They wouldn’t let me into the Donner party and I am IRATE
April 21st, 1846
INDEPENDENCE—Whose breeches, pray tell, must I snatch to go to California? How am I supposed to complete the perilous westward trip—that can be especially dangerous if the leaders of said trip are unqualified—alone? Rather than behaving like good Catholics, they excluded me, a sickly man of seventy-nine without any surviving talents or use, from their wagon train like heartless barbarians! To that I say: Nay!
Out of spite, I wish that the Donner party encounters mild difficulties in their travels. I hope they choose to take an unestablished shortcut that, God willing, adds a few days to their little adventure. That should eat into their food rations such that they are mildly hungry when all eighty-seven members arrive intact in California. I also hope they lose some of their oxen, horses, and mules; that will show them! And that one of their wagons should break down, forcing them to halt their progress to mend it! Oh, what mild annoyment that would cause them!
As a good Catholic, that is the extent of what I wish upon them for denying an old man who cannot work an area of economic opportunity and pure Catholic culture scant found in the United States, with the exception of Louisiana.
