Latest / Ridiculous History / The Weird Origin of Pink Lemonade, Part 2: The Rise of Clown Pants
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
- 0:27Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
- 0:30Speaker 1: so much for tuning in previously on the origins of
- 0:34Speaker 1: pink lemonade. Uh, you know, we all have to do
- 0:37Speaker 1: the whole lost voice, but we learned a lot of stuff.
- 0:39Speaker 1: Lemonade is an ancient, ancient drink that was originally called
- 0:45Speaker 1: which I think is a cooler name than just lemonade. Yep,
- 0:48Speaker 1: And it's also fun to like mispronounce in nineteen different ways.
- 0:51Speaker 1: I think you got the spot on pronunciation. But here
- 0:54Speaker 1: join us already in progress where you can hear me
- 0:56Speaker 1: waffle or flounder or any other euphemism for screwing up
- 1:01Speaker 1: uh pronunciations. You're doing great, Thanks Budden clown pants. Lemonade
- 1:06Speaker 1: Where are we talking about? It all goes back to
- 1:09Speaker 1: a book by a guy named Harvey W. Root, written
- 1:12Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty one. The book has a long title,
- 1:15Speaker 1: which wasn't unusual for books at that time, the ways
- 1:18Speaker 1: of the circus being the Memories and Adventures of George
- 1:21Speaker 1: Conklin Tame of Lions, So as you can imagine, Lemonade
- 1:26Speaker 1: Stories is kind of an aside here that's right. And
- 1:29Speaker 1: this guy, George Conklin Tamer of Lions, as that amazingly
- 1:34Speaker 1: convoluted book title um implies, he actually had a brother
- 1:38Speaker 1: as well. His brother's name was Pete, and he was
- 1:40Speaker 1: sort of like a junior circus guy. Um, he was
- 1:43Speaker 1: running the concessions, but also was a tumbler on the side. Uh.
- 1:46Speaker 1: And this was in Jerry Mabel's Traveling Circus. He was
- 1:49Speaker 1: a well known promoter at the time as well. And um,
- 1:53Speaker 1: so like a tumbler would be sort of like a
- 1:55Speaker 1: second tier act, but a clown maybe not the same
- 1:58Speaker 1: as a lion tamer, but definitely give you like a
- 2:00Speaker 1: bump and pay. You want to get clown pay. If
- 2:03Speaker 1: you were asked to be a clown, you wouldn't do
- 2:04Speaker 1: that for nothing. And um, he was asked to become
- 2:08Speaker 1: a clown because he already had the tumbling skills, clearly
- 2:10Speaker 1: the comedic timing uh. And he was asked to kind
- 2:13Speaker 1: of like upgrade his act and put on the clown
- 2:16Speaker 1: shoes and the clown makeup and the clown tights. But
- 2:19Speaker 1: he wasn't offered the corresponding pay. So Pete said, no,
- 2:26Speaker 1: absolutely not. He had he had his dignity, He had
- 2:29Speaker 1: his standards, and so he just continued selling his own
- 2:32Speaker 1: lemonade as he followed the circus around like a scavenger
- 2:36Speaker 1: following soldiers at war. And I love the idea of
- 2:39Speaker 1: like I've done the work of a cloud. I demand
- 2:41Speaker 1: the clowns pay, Demand a clowns pay. It's true. I
- 2:45Speaker 1: mean it's hard work. Yeah, being a clown you definitely
- 2:48Speaker 1: have to have have some skills. Not just anyone can
- 2:50Speaker 1: put on the dawn the clown makeup. You gotta have
- 2:53Speaker 1: the chops. So he so, Ben, did you give the
- 2:56Speaker 1: sense that he was he like unofficial? Was he just
- 2:59Speaker 1: sort of like a hanger on? Yeah? He was going like, um,
- 3:02Speaker 1: it's similar to what we see happen with maybe religious
- 3:06Speaker 1: pilgrimages of yesteryear or with traveling armies. There will be
- 3:10Speaker 1: people who attached themselves to that large traveling group of people,
- 3:15Speaker 1: and they can kind of swim in their wake, you
- 3:17Speaker 1: know what I mean. So that's what Pete is doing.
- 3:21Speaker 1: He officially leaves the circus, but does it really leave
- 3:23Speaker 1: the circus. It's like he he leaves the circus and
- 3:27Speaker 1: walks a couple of miles away and then just starts
- 3:31Speaker 1: following behind them, and whenever they're in town, he's also
- 3:35Speaker 1: in town selling lemonade to people. So he just kind
- 3:38Speaker 1: of goes independent and everything's going well until one day
- 3:43Speaker 1: he runs out of water at the worst time. There's
- 3:46Speaker 1: a line. More and more people are coming to get
- 3:49Speaker 1: some of Pete's famous lemonade or whatever he called it,
- 3:52Speaker 1: and so he calls on his old clown colleagues. He
- 3:56Speaker 1: burst into a tenth and he sees his but one
- 4:00Speaker 1: of his old clowning friends ringing out his tights into
- 4:03Speaker 1: a bucket of water. Yeah, and the tights had a
- 4:06Speaker 1: cheap die. Uh, this is just the one version of
- 4:10Speaker 1: the story, right, Uh, the tights were cheaply died, and
- 4:13Speaker 1: so they left the water with a pinkish red hue.
- 4:17Speaker 1: But not that didn't stop peet Man. He grabbed that
- 4:20Speaker 1: clown pants bucket and he started selling the crowd um
- 4:26Speaker 1: strawberry lemonade. Uh yeah, And I mean, you know, like
- 4:34Speaker 1: by the time he sweetened the pot of of you know,
- 4:38Speaker 1: wrung out circus juice, Clowns sweat a lot. You know,
- 4:44Speaker 1: I'm just saying, clowns sweat a lot. It's hard work,
- 4:46Speaker 1: it's not good. So I'm sorry, I had to coin
- 4:48Speaker 1: the term wrung out circus juice. But it is what
- 4:51Speaker 1: it is. I said what I said, and you can't
- 4:53Speaker 1: put it. You can't. I won't take it back. Um.
- 4:55Speaker 1: But yeah, by the time he sweetened it with sugar,
- 4:57Speaker 1: I would presume that maybe added a little more than usual. Um.
- 5:01Speaker 1: But it people didn't seem to notice. And it did
- 5:05Speaker 1: take on this charming pink hue. Uh. And it and
- 5:08Speaker 1: not only do they not notice, just like in the
- 5:11Speaker 1: other version of the story with the red hots, it
- 5:13Speaker 1: seemed to sell like gangbusters. Yeah, apparently sales doubled on
- 5:20Speaker 1: the spot and according to Route, soon no self respecting
- 5:25Speaker 1: circus would be without the novelty of pink lemonade. There
- 5:29Speaker 1: are other versions of this theme. There's one that he found, uh,
- 5:35Speaker 1: the pink tights of a female horse rider and took
- 5:41Speaker 1: those and sold the water that she was washing the
- 5:44Speaker 1: tights in his fine strawberry lemonade. Uh. And then there's
- 5:47Speaker 1: another story that's pretty much the same thing with a
- 5:51Speaker 1: different guy, a guy named William Henry Griffith who was
- 5:55Speaker 1: working at one of the largest circuses in the US.
- 5:59Speaker 1: Also in this one, and this is a little bit
- 6:02Speaker 1: of a bull to final destination. For me, there were
- 6:05Speaker 1: some pink tights that were blown from a clothes line
- 6:09Speaker 1: into this waiting vat of water, which just seems like
- 6:12Speaker 1: the odds against that are pretty high. And so you
- 6:15Speaker 1: hear these variations. But after after all the theories we've
- 6:19Speaker 1: given you, which which circus theory is most plausible? This
- 6:25Speaker 1: is the best title book title I think here, uh,
- 6:28Speaker 1: other than A Clown's Pay, which is a historical anthology.
- 6:33Speaker 1: I'm going to write a series of linked stories anyway.
- 6:35Speaker 1: Josh Chetwynd wrote a book called How the Hot Dog
- 6:38Speaker 1: Got Its Bun accidental discoveries and unexpected inspirations that shape
- 6:43Speaker 1: the way we eat and drink. And he has some
- 6:46Speaker 1: draft picks, right he decided one is more plausible than
- 6:50Speaker 1: the others. Yeah, chetwyn says in his book, no one
- 6:58Speaker 1: really knows which story is accurate. But of course the
- 7:01Speaker 1: timing of Conklin's tail gives that yarn the advantage. Um
- 7:07Speaker 1: because the cinnamon candy story was in the nineteen twelve
- 7:13Speaker 1: edition of the New York Times, and that article was
- 7:17Speaker 1: written after a lot who was the gentleman involved in
- 7:20Speaker 1: that story. The concessionsman Um had passed away, and it
- 7:25Speaker 1: claims that he invented the drink as a teenager, which
- 7:27Speaker 1: would which would make it around eighteen sevent eighteen seventy three,
- 7:31Speaker 1: twenty years after conklind story with the clown tits the
- 7:36Speaker 1: clown pants. So um and like we said, then, I
- 7:40Speaker 1: don't feel like I don't know it was a novelty.
- 7:44Speaker 1: Perhaps the cinnamon flavor wouldn't have been as much of
- 7:46Speaker 1: a red flag as you or I might think, but
- 7:49Speaker 1: it still doesn't quite ring true. Chetwyn in his book
- 7:53Speaker 1: points out that, uh, both of the stories have when
- 7:57Speaker 1: we've we've mentioned this along the way, have these kind
- 8:00Speaker 1: of like incredulous sort of the stuff of legends kind
- 8:04Speaker 1: of like rings to them. Um. Not to say that
- 8:06Speaker 1: necessarily makes them untrue, but it does feel like a
- 8:09Speaker 1: game of historical telephone. Both of these stories the thing
- 8:12Speaker 1: like the details lining up just right to yield the
- 8:15Speaker 1: given result and the rest was history. As they say. Um,
- 8:20Speaker 1: so yeah, both of those stories definitely uh continue to
- 8:25Speaker 1: be a part of the kind of oral history of
- 8:28Speaker 1: pink lemonade. But the New York Post uh in in
- 8:32Speaker 1: their obituary of a lot Um who you know, who
- 8:35Speaker 1: is the cinnamon candy. Man Um this to say, referencing
- 8:40Speaker 1: his particular version of the legend uh quote, the man
- 8:43Speaker 1: who invented pink lemonade has crossed the river, where it
- 8:46Speaker 1: may be hoped there are no pure food advocates to
- 8:49Speaker 1: harass him for the sins committed in his name, and
- 8:53Speaker 1: we know that it's it's true. However, this stuff happened,
- 8:57Speaker 1: whether cinnamon whether cloud pants, because someone didn't get a
- 9:01Speaker 1: clown's pay. However, this came about, pink lemonade became incredibly popular.
- 9:08Speaker 1: By we are seeing pink lemonade recipes in print, but
- 9:13Speaker 1: to our earlier points, they are calling for things like
- 9:16Speaker 1: half a cup of strawberries, raspberries, cranberry juice, etcetera, in
- 9:21Speaker 1: place of you know, clown pants, water and cinnamon candies.
- 9:25Speaker 1: And now, of course you see a ton of other
- 9:28Speaker 1: variations upon that theme. But the bulk of pink lemonade
- 9:36Speaker 1: is just pink and color alone. The tend to actually
- 9:40Speaker 1: comes from concentrated grape juice or grape extract. And this
- 9:44Speaker 1: gets to the science question was setting up earlier. If
- 9:47Speaker 1: the taste of pink lemonade and the taste of regular lemonade,
- 9:52Speaker 1: if they're exactly the same. Why is pink lemonade still
- 9:56Speaker 1: so popular? Uh? The author of this sony An article
- 10:01Speaker 1: reached out to Sally Augustine, who was an environmental psychologists
- 10:04Speaker 1: focusing on the way things like shape and colors influence
- 10:07Speaker 1: our lives, and she said, the color of pink lemonade
- 10:11Speaker 1: is relaxing. It's not very saturated, it's relatively bright. Traditional
- 10:16Speaker 1: lemonade has no real color. And then this is weird
- 10:21Speaker 1: because it takes us to study that finds people tend
- 10:25Speaker 1: to associate the colors red and pink with sweetness and
- 10:30Speaker 1: yellow and green or associated with sourness. So the color
- 10:35Speaker 1: of it may affect people's experience tasting it. We we
- 10:41Speaker 1: know this happens. The science is pretty compelling. There. Also,
- 10:44Speaker 1: maybe is why blue or purple ketchup never caught on,
- 10:48Speaker 1: now that I think about it, you guys, remember that
- 10:50Speaker 1: for a hot minute there were different colors to catch up?
- 10:53Speaker 1: Oh god, no, really, there's a green one too that
- 10:56Speaker 1: was really nasty looking. Yeah, that is awful. People like
- 10:59Speaker 1: to catch up ready. That's a really good point, Ben,
- 11:01Speaker 1: But it it's also interesting, like I've always kind of
- 11:03Speaker 1: been a fan of like oddly colored drinks like gatorade
- 11:07Speaker 1: and all that. And I don't know why like or
- 11:09Speaker 1: like you know, bright neon blue popsicles and the like.
- 11:13Speaker 1: And I will say, in my very kitchen cabinet right now,
- 11:17Speaker 1: I have a thing of powdered crystal light pink lemonade
- 11:21Speaker 1: that absolutely tastes exactly the same as the regular yellow lemonade.
- 11:27Speaker 1: It's just pink, and I I don't know why, but
- 11:31Speaker 1: I like it. There's something about the pinkness of it
- 11:33Speaker 1: that that that does it for me. Because they absolutely
- 11:36Speaker 1: have raspberry flavored ones, they have a cranberry one. They
- 11:39Speaker 1: have like, you know, mixes of them, cran raz you know,
- 11:43Speaker 1: whatever you want. But I, for some reason, I'm gravitating
- 11:46Speaker 1: towards the pink one. It's it's just that it's one
- 11:49Speaker 1: of my weakness as fellas, and so you know, we
- 11:52Speaker 1: have we have one tangent we have to address before
- 11:55Speaker 1: we call it a day here. And that is the
- 11:57Speaker 1: origin of the phrase, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
- 12:03Speaker 1: Apparently it came about from a nineteen fifty obituary for
- 12:07Speaker 1: a man named Marshall Pinckney Wilder, who was an actor,
- 12:11Speaker 1: a writer, humorist, despite his chronic health problems and medical conditions.
- 12:17Speaker 1: The original version of the phrase read this of Wilder.
- 12:23Speaker 1: They said he picked up the lemons that fate had
- 12:26Speaker 1: sent him and started a lemonade stand. Uh. And people
- 12:31Speaker 1: picked up the phrase and started styling on it for
- 12:33Speaker 1: a while. You'll still hear it used today, right, But
- 12:37Speaker 1: I don't know, not as not as often. You know,
- 12:39Speaker 1: it's funny. They're like I, I I think lemons have a
- 12:41Speaker 1: lot of uses, and we did, I believe we did
- 12:43Speaker 1: an episode about how there's this perception that lemons helped
- 12:48Speaker 1: London deal with the plague because lemons were sort of
- 12:52Speaker 1: an anti pestilent kind of agent. They would keep those
- 12:56Speaker 1: plague rats at bay Um. And then also I believe
- 12:59Speaker 1: there's something you know, there's this notion that because they
- 13:02Speaker 1: had these vitamins that they would make you like healthier
- 13:05Speaker 1: or whatever. So lemons have played a really interesting role
- 13:07Speaker 1: in history. And I love using the zest of lemons
- 13:11Speaker 1: and pasta dishes and cooking and um, it's a nice
- 13:14Speaker 1: squeeze of lemon, you know, onto a dish. You definitely
- 13:17Speaker 1: want to make sure you do the squeeze later in
- 13:19Speaker 1: the cooking process or the flavor just kind of gets
- 13:21Speaker 1: cooked out of it. But the zest, my friends, that'll
- 13:24Speaker 1: that I'll get to that lemony flavor. I use it, Yeah,
- 13:27Speaker 1: I use them. I use them pretty frequently with a
- 13:29Speaker 1: lot of the seafood experiments I do. I made a
- 13:32Speaker 1: jar of preserved lemons from my recipe and that was
- 13:36Speaker 1: pretty cool. But it took a while to get through them,
- 13:38Speaker 1: like you know, that's it's the thing, like when you
- 13:41Speaker 1: can vegetables. Anyway, story for another day. That's our show
- 13:52Speaker 1: we do. So hope you enjoyed it and shout out
- 13:55Speaker 1: to anybody sipping pink lemonade while listening to this bizarre tail. Also,
- 14:02Speaker 1: some of us in the crowd may be wondering what's
- 14:04Speaker 1: really up with chocolate milk, because there are rumors about
- 14:07Speaker 1: that stuff too. We'll answer them in a future episode. Meantime.
- 14:11Speaker 1: Thanks so much to super producer Casey Pegra, huge thanks
- 14:15Speaker 1: to Alex Williams, who composed are him I'm back? Yes, yes, yeah.
- 14:28Speaker 1: I also watched Win Harry met Sally just before this.
- 14:31Speaker 1: I was I think it's no coincidence that the Quister
- 14:38Speaker 1: makes his his return on one of the grossest episodes
- 14:41Speaker 1: we've done in recent memory. What did you talk about?
- 14:44Speaker 1: We talked about don't care? Nice nice, so I assumed. Then,
- 14:52Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland a k the quister that the rules of
- 14:56Speaker 1: engagement remain the same you old so and so oh
- 15:00Speaker 1: as always, my friends, I shall present to you a
- 15:04Speaker 1: trio of scenarios, whereupon you will have to guess which
- 15:09Speaker 1: one is true, or rather which one I made up seats.
- 15:12Speaker 1: I even forget, it's been so long. I don't even
- 15:15Speaker 1: remember my own game anymore. Oh, by the way, I
- 15:17Speaker 1: welcome to the most cringeworthy segment in all the podcasting etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
- 15:22Speaker 1: We're here for it, man, I mean, I guess, but
- 15:24Speaker 1: I gotta say, Jonathan, you've lost your edge a little bit.
- 15:27Speaker 1: I thought you you used to do your scenarios sort
- 15:30Speaker 1: of themed around the content of the episode. Is that
- 15:33Speaker 1: no longer the case? So no, it's since totally the case.
- 15:35Speaker 1: I just don't know what the hell you guys are
- 15:37Speaker 1: recording anymore. It's hard to the zoom bombing thing. I
- 15:40Speaker 1: don't get to listen in as much. It's a it's
- 15:43Speaker 1: a lot of me typing in letters and numbers and
- 15:45Speaker 1: then just hitting intern hoping that I let me tell
- 15:49Speaker 1: you daily zygeist does not like me. But now that
- 15:52Speaker 1: I managed to be able to actually get into this one,
- 15:54Speaker 1: I figured i'd go ahead and do one. I've already prepared,
- 15:57Speaker 1: and let's just say I too too. Choose you? Okay,
- 16:03Speaker 1: all right, okay, uh, I think I see where you're
- 16:06Speaker 1: going with this. You're you're gonna lay out some scenarios.
- 16:09Speaker 1: We've gotta pick which one you made up. I got
- 16:13Speaker 1: a time limit, all right, so I think we can
- 16:17Speaker 1: kick the rust off the tires here. Let's keep going.
- 16:20Speaker 1: You could ask me questions in this one, but you know,
- 16:24Speaker 1: in order to ask me a question, you of course
- 16:26Speaker 1: have to preface it with a phrase. In this case,
- 16:29Speaker 1: it's uh, come on, ride the train to cho ride it,
- 16:34Speaker 1: and then I will call upon you and you may
- 16:36Speaker 1: ask you a question. Well guess what the theme is.
- 16:39Speaker 1: I've been very subtle about it. All right. Here are
- 16:43Speaker 1: your three scenarios. Of course, I have put them in
- 16:47Speaker 1: order chronological. Something spooky was going down in Erie, Pennsylvania
- 16:55Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty three. The railroad tracks through town kept
- 16:59Speaker 1: getting destroy PoID. Except this wasn't a mystery. The town's
- 17:02Speaker 1: own mayor called on citizens to tear up the tracks.
- 17:06Speaker 1: When a railroad company tried to standardize rail gauges across
- 17:10Speaker 1: the city, the US government had to send federal officials
- 17:13Speaker 1: to Erie to tell them to knock that crap off.
- 17:17Speaker 1: Scenario two. In the eighteen eighties, the Wholeman Locomotive Company
- 17:22Speaker 1: of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania produced a trade in which the trains
- 17:26Speaker 1: wheels were on top of other wheels, which were on
- 17:30Speaker 1: top of other wheels. It was supposedly to be an
- 17:34Speaker 1: engineering marvel to facilitate faster speeds. It was in fact,
- 17:38Speaker 1: all part of a scheme to scam investors out of money,
- 17:42Speaker 1: with no basis in mechanical engineering. It did work, sort of,
- 17:48Speaker 1: but was only built for the con Scenario three. In
- 17:54Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, the M four nineties seven Black Beetle
- 17:58Speaker 1: experimental train didn't use a steam engine or electricity for locomotion.
- 18:04Speaker 1: It ran on jet engines that came from a B
- 18:07Speaker 1: thirty six bomber. It go fast, too fast, because in
- 18:12Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, during a test run in Yes, Pennsylvania,
- 18:18Speaker 1: the train skipped the tracks, traveled another two hundred yards
- 18:22Speaker 1: and came to a grinding halt. Miraculously, the engineers on
- 18:25Speaker 1: board only suffered serious but not critical injuries. Begin come
- 18:36Speaker 1: on right the trainin yeah, alright, alright, Mr Bolan, that's
- 18:39Speaker 1: good enough. Okay, sorry, I'm not gonna do the whole song,
- 18:43Speaker 1: but okay, could you could you reiterate some of the
- 18:48Speaker 1: key points of scenario one? Scenario one? Yes, So there
- 18:52Speaker 1: was a move to standardized railroad tracks throughout Erie, Pennsylvania.
- 18:58Speaker 1: A railroad company wanted to make all the tracks the
- 19:01Speaker 1: same gauge, and the mayor of the town objected to
- 19:05Speaker 1: this and called upon citizens to rip up the tracks,
- 19:07Speaker 1: which they did for several months until federal officials sit, stop.
- 19:12Speaker 1: That sounds like the kind of horrible thing people would do,
- 19:14Speaker 1: they know, they if we fear change, even if it's
- 19:16Speaker 1: something as simple as standardization of railroad gauges. What do
- 19:19Speaker 1: you think then? Yeah, I I think that the thing
- 19:22Speaker 1: is that I think scenario three it has the ring
- 19:26Speaker 1: of truth from my car stuff days. But I just
- 19:29Speaker 1: I don't remember the exact year because Jonathan, you said
- 19:32Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, right, did indeed say nineteen sixty three?
- 19:37Speaker 1: Mr Berlin, I will say that I would not just
- 19:39Speaker 1: I would not just fudge a year. No, we know,
- 19:42Speaker 1: we know we're we're aware of your of your sinister tricks.
- 19:45Speaker 1: What about so scenario B wheels upon wheels, These are
- 19:48Speaker 1: like what double decker wheels are, like an upper wheel
- 19:51Speaker 1: and a lower wheel, like on a roller coaster track?
- 19:53Speaker 1: Can you kind of explain? Come on and ride that train,
- 19:55Speaker 1: it's the chew chew, Come on ride it? Who woos? Mr? Brown?
- 20:00Speaker 1: I say, I get the gist of your question. Yes,
- 20:03Speaker 1: if you think of think of like cogs in clockwork,
- 20:07Speaker 1: right where you have one cog that turns another cog
- 20:10Speaker 1: that turns another cog. So you have to think of
- 20:12Speaker 1: three wheels because obviously, if you have one set of
- 20:15Speaker 1: wheels going forward, it's going to make the set of
- 20:16Speaker 1: wheels underneath go backward. Then you have a third set
- 20:19Speaker 1: of wheels which would go forward. The claim was that
- 20:22Speaker 1: this was to increase speed, but in fact it was
- 20:25Speaker 1: all just it was just hogwash. It was just made
- 20:29Speaker 1: up so that people would spend money on it. I
- 20:33Speaker 1: the fact that you're explaining this in this level of
- 20:36Speaker 1: detail leads me to think it might be be you
- 20:39Speaker 1: think B is the is the made us That's That's
- 20:42Speaker 1: what I'm thinking, because I know I don't know the
- 20:44Speaker 1: exact timeline. But I'm pretty I'm pretty confident about scenario three.
- 20:49Speaker 1: Uh and I don't know, man, maybe we're going to
- 20:53Speaker 1: end up offending the good people of Erie, Pennsylvania. I mean,
- 20:57Speaker 1: all three of these take place in Pennsylvania. So that's true.
- 21:00Speaker 1: That's true. The die is cast. Yeah, what do you
- 21:03Speaker 1: think you wanna? You want to lock it in? Or
- 21:05Speaker 1: you was locking in for B baby boom, Oh, the
- 21:16Speaker 1: locomotion is sweet this day, my friends. No, B is
- 21:20Speaker 1: absolutely true. It was option three that was the made
- 21:24Speaker 1: um upseas what. Yes, So there was a train it was.
- 21:27Speaker 1: It did have a B thirty six jet engine that
- 21:30Speaker 1: made it go fast, but it never jumped the tracks.
- 21:32Speaker 1: There was never any accident. No. Instead, what happened was
- 21:36Speaker 1: they determined that this particular form of locomotion was far
- 21:40Speaker 1: too expensive. It made no monetary sense. It worked and
- 21:45Speaker 1: it went pretty fast, but it didn't make any sense
- 21:48Speaker 1: from the perspective of an investment. It would have been
- 21:50Speaker 1: a waste of money. The first one, the Eerie, Pennsylvania.
- 21:54Speaker 1: The interesting thing about that was that the reason the
- 21:56Speaker 1: mayor called upon citizens to rip up the track in
- 22:00Speaker 1: what we're called the gauge War was because Erie was
- 22:04Speaker 1: a stopover point, a train would have to stop and unload,
- 22:08Speaker 1: and then everyone would have to get onto a second
- 22:10Speaker 1: train to continue their journey because the train could not
- 22:14Speaker 1: travel on two different gauge tracks. So Pennsylvania, Erie, Pennsylvania's
- 22:19Speaker 1: their economy depended upon people stopping. They had people who
- 22:23Speaker 1: would unload the trains, they had hotels and restaurants that
- 22:26Speaker 1: were all dependent upon this traffic. So it's sort of
- 22:28Speaker 1: like when Roots sixty six became obsolete, the same sort
- 22:33Speaker 1: of ideas that now there was no reason for people
- 22:35Speaker 1: that they could just go right on throw Eerie, Pennsylvania.
- 22:39Speaker 1: So that was that was the story behind that one,
- 22:42Speaker 1: and and the other one was in fact just an
- 22:44Speaker 1: investment scam. Well I feel I feel pretty uh pretty down, guys,
- 22:50Speaker 1: because I knew, I knew this sort of jet propulsion
- 22:55Speaker 1: experimentation existed with locomotives and trains, and I knew the
- 22:59Speaker 1: time I'm period sounded about right. I just I guess
- 23:02Speaker 1: I unfairly assumed that they would end in a horrific accident,
- 23:06Speaker 1: which is you know, my just probably goes back to
- 23:08Speaker 1: my lifelong fear of being attacked by a jet, which
- 23:11Speaker 1: is always like right around the corner. I live in
- 23:14Speaker 1: constant fear of being attacked by jets or Corvitt's. You know,
- 23:18Speaker 1: that's sort of my daily daily paranoia, just walking through life.
- 23:23Speaker 1: But thankfully we don't go outdoors as much as we
- 23:25Speaker 1: used to, so but then I would check a crash
- 23:27Speaker 1: into my my house Donnie Darko style, that would would
- 23:30Speaker 1: be cool. They're super nimble too, you know, that's what
- 23:34Speaker 1: people need to We need to talk more about the
- 23:36Speaker 1: jet threat. Uh. I completely agree with you, Ben, Let's
- 23:40Speaker 1: let's let's offline about that, and made set up a
- 23:43Speaker 1: campaign or a go fund me of sometime. I'm still
- 23:46Speaker 1: stuck on the pain Trade Paintings and Automobiles with Jonathan Strickland,
- 23:52Speaker 1: a k a. The Quister You got us, man, I'm
- 23:55Speaker 1: not even gonna sulk about it. That was you really,
- 23:58Speaker 1: you really, You're really stuck it to us fair and square.
- 24:00Speaker 1: I was doing a whole text stuff about format wars,
- 24:03Speaker 1: which is where I came upon the gauge war, and
- 24:04Speaker 1: that that just sort of precipitated the whole thing I was.
- 24:07Speaker 1: I was definitely the one that very first said that
- 24:10Speaker 1: one's sounded real. It's like the kind of horrible thing
- 24:12Speaker 1: people would do when they see a change of coming
- 24:15Speaker 1: and they don't like it. But yeah, you really capitalized
- 24:18Speaker 1: on our our own personal biases as human meanings, which
- 24:21Speaker 1: means you'll have to come back on the show. Uh,
- 24:24Speaker 1: so that we can we can yet again expose our
- 24:27Speaker 1: our own biases. Although I think we we both agree
- 24:30Speaker 1: with each other on jets and the fear of change. Uh. Yeah, yeah,
- 24:34Speaker 1: I'm not going to check the score. Don't tell me, Jonathan.
- 24:37Speaker 1: I think we're it's a dead heat because you you
- 24:41Speaker 1: won last time. Uh, so you have to come back. Uh,
- 24:45Speaker 1: and don't be such a stranger. Come back sooner, you know,
- 24:48Speaker 1: because it's been it's been a while. Listen, you're asking
- 24:50Speaker 1: me not to be stranger, and that's just that's just
- 24:52Speaker 1: a promise I cannot deliver upon. Oh boy, so with
- 24:58Speaker 1: uh with this in my Jonathan Strickland, the quister, you
- 25:04Speaker 1: have one the day, but you have not won the war.
- 25:08Speaker 1: Thank you for coming. You will return in the meantime.
- 25:11Speaker 1: Where can people learn more about your work and uh
- 25:14Speaker 1: and and your other your other schemes. Well you can.
- 25:19Speaker 1: You can learn about all things technology over at the
- 25:22Speaker 1: Tech Stuff podcast. It's a pretty good we've got about episodes,
- 25:27Speaker 1: So if you don't like the first one, just dig
- 25:28Speaker 1: into the archive, and then of course you can follow
- 25:31Speaker 1: me John Strickland over on Twitter and pretty soon you'll
- 25:34Speaker 1: be able to listen to a totally new podcast that
- 25:37Speaker 1: also has me on it coming out into Smber. So
- 25:41Speaker 1: just keep your ears peeled for that? Is that what
- 25:46Speaker 1: people do with you? I don't know. I don't go
- 25:47Speaker 1: out anymore. I think you can peel ears or I've
- 25:50Speaker 1: never understood where eyes peeled means either, So why not
- 25:54Speaker 1: just apply it to any anything that you can that
- 25:57Speaker 1: one can sense with keep your hands peeled, not just
- 26:00Speaker 1: on like something like a torture situation. Um, which is
- 26:03Speaker 1: which is appropriate considering who we're talking to right now,
- 26:07Speaker 1: thinks as well to uh, let's pick up the credits
- 26:11Speaker 1: like this this whole thing, like we didn't just lose.
- 26:13Speaker 1: So thanks also to Casey Pegraham, thanks to Christopher hasciotis
- 26:18Speaker 1: uh just he's he's a real gem, and thanks to
- 26:21Speaker 1: Eaves Jeff Coat are pure podcast on This Day in
- 26:24Speaker 1: History class, Alex Williams, who composed our theme my Neighbor
- 26:28Speaker 1: for his incessant leaf blowing. If I've seemed a little
- 26:31Speaker 1: out of it today. It's because this dude has been
- 26:33Speaker 1: blowing leaves for like four days straight. How can anyone
- 26:36Speaker 1: possibly have that many leaves? I was very tempted to
- 26:39Speaker 1: like literally just storm outside and a huff and just
- 26:41Speaker 1: literally just say, hey guy, what's is everything? Okay, what's
- 26:45Speaker 1: what's going on? And I went through the same thing.
- 26:48Speaker 1: I think I asked Casey to cut some of it
- 26:51Speaker 1: when I had some very like performatively loud leaf blowers there.
- 26:55Speaker 1: But that's that's why I'm in the office today. I
- 26:59Speaker 1: do also want to whatever genius invented the phrase a
- 27:03Speaker 1: clowns pay, A clowns pay. That's it, man, That's all
- 27:07Speaker 1: I've got. We'll see you next time, of folks. For
- 27:20Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
- 27:22Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
- 27:25Speaker 1: favorite shows.