Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (14 page)

Saving Hollywood

He was right, of course. In fact, some historians credit popcorn with
saving
the movie industry during the Great Depression. Money was so tight that theaters had to resort to gimmicks to attract customers—like “dish nights” (free dishes) and “ladies nights” (girlfriends or wives got in free), etc. This cut into profits so deeply that without the extra revenue from popcorn stands, many theaters would have closed.

To a lesser degree, the same conditions prevail today. About $3 of every $4 the customer pays for a movie ticket goes to the distributor (although there’s a sliding scale; if the movie is popular enough to have an extended run, the percentage to the distributor is reduced). Often, the difference between a profit or loss for the theater is the sales of food. Popcorn accounts for 35% of all sales at the “refreshment” stand.

THE POPCORN HERO

Popcorn was still a long way from being an international agribusiness in 1941 when a 34-year-old, Purdue-educated agronomist named Orville Redenbacher decided to make popcorn his life’s work. His axiom was: “Learn one thing, but know it better than anyone else.”

The self-proclaimed “King of Popcorn” began a series of crossbreeding experiments to increase fluffiness. Up to that time, the popped grain was 15 to 20 times the size of the uncooked kernel. Redenbacher’s new strains of popcorn doubled that. They had a volume of 40 times the original kernel.

For the next three decades, Redenbacher continued his pursuit of
the perfect popcorn kernel. At least five new strains were developed and tested. Finally, in 1960, he announced his ultimate discovery—a new strain he labelled Gourmet Popcorn.

Redenbacher tried to sell it to large food companies, but no one was interested. Finally, he decided to market it himself. He planned to call it
Redbow
, a combination of his and his partner’s (Bowman) names. But a consulting firm insisted that he use his own name and photo instead.

Orville Redenbacher Gourmet Popcorn was first sold at the Marshall Fields Department Store in Chicago. Five years later, it was the leading brand in the U.S.—and popcorn had been reborn as a sophisticated snack.

Redenbacher was so closely identified with popcorn that, when his company was sold to the giant Hunt-Weston conglomerate, they kept his name on the package.

MEANWHILE...

From 1980 to 1990, two consumer products combined to double America’s popcorn consumption: the microwave oven and the VCR. People were starting to watch movies at home. When Pillsbury invented microwave popcorn in 1982, it was suddenly simple to make popcorn part of the experience.

A year later, Redenbacher developed the first “shelf-stable” microwave popcorn. “Pillsbury came out with the first microwave popcorn,” he explained, “but it had to be refrigerated to preserve the fat and everything that’s in there to pop it with. ‘Shelf-stable’ meant we could put it on the shelf for a minimum of seven months [without spoiling].” This shifted popcorn consumption back to where it all started—the home. Today about 90% of retail popcorn sales are microwave popcorn.

POPCORN TRIVIA

• Americans today eat 17.3 billion quarts of popcorn a year. The average American eats about 68 quarts.

• About 70% of all popcorn is prepared and eaten in the home. Most of the remaining 30% is sold at the movies, sports events, etc.

• A popped kernel will form either a “snowflake” shape (popped big
and shaped like an unruly cloud) or “mushroom” shape (popped into a ball).

• Newly harvested popcorn is better than old corn—the water content is higher, which means more of the kernels will pop. One way to preserve moisture content: keep popcorn in the refrigerator, in an airtight container.

Nutrition

• According to
The Almanac of Food
, four cups of air-popped, plain popcorn have only 92 calories, with 1 gram of fat. If oil is used, the calorie and fat content more than doubles.

• Nutritional content: 71% starch and other carbohydrates, 10.5% protein, 3% fat, a sprinkling of vitamins and minerals, and up to 14% water.

Popcorn Weirdness

• Orlando, Florida created the world’s largest box of popcorn on December 17, 1988. A square box, measuring 25 feet on each side, was built at Jones High School. Thousands of citizens showed up, with popcorn and poppers. When the signal was given, the poppers were turned on. Volunteers dumped the popcorn into the box. When the day ended, the box was filled to an average depth of 6.06 feet, and ended up in the
Guinness Book of World Records.

• Marion, Ohio is the Popcorn Capital of the U. S. Every year, a quarter of a million visitors show up for their three-day Popcorn Festival. There are the usual beauty pageants, popcorn sculptures, popcorn foods, and guided tours of the popcorn museum, which features displays of antique corn poppers dating back to 1892.

And...

• The Aztecs threw ears of popcorn into the fire, then collected the popped grains. Or, if time permitted, they heated stones in the fire, then spread a layer of popcorn on the flat surface.

• Corn is the most hybridized of any major plant in the world. It can grow in more places than any other plant—from the polar regions to the hottest rain forest.

• More popcorn is eaten in the fall than any other time of year.

Recently, we stumbled on
Bizarre Books,
a collection of weird-but-true book titles, compiled by Russell Ash and Brian Lake. Hard to believe, but these titles were chosen and published in all seriousness. How would you like to spend
your
time reading...

Why People Move,
edited by Jorge Balan (1981)

Oh Angry Sea (a-ab-ba, hu-luh-ha): the History of a Sumerian Congregational Lament,
by Raphael Kutscher (1975)

Animals as Criminals,
by J. Brand (1896)

A Pictorial Book of Tongue Coating,
Anonymous (1981)

The Dentist in Art
, by Jens Jorgen Pindborg and L. Marvitz (1961)

How to Get Fat,
by Edward Smith (1865)

A Frog’s Blimp,
by Shinta Cho (1981)

The Fangs of Suet Pudding,
by Adams Farr (1944)

How to Cook Husbands,
by Elizabeth Stong Worthington (1899)

Cold Meat and How to Disguise It,
by Ms. M.E. Rattray (1904)

How to Boil Water in a Paper Bag,
Anonymous (1891)

Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe,
by William Rossi (1977)

How to Be Happy Though Married,
by E. J. Hardy (1885)

Let’s Make Some Undies,
by Marion Hall (1954)

Be Bold With Bananas,
by Australian Banana Growers Council

One Hundred and Forty-one Ways of Spelling Birmingham,
by William Hamper (1880)

Children Are Wet Cement,
by Ann Orlund (1981)

Scouts in Bondage,
by Geoffrey Prout (1930)

Do Snakes Have Legs?
by Bert Cunningham (1934)

Let Me Hold It Till I Die,
by H. Lovegrove (1864)

Life and Laughter ’midst the Cannibals,
by Clifford Whiteley Collison (1926)

Unmentionable Cuisine
, by Calvin W. Schwabe (1979)

Nasal Maintenance: Nursing Your Nose Through Troubled Times,
by William Alan Stuart (1983)

Old Age: Its Cause and Prevention,
by Sanford Bennett (1912)

Ever find something valuable? It’s a great feeling. Here’s a look at some people who found some valuable stuff and got to keep it! You should be so lucky...

H
OLY GRAIL

The Find:
A first edition copy of a book called
Tamerlane.

Where it was Found:
In a New Hampshire antique shop.

The Story:
In the winter of 1988, an antique dealer named Robert Webber paid $500 for a large collection of musty old books at another dealer’s estate auction.

One of the books was titled
Tamerlane and Other Poems
, and was dated 1827. “It was an awful looking thing,” Webber recalled. The slim brown book had a ring stain from a drinking glass. Its edges were faded and the printing was poor. Even if the book had been new, it wouldn’t have looked pretty. “By a Bostonian” was all it said about the author.

Webber put a price tag of $18 on it. “My wife wanted to keep it and read it,” he said. “But I said, ‘What do you want that dirty old thing for?’” It sat there for a few days in his antique bar, with a pile of pamphlets on fertilizer and farm machinery. A man came into the store, saw the book and the $18 price tag, and offered $15 for it. Sold.

The customer was either really cheap or just slow to realize what he’d bought.
Tamerlane
is nicknamed “the black tulip” by book collectors because it is the rarest and most valuable book in American literature. “A Bostonian” was Edgar Allen Poe and
Tamerlane
was his first book of poetry, a self-published failure. Eventually, the man who bought the book (his identity is secret) notified Sotheby’s of his find; they picked it up in an armored truck and later auctioned it for $198,000.

WAGGA WAGGA TREASURE

The Find:
An etching of a river scene.

Where It was Found:
On a pig breeding trophy at Charles Sturt University in Southeastern Australia.

The Story:
In the 1950s, the Wagga Wagga Agricultural College created the Brighton Trophy to be awarded to the “five highest-producing sows of one sire.” Someone in town donated the etching to serve as the centerpiece of the trophy.

When the college was taken over by Charles Sturt University in 1989, administrators put the trophy on top of a filing cabinet and forgot about it. It sat there, gathering dust, for almost a decade. Then someone decided to include it in a local exhibit of Wagga Wagga memorabilia. When the show was over, they sent it directly to Charles Sturt University. The university’s art curator happened to walk past it...and recognized it as an original work of the French impressionist Auguste Renoir. Estimated value: $25,000.

MISSING LINK

The Find:
A flat, jagged rock about the size of a quarter.

Where It Was Found:
On a camping trip, in Rio Puerco, New Mexico.

The Story:
In 1995, the Shiffler family was returning from a camping trip when they decided to stop and explore the desert. With a toy shovel in his hand, David, the three-year-old son, began digging for dinosaur eggs. He had just seen
The Land Before Time
, a cartoon about dinosaurs, and according to his father, “everything he picked up that day was a dinosaur egg.” One rock attracted him more than any other. He insisted they take it home.

The Shifflers put the rock on a shelf in the garage. It was just a jagged fragment of some kind, but David insisted it was a dinosaur egg, and his father decided to humor him. He took it to scientists at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science and asked them to look at it.

To his shock, they told him it
is
a dinosaur egg (a fragment of one)—and not just any dinosaur egg, either. It is believed that a meat-eating dinosaur laid it 150 million years ago—which makes it 80 million years older than any other egg like it ever found in North America. David Shiffler’s egg may force scientists to revise many of their theories about dinosaurs in the Jurassic period. David’s reaction: “I knew it was an egg,” he announced.

Here are a few more patriotic stories we all learned when we were young...all of which are 100% baloney. The information is from Bill Bryson’s book
, Made in America.

T
HE MYTH:
Representatives from the 13 colonies met in Philadelphia in 1787 and drafted the U.S. Constitution.

THE TRUTH:
Rhode Island didn’t send delegates. And Maryland almost didn’t, because officials there had a hard time finding anyone willing to go. The first five people who were asked refused, and the state was still looking for people to send when the convention opened for business. New Hampshire was willing to send two delegates, but it refused to pay their expenses, and went for weeks without any representation at the convention. “Many delegates attended only fitfully, and six never came at all,” Bryson writes. “Altogether only about thirty of the sixty-one elected delegates attended from start to finish.”