Author: Richard Daybell

A writer of fiction and other stuff who lives in Vermont where winters are long and summers as short as my attention span.

November 13, 1953: When Red, Red Robin Comes Bobbin’ Along

Posted on by Richard Daybell

In the early 50s, folks worked themselves up into a real dither searching for Bolsheviks here, there, wherever they may be hiding. There was a commie round every corner; any person you met might be a secret pinko, hoping to lead you down the slippery slope to socialism and the dreaded one world.

We remember Joseph McCarthy and the infamy of his search for traitors in the State Department, Hollywood and the PTA. But there were many McCarthy wannabes – good folk just itching to unveil a neighbor or loved one’s clandestine proclivities and nefarious schemes to indoctrinate the unaware.

Mrs. Thomas J. White of the Indiana Textbook Commission, was a bit of a zealot when it came to finding Communist propaganda in the seemingly innocent written word. On November 13, 1953, she announced an amazing discovery in textbooks used by the state’s schools. She called for the banning of the book Robin Hood and any references to it.

There was, she said, “a Communist directive in education now to stress the story of Robin Hood because he robbed the rich and gave it to the poor. That’s the Communist line. It’s just a smearing of law and order and anything that disrupts law and order is their meat.” On somewhat of a roll, she went on to attack Quakers because they “don’t believe in fighting wars.” This philosophy, she argued, played into communist hands.

Not everyone in Indiana jumped on her bandwagon. Reacting to criticism, White claimed that she never argued for the actual removal of offensive texts, but reiterated her position that the “take from the rich and give to the poor” theme was the Communist’s favorite policy. “Because I’m trying to get Communist writers out of textbooks, my name is mud. Evidently I’m drawing blood or they wouldn’t make such an issue out of it.” The response to Mrs. White’s charges was mixed.

Indiana’s governor defended the Quakers, but sidestepped the textbook issue. The superintendent of education, having it both ways, said that the book should not be banned, but agreed that Communists had twisted the meaning of the Robin Hood legend. Commentators throughout the world were thoroughly amused. The “enrollment of Robin Hood in the Communist Party can only make sensible people laugh,” said the Russians. Even the current sheriff of Nottingham chimed in: “Robin Hood was no Communist.”

Robin Hood was spared, free to rob from the rich another day. Other books during the Red Scare were not so fortunate: The Grapes of Wrath, Civil Disobedience, 1984, Johnny Got His Gun to name a few. Hollywood also felt the pressure to produce pro-American stories. And then there was that other obviously Communist-inspired phenomenon, rock and roll.  We won’t even mention those merry men.

November 12, 1933: It Came from Beneath the Sea

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Hugh Gray was walking along a loch after church when he spotted a brouhaha in the nearby water. As he looked on a massive creature rose up from the lake. The quick-thinking Scotsman took several pictures of it (why he had a camera when he had been to church is anyone’s guess). Only one of the pictures he took on November 12, 1933, turned out; it looked a lot like a plesiosaur frolicking in the water. Some naysayers suggest it looked more like a dog carrying a stick swimming towards the camera, but the legend of the Loch Ness Monster was born nevertheless, as was the science of cryptozoology, the study of animals that don’t exist (such as Bigfoot and Rudy Giuliani).

While Nessie, as those on a first-name basis call it, is a bona fide cryptid, the monster that showed up on a beach just south of Florence, Oregon, on November 12, 1970, was not. It was the real thing – an 8-ton, 45-foot-long sperm whale. For a while the creature, which had been dead for some time, was a curiosity for locals and visitors alike, something more dramatic than the typical flotsam and seashells they usually found on the beach. But then it began to smell.

The task of dealing with the carcass fell to the state Highway Division, and it presented a monster problem. If the carcass were buried, it would simply be uncovered by the ocean tides. Oregon officials consulted U.S. Navy officials (division of cetacean disposal) and hatched the ingenious plan to blast the behemoth into a billion bits of blubber using a bunch of dynamite – little morsels that would then be devoured by seagulls.

The engineer in charge of the operation said that he wasn’t exactly sure how much dynamite would be needed, but a half ton of dynamite was finally applied to the carcass. Walter Umenhofer, a military veteran with explosives training, happened to be beachcombing at the scene. He warned the engineer that the amount of dynamite he was using was a tad excessive – 20 sticks was about right, not the 20 cases that were being used. Umenhofer said the engineer was not interested in his advice.

Needless to say, the explosion didn’t go as planned. The blast pulverized only part of the whale, sending pieces soaring — not toward the ocean, as hoped, but toward people watching from the dunes. No onlookers were seriously hurt, but they were pelted by bits of smelly blubber. And as an added thanks for butting in, Walter Umenhofer’s brand-new Oldsmobile was flattened by a chunk of falling blubber after the blast. He had just bought the Ninety-Eight in Eugene, during a “Get a Whale of a Deal” promotion.

After onlookers scurried away, the Highway Division crew buried the remaining whale. The seagulls who were supposed to dine on whale tidbits were found wandering in a daze in Utah and Wyoming.

November 11, 1817: If You Believe This You’ll Swallow Anything

Posted on by Richard Daybell

When New Yorkers paid their $1 admission price to enter St. John’s Hall swordon November 11, 1817, they were prepared to be amazed. And amazed they were, by an Indian juggler Ramo Sammee (also known as Senna Samma or Samaa because to Americans all Indian names sound alike).

What New Yorkers witnessed that day was not just another juggling act; no, Ramo stupefied the spectators by swallowing a sword. Now Indian street performers had been swallowing swords for centuries — along with climbing ropes into mid-air and staring down cobras –but this was a first for this continent. Sword swallowing in this country presented its own kind of danger as demonstrated later that month by the announcement that Ramo would be swallowing a new sword of American manufacture as “a substitute for the one lately stolen from him by some villain.”

Ramo continued to swallow that sword and others, gaining a certain fame, until his death in 1850. Live by the sword . . .

Those who followed Ramo, particularly in this country, sought to distinguish themselves with longer swords, multiple swords, hot swords, cutlasses, bayonets and even glowing neon Star-Wars swords.

The Sword Swallowers Association International (yes, there is one) reports that there are fewer than a dozen professional sword swallowers actively performing today. That led the association to create World Sword Swallowers Day (yes, there is one) “to honor and celebrate these courageous and daring performers” and to bring together dozens of amateurs and professionals for a sword swallowing extravaganza. The celebrations help raise funds for the Injured Sword Swallowers Relief Fund (yes, there are injuries).

And occasional deaths. But — mea culpa for misleading you — Ramo Sammee did not die by the sword.

November 10, 1801: Offenders Offending the Offended

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Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries had little use for European customs. One European practice they could cozy up to, however, was dueling — a practice that brought a veneer of sophistication to killing another person. The hoi polloi didn’t duel, only gentlemen dueled.

It was all very civilized. It even had it’s own ‘according to Hoyle’ rule book, the Code Duello, imported from Ireland, which spelled out 26 specific do’s and don’ts, right down to the hours during which duel challenges could be made and the number of wounds necessary to satisfy one’s honor.

The typical duel played out in this manner: An offended party would send a challenge to the offender (through a second, of course; the two primaries were not allowed to speak to each other lest they might resort to ungentlemanly name-calling). If the offender apologized, the matter ended, at least until the offender once again offended which he usually did.  If the offender refused to make nice, he chose the weapons and the time and place of the duel.  An apology could stop the proceedings at any time right up to the pulling of the trigger or the thrusting of the rapier or whatever.

As sophisticated as dueling was, it nevertheless began to annoy people. And on November 10, 1801, Kentucky (of all places) became the first state to adopt a law “to prevent the evil practice of dueling.” Dueling would bring a fine of $500 (about $15,000 today). Still, dueling persisted, so in 1849 a provision was added to the Kentucky state constitution requiring all public officeholders and all members of the bar to take an oath, swearing they had never, nor would they ever, take part in a duel.

We all know that once something worms its way into a constitution it pretty much stays there forever. And so it is today a source of amusement and/or embarrassment that anyone taking an oath of office in Kentucky must affirm (speaking the words right out loud) that he or she has “not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this State nor out of it, nor have I sent or accepted a challenge to fight a duel with deadly weapons, nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge, nor aided or assisted any person thus offending, so help me God.”

November 9, 1918: And Mona Lisa Isn’t Talking

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Guillaume Apollinaire, who died on this date in 1918, was a French poet and critic of the early 20th century. He was a fan of modern art and is credited with coining the word surrealism. To the French police, however he was just another voleur, but certainly not a petty one. Seven years earlier, they had arrested and jailed him on suspicion of aiding and abetting the theft of the Mona Lisa and a number of Egyptian statuettes from the Louvre. It didn’t help his case that he had once called for the Louvre to be burnt down.

The strange case began early on a Monday morning. Before the Louvre was opened for visitors,the Mona Lisa was stolen by a thief who acted quickly when no guards were around. The theft wasn’t reported until Tuesday; guards who noticed that the painting was missing assumed it had been removed to be photographed. Once museum officials realized the truth, however, all hell broke loose. The Louvre went into lock-down. Police arrived to question the staff, re-enact the crime and dust for fingerprints, a newfangled detection technique. The French border was sealed, departing ships and trains thoroughly searched.

By the time the museum re-opened nine days later, the theft was on the front page of newspapers around the world. Tips poured in from amateur sleuths, clairvoyants and your everyday would-be experts. Thousands of people lined up at the Louvre just to see the empty spot where the painting once hung. More it seems than ever viewed the painting itself, which was not widely known outside the art world until it was stolen (Nat King Cole had not yet sung about it). Giving the whole situation a Kafkaesque touch, Franz Kafka was among those who came to view the empty space.

The plot thickened (as plots will) when a mystery man called the Paris-Journal, which was offering a reward for information about the crime. The man showed up at the newspaper’s offices with a small statue, one of several that he claimed to have stolen from the Louvre. The anonymous thief turned out to be a bisexual con man named Honoré Joseph Géry Pieret who had a questionable relationship with Apollinaire. Pieret implicated Apollinaire and he was arrested.

Under pressure, Apollinaire, admitted that Pieret had sold the pilfered works to his friend Pablo Picasso. Thinking they might have discovered a dandy crime ring, police arrested Picasso as well. Although Picasso admitted buying the objects, prosecutors couldn’t build a case that either he or Apollinaire had stolen them, much less the Mona Lisa, and both of them went free.

And what happened to the Mona Lisa? Conspiracy theorists tell us it was never found, that museum officials had to hire Leonardo DaVinci to paint a replacement. “How about a real smile this time,” they suggested.

But She’s Showing It All

This just in:  French experts have determined that a nude portrait that has been hiding at the Conde Museum at the Palace of Chantilly, north of the French capital is actually Mona Lisa herself.  She has been going under the alias Monna Vanna.  Curators have determined that Leonardo himself had a hand in the charcoal work.  Shocking!

November 8, 1957: Return with Us Now to Those Days of Legroom

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Pan Am’s Flight 7 was known as the Clipper Romance of the Skies, an around-the-world flight that originated in San Francisco and flew west, eventually arriving in Philadelphia. The plane itself was a Boeing B-377 Stratocruiser. Introduced in 1947, the aircraft was the biggest, the fastest, and the fanciest, called “the ocean liner of the air.”

Pullman-style sleeping berths, separate men’s and women’s dressing rooms, a cocktail lounge in the belly of the airplane, reclining seats that offered 60 inches of something they used to call legroom. Seven-course dinners, with champagne and caviar, catered by Maxim’s of Paris. You could happily go through searched luggage and patdowns for this, but there weren’t any.

Of course it was expensive – a $1,600 round-the-world fare (equivalent to $10,500 today).

When the November 8, 1957, flight left the gate shortly before noon for its first leg, the nine-and-a-half-hour flight to Honolulu, 38 passengers were aboard. They included the vice president of Renault Auto, a French flying ace, the general manager of Dow Chemical in Tokyo, a well-known Phoenix dress designer, a Louisville surgeon, a spice company honcho, and a U.S. Air Force major on a mysterious mission to southeast Asia with a briefcase full of classified documents.

At 4:04 p.m., the flight captain radioed a routine position report from an altitude of 10,000 feet to the Pontchartrain, a Coast Guard weather ship stationed in the Pacific. Romance of the Skies had just passed the point of no return, on course and on schedule, 1,160 miles from Honolulu and about 10 miles east of the Pontchartrain. The skies were clear and the seas calm, the sun low in the western sky. The plane was never heard from again.

The biggest air-sea search since the disappearance of Amelia Earhart ended just days later with the discovery of 19 bodies and floating wreckage about 1,000 miles northeast of Honolulu. And the little that was recovered from the flight only deepened the mystery. There had been no distress call; the location of the debris showed that the Clipper was well off course; and, finally, elevated levels of carbon monoxide were found in several of the recovered bodies.

The definitive cause of the accident has never been determined. Speculation includes a malfunctioning engine, a disgruntled flight crew member, and insurance related fraud  involving an explosive device. And then there’s that mysterious major.

Way Bigger Than a Breadbox

To most people, Dorothy Kilgallen was known as a long-time panelist on the television game show What’s My Line? (Does ‘Is it bigger than a breadbox?’ ring a bell?) or as a high society New York newspaper columnist. She was also throughout her career a rather enterprising reporter. Her journalism coming out party was a 1936 race around the world against two male colleagues. Her cabled columns and a book Girl Around the World made her a celebrity.

In 1963, she once again took up the role of daring reporter. According to a biographer, Kilgallen was devastated when President Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. She was among those who refused to believe that Oswald acted alone. She spent the next two years in her own investigation of the assassination, gathering evidence and conducting interviews. She was the only reporter to interview Jack Ruby, and she somehow got hold of an advance copy of the Warren Commission report even before President Lyndon Johnson had seen it. (He was miffed.)

So was J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI and CIA both began to follow her and her friends. She was interrogated, and her phone was tapped. In 1965, she told her lawyer that she was going to break the real story and that it would be the scoop of the century. She planned to meet a secret informant in New Orleans.

On November 7, she appeared on What’s My Line? as usual, and afterward wound down with a few drinks along with other members of the show before returning to her apartment. The next day — November 8, 1965 — she was found dead, sitting up in bed in a blue bathrobe and still wearing in her hair a floral accessory from the previous evening. On her nightstand, an empty sleeping pill bottle and a drinking glass. The police, playing the bumblers they traditionally play in detective fiction, found nothing suspicious. Her death was attributed to an accidental overdose.

Loose ends included the fact that her accumulated evidence had gone missing, that she was found in a bed she never slept in wearing clothes she never wore to bed, that she had recently bought a gun telling her hairdresser she was ‘scared for her life.’ Lawyer and author Mark Shaw suggested in a 2016 book The Reporter Who Knew Too Much that Kilgallen’s death was orchestrated by a mobster who feared her book would name him as the mastermind behind Kennedy’s assassination.

November 7, 1811: Tippecanoe and So Do You

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Long before the confederacy of southern states, United States forces faced the uprising of a confederacy under the Shawnee leader and Native American folk hero Tecumseh who had visions of a Midwestern Indian nation allied with the British. Confederacy forces led by Tecumseh’s brother Tenskawatawa (One with Open Mouth) met government forces under the direction of William Henry Harrison, Governor of the Indian Territory, on November 7, 1811, in the Battle of Tippecanoe (and Tyler too).

The battle took place in Indiana, at the confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash too Rivers. The day gave government forces an important political and symbolic victory and dealt a devastating blow to Tecumseh’s confederacy. Public opinion in the United States blamed the entire brouhaha on buttinsky Brits. The War of 1812 broke out only six months later.

The Battle of Tippecanoe (and Tyler too) also served as an important springboard for Harrison’s political ambitions which culminated in his becoming president in 1841. At the age of 68 years and 23 days when inaugurated, Harrison was the oldest president to take office until Ronald Reagan in 1981. During the campaign, Democrats characterized Harrison as an out-of-touch old fart (One Who Sits in Log Cabin Drinking Hard Cider). Harrison and running mate John Tyler (and Tippecanoe too) turned the tables on the Dems, adopting the log cabin and hard cider as campaign symbols along with one of the most famous campaign slogans ever (Tippecanoe and you know who).

Harrison caught cold shortly after his inauguration and went quickly from bad to worse. Harrison’s doctors tried applications of opium, castor oil, leeches, and Virginia snakeweed too. But to show his disdain for modern medicine, Harrison became delirious and died. He served only 32 days in office – some would say the perfect tenure for any politician.

 

November 6, 1982: Antifreeze and Old Lace

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In Arsenic and Old Lace, a delightfully dark stage play adapted into a movie by Frank Capra, Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) has an eccentric family that includes two brothers – one of whom thinks he’s Theodore Roosevelt digging the Panama Canal in the basement, the other a killer who’s had plastic surgery to make him look like Boris Karloff – and two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with home-made elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and “just a pinch” of cyanide. Generally, poisoners aren’t as sweet as these two old ladies.

Take the case of Shirley Allen, arrested on November 6, 1982, charged with murdering her sixth husband Lloyd. Shirley certainly wasn’t as sweet as the two old ladies, nor nearly as successful. Her first attempt at poisoning was believed to be an early husband, Joe Sinclair, back in 1968. When his coffee began to taste odd, he didn’t buy the idea that it was the newest flavor of the month, reasoning that Juan Valdez Free Trade Almond Praline Decaf should not give him internal injuries.  Joe went to the police, but no charges were filed. He filed for divorce, however.

Another husband, John Gregg, was not so lucky. He died a year after he married Shirley. He must have sensed that something was amiss because he changed the beneficiary of his insurance policy shortly before he died. Shirley got nothing. As you might guess, she was miffed. A pink-haired, large-bosomed barfly was rather happy, however.

Lloyd Allen was Shirley’s sixth husband. He began to complain of a strange taste in his beer. When Shirley said that it was an iron supplement that would put a tiger in his tank, Lloyd believed her and promptly died. This time she was named as beneficiary of a $25,000 life insurance, but alas her daughter told police about the doctored beers. Toxicology reports confirmed that Lloyd’s body tissue contained a lethal amount of ethyl glycol – antifreeze. Shirley went to prison for life. She was never allowed to work in the prison cafeteria.

 

November 5, 1975: And Stop Calling Me Dopey

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On November 5, 1975, Travis Walton and a half dozen co-workers had finished up their day’s work in the Apache-Sitgreaves National forest near Snowflake, Arizona. As they departed the forest in a pickup truck, they found themselves facing a huge hovering subject blocking the road a hundred feet ahead of them and making an unfriendly buzzing sound. It was of course saucer-shaped.

Travis, evidently the bravest of the bunch, jumped out of the truck and approached the saucer. It is unclear whether he planned to welcome it to Earth, say take me to your leader or tell them to get the hell out of the way before he called in the army with its grenade launchers, bazookas and itchy trigger fingers. It really didn’t matter because before he could say anything that saucer up and zapped him with a nasty beam of light that knocked him unconscious.

Naturally his coworkers ran to his aid. Not really. Actually, they turned that truck around and sped off.

Travis was missing for five days. During those five days, he says, he awoke in what appeared to be a hospital being poked and prodded by three creatures that looked a lot like Dopey of the Seven Dwarfs. They were little, so Travis attempted to beat them up, but was himself subdued by a big guy in a helmet. The big guy and several cohorts forced a plastic mask over Travis’ face and he once again passed out. He awoke on a lonely stretch of highway with the saucer speeding off into the twilight.

Fortunately for Travis, a $5,000 National Enquirer prize for the best true account of an alien abduction took some of the sting out of his unpleasant experience.

Please To Remember, the Fifth of November

As if the juvenile delinquents of the world couldn’t get in enough trouble on Halloween, they get another opportunity to misbehave, at least in England, on Guy Fawkes Day. On this day, November 5, it has long been customary to dress up a scarecrow figure and, sitting it in a chair, parade it through the streets. Those unlucky enough to be passers by are solicited for cash contributions with shouts of “Pray remember Guy” which the passers by hear as “Your money or your life.” Once the revelers have extorted enough money, they built a big bonfire and merrily burn their scarecrow, pretending it is Guy Fawkes or the Pope or the Prime Minister or their history teacher.

Who Is Guy Fawkes, You Ask

Guy Fawkes was a protester some four hundred years ago, a member of a group of English Catholics who were dismayed at having a Protestant as King of England.  Their protests eventually moved beyond the verbal assaults (“Hi de hay, hi de ho, King James the First has got to go”) down the slippery slope to gunpowder, treason and plot.

Guy Fawkes was born in England in 1570 but as a young man went off to Europe to fight in the Eighty Years’ War (not the entire war, of course) on the side of Catholic Spain.  He hoped that in return Spain would back his Occupy the Throne movement in England.  Spain wasn’t interested.

Guy  returned to England and fell in with some fellow travelers.  Realizing that the Occupy the Throne movement required removing the person who was currently sitting on it, the group plotted to assassinate him.  They rented a spacious undercroft beneath Westminster Palace  where they amassed a good supply of gunpowder.  Guy Fawkes was left in charge of the gunpowder.

Unfortunately, someone snitched on them and Fawkes was captured on November 5.  Subjected to waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation methods, Fawkes told all and was condemned to death. (Evidently, James I was not amused.)  Just before his scheduled execution, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold, breaking his neck and cheating the English out of a good hanging.

Since then the English have celebrated the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 with the November 5 celebration, an integral part of which is burning Guy Fawkes (and sometimes others) in effigy.  Seems like a long time to hold a grudge.

November 4, 1879: The Incorruptible Cashier

Posted on by Richard Daybell

James Ritty was by his own description a dealer in pure whiskies, fine wines and cigars. Common folk would probably just refer to him as a saloonkeeper. He opened his first saloon in Dayton, Ohio, in 1871. His life as the owner of a saloon was not without its angst; Ritty was certain his bartenders – a disreputable lot – were pocketing a portion of his profits. In those days, beer was but a nickel a stein or fifteen cents a bucket and came with a free lunch of boiled eggs, sardines, blind robins (little nuggets made from salt and herring), cold meats, pigs’ feet, pickles, pretzels, crackers, and bread. Every penny counted.

In 1878, on a steamboat trip to Europe but worrying about the saloon back home, Ritty became fascinated by a mechanism that counted how many times the ship’s propeller went around. Could something like this record the cash transactions made at his saloon? As soon as he returned home to Dayton, Ritty and his brother, a mechanic, began working on a design for such a device. Eventually, they devised a machine operated by pressing a key that represented a certain amount of money. The Rittys patented the design on November 4, 1879, calling it “Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier.”

They opened a small factory in Dayton to manufacture the devices while still operating the saloon. The company didn’t do all that well, and Ritty was overwhelmed by the running of two businesses, so in 1881, he sold the cash register business. The buyers were a group of investors who formed the National Manufacturing Company which was renamed the National Cash Register Company a few years later.

Free of the cash register business and able to keep those pesky bartenders honest, Ritty opened another saloon, the Pony House, in 1882, in a historic Dayton building that had been a school of French and English for young ladies. For the Pony House, Ritty had wood carvers create a 32-foot bar that looked like the interior of a passenger railcar with Honduras mahogany, hand-tooled leather, and giant mirrors . Dining, drinking and gaming were the specialties of the Pony House – along with occasional fruitless searches for young French-speaking ladies. The saloon had it’s share of notable customers: Buffalo Bill Cody once rode his horse right up to the bar; John Dillinger (who never robbed a saloon) was a regular; and Jack Dempsey frequently took his spirits, never taking part in a barroom brawl.

The Pony House building was torn down in 1967, but the bar was saved and today resides at Jay’s Seafood in Dayton.

 

If I had to live my life over, I’d live over a saloon. ~ W. C. Fields