ATDTDA Colfax not Fairfax, of course, of course

bekah bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net
Tue Jul 3 11:09:25 CDT 2007


Colfax is an interesting name for Vibe's son.   Schuyler Colfax had 
made it a popular name while he was Speaker of the House under 
Lincoln and Johnson and for his one term as Vice President under 
Uysses S. Grant.  This is probably when all the Colfax towns and 
streets were named.    But after 1872 when  his involvement in the 
Credit Mobilier scandal broke,  the name became "a symbol of the 
sordidness of Gilded Age politics."   Congress brought a motion to 
impeach but it failed (by one vote)  probably because he only had a 
few weeks left in office.  He left office in 1873 in total disgrace 
and went on the lecture circuit.  He died in 1885. 

Colfax Vibe was probably born in about 1880. (?)  What was Scarsdale 
thinking?  (heh)

Bekah


At 8:27 PM +0000 7/2/07, mikebailey at speakeasy.net wrote:
>Kit's Vibe roommate who I'd been thinking of as "Fairfax",
>expanding 'Fax wrong, is actually "Colfax"
>
>not finding that in the usual baby name search sites,
>but there are several Colfax Counties, and Schuyler
>Colfax was Grant's vice-president.
>
>s'pose it's too much of a stretch to oppose
>(black-as) "coal" -fax, to Fair-fax...
>
>a-and Sandy Koufax doesn't even belong in the
>associative thread...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20070703/93207022/attachment.html>


More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list