There’s a big house up a sharp drive at the dead end of our canyon. There’s a ‘For Sale’ sign laying in the brush off the drive. I take down the number to see what they want for it. Not five seconds into the conversation, the woman at the real estate office tells me its a ‘White Elephant’. She then told me the price. I asked her if she knew where the term came from. She informed me she could care less, was busy, and to call back when I wanted to buy a house…Guess I’ll tell you guys…Back when the British were conquering third world nations to get masts for their Navy, they had to go through a certain province in India to get through the Kyber pass. All of the disembarking troops started from this point. Now, the Maharajah of this domain not only didn’t want the British coming through, he also had a huge problem of his own making. He had made a big mistake, years earlier…The King, while out on a tiger hunting expedition, spots a baby white elephant in a small herd of his subjects that lived nearby. He was just enamored with the creature. He had to have it for his private zoo. Since this village still owed on its annual taxes to the King, he waves their taxes for the year, and takes possession of the delightful animal. The King shows off his new prized addition to his menagerie, while also putting forth an edict that a white elephant is to never do any work and to be pampered and well cared for…Jump forward a few years. The King is going broke. So many of his subjects brought baby white elephant calves to avoid taxes, he was ready to rip his beard out. Now, he also had about sixty wives. His former first lady, now long cast out of the inner circle, tells the King that she can take care of his problem, if he makes her top dog again. He agrees. She arranges to have each new British regiment, take a gift of a royal white elephant, with all its trappings, after a good bye feast with the King. Not wanting to offend the King, or, piss off the English Queen, they just put the new elephant with their own elephants they used to carry cannons. It was months before all the regiments realized that they had been had. They were all stuck with beasts that ate all day, couldn’t work, and seemed to live forever. Thus, when the Brits returned home, it was stuck in their vocabulary. If it’s big, worthless, and you can’t get rid of something, that, my friends, became a ‘White Elephant’…
