Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (49 page)

Reed contacted officials at nearby Fort Rucker, who decided to evacuate people from the area. They closed the roads nearby and called the bomb squad from Fort Benning in Georgia.

False Alarm:
Fort Benning’s Ordnance Explosive Detachment (OED) arrived four hours later. For about half an hour, they carefully worked on getting the object out of Ashworth’s roof. Then they announced to the press that it was a cardboard model that could be purchased at any toy store.

Local police vowed to get to the bottom of things. “The investigation is not closed,” Lt. Reed said, as the story made national news. A few days later a 14-year-old dropped by the police station to let them know it was his rocket. He’d shot it off at a nearby play-ground and had been wondering what happened to it.

BRITISH FARCE

Background:
According to the
Fortean Times:
“A suspicious-looking cardboard box was found outside a Territorial Army centre in Bristol (England) in 1993.”

False Alarm:
“The TA called the police, who in turn called an Army bomb-disposal unit, who blew up the box—to find it full of leaflets on how to deal with suspicious-looking packages.”

ANIMAL CRACKERS

Background:
On May 28,1996, an employee at the Wal-Mart Superstore in Enterprise, Alabama, found a suspicious-looking box in the parking lot. Police were called. Taking no chances, they roped off the area, then called the bomb squad at Fort Benning, Georgia.

False Alarm:
A few hours later, their Ordnance Explosive Detachment (the same ones who showed up in Level Plains) arrived by helicopter. They X-rayed the package and determined that it contained suspicious-looking wires. The store and surrounding area were evacuated. Then the package was blown up. It turned out to contain a dead armadillo.

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“My license plate says
PMS.
Nobody cuts me off.”

—Wendy Liebman

Some rumors are straight fiction, but some have a kernel of truth at the core—which makes them a little more believable. Have you heard any of these?

R
umor:
The baby face on Gerber baby food belongs to Humphrey Bogart, who modeled for the label as an infant.

Hidden fact:
Bogart’s mother
was
a commercial illustrator, and may have done some work for Gerber.

The truth:
The Gerber company credits artist Dorothy Hope Smith with designing the Gerber baby. Besides: Bogart was already 29 when Gerber baby food hit store shelves in 1928.

Rumor:
After World War II the Japanese renamed one of their cities Usa, so products manufactured there could be exported with labels that read, “made in USA.” (We reported this in BR #5.)

Hidden fact:
There really is a town in Japan called Usa, just as there are Usas in Russia, Tanzania, and Mozambique.

The truth:
Usa predates the war. The town is very small, so it doesn’t show up on every map of the country—which may contribute to the notion that it suddenly “popped up” out of nowhere. But even if a country wanted to pull such a stunt, U.S. Customs regulations wouldn’t allow it: Imported goods must be stamped with the
country
of origin, not the city.

Rumor:
If you write to the H.J. Heinz company in advance of your 57th birthday, they’ll send you a free case of Heinz products. They do it to plug their “57 Varieties” slogan.

Hidden fact:
The company actually did at one time send free cases of food to people who wrote in to say they were turning 57.

The truth:
They stopped in the 1950s. Now they won’t send you anything, except maybe a form letter.

Rumor:
“Mama” Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas choked to death on a ham sandwich in 1974.

Hidden fact:
When Cass died in 1974, it took a week for the autopsy reports to be released. In the meantime, her personal physician did speculate in newspaper interviews that she could have choked on a sandwich.

The truth:
The autopsy showed that the cause of death was actually a heart attack caused by her obesity, not choking.

Rumor:
Recently, a man somewhere in the South was chomping on an unusually hard plug of chewing tobacco. He took it out of his mouth…and discovered he’d been chewing on a human thumb.

Hidden fact:
There was a real lawsuit filed in Mississippi in 1918 that resembles this rumor. Plaintiff Bryson Pillars bought some Brown Mule chewing tobacco, chewed the first plug without incident, then started chewing the second plug. According to court records, “when the appellant tackled the second plug it made him sick, but not suspecting the tobacco, he tried another chew, and still another…while he was getting ‘sicker and sicker.’ Finally, his teeth struck something hard. On examination, he discovered a human toe.” The Supreme Court of Mississippi ruled against the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, owner of the Brown Mule brand, arguing “We can imagine no reason why, with ordinary care, human toes could not be left out of tobacco. If toes are found in chewing tobacco, it seems to us that somebody has been very careless.”

The truth:
The rumor has been circulating for more than 50 years.

Rumor:
In the 1960s the U.S. military forced the recall of U.S.S.
Nautilus
plastic submarine models. The models were so accurate that the government feared Soviet spies would buy them and learn our submarine secrets.

Hidden fact:
In 1961 Vice Admiral Hyman Rickover
did
complain that a model kit of the Polaris nuclear submarine, made by the Revell Toy Company, revealed too much—including detailed floor plans of the engine and missile compartments. (Defense contractors that made the real submarine’s missiles even used the models to demonstrate how their weapons systems worked.)

The truth:
The military complained…but the model was never recalled. Super-accurate models annoy the military even today: In 1986 the Testor Model Company offered a surprisingly accurate model of the F-19 Stealth fighter—even before the U.S. Air Force acknowledged the plane existed.

You may not have heard of Rita Rudner before, but Uncle John thinks she’s pretty funny. See what
you
think

“I want to have children while my parents are still young enough to take care of them.”

“I’m going home next week. It’s a kind of family emergency—my family is coming here.”

“My mother used to tell me she had natural childbirth. I recently found out it was
her
version of natural childbirth—she took off her makeup.”

“When I meet a man, I ask myself: ‘Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?’”

“My boyfriend and I broke up. He wanted to get married, and I didn’t want him to.”

“I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle, even though it wasn’t mine.”

“In Hollywood, a marriage is successful if it outlasts milk.” “Before I met my husband, I’d never fallen in love…though I’d stepped in it a few times.”

“My cousin married a man for money. She wasn’t real subtle about it. Instead of calling him her fiancé, she kept calling him her financee.”

“All I have to say about men and bathrooms: They’re not real specific. It seems if they hit ‘something’ they’re happy.”

On marathons
: “What would make 17,000 people want to run 26 miles? Maybe there was a Hare Krishena in back of them going, ‘Excuse me? Could I talk to you for just a second?’”

“In high school, I was voted the girl most likely to become a nun. That may not be impressive to you, but it was quite an accomplishment at the Hebrew Academy.”

What’s it like being in the yo-yo business? They say it has its ups and downs. Here’s a brief history of one of the world’s most enduring toys.

W
HODUNNIT?

• The Yo-yo is believed to be the second-oldest toy in the world, after dolls. No one knows for sure when or where it was invented: some think China, others the Philippines.

• Most yo-yo experts agree that a version of the yo-yo was used as a weapon in the Philippines as far back as prehistoric times. Hunters wrapped 20-foot leather straps around heavy pieces of flint and hurled the rock at prey. If a hunter missed, he could pull the rock back and try again. (The name “yo-yo” comes from a Filipino expression that means “come come” or “come back.”)

• Even when it fell into disuse as a weapon, the yo-yo retained an important role in Filipino culture: people used yo-yo contests to settle disputes. Yo-yoing became the national pastime of the islands. “To this day,” says one game historian, “young, rural Filipinos spend weeks creating their own custom yo-yos out of rare wood or a piece of buffalo horn.”

YO-YOS IN EUROPE

• The ancient Greeks played with yo-yos as far back as 500 B.C. They even portrayed yo-yoers in their art. In
World on a Stringy
Heliane Zeiger writes that terra-cotta yo-yos and “a piece of decorated pottery showing a youngster in a headband and tunic, playing with a yo-yo—both from the classical period in Greece—are currently on display in the Museum of Athens.”

• “In 1790,” Zeiger continues, “the yo-yo made its way from the Orient to Europe, where it became popular among the British and French aristocracies…and inherited some new names. In England the yo-yo was known as the
bandalore, quiz,
or
Prince of Wales’s toy.
(A painting from the 1700s shows King George IV, then Prince of Wales, whirling a bandalore.)”

• In France, the yo-yo picked up the nicknames
incroyabley l’emigrette,
and
jow-jou
. “One contemporary account of the French Revolution notes that several French noblemen were seen yo-yoing in the carts hauling them off to the guillotine.” And Napoleon’s soldiers amused themselves with yo-yos between battles.

Coming to America

Bandalores appeared in the United States in the 19th century. For about 100 years, they occasionally popped up as local fads in areas on the East Coast…then faded in popularity each time. They never disappeared completely but didn’t attain greater success until the early 20th century.

ENTER DONALD DUNCAN

The turning point for the yo-yo came in 1928, when a businessman named Donald Duncan happened to see Pedro Flores, owner of the Flores Yo-Yo Corporation, demonstrating yo-yos in front of his store. Duncan was impressed with the huge crowds that had gathered to watch the tricks. He figured that a mass-produced yo-yo, if heavily promoted, would make a lot of money—so in 1929 he and Flores began manufacturing yo-yos on a larger scale. A year later Duncan bought Flores out for $25,000 and renamed the company after himself.

No Strings Attached

Yo-yo historians disagree on whether Flores or Duncan deserves credit for the innovation, but the yo-yos that Duncan manufactured in 1929 boasted an important new feature: the yo-yo string was looped loosely
around
the axle (the center post between the two halves of the yo-yo), rather than being firmly secured to it. This allowed a Duncan Yo-Yo to spin freely at the end of the string. It transformed the yo-yo from a device that could only go up and down to one that could perform an endless number of tricks.

Duncan started out with just one model—the O-Boy Yo-Yo Top—but by the early 1930s had a whole line of yo-yo products…and a trademark on the name “yo-yo.” Legally, his company was the only one in the United States that could call its toy a yo-yo.

SALES HYPE

But it took more than a technical innovation to make the yo-yo a national fad. It took promotion—and Duncan was a promotional genius. He immediately created…

•
The “Yo-yo Champion.”
Many Filipinos living in the United States had played with yo-yos since they were kids. Duncan hired 42 of them (including his former business partner, Pedro Flores), gave them each the title “Champion,” and sent them on tour to demonstrate yo-yos all over the country. At its peak, the company had one demonstrator on the road for every 100,000 people in America.

•
The yo-yo contest.
To drum up local support, Duncan sponsored neighborhood yo-yo contests all over the country, awarding new yo-yos, “All American Yo-Yo Sweaters,” baseballs, gloves, bicycles, and other prizes to winners.

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