Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (12 page)

CHARLES LINDBERGH

Claim to Fame:
“Lucky Lindy” became an international hero in 1927 when he made the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

Secret Life:
Lindbergh fathered six children by his wife, Anne, but apparently six was not enough. In August 2003, three grown children of a Munich hatmaker named Brigitte Hesshaimer came forward to claim that Lindbergh was
their
father as well.

For Dyrk Hesshaimer, 45, Astrid Bouteuil, 43, and David Hesshaimer, 36, piecing the story together had taken most of their lives. When they were growing up, a tall, mysterious American they knew as “Careau Kent” visited them a few times a year, cooking them huge breakfasts of sausages and banana pancakes, and telling them tales of his adventures around the world...before disappearing again a week or two later. Their mother, Brigitte, confirmed that he was their father, but she refused to tell them his real name. Furthermore, she warned, if they ever talked about him outside of the immediate family, he might disappear forever.

Their father’s true identity remained a mystery until the late 1990s, when Astrid Bouteuil was cleaning out a storeroom and accidentally discovered a bag containing more than 100 love letters written to her mother. The letters were signed only with the initial “C,” but the bag also contained a magazine article about Lindbergh. When Astrid confronted her mother with the evidence, Brigitte confessed—Careau Kent was Charles Lindbergh, and he was their father.

Zagazig is a city in Egypt; Wagga Wagga is a city in Australia.

Brigitte begged her children not to reveal the secret while she was alive, and they respected her wishes. Two years after Brigitte died, they went public.

Update:
In October 2003, Dyrk, Astrid, and David agreed to let the University of Munich test their DNA to confirm their story. Result: The test came back positive—Lindbergh is their father.

So is that the end of the story? Maybe not—the German magazine
Focus
reports that Lindbergh also had an affair with Brigitte Hesshaimer’s sister, Marietta. So far Marietta’s two sons are refusing to take DNA tests.

CHARLES KURALT

Claim to Fame:
CBS newsman from 1960 to 1994 and host of the popular news segment
On the Road with Charles Kuralt
.

Secret Life:
Kuralt passed away suddenly and unexpectedly from an autoimmune disease called lupus in 1997. Had he lived long enough to put his financial affairs in order, the biggest secret of his life might never have become known: for nearly 30 years, he’d carried on a relationship with a woman named Patricia Shannon and had supported her financially to the tune of $80,000 a year.

Shannon lived in a cabin that she and Kuralt had built at his 110-acre fishing retreat in Montana. Kuralt had promised to leave it to her upon his death and had even given her a notarized letter to that effect. In fact, he was in the process of transferring ownership to her when he died, but he passed away before the transaction was complete...so his wife and daughters inherited it.

Kuralt’s wife of 35 years apparently had no inkling of his secret life until Shannon showed up at his funeral with the notarized letter and tried to stake her claim on the fishing retreat. When that failed, Shannon filed suit against the estate, and her relationship with Kuralt became public.

Update:
Shannon won. Not only did she inherit the cabin and the 110 acres, but Kuralt’s daughters (his widow had since passed away) were ordered to pay $350,000 in property taxes out of
their
share of the estate.

Yuck! Cockroaches have white blood.

Uncle John is amazed—and pleased—by the unusual way people get involved with bathrooms, toilets, toilet paper, and so on. That’s why he created the “Stall of Fame.”

H
onoree:
Heraclio “Rocky” Nazarano, deputy press secretary for Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo

Notable Achievement:
Getting lost on the way to the airplane lavatory

True Story:
In September 2003, Nazarano was on a chartered flight from Paris to Manila with President Arroyo when he had to pee. So he got up from his seat and made his way to the restroom. At least that’s what Nazarano
thought
he was doing. It turns out he’d had a little too much to drink, mistook the emergency exit door for the toilet, and peed on it.

Nazarano was mortified when he sobered up. “How I wish I could deny it,” he said in a cell phone text message to reporters. “But it was a moment of weakness. I deeply apologize about all the shattered expectations.”

Honoree:
Cody Yaeger, 10, a fourth grader at Jamestown Elementary School in Hudsonville, Michigan

Notable Achievement:
Striking it rich in the bathroom...and being honest enough to report it

True Story:
In May 2004, Cody was making a pit stop at school when he found something unusual inside a roll of toilet paper—a neatly folded $100 bill. The bill was so perfectly tucked into the roll that it seemed like it must have been put there by someone at the toilet paper factory. Cody knew the money didn’t belong to him, so he took it to a teacher.

The school’s lost-and-found policy states that if, after two weeks, nobody claims the item, the person who found it gets to keep it. Two weeks later, no one had claimed the money so Cody became $100 richer. His mom, Terri, says she isn’t surprised that he acted so honestly. “When it comes to school or church, when he finds something, he turns it in,” she says. “But if it has anything to do with his sister, he’ll keep it.”

American kids make about $8.6 million per year in allowance.

Honoree:
Monica Bonvicini, an Italian artist

Notable Achievement:
Turning a toilet into “performance art”

True Story:
In December 2003, Bonvicini had a stainless-steel toilet installed on the sidewalk across the street from the Tate Britain, a national museum in London. Then she had it enclosed in a cubicle made entirely of one-way glass, and opened it to the public. Result: People using the toilet can see out, but people outside can’t see in—it looks like a big mirrored cube stuck in the middle of the sidewalk. Of course anyone inside has the feeling of doing their business right out in the open.

“It will arouse curiosity,” says a spokesperson for the art project. “People can just come and use it, although there is a question of whether they will feel comfortable doing so.”

Honoree:
Chien (Taiwan’s TVBS cable network isn’t releasing his full name.)

Notable Achievement:
Getting fired for poor marksmanship

True Story:
In October 2003, Chien received a letter of dismissal from his company. Reason: When answering the call of nature, Chien routinely missed the urinal. According to the letter, cleaning ladies complained repeatedly about his poor aim, so he was let go. (No word on how the cleaning ladies knew that
he
was the one responsible.) Chien doesn’t buy a word of it. “The company had planned to lay off a number of employees,” he told TVBS. “This was just an excuse to dismiss me.”

FIVE REAL PLACES TO SPEND YOUR NEXT HOLIDAY

1.
Christmas Valley, Oregon

2.
Easter, Texas

3.
Passover, Missouri

4.
New Years Lake, Idaho

5.
Valentine, Texas

Survey says: 95% of us put our left sock on first.

You’ve seen Grant on the $50 bill; you know that he was a president and also the general who won the Civil War. Here are some things you probably didn’t know about him
.

S
CHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS

In 1839 an Ohio tanner named Jesse Grant managed to obtain an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy for his son, Ulysses. Ulysses wasn’t the slightest bit interested in a military career, but Jesse didn’t think his son had much of a head for business. West Point was free, and it offered Ulysses his best chance for a good education. So off he went.

Ulysses graduated from West Point in 1843, fought in the Mexican War, and remained in the military until 1854, when he resigned and became a civilian again.

Ulysses promptly proved his father’s suspicions correct: he had no head for business. He took up farming and failed at it; then got a job in real estate and failed at that, too. By 1860 Grant, a graduate of West Point, was back working as a clerk in his father’s store. He was 37, and a failure. But the Civil War was about to save him.

The first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861. The fort fell to the Confederacy the following day, prompting President Abraham Lincoln to call for troops. Grant returned to the army and was quickly promoted to brigadier general. “Be careful, Ulyss, you are a general now,” Jesse Grant wrote him after learning of the promotion. “It’s a good job, don’t lose it!”

ITCHING FOR A FIGHT

In the early months of the war Grant was assigned mostly defensive tasks, but he wanted to go on the offensive. In February 1862 he won approval for a plan to attack two key Confederate strongholds: Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River, and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. Grant, with 17,000 troops and the assistance of gun-boats commanded by Commodore Andrew Foote, planned to attack the forts.

This page is about 500,000 atoms thick.

Fort Henry fell after just a few hours of fighting; the attack on Fort Donelson began a week later and raged for two days. By February 15, defeat was imminent.

As was the custom in 19th-century warfare, the fort’s commander, General Simon Bolivar Buckner, sent a message to Grant proposing a truce so that the two men could negotiate terms of surrender. Buckner had served with Grant in the Mexican War and had even lent him money, but if he was expecting generous terms from his old friend, he was soon rebuked. Grant’s reply was swift and blunt: “No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” Buckner, complaining that he had no choice but “to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms,” gave in.

Capturing the two forts marked the first major Union victories in the war, and turned “Unconditional Surrender” Grant, as his admirers nicknamed him, into a national figure. He was promoted to major general. And “purely by accidental circumstance,” as Grant himself later put it, the campaign caused him to pick up the habit that would eventually claim his life—cigars.

THE SPOILS OF WAR

Up to this point, Grant had smoked a pipe, but only occasionally. When Commodore Andrew Foote was wounded in the assault on Fort Donelson, he asked Grant to confer with him aboard his ship, and offered him a cigar. Grant was still smoking it on his way back to his headquarters when a staff officer informed him that Confederate soldiers were attacking. Grant recalled in 1865:

I galloped forward at once, and while riding among the troops giving the directions for repulsing the assault I carried the cigar in my hand. It had gone out, but it seems that I continued to hold the stump between my fingers throughout the battle. In the accounts published in the papers I was represented as smoking a cigar in the midst of the conflict; and many persons, thinking, no doubt, that tobacco was my chief solace, sent me boxes of the choicest brands from everywhere in the North. As many as 10,000 were soon received. I gave away all I could get rid of, but having such a quantity in hand, I naturally smoked more than I would have done under ordinary circumstances, and I have continued the habit ever since.

Betamax VCRs were commercially available until 2002.

STILL SMOKIN’

Inundated with free cigars, Grant was soon addicted. In March 1864, he was promoted to lieutenant general and given command of all the Union armies. By then he was smoking his first cigar of the day right after breakfast as he stuffed the pockets of his uniform with another two dozen. When he accepted General Robert E. Lee’s surrender in 1865, Grant was still puffing away. And after the war the gifts of free cigars and related paraphernalia—ashtrays, cigar holders, cigar stands, and so on—only increased.

Even in those days people had an idea that smoking was unhealthy, and in 1866 Grant tried to cut back on the stogies. “I am breaking off from smoking,” he told a newspaper reporter. “When I was in the field I smoked eighteen or twenty cigars a day, but now I smoke only nine or ten.” (One large cigar can contain as much tobacco as an entire pack of cigarettes.) Grant was elected president in 1868 and reelected in 1872. He smoked his way through both terms; though he still tried to quit on occasion, he never managed to cut back much.