is often an unconscious description of how we see ourselves. Hayes said he saw the truth of her statement and gained back all the mental weight he had lost in the writing of these books. He died two days later.