Flower Show

Each Spring brings with it the Philadelphia Flower Show which is a "Big Deal" and takes over The Pennsylvania Convention Center. The theme for 2013 is the English Garden.
When the Trumans were in the White House, Bess had a visit from a Ladies Club and Harry was proud to show off his roses to the group. He said his red roses were so healthy because of the cow manure he heaped on them. And the yellow roses were blooming in profusion due to the extra sheep manure. On leaving one lady whispered to Bess "I wish you could stop Harry from saying that word "manure"." Bess replied - 'You don't know how long it took me to get him to SAY manure."
The byproduct Harry was using used to be carried dry in the holds of ships. But if water entered the hatches and the "byproduct" got wet it produced methane gas and when a crewman went down with a lantern there would be an explosion. The shipowners got wise and henceforth instructed the stevedores to "Stow High In Transit" to avoid wetting and so they stamped the bales with the abbreviation of the leading letters which led to the word we use today in the vernacular. If you are still holding your nose I will leave you with a bit of trivia. The late Bill Veeck who owned baseball teams and a  race track was fascinated by the latter and wrote a book titled "Thirty Tons" which was the amount of stable output accumulated in one day at the Suffolk Downs Race Track.
 This was before we invented the word "logistics". As we sailors used to say "Stay upwind."
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