On June 26, 1284, officials in a German town called Hamelin hired a musician to rid the town of its rats. The “rat-catcher’s magical flute” hypnotized the rats that followed the piper out of Hamelin’s gates and into the Weser River, where they all drowned.

Although the story is based upon verifiable historical facts, it has since passed into folklore, as a fairy tale once told by the Brothers Grimm. One can only wish for as simple a solution as a magic flute to drown and destroy all forms of pestilence.

For example, the wheat stem sawfly severely reduced yields in this year’s winter wheat crop.

Long a threat to spring wheat production in the northern plains of North and South Dakota, and Montana, “it has now emerged as a significant pest of winter wheat as well,” in southeastern Wyoming, Nebraska’s Panhandle, and also, since 2010, in northeastern Colorado.

The female sawfly, “wasplike in appearance, with a shiny black body with three yellow bands around her abdomen,” lays 30 to 50 eggs” inside a wheat stem. The larvae then crawl down the stem towards soil level, where it cuts a notch in the stem. The upper stem then breaks off just before harvest.

Various forms of insect infestations have plagued the western states since the first settlers arrived.

Brigham Young arrived in the Great Salt Lake area on July 24, 1847. He and his fellow Mormons were determined to build farms there, but the crickets, actually katydids, most impressed them.

“The ground seems alive with very large black crickets crawling around the grass and bushes,” said one farmer. Brigham Young said, “Mammoth crickets abound in the borders of the Valley.”

Early the next spring they plowed the soil and planted seeds, hopeful of a good crop. A farmer said, “wheat, corn, beans, and peas are all up and looking grand, and grass is 6 inches high.”

Then, in mid-May, a swarm of the dreaded crickets attacked the tender young green plants.

One of Young’s wives said, “the crickets came by millions, sweeping everything before them. They first attacked a patch of beans, and in twenty minutes, there was not a vestige of them to be seen. They next swept over the peas. We went out with a brush to drive them out, but they were too strong for us.”

Horrified, the Mormons tried to combat this army of invaders with noise, mallets, fire, and water. One technique they tried was for two guys to pull a rope back and forth across the tops of the grain to knock the climbing crickets off the stem, before they reached the heads and devoured the grain kernels.

Nothing seemed to work though, because of the crickets’ vast numbers. Then, on June 9, they witnessed, what they later called, a miracle, when seagulls arrived and began consuming the crickets.

In a letter to Brigham Young, his fellow farmers wrote, “The sea gulls have come in large flocks from the lake and sweep the crickets as they go.” The Mormons claim that those gulls saved the Mormons’ crop that season.

Utah’s state bird is now the California gull, and a monument to that gull stands in front of the Salt Lake Assembly Hall on Temple Square, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Another insect invasion occurred, but this time on the Great Plains. Called the Locust Plague of 1874, it began on July 20, when a swarm of the Rocky Mountain locusts — migratory and destructive grasshoppers — fled east, from the mountains onto the plains, in a frantic search for food.

The swarm soon stretched from Canada and the Dakotas in the north, to as far south as Texas. Residents throughout the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, eastern Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Oklahoma and Missouri all witnessed the locusts’ destructive talent.

An editor of a Wichita newspaper wrote,

“They came upon us in great numbers, in untold millions, in clouds upon clouds, until their fluttering wings looked like a sweeping snowstorm in the heavens, until their dark bodies covered everything green upon the earth.

“In a few hours many fields that had hung thick with long ears of golden maize were stripped of their value and left only a forest of bare yellow stalks that in their nakedness mocked the farmer.”

A New York Times reporter, in Kansas, said, “The air is literally alive with them. They beat against the houses, swarm in at the windows, covering the passing trains. They work as if sent to destroy.”

Bad news soon turned good. The next spring, “a late snowstorm and a hard frost killed most of the immature insects, trillions of them, allowing farmers time to replant their crops.” As the years passed, the Rocky Mountain locust thinned, disappeared, and went extinct. It was last seen in 1902.

Of pestilence, the poets write, “The locust has no king, just noise and hard language.” “He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.” I say, find that magic flute, and pay the piper.

The logo for the Broadway musical “1776” features an eaglet inside a broken eggshell, biting down on a flagpole. The small flag atop the pole shows its colors: red and white stripes, and a blue field in the upper left corner. Across the bottom portion of the egg appears a larger English flag.

The musical begins with John Adams alone in the Pennsylvania State House’s belfry, four floors up, leaning on a massive bell. A messenger approaches and informs him that he must return to the hall.

He races down the steps, walks into the hall where the thirteen colonies’ fifty-plus delegates are seated at tables. There he strides across the room, all the while talking. “One useless man is a disgrace,” he says, “two is called a law firm, and three is a Congress.”

To a person, the other delegates shout at him, in song, “Sit down, John. It’s ninety degrees! Have mercy, John. It’s hot in Philadelphia. Someone ought to open a window. No! No! No! Too many flies.”

The delegates are upset with John, because he wants a vote for a declaration of independence from England, both King and Parliament, now. Most of the delegates favor reconciliation, but not a stubborn lawyer from Massachusetts named John Adams, who has read Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.”

The next day the world-famous Dr. Benjamin Franklin takes Adams aside and says, “John, really. You talk as if independence was the rule. No colony has ever broken from the parent in the history of the world. John, why don’t you give it up? Nobody listens to you. You’re obnoxious and disliked.

Franklin says, “Let someone else introduce a vote for independence.”

Adams responds, “Never,” but he warms to the idea. Franklin and Adams ask Richard Henry Lee, a Virginia delegate, to introduce a motion that permits discussion on independence. The motion passes.

During the debate, John Adams surprises everybody when he calls for a postponement on all future discussion until a document is written for the delegates’ review. Franklin seconds the motion, and the motion passes.

According to the history books, on June 11, 1776, the 2nd Continental Congress appointed five to the committee to write the declaration: Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, John Adams of Massachusetts, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Robert Livingston of New York.

Adams and Franklin ask Jefferson to write the document, and he agrees, but is reluctant. He has not seen his wife Martha for six months, but out of duty he stays and writes during those hot summer days.

At one point in the musical, prior to the vote, John finds himself alone in the state house late at night, and he begins to sing, “Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see? They want me to quit. They say, John, give up the fight. Still to England I say ‘Good night.”

Then, in a second verse, he sings, “Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see? I see fireworks! I see the pageant and pomp and parade. I hear bells ringing out. I hear cannons roar. I see Americans—all Americans, free forever more.”

The musical “1776” first appeared on March 16, 1969, on a stage at the 46th Street Theatre, two and a half blocks west of Broadway, now called the Richard Rodgers Theatre. William Daniels played the part of John Adams, Ken Howard played Jefferson, and Howard Da Silva played Franklin.

The play ran for 1,217 performances and won three Tony Awards, including Best Musical.

In 1972, the film producer Jack Warner adapted the play for a film, and he hired the same actors for the movie as appeared on the stage. “I want the whole cast,” he said.

Many of you may know of William Daniels. In addition to playing John Adams, he also played John Quincy Adams in “The Adams Chronicles,” in the mid-1970s on PBS, and also Dr. Mark Craig in “St. Elsewhere,” an arrogant, irritable, but brilliant heart surgeon.

Perhaps his longest stint as a television actor though was as George Feeny, a history teacher at John Adams High School in Philadelphia, on “Boy Meets World,” a sitcom that ran for 7 seasons, from 1993 until 2000, 158 episodes. Cory, Topanga, and Shawn each received life lessons from Mr. Feeney.

Last March, William Daniels turned 95 years old, and he and his wife reside in southern California.

One other piece of trivia. On August 6, 2015, Lin-Manual Miranda staged his musical, “Hamilton,” also at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. In 2016, Lin-Manual Miranda and William Daniels talked.

In their interview, Daniels said that his dressing room, when he played John Adams, is the same as the actor who plays George Washington in “Hamilton,” stage right, with a little door facing the audience.

Miranda summed up their respective musicals, “The truth is more interesting than anything a writer could make up.”

I hope each of you enjoyed your Fourth of July holiday!

The Native American tribes had pet names for George Armstrong Custer. The Crow called him Child of the Morning Star, the Cheyenne labeled him Yellow Hair, but the Lakota Sioux referred to him as Long Hair, even though a barber had cut off his curly blond locks, days before his Last Stand.

A major general when the Civil War ended, but a Lieutenant Colonel during the Indian Wars in the Dakota’s and Montana, Custer harbored more lofty ambitions than only serving in the U. S. Army.

At least that is what Stephen E. Ambrose, a late twentieth-century U. S. historian, hinted at in his dual biography, Crazy Horse and Custer.

A strong Democrat, Custer was tired of seeing Republican administrations control the White House. Abraham Lincoln was first elected in 1860, then again in 1864, but then his Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, completed his second term after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln.

Former Army General U. S. Grant, a Republican, won election in 1868 and again in 1872, but his administration was marred by appalling scandals that soured the American public.

In the spring of 1876, the Democrats decided to hold their Presidential convention out west, in St. Louis, and scheduled it to begin on June 27. This time they wanted to pick a winner, and a few of the delegates began to think that a winning boy general, like Custer, only thirty-six, stood a fair chance.

Americans love their generals, men like George Washington, William Henry Harrison, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, and U.S. Grant, who all became a U.S. President.

Although anchorman in his graduating class of 1861, at West Point, 34th out of 34 graduates, Custer proved himself during the Civil War. He was at the first battle at Bull Run, at Antietam, at Gettysburg, in the ferocious Wilderness battle, and at Appomattox, the final battle.

He achieved fame by his daring style, by taking immense chances in battle and winning, and by riding his horse out in front of his famous 7th Cavalry.

Custer understood that he needed a decisive battle over the Sioux now, “if he wanted to stampede the Democratic Convention,” in St. Louis late in the month. Hence, he drove his men and his horses hard, mile after mile, day after day in those hot June days, into Montana.

“He told his favorite scout, Bloody Knife, and the Arikara scouts that he was planning to become the Great White Father,” in other words President of the United States.

When near the Sioux, Bloody Knife rode ahead and saw the enemy congregated on the Little Bighorn. He came away aghast, and told Custer to exercise caution, that “there were more Sioux ahead than the soldiers had bullets, enough Indians to keep the 7th Cavalry busy fighting for two days.”

Custer waved caution aside, and said that “the largest Indian camp on the North American continent is ahead, and I am going to attack it. I could whip all the Indians on the Continent with the 7th Cavalry.” The day was June 25.

That same day, Crazy Horse declared to his men, “It is a good day to fight! It is a good day to die!”

Instead of keeping his 611 men together, Custer divided them into four parts, a decision that proved a mistake, because the Sioux had as many as 3,000 warriors, and they were waiting for him.

Plus, Custer’s men were exhausted. Sitting Bull saw them and later said, “they were too tired. When they rode up, their horses were tired, and they were tired. When they got off from their horses they could not stand firmly on their feet. They swayed to and fro.”

Custer fought his final battle on a bluff above the Little Bighorn, renamed Custer’s Hill. The next year, a reporter from the New York Herald quizzed Sitting Bull who said, “Long Hair stood like a sheaf of corn with all the ears fallen around him. He killed a man when he fell. He laughed.”

The reporter asked, “You mean he cried out?” “No,” the chief said, “he laughed. He had fired his last shot.”

Stephen E. Ambrose wrote, “Custer had gambled all his life. It was a winner-take-all game, and Custer would have played it again if given the chance. He laughed. Then he died.”

Would a daredevil like Custer have made a good President? Ambrose wrote, “Custer probably would not have been much worse than the men who did hold the job for the remainder of the nineteenth century. The country would have survived.”

A quote that I read years ago, but could not find today, suggests that “the intelligence levels of the Presidents who followed Lincoln disproves evolution, the idea that a species progresses into a better, more capable living being.” It was not so with Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, and Harrison.

The Democratic candidate for President in 1876, Samuel Tilden, won the popular vote, but the election was thrown out because of charges of fraud. A commission gave the presidency instead to Rutherford B. Hayes, another Republican.