The Quince

Myth:  Born just 8 years prior to the outbreak of America’s war for independence and reared in a household rife with talk of liberty and doses of austerity, John Quincy Adams already had big shoes to fill as a mere toddler.  His father and the 2^nd president of the United States, John Adams was a man of simple tastes, but still was an erudite politician and celebrity framer of America and her ideology.  Unlike Adams’ other children, John Quincy was baptized into diplomacy at an early age, often accompanying his father on trips to Europe and elsewhere.  He endured harsh seas and seemingly endless voyages in this age of slow transit – uncomplaining all the while.  Quincy absorbed his father’s tactics as a consummate ambassador, even if both Adamses were more timid than their political counterparts.  Ever aware of the unspoken pressures of growing up in an American dynasty, John Quincy quickly climbed the bureaucratic ranks and was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands at the ripe age of 26.  In 1825 he became our 6^th president, leaving a trail of milestones like the Monroe Doctrine and the acquisition of Florida.

Fact:  John Quincy Adams, as only his parents called him, generally went by his better-known moniker: The Quince.  He had numerous others, including “Ocho Quince,” “John Queefer,” “An American in Piss,” “6^th Prez and 6 Deep,” and the terribly penned “Bald on Top, Party in the Back, Oh My Deist Lord He’s Putting Cocaine on Her Crack” (this last is attributed to the once witty, but now senile and wildly inappropriate Benjamin Franklin).  But, it was always The Quince since he entered Harvard in the mid-1780s.  Eager to distance himself from his father’s shuttered personality, John Quincy turned to another delinquent Adams: his uncle, Samuel Adams.  Sam, much to the chagrin of his “lame, fugly” brother, John, had been selling his beer-like product to the hormonal adolescents of Revolutionary Boston since the Tea Party scene flamed out.  A horrendous brewer, Sam used fermented chicken stock and mule urine as his main ingredients; but as the main supplier for Boston’s teenagers, Quince and the others clung to his uncle’s choice brew, Tar & Feather’d.  Quince often lamented in his diary about his father’s strict household rules and moral platitudes: “Jefferson does it for his kids, Rutledge for his, and of course Mr. Hancock.  God, Mr. Hancock is so cool – wish he were my father.  He even lets us touch his big-ass name.  Why am I forbade to drink at all?  Father could get a clue and become a cool parent and let us drink in the house.  I mean, we’re going to get hammered anyway, why not in the safety of our own homes.  That’s what cool parents do…like John!  He even lets us call him by his first name!”  The simultaneous move to a Harvard dorm and befriending of his seedy uncle unleashed a new, coke-riddled, binge-drinking John Quincy to the world.  On a particularly uninhibited Saturday night, Quincy outdrank the Russian ambassador’s son in a classic Russian drinking game of “Drink Vodka, No Die.”  Hours after the ambassador’s son had passed out, Quincy kept at it until he topped off the feat by kegstanding one of his uncle’s mules.  Dazed, he raised his fists in glory to the chant of “Quince! Quince!”  Short on funds after graduation and already annoyed by his drunken uncle’s Boston-style racist rants, John Quincy realized the irony of his situation.  In order to continue his party/socialite lifestyle he needed to enter into politics – the only line of work in which he had connections, connections that would prove to be vital.  While working as secretary of state and bangin’ the secretary [Adams Five!], Quince became increasingly frantic due to Spain’s incursion into Latin America, impeding Adams’ cocaine supplier.  The Quince’s desperate plea for a continuous supply for coke also turned out to be one of the defining moments of his political career: The Monroe Doctrine.  In short, “any attempt to colonize or encroach on either North America or South America will be treated as an act of aggression and treated as such.  My boy Lopez will take a whaler’s paddle to your kneecaps and wish you would’ve been born a pussy-footin’ Virginian because daddy ain’t gettin’ no snow.”  The last sentence was struck from the document at the behest of Monroe.  Two liver transplants and a deviated septum later, The Quince put down the beer bong in 1848 and passed away with a grand legacy of foreign service and no sense of smell.