I'm Off To See The Giant

My eyes were glued to the television set as Walter Cronkite's voice boomed out: The date is February 2, 1870. The place is Cardiff, New York, and you are there.  "You Are There" was a TV show that transported the audience back through history.  In this case, the show transported me back to the day when the oldest human fossil remains were found on a farm.

The human remains were a ten-foot tall petrified giant.  It was instantly proclaimed to be proof  of Genesis 6:4 - "there were giants in the earth in those days". 

The farmer erected a tent, and people paid 25 cents to see the giant.  The roads around the little town of Cardiff, New York, became clogged with horse-and-buggies.  The giant was named the Cardiff Giant, and was moved to Syracuse, New York, where people paid 50 cents to see the giant.

The story on television fascinated me.  But then it became more fascinating.

The Cardiff Giant was revealed as a hoax.  People still kept on coming and paying 50 cents.  P. T. Barnum got wind of the money-making hoax and offered to buy the Cardiff Giant.  His offer was rebuffed, so P. T. carved his own giant out of plaster and put it on display.  People kept on coming and kept on paying.

The details of the hoax came to light: George Hull had travelled from New York to visit his sister in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1869.  He spent one evening discussing the Bible with a Fort Dodge minister.  The minister believed that giants once roamed the earth, because Genesis said so.  George Hull was an atheist, and he decided to play a joke on people who take the Bible literally.  

He purchased a huge block of gypsum from a quarry near Fort Dodge, and transported it to Chicago.  He hired a sculptor to carve a giant man who looked dead.  The sculptor was sworn to secrecy; George Hull then moved the giant to upstate New York and buried it on his cousin's farm. 

They waited a year, and hired neighbors to dig a well in 1870 -- and you guessed it -- to dig  well right where the giant was buried.

I was 12-years-old when I watched Walter Cronkite’s show about the Cardiff Giant.  I was not surprised that people, both believers and skeptics, would pay money to see the giant even when they knew it was a hoax....or, in the case of P. T. Barnum's giant, pay money to see a hoax of a hoax.  I was not surprised because the TV show made me want to see the Cardiff Giant, and I was willing to pay money.  

I assumed that the giant had disappeared sometime in the 19th century.

However, the Internet tells me that the Cardiff Giant did not disappear.  The original hoax giant is in Cooperstown, New York.  P. T. Barnum's hoax of a hoax giant is in Michigan.

And there is now a third Cardiff Giant.  It is in Iowa.  The town of Fort Dodge decided to commemorate its role in America’s biggest hoax, and had their own giant carved forty years ago.  Since this giant is from the same quarry as the original, it is a brother of the hoax giant.

I am off to Fort Dodge, Iowa, this weekend --- where I will pay 7 dollars to see the giant.

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You can watch a 2-minute CBS Sunday Morning feature where Charles Osgood talks about the anatomically-correct giant:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnxft3_0Btw

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Camel Meatloaf

The first camel I ever saw up close was in my backyard.  It was in my backyard every day around 4 PM, grazing.

The camel had an attendant, who always greeted me as if it was OK for the camel to be in my yard.  I eventually found out that it was the sultan's camel.  Yes, it was OK for the royal camel to graze in my backyard.  

The royal camel was regal: tall with fur a uniform color, a paler version of the camelhair coats I used to see for sale in department stores back in the United States.

In Kano, Nigeria, camels were a fairly frequent sight.  They were used as beasts of burden - carrying goods or carrying people.  (The sultan's camel, however, was for ceremonial purposes.)

Then I found out that camels were edible.

An American told me that camel meat was sold in the Kano market.  Being an American, of course, he had to tell me which part of a camel is best for making hamburgers: the hump.

Isn't a camel's hump full of water?  No, that idea was from some childhood fairy tale.  A camel's hump is full of fat, which makes it ideal for grinding into hamburgers - or meatloaf.  Camel meatloaf - food for a special occasion.

Betty Daniels was coming to visit.  She lived in a part of Nigeria that had no camels - and no horses - because it was in the zone where tsetse flies lived.  When tsetse flies bite an animal, they transmit trypanosomes.  Horses and camels are not resistant to trypanosomes; so, they die.

I told my cook that we were having a dinner guest, and would he please go to the Kano market, buy some meat from the hump of a camel, and make camel meatloaf.  When Betty arrived at my house, I told her, "Betty, we are having meatloaf for dinner".  I planned to wait until she had eaten half her dinner and spring the news on her: it was camel meatloaf.  I was eager to see whether Betty would be horrified or fascinated.

The moment came, Betty was halfway through dinner, and I told her she was eating meatloaf made from the hump of a camel.  Her reaction: "Oh” and she kept on eating.  No horror, no fascination, just a plain "Oh", as if there was nothing remarkable about eating camel hump.

The abattoir, where all the meat for the Kano market is slaughtered, sits on the outskirts of the city.  I went out to take a look at it, and I observed the animals tethered outside, awaiting their destiny on the inside of the abattoir.  There were cows and there were camels.  The camels looked especially scraggly and worn down; I realized that these camels were no longer able to function as beasts of burden.  The abattoir was the end of the line for them.

After seeing these decrepid animals, I never ate camel meat again.  And the camels thanked me by putting on a special show one day.

It was the day I was taking some Swedish friends to the Kano Airport, to catch a jet plane back to Sweden.  But traffic on the airport road had to stop: there was a camel caravan crossing the road.  Camel after camel trudged past us, taking their own sweet time.

I savored the irony that my Swedish friends' trip to the airport to catch a twentieth-century mode of transportation had been slowed down by an ancient form of transportation.

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If you would like to know how to train a pet camel, here is a 12-minute video from Arizona:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvkoloNYZE4

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Jack The Ripper Died In St. Louis

Because I live in St. Louis, I am convinced that Jack the Ripper died in St. Louis.  He died on May 28, 1903, at St. John's Mercy Hospital.

His name was Francis Tumblety, and he was so appreciative of the care he received that he bequeathed his jewelry to the nuns who ran St. John’s Mercy Hospital.  The jewelry consisted of:

     - One cluster ring of 17 diamond stones 

     - One 5 stone diamond ring

     - Two imitation set rings

Tumblety grew up in Rochester, New York.  As a young boy, he made money selling pornography to the people who traveled the Erie Canal.  

As an adult, he moved from city to city.  He called himself Dr. Tumblety and made his money by selling an ointment he concocted called “Dr. Tumblety’s Pimple Banisher”, which promised to make old faces look young and beautiful.  

Tumblety sported a long moustache, and dressed elegantly.  He was often seen riding a white steed accompanied by two greyhounds on a leash.  

It seems odd that such an ostentatious man would own two cheap imitation set rings.

For a few years in the early 1860's, Tumblety lived in St. Louis, in the Lindell Hotel - the largest hotel in the world at that time.  He held card playing evenings in his hotel room, inviting only men.  When one of his guests remarked about the absence of women, Tumblety would grow livid. He would speak about how he deeply detested women, especially fallen women.  Then he would show his guests his medical museum: two cabinets filled with glass jars.  In each jar: a uterus.

In 1888, Tumblety was not living in St. Louis.  He was living in England, in the Whitechapel section of London.  Whitechapel was the locale of the five Jack the Ripper slayings in 1888…slayings of five prostitutes, or in the parlance of the times: "fallen women".

Scotland Yard arrested Tumblety, not for the slayings but for “gross indecency between men” on November 7, 1888.  He posted bond and slipped out of England to catch a ship from France to New York.  Scotland Yard sent two detectives to New York on a ship from Liverpool.  The Liverpool ship arrived before the French ship, and the two detectives met Tumblety on the dock when he reached New York.  Scotland Yard sent a supervisor a few days later.  But the policemen from Scotland Yard had no authority to arrest Tumblety on U.S. soil.

After November 7, 1888, there were no more Jack the Ripper slayings.  The fact that Scotland Yard would send three personnel to North America pinpoints Tumblety as a prime suspect.

There is now an official word for the study of Jack the Ripper: ripperology.  Each ripperologist has their own favorite prime suspect.

I am not a ripperologist, but Tumblety is my own favorite prime suspect.  Not just because of the St. Louis connection.  But also because of Annie Chapman, Jack the Ripper’s victim number two. 

When police examined Annie Chapman’s body on September 8, 1888, they saw that her uterus was missing.  It had been removed intact.  Also, missing from Annie Chapman’s left hand: two imitation set rings.

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Sherlock Holmes meets Dr. Tumblety (7 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xGFqS4ulac

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Do Not Flash The Octopus

I had heard about the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California for years, but when I finally got there, I was not prepared for how immense it is.  The place is like a theme park for aquatic life.

Tanks with jellyfish, which some people consider edible:

Tanks with sand dollars, which seem to like to stand vertically:

Tanks with anemones, which are venomous:

And a tank with an octopus, which does not like to be flashed:

I was not prepared for how immense the Monterey Bay Aquarium is, and I was not prepared for how expensive it is: $40 for an adult, $25 for a kid. That meant a family of five spent $155 to get in. I looked around; the place was overrun with kids. 

One thing I was prepared for: I knew that when I left the aquarium, I would have no interest in eating seafood.

I blame that on my mother.

Our sixth-grade class went on a field trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, one of the largest museums in the world.  Much to my disappointment, we were not going to the Hall of Dinosaurs.  Our teacher took us to the Hall of Fishes.

None of the fishes in the Hall of Fishes moved, because they were all models.  They sat in dioramas or were fastened to the wall.  I dutifully looked at all the dioramas because our teacher wanted us to, but the exhibits seemed stale.  Our hometown was surrounded by salt water on three sides, and the Hall of Fishes was noticeably lacking in the feel of walking on a sand beach, the sound of waves lapping the shore, the smell of salt air.

Having dutifully looked at dioramas, our sixth-grade class went into the American Museum of Natural History cafeteria to eat the lunches that our mothers had packed for us.  I opened up my lunch bag and found that my mother had made me a tuna fish sandwich.

Mom!!!!!  How could you do this to me?

I had just seen a life-size model of a tuna fish attached to the wall of the Hall of Fishes.  I couldn’t possibly eat tuna fish for lunch.

Nobody in my sixth grade class would trade sandwiches with me.  I went hungry that day. 

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Shirley Temple had a great time at the Codfish Ball (4-minute video).  Lobsters dancing in a row shuffle off to Buffalo…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkLjMdE9-lY

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Tying The Knot At Age 70

I stopped in a co-worker’s office and said: “I am getting married next month, and I am 70 years old.”

Her reaction: “Well, some people take a long time to make up their mind.”

My response: “It wasn’t a matter of my mind; it was a matter of the government making up its mind.”

Many people get emotional because they are going to get married; I was emotional because I could get married.

March 21, 2014 was the date for the ceremony: the day when Randy would transition from being my buddy to being both my buddy and my husband.  That date was chosen because it marked the seventeenth anniversary of us being a couple.

There are a limited number of states where we can get married. Because we wanted to get married outdoors, that narrowed the choice down to California.

We turned to Google, and typed in “Wedding Venues in California”.  The first place that Google showed us was a keeper: we looked no further.  It was The Sea Ranch Lodge, sited in a twenty-mile stretch of Pacific Ocean coastline that is under a covenant to keep its architecture in a state of harmony with nature: no one can paint the outside of their house (house exteriors must be weathered wood); no one can have a lawn; no house can block the ocean view of another house.

Randy and I signed a contract once the Sea Ranch wedding planner assured us that the weather would be perfect on March 21.

Well, on March 21, it wasn't too foggy and it wasn't too chilly as Randy and I stood on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

We were joined by 12 wedding guests and 2 wedding crashers in the form of harbor seals cavorting in the cove below us.

I was in fine form during the ceremony until they played the wedding song that Randy had chosen.  It was Natural High, sung by the strong voice of Merle Haggard, backed up by the haunting voice of Janie Fricke.  Merle and Janie sang: "You stayed with me through thick and thin..."

I lost it.  I blubbered through my vow, while putting a ring on Randy's left hand: "On this day, I re-new the promise I made to you seventeen years ago: that I will show you respect, consideration, and care.  As a sign of my commitment, I give you this ring to wear."

Since MAR 21 is World Poetry Day, I made sure that my vow rhymed.

Off to the Lodge to have Randy's son and my brother sign the wedding certificate.

Signing the wedding certificate must have put my 81-year-old brother in a romantic mood; he approached a woman in the lobby and asked her if she was a rich widow that he could sweep off her feet.

Before Randy and I went off to California, a friend asked me why we were doing this.  The basis of his question was the fact that many state governments (including our state government) will not recognize our marriage, and some state legislators are busy dreaming up new ways of discriminating against us.

The answer is that, as I entered my seventieth year, the Veterans Administration said it will recognize same-gender marriage and so will the Internal Revenue Service.

And, hopefully, hospitals will recognize our marriage, and no hospital will ever again bar Randy from visiting me while I lie in a bed in that hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.


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A YouTube video of Merle Haggard and Janie Fricke singing "Natural High" - 3 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTHRl6sATmM

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com