Grant Statue

I wouldn’t call Ulysses S. Grant a «close, personal friend.» We weren’t intimates. That’s for sure. But I knew him casually prior to the War Between the States. These were hard times for Grant. He was fluttering in the wind. Wayward and forlorn, his career seemed pretty much over. The Mexican War failed to catapult him into the fame he deserved. So he sat and waited for history to intercede. Great men can only be great men during the right set of circumstances. Lincoln needed the Civil War. He would’ve made a great manager at Denny’s but strife brings out the best. The times and the man are seldom made for one another. Grant too needed events for glory.
I’d pop in (no call, of course) and see him while he was working at a tannery in Galena, Illinois. This was in the 1850s. Any moron could see the impeding struggle brewing. The shop was nice but Grant was aimless. Distracted easily and washed up. A fighter without a fight. Even then I was known around northern Illinois as an incorrigible ball-​breaker. If I didn’t need a leather satchel or pair of gloves, I’d be sure to see if Grant was working. He was a prickly fellow. I took to calling him «Hiram» — his given name. He never liked that. So I mercilessly broke his balls in front of customers. Just congenial joshing but sometimes it got personal. Mostly though, it was all in good fun. Once he called me a «snake.» Had he known the horrible things I called McClellan, he might have warmed up to me sooner.
Then Lincoln won the election and southern states started to bow out ungracefully. Shortly after that, I came in to the store looking for my verbal sparring partner. The clerk said Grant went east. Once a solider, always a soldier I suppose. I knew then — not at what cost — that the Union would prevail. I left the store thinking about Grant and our fledgling nation. We were at a crossroads with so much bloodshed ahead. I walked for a while until reaching the banks of the Mississippi. Looking out across the beautiful river, it was there I whispered ever so softly, «Good luck, Hiram. Good luck.»

Just a big Statue in the middle in the street in crown heights brooklyn… Drove by a few times … But the Statue is nice to take pictures