Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (48 page)

Charles Lindbergh.
His father was a U.S. congressman. During a visit to the Capitol as a boy, he locked the doors of the bathroom and threw lightbulbs onto the street below.

Charlie Brown.
If he were a real person, he'd be four and a half feet tall: his head would take up two of those feet, his body another two feet, and his legs six inches. Also, his head would be two feet wide.

Charles Barkley.
After Tonya Harding called herself the “Charles Barkley of figure skating,” Barkley said this: “My initial response was to sue her for defamation of character, but then I realized that I had no character.”

Charles Darwin.
Born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln, Darwin originally wanted to be a doctor, but had to give it up because he “wasn't smart enough.”

Charlie Chaplin.
His mansion was next door to notorious Hollywood rake John Barrymore's. Chaplin installed a telescope to spy on his neighbor's nightly exploits.

Charlie Chan.
From 1925 to 1949, there were 47 movies made about the fictional Chinese detective. Six actors played Chan—not one was Chinese.

To most people, the banana peel is little more than a convenient wrapper around the fruit. We told you the history of the banana on page 143…but it turns out the peel has a story too.

Early 20th-century cities had a huge garbage problem. In those days, litter was a part of urban life—it was everywhere. In the wealthier areas of town, streets were cleaned on a regular basis, but in the poorer neighborhoods, they weren't. The result: the streets were polluted with rotting food, horse manure, and trash.

And then came the banana. By the late 1890s, better transportation methods made the banana so cheap that it became a common snack food, particularly popular among the working class. What happened to the peel after the banana was eaten? It ended up on the street.

Magazines, such as
Harper's Weekly
warned that “whosoever throws banana skins on the sidewalk does a great unkindness to the public, and is quite likely to be responsible for a broken limb.” The
Sunday School Advocate
told the story of a man who slipped and broke his leg, which had to be amputated. Unable to work, he saw his family end up in a poorhouse. “All this sorrow,” the
Advocate
said, “was caused by the bit of banana peel which Miss Sweet-tooth dropped on the sidewalk.”

Banana peels were certainly no worse than all the other refuse on the street. But they were bright yellow, which made them highly visible, so they quickly became a symbol of a trash problem that was already out of control…and getting worse.

New York was the first city to seriously address the trash problem. The police department had been responsible for keeping the streets clean, but the men appointed by the police often did little more than just collect their paychecks. In 1895 Col. George E. Waring, Jr. was appointed the new Commissioner of Streets, assigned to overhaul the ineffective street-cleaning system. A military
man, he required his sanitation workers to wear white uniforms and and instilled a sense of pride in them. Parades of the uniformed street cleaners impressed city residents and slowly raised public awareness about the importance of clean streets.

It would be years before anti-littering and “Beautify America” campaigns permanantly changed the national landscape. But the banana was the turning point. The new science of city sanitation spread to other cities, and within a few years the banana peel, once a symbol of filth and ignorance, became synonymous with the movement for clean city streets.

Is the banana peel just trash? Some people claim it has beneficial uses:

• To get rid of a wart, tape a one-inch square of banana peel over the wart, inside part against your skin. Change the dressing every day or so until the wart is gone—probably within a month or two.

• Use the same treatment to get rid of a splinter. Tape a piece of peel over the splinter. By morning the enzymes (or something) in the peel should bring the splinter to the surface.

• To draw the color from a bruise, hold a banana peel over it for 10 to 30 minutes.

• In the late 1960s, a rumor spread that the inner part of the peel contained an hallucinogenic substance called
banadine.
Supposedly one could smoke it and get legally high. It didn't work (trust Uncle John), but
for historical purposes only
, here's the recipe:

1. Take 15 pounds of ripe yellow bananas. 2. Peel them. 3. Scrape off the insides of the skins with a knife. 4. Put all scraped material into a large pot and add water. Boil for three to four hours until it gets a pastelike consistency. 5. Spread this paste on cookie sheets and dry it in an oven for about 20 minutes. This will result in a fine black powder (banadine), which you roll into a cigarette and smoke. Supposedly you'll feel something after smoking three or four. (Unfortunately, it's a really bad headache.)

• To relieve the headache you just got from smoking a banana peel, tape or hold the inner side of a banana peel to the forehead and the nape of the neck. Supposedly the peels increase the electrical conductivity between the two spots.

We're back with one of our most popular features. Remember the rule of thumb for an urban legend: if a wild story sounds a bit too “perfect” to be true, then it probably isn't.

T
HE LEGEND:
A young woman who lives near a beach becomes pregnant but swears it's a mistake. It turns out that she accidentally swallowed microscopic octopus eggs while swimming and has a baby octopus growing inside her, spreading its tentacles to various parts of her body.

HOW IT SPREAD:
The story was first published in the
Boston Traveler
in the 1940s and is kept alive mainly in coastal towns.

THE TRUTH:
No medical records have ever been found to verify this story, but the universal fear of foreign bodies growing inside us keeps it afloat. Similar legends exist about eating pregnant cockroaches in fast food.

THE LEGEND:
The Chevy Nova had dismal sales in Latin American countries because in Spanish the word
Nova
sounds like
no va
, which translates to “doesn't go.”

HOW IT SPREAD:
It began circulating in business manuals and seminars in the 1980s warning of the follies of failing to do adequate market research before releasing products in foreign markets. It spread from there to newspaper columnists. (Even Uncle John was duped—we included it in
The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader
.)

THE TRUTH:
When Chevrolet first released the Nova in Mexico, Venezuela, and other Spanish-speaking countries in 1972, the car sold just fine, even better than expected in Venezuela. According to
www.snopes.com's
Urban Legends page, the very nature of the tale is absurd:

Assuming that Spanish speakers would naturally see the word “Nova” as equivalent to the phrase “no va” and think, “Hey, this car doesn't go!” is akin to assuming that English speakers would spurn a dinette set sold under the name “Notable” because nobody wants a dinette set that doesn't include a table.

THE LEGEND:
Teenagers drive around looking for open car windows at red traffic lights, yell, “Spunkball!” and throw a gasoline-soaked rag with a lit firecracker connected to it, hoping to start a fire inside the vehicle.

HOW IT SPREAD:
Via e-mail, beginning in February 2000.

THE TRUTH:
This is another variation on a common urban legend—the “gang initiation” legend. (Like the one about someone who flashed a friendly warning at an oncoming car without lights, only to be shot dead by recently-initiated gang members.) No police reports or news items exist to substantiate either legend. The “spunkball” e-mail looked even more credible when the name Bea Maggio, FCLS, Allstate Insurance Co., began appearing underneath it. After reading it, she supposedly passed it along to some friends—not in a company capacity—but just as a regular concerned (and duped) citizen. Her name stuck with the e-mail, giving it an “official” look, but have no fear, there's nothing official about it.

THE LEGEND:
Walt Disney's body was cryogenically stored after he died in 1966, with instructions to reanimate him when the technology is available. He's supposedly stored underneath “The Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at Disneyland.

HOW IT SPREAD:
The story began in the early 1970s, but who started it remains unknown. Disney's slow decline in health, his family-only funeral, and the fact that the public was not notified of his death until
after
he was buried all added fuel to the legend. It was given new life when it was reported in two unauthorized—and widely discredited—Disney biographies that were published in the late 1980s.

THE TRUTH:
No documented evidence exists anywhere claiming this to be true. Disney's daughter Diane said in 1972, “There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that my father, Walt Disney, wished to be frozen. I doubt that my father had ever heard of cryonics.” He wasn't frozen; in fact, he was cremated and buried in the Forest Hills cemetery in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles. Disney's very private life, along with his cult status, has put him in the same league with Elvis and Marilyn as a target for urban legends.

Uncle John was always embarrassed by his golf game…until he read these stories of big-time blunders made by big-time golfers.

G
olfer:
Bobby Cruickshank

Flub:
Cruickshank was leading by two strokes in the final round of the 1934 U.S. Open. At the 11th hole, he looked on in dismay as his drive plopped into a creek. But to his surprise, the ball bounced off a submerged rock and rolled onto the green less than 10 feet from the hole. Cruickshank was so happy he tossed his club in the air and shouted thanks to God. The club came down and hit him in the head, knocking him flat on the ground. He got up after a few moments, but never quite recovered. He finished third.

Golfer:
Gary Player

Flub:
Player was in the lead at Huddersfield, England, in 1955, but on the final hole, he needed a par four to win. His second shot landed near the green, a few inches from a stone wall. Because there was no room for a backswing and he didn't want to waste a stroke knocking the ball clear of the wall, Player decided to ricochet the ball off the wall. It didn't work out exactly the way he planned. The ball bounced back and hit him in the face. Player was knocked for a loop and was penalized two strokes for “impeding the flight of the ball.” He lost the tournament.

Golfer:
Elaine Johnson

Flub:
Johnson once drove a ball that hit a tree, bounced back, and landed in her bra. “I'll take the two-stroke penalty,” she said, “but I'll be damned if I'm going to play the ball where it lies.”

Golfer:
Andy Bean

Flub:
Bean was playing in the 1983 Canadian Open when his ball came to rest a mere two inches from the cup on the 15th green. Just to be cute, he tapped the ball into the cup using the grip of his putter instead of the head. Oops. He had forgotten about Rule 19, which states that “the ball shall be fairly struck at with the head of the club and must not be pushed, scraped or spooned.” Bean was assessed a two-stroke penalty, which came back to haunt him when he lost the match…by two strokes.

When someone passes away and their remains are buried or cremated, it's said they are being “laid to rest.” For some, the journey is just beginning.

Claim to Fame:
18th-century explorer and American frontiersman

Final Resting Place:
Near Charette, Missouri…or maybe Frankfort, Kentucky

Details:
If you owned a cemetery and wanted to attract new customers, how would you do it? One trick: a celebrity endorsement. Living celebrity pitchmen are best, but dead celebrities aren't bad either, because they can't complain.

That's how Daniel Boone ended up in Frankfort. When he died in the backwoods of Missouri in September 1820, he was buried in a small graveyard on a farm near Charette, in accordance with his wishes. But in 1845, the Capital Cemetery Company of Frankfort, Kentucky, started looking around for a famous American to bury in its new cemetery in the state capital. Boone was the perfect candidate: he was one of the founders of Kentucky and though he eventually left the state over a land dispute and swore he'd never return, he was still considered a hero.