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Flagpole Sitting: A Real Fad · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: you Should Read books dot com. Welcome to Stuff you
1:01
Speaker 1: Should know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
1:10
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
1:12
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant right over there. Jerry's out there somewhere,
1:17
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. You know, Chuck,
1:21
Speaker 1: I have to say yes. Every once in a while,
1:24
Speaker 1: the amazing theme song from our short lived television show
1:27
Speaker 1: comes into my head and it'll just it's just a
1:31
Speaker 1: complete earworm because I just hear the end of it
1:34
Speaker 1: over and over and over again, and it's actually pretty
1:37
Speaker 1: pleasant night. It doesn't bother me. I love it. I
1:39
Speaker 1: haven't heard that song in a while. Well, you need
1:41
Speaker 1: to go listen. That was the Henry Clay people, right, Yeah.
1:44
Speaker 1: Our buddies, Joey and Andy Sierra California boys, Southern California
1:51
Speaker 1: boys men. Didn't didn't they go to like Harvard or
1:53
Speaker 1: something crazy like that. Joey ended up going to Harvard
1:56
Speaker 1: and then I think Andy went to a f I
1:58
Speaker 1: and then Joey I think went back to film school
2:03
Speaker 1: and they're both writing, uh you know, screenwriting. Man. That's great,
2:08
Speaker 1: and he's got a he wrote it the this uh
2:10
Speaker 1: Andy Sandberg movie that's that's coming out soon. Really what
2:14
Speaker 1: which what what's it called? Uh? It is called Palm Springs?
2:18
Speaker 1: I think why? And he wrote it? Yeah, dude, that's fantastic.
2:23
Speaker 1: Congratulations And he wrote on the TV show Lodge forty nine. Yeah,
2:28
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the Springs, but that, um, that guy
2:33
Speaker 1: Kurt Rustling Goldie hans Son. I love that guy. I
2:37
Speaker 1: think he's one of the coolest people walking around on
2:39
Speaker 1: the planet today. Yeah, I haven't seen Lodge forty Nine's
2:42
Speaker 1: supposed to be awesome. And um, Andy was a writer's
2:45
Speaker 1: assistant and then ended up on the staff and they're
2:47
Speaker 1: they're both doing great. Man, that's great. A little baby
2:51
Speaker 1: now they're both married. Nice man, that's nice. And that's
2:54
Speaker 1: an update on the cra Club as um, let's see
3:00
Speaker 1: what else? How was it? How did did that come
3:03
Speaker 1: into your head? Though? The song? Like? What made you
3:05
Speaker 1: think of that? Nothing? I was just out back, like
3:08
Speaker 1: mowing the lawn with my big old lawnmower. Uh, and
3:11
Speaker 1: it just popped in my head. I was probably thinking
3:14
Speaker 1: of something I had to do that had to do
3:16
Speaker 1: with stuff you should know, and I thought stuff you
3:19
Speaker 1: should know? And when I thought it, I thought it
3:21
Speaker 1: as stuff you should know. Duing it. This is the
3:24
Speaker 1: then it just played on a loop. This is the
3:26
Speaker 1: second time you mentioned the size of your lawnmower. Yeah,
3:31
Speaker 1: and now you just gotta send me a picture. Is
3:33
Speaker 1: this one of these things that you stand it and
3:35
Speaker 1: it and it wheels you around like some weird land
3:38
Speaker 1: speeder you mean, like a skag or something. Now, this
3:41
Speaker 1: is just a good old fashioned toro. That is because
3:45
Speaker 1: it's gas powered. I got it like on super discount. Um,
3:49
Speaker 1: because everybody's making like really good electric lawnmowers, um, but
3:54
Speaker 1: this one was you know, it was on discount, and
3:57
Speaker 1: I like the look of it. Yeah, it's a good
3:59
Speaker 1: looking more huh. Yeah. I was like, I like your style.
4:03
Speaker 1: Is it red? Yep? Yeah, it was red toros. Yeah,
4:07
Speaker 1: it's nice. It takes you back to days of paper
4:09
Speaker 1: routes and stuff like that, don't I thought you were
4:12
Speaker 1: mentioning the song because you were thinking of the song
4:14
Speaker 1: Flagpole Sita by Harvey Danger. No, I wasn't at all. Okay,
4:24
Speaker 1: but that's a great segue, Chuck, because it just so happens.
4:27
Speaker 1: And you may be aware of this for talking about
4:30
Speaker 1: Flagpole sitting to day in this episode, right, and I've
4:33
Speaker 1: been singing that song in my head all day now,
4:36
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know that song? You know it?
4:38
Speaker 1: It was a well maybe not, it was a It
4:40
Speaker 1: was a top forty hit in the nineties, kind of
4:44
Speaker 1: during the grunge era. It was. It was a power
4:46
Speaker 1: pop hit that kind of Oh, don't, don't, don't, don't,
4:53
Speaker 1: don't do do wait, don't said it at it? No,
5:01
Speaker 1: my band actually covers a flagpoles. It it's a fun song. Okay,
5:04
Speaker 1: that's great. I'm gonna have to go listen to it
5:08
Speaker 1: because I feel like I'm missing out. But what that
5:10
Speaker 1: song is? That song about flagpole sitting is about shipwreck
5:13
Speaker 1: Kelly in particular. No, it's not. But it does have
5:16
Speaker 1: one line that says, run it up the flagpole and
5:19
Speaker 1: see And that's the only time it references flagpoles at all?
5:24
Speaker 1: Sees what who salutes? But no one ever does? I think?
5:29
Speaker 1: Is the next line? Mm hmm that rings a bill
5:33
Speaker 1: I have, but the again end then and then I
5:34
Speaker 1: was again to the mirror a little bit clearer. Run
5:40
Speaker 1: it up the flagpole and see who salutes? But no
5:43
Speaker 1: one ever does? Yeah, I'm not sick, but not well?
5:47
Speaker 1: Who is that Harvey danger? Danger? Okay? Yeah, that's a
5:50
Speaker 1: great song. I love it. Yeah. Who fellow podcasting friend
5:54
Speaker 1: John Roderick. Actually, uh, Sean Nelson was a friend of
5:57
Speaker 1: his in Seattle and Nate he played bass for a
5:59
Speaker 1: little all in Harvey Danger. Oh very wow, man, this
6:03
Speaker 1: is all coming first. So I got one more for you.
6:05
Speaker 1: I used to have that song and I don't know
6:09
Speaker 1: where I downloaded it from. This would have been probably
6:11
Speaker 1: back in the napster days or something, um, and it
6:15
Speaker 1: was mislabeled as Brian Jones how massacre. And I was
6:18
Speaker 1: always like, this is not sound like Brian Jones how massacre.
6:22
Speaker 1: Now I know it most definitely wasn't Brian Jones hown massacre. Wow. Alright,
6:28
Speaker 1: we haven't even talked about flag pole sitting yet. No,
6:31
Speaker 1: we haven't, um, which is a crime because it's actually
6:34
Speaker 1: one of the more interesting, weird old fads that's ever
6:38
Speaker 1: come this way in America, and it was in the
6:41
Speaker 1: twenties started. We actually we know who patient zero was
6:45
Speaker 1: a flagpole sitting and it's easy to tell because it
6:49
Speaker 1: is such a bizarre thing to do that if you
6:53
Speaker 1: can find the person who who who did it first,
6:56
Speaker 1: who claims to have done it first, they're probably correct,
6:59
Speaker 1: And in this case, you can trace it back to
7:02
Speaker 1: sometime around January, supposedly potentially in Hollywood, California, part of
7:09
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and there was a man named Alvin Shipwreck
7:13
Speaker 1: Kelly who supposedly climbed up on a flagpole as part
7:17
Speaker 1: of a promotion for a movie and sat there for
7:20
Speaker 1: full thirteen hours and thirteen minutes to help draw a crowd.
7:24
Speaker 1: And boyditty ever, yeah, which you know, Uh, that sounds
7:28
Speaker 1: like a long time to sit on a flagpole, but
7:30
Speaker 1: that is kids stuff, yeah, compared to where this is. Yeah,
7:35
Speaker 1: for sure, that's an appertif. But it's a good first attempt,
7:39
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. And so you know, it sounds strange
7:43
Speaker 1: because when you think of a flagpole, you're like, what
7:44
Speaker 1: are they sitting on? It's a it's a modified flagpole
7:47
Speaker 1: that basically there are different kinds, but um usually it's
7:51
Speaker 1: sort of like a bar stool at the top of
7:52
Speaker 1: a flagpole and it's that low fi and you climb
7:56
Speaker 1: up there and you sit and that's all you do.
8:01
Speaker 1: That's that's it. I mean, whatever else you want to do, well,
8:04
Speaker 1: sure you do use yourself or whatever that's up to you.
8:07
Speaker 1: But as far as being considered a flagpole sitter. That's it.
8:11
Speaker 1: You sit on top of a flagpole for as long
8:13
Speaker 1: as you can. All right, So let's talk about this guy,
8:15
Speaker 1: because Shipwreck Kelly was a pretty interesting character. Uh. And
8:20
Speaker 1: I have to say there's a Memory Palace episode about
8:22
Speaker 1: him that I specifically didn't listen to you beforehand because
8:25
Speaker 1: I didn't want to unconsciously rip it off. Go listen
8:28
Speaker 1: to that, yeah, or Buddy Nate, I'm gonna check that
8:30
Speaker 1: out for sure. So Alvin Kelly, Uh, he was born
8:34
Speaker 1: Aloysius Anthony Kelly in New York City, in Hell's Kitchen
8:38
Speaker 1: in a tenement in eight and had a very sad
8:42
Speaker 1: start to his life and that his father was had
8:46
Speaker 1: already passed before he was born. His mother passed in childbirth,
8:50
Speaker 1: and that basically meant he was shuttled around two relatives
8:55
Speaker 1: and orphanages from you know, the minute he took his
8:58
Speaker 1: first breath. Yeah. Um, And apparently from a pretty pretty
9:03
Speaker 1: early age he would do things like climb flagpoles and
9:06
Speaker 1: other tall stuff and like working at heights became a
9:11
Speaker 1: kind of a recurring theme in his life. Um. Was
9:14
Speaker 1: supposedly by age seven, he was climbing flagpoles. Within a
9:17
Speaker 1: few years after that, he was starting to scale the
9:20
Speaker 1: facades of some of the buildings in his neighborhood. And
9:22
Speaker 1: by the time he was thirteen. And bear in mind,
9:25
Speaker 1: if this guy's biography seems a little thin, he just
9:29
Speaker 1: came out of nowhere in n for sitting on a flagpole.
9:33
Speaker 1: So all of the info about him came from him
9:36
Speaker 1: to reporters who were reporting in the nineteen twenties. So
9:39
Speaker 1: just fabrications are flying around left and right. But um,
9:43
Speaker 1: supposedly he ran away at age thirteen and ran off
9:46
Speaker 1: to join uh the crew of a cargo ship and
9:50
Speaker 1: start his life sailing the seas. Yeah, and he did
9:53
Speaker 1: a lot of kind of odd jobs, or maybe not
9:55
Speaker 1: odd jobs, but just jobs that didn't have anything to
9:58
Speaker 1: do with one another. Uh. Over the next couple of decades,
10:01
Speaker 1: he was in the movies as a a stand in
10:04
Speaker 1: and a double He was a stunt person, a stunt pilot,
10:08
Speaker 1: high diver, a boxer. Uh, this part I love. There's
10:12
Speaker 1: actually a name for people that repair church steeples, and
10:15
Speaker 1: what is that steeple jack. He was a steeplejack. That
10:19
Speaker 1: is definitely a band name for sure. Steeple Jack oh yeah,
10:23
Speaker 1: it sounds like maybe an industrial band, but like on
10:27
Speaker 1: the light side, like they like they're technically too melodic
10:30
Speaker 1: to actually be considered industrial, but they still call themselves industrial.
10:34
Speaker 1: That's become my favorite part of this whole band name thing,
10:38
Speaker 1: is you describing what kind of band it is? Okay,
10:42
Speaker 1: well thanks man. That that that makes me feel warm
10:44
Speaker 1: and funny. So, um, World War One comes along, and
10:48
Speaker 1: he was in the Naval Auxiliary Reserve as an ensign
10:53
Speaker 1: and served on the USS Edgar f Lukenbach during that war. Yep,
11:00
Speaker 1: so he did have some sort of well I should say,
11:03
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody's corroborated that, um, but we'll
11:07
Speaker 1: just take all that at face value because it doesn't
11:08
Speaker 1: really matter at this point. But what he eventually picked
11:13
Speaker 1: up the nickname shipwreck. And there's a lot of different
11:16
Speaker 1: um explanations for this, and he's given or he gave
11:20
Speaker 1: multiple different explanations depending on what reporter he was talking to.
11:24
Speaker 1: But one of the numbers that gets bandied about pretty
11:28
Speaker 1: frequently is that shipwreck Kelly was so named because he
11:33
Speaker 1: survived thirty two different shipwrecks at sea. And where this
11:36
Speaker 1: is where shipwrecks tend to happen with the good old days. Third, yeah,
11:40
Speaker 1: up stories about yourself. Do you remember when we talked
11:44
Speaker 1: about um, we did an episode on the World's Either
11:48
Speaker 1: Luckiest or Unluckiest People? And do you remember that one
11:52
Speaker 1: guy He was like, I I survived a car that
11:55
Speaker 1: fell off a cliff, and I survived a train wreck
11:57
Speaker 1: and all that. He was doing his jam in like
11:59
Speaker 1: two thousand five, remember, was he? Yeah, he was pretty
12:03
Speaker 1: pretty recent if I remember correctly. Remember his son came
12:06
Speaker 1: out was like, everybody, this is not true, right, Like,
12:09
Speaker 1: none of what you're talking about is true. Well, we
12:11
Speaker 1: did had just fooled you all. We don't know if
12:13
Speaker 1: a shipwreck Kelly actually survived the Titanic like he claimed,
12:17
Speaker 1: but we do know that he was not on the
12:20
Speaker 1: roster on the Titanic, So I am going to venture
12:23
Speaker 1: to say that he made that one up. And there
12:25
Speaker 1: were three Kelly's on board, but who were survivors? But
12:29
Speaker 1: all three of them were women, So yeah, he probably
12:31
Speaker 1: wasn't on the Titanic. Maybe he did survive from shipwrecks.
12:34
Speaker 1: He was at sea most likely, But the point is
12:37
Speaker 1: that they call him shipwreck Kelly, and I guess somebody
12:40
Speaker 1: went to the trouble of digging up that. Uh. Some
12:44
Speaker 1: reporters who covered his boxing career are probably the likeliest
12:49
Speaker 1: source for where he got his nickname shipwreck, right, which
12:52
Speaker 1: I love because I guess he wasn't a great boxer,
12:55
Speaker 1: because they said that he was often adrift and ready
12:59
Speaker 1: to sink that great shipwreck Kelly. It's a great nickname
13:04
Speaker 1: and an even better origin story than surviving thirty two
13:07
Speaker 1: shipwrecks if you asked me. Yeah. And the other thing
13:09
Speaker 1: we don't know for sure is even if that Hollywood
13:12
Speaker 1: movie premiere story is correct in his first major outing
13:17
Speaker 1: as a flagpolesitter, because uh, yet another story says no,
13:21
Speaker 1: this is actually in Philadelphia at a department store and
13:24
Speaker 1: he just did it on a dare and the department
13:26
Speaker 1: store got a lot of business because people are standing
13:28
Speaker 1: around looking and then doing some shopping. So they were like, Hey,
13:32
Speaker 1: stay up there and I'll give you some extra dough. Yeah. So,
13:36
Speaker 1: either way, it's pretty widely held that Shipwreck Kelly was
13:40
Speaker 1: the guy who started the flagpole sitting craze. And it
13:44
Speaker 1: was a craze because this is a time where you
13:48
Speaker 1: could go sit on a flagpole for thirteen hours and
13:50
Speaker 1: thirteen minutes, and newspapers around the country would pick up
13:56
Speaker 1: the story and write about it. Um, and you would say,
14:00
Speaker 1: become famous overnight. And that's exactly what happened to Shipwreck Kelly.
14:03
Speaker 1: So that's prong one towards this becoming a fad in
14:07
Speaker 1: the nineties. The other criteria is that um, people have
14:12
Speaker 1: to want to topple that record, and that was very
14:15
Speaker 1: widespread at the time too, because the nineteen twenties were
14:18
Speaker 1: actually really big into fads, like people would take up
14:21
Speaker 1: weird fads and just go nuts over for basically the
14:25
Speaker 1: whole decade. Yeah, you know, people had time, and they
14:29
Speaker 1: had fewer distractions. Yeah, no TV. So like someone doing
14:35
Speaker 1: a dance a thon for twenty eight hours or sitting
14:39
Speaker 1: on a flagpole for a day. You know, it's a
14:42
Speaker 1: it's an interesting story. Back then it's sad, but that
14:45
Speaker 1: that was interesting, but it was so uh well, we'll
14:51
Speaker 1: talk about dance marathons and then we'll take a break. Okay, okay, okay,
15:26
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I got that backwards, Chuck. I just realized
15:29
Speaker 1: hopefully Jerry figured it out and there was an ad
15:31
Speaker 1: in there somewhere. I think we should just leave it
15:34
Speaker 1: just like that though. That'll be fun. Okay, So um,
15:38
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about marathon's. Dance marathon's now after the
15:42
Speaker 1: ad break, despite what I said before, and dance marathons
15:46
Speaker 1: are a super twenties example of a crazy fad that
15:51
Speaker 1: kind of came along and got everybody by the hackles,
15:54
Speaker 1: and people across the country started entering basically dance marathon
15:59
Speaker 1: competitions because of one person, one woman, a dance instructor
16:02
Speaker 1: named Alma Cummings, that's right, thirty two years old. She
16:06
Speaker 1: danced for twenty seven hours at the Audubon Ballroom in
16:10
Speaker 1: New York in nine three with six different dance partners.
16:14
Speaker 1: And uh, it was a weird time because it wasn't
16:19
Speaker 1: just dancing, it was endurance challenges as a whole. We're
16:23
Speaker 1: just all the rage and punishing your bodies and all
16:27
Speaker 1: these weird random ways from yo yoing too hula hooping
16:32
Speaker 1: to rocking in a rocking chair or skipping rope uh
16:37
Speaker 1: to dancing dancing was the big one. That's where you
16:39
Speaker 1: You know, if you see these videos of these marathon
16:43
Speaker 1: dance competitions, it's just it looks like hell on Earth.
16:47
Speaker 1: It looks awful. Yeah, oh yeah, they didn't seem very
16:50
Speaker 1: fun at all, but um, Alma Cummings just kicked the
16:53
Speaker 1: whole thing off. And again, just like Shipwreck Kelly, who
16:56
Speaker 1: would follow I guess a year later, um or even yeah,
16:59
Speaker 1: about a year later. Uh, she got a lot of publicity.
17:03
Speaker 1: There's like a famous photo of her with her feet
17:05
Speaker 1: in a tub of water soaking at home and she's
17:08
Speaker 1: holding up her shoes and they have holes in the
17:10
Speaker 1: souls where you know, she wore holes from dancing for
17:13
Speaker 1: twenty seven hours. And I guess, like you're saying people
17:16
Speaker 1: were bored or there wasn't as much to do, but
17:19
Speaker 1: also there really seems to just be a profound hunger
17:23
Speaker 1: for celebrity however you can get it, and that seemed
17:27
Speaker 1: to be like really drive people who wanted to be like, well,
17:30
Speaker 1: if this lady got this much attention for dancing twenty
17:33
Speaker 1: seven straight hours, maybe I can get even more attention
17:36
Speaker 1: for dancing thirty straight hours. And so within just like
17:40
Speaker 1: I think three weeks of Alma Cummings setting this record
17:44
Speaker 1: for dancing, um, it had been broken nine times at
17:47
Speaker 1: least from people trying to seek the same kind of
17:50
Speaker 1: publicity she got. Yeah, and you know, it's funny. It
17:53
Speaker 1: really like we talked about these days, how everyone wants
17:56
Speaker 1: their ten minutes or they want to be reality show
17:58
Speaker 1: famous or whatever, and I been whittled down to ten Now.
18:02
Speaker 1: I thought it was like fifteen. Well, like that's something new,
18:05
Speaker 1: and it's really not like this is sort of this
18:08
Speaker 1: The version of that back then was I want to
18:11
Speaker 1: be famous, I want my names in the papers, but
18:14
Speaker 1: I'm not particularly skilled enough to do anything to do that.
18:18
Speaker 1: So I'll rock in a rocking chair for three days. Yeah,
18:22
Speaker 1: you know, and hopefully they will come. Um rock, they
18:25
Speaker 1: will come. And it's that was a pity laugh at best,
18:30
Speaker 1: but I appreciate. Well it's a bad joke admittedly, Um,
18:35
Speaker 1: but it would. And we we should shout out a
18:38
Speaker 1: bunch of great websites here because um this next bit
18:41
Speaker 1: came from Atlas Obscura, one of our favorite sites and
18:45
Speaker 1: also our dearest of old sites that we always have
18:48
Speaker 1: loved Mental Floss, Ripley's History Daily, j Mark Powell, and
18:53
Speaker 1: Historic Pellem, which is great, but um, Atlas Obscura talks
18:58
Speaker 1: about the in the thirties and this is really kind
19:01
Speaker 1: of depressing. Um during the depression. It's very appropriate is
19:09
Speaker 1: that sometimes people would enter these dance marathons because it
19:13
Speaker 1: would be somewhere they could sleep and eat for a
19:16
Speaker 1: week at a time when they didn't necessarily have a
19:19
Speaker 1: home or food. Yeah, it's extremely depressing, or just the
19:24
Speaker 1: prize money that was offered in the depression might be
19:28
Speaker 1: enough to keep your house from being foreclosed on. So yeah,
19:31
Speaker 1: the thing is is, you know, you can blame promoters
19:34
Speaker 1: for continuing this long beyond the fad, but the promoters
19:38
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been putting these on and offering these price
19:40
Speaker 1: this prize money where it not for all the crowds
19:43
Speaker 1: that would show up every day to watch these people
19:45
Speaker 1: get increasingly closer to you know, catastrophic exhaustion from from
19:51
Speaker 1: dance marathons. Because like there were there were rules where
19:55
Speaker 1: you know, probably early on in the dance marathon, um,
19:59
Speaker 1: you could sleep or rest for fifteen minutes of every hour,
20:03
Speaker 1: and then after like a week a week of this
20:07
Speaker 1: dance marathon going on, the promoter might be like, okay, well,
20:10
Speaker 1: you know, we need to step things up a little
20:13
Speaker 1: bit and you will now have three minutes per hour
20:17
Speaker 1: every twenty four hour period in a day to where
20:20
Speaker 1: you can rest and then towards the end, they'd be like,
20:24
Speaker 1: no rest. I think I read about one where the
20:26
Speaker 1: last fifty seven hours of a multi week um dance
20:31
Speaker 1: marathon was like I had no rest. So these people
20:35
Speaker 1: dance for more than two straight days constantly. You had
20:37
Speaker 1: to constantly be in motion and your knees couldn't touch
20:40
Speaker 1: the ground or else you'd be disqualified. Yeah, and if
20:43
Speaker 1: you look at footage of this stuff, I mean it's charitable,
20:45
Speaker 1: we'll call what they're doing is dancing. Toward the end,
20:47
Speaker 1: it's just hanging. It looks like two corpses hanging on
20:51
Speaker 1: each other, sort of swaying back and forth. Yeah, I
20:55
Speaker 1: don't get I mean any of these things, even the
20:58
Speaker 1: modern day versions of like these contest where you have
21:01
Speaker 1: to keep your hand on a car or whatever, oh man,
21:07
Speaker 1: or sit in the car. I knew a guy that
21:09
Speaker 1: did one of those where you try to win a
21:11
Speaker 1: Volkswagen Beetle by sitting in it with four other people
21:13
Speaker 1: in a mall. I'm just like, oh, yeah, you told
21:17
Speaker 1: us that story before. Did he win or not? I
21:19
Speaker 1: think he did, But there's just no way kill me. Yeah,
21:25
Speaker 1: it would be really awful for sure, because let's say,
21:28
Speaker 1: for one of those contests. Let's say don't win, then
21:33
Speaker 1: you've just sat in a car with three strangers for
21:35
Speaker 1: a week and he didn't even get the car. But
21:39
Speaker 1: even if you did get the car, imagine yourself five
21:41
Speaker 1: years on and that car is like like curst, there's
21:45
Speaker 1: tears in the seats or something like that, you know,
21:47
Speaker 1: and like the glove compartment won't close. It's you know,
21:52
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you've got a story to tell
21:54
Speaker 1: a cocktail parties, but even that would wear thin after
21:57
Speaker 1: a while. But but Chuck, we need people to do
22:00
Speaker 1: stuff like that because there's something about contests like this.
22:05
Speaker 1: There's something about fads like flagpole sitting that keep humanity
22:11
Speaker 1: from becoming too cerebral, you know what I mean, from
22:15
Speaker 1: just becoming like computers. Basically, we need people to do
22:20
Speaker 1: stuff like this because it brings out some juvenile something
22:25
Speaker 1: in us that makes us want to find out about
22:27
Speaker 1: it or learn about it or talk about it. And
22:30
Speaker 1: I think that's good. I think that's healthy for our species.
22:33
Speaker 1: All right, it's my it's my take. It's genuinely off
22:37
Speaker 1: the cuff. I'm actually just surprised at myself that I
22:40
Speaker 1: just said that out loud. You're just riffing. Yeah, so
22:44
Speaker 1: shipwreck Kelly back to flagpole sitting. Uh, that initial thirteen
22:49
Speaker 1: minutes sit, like you said, inspired so many others to
22:53
Speaker 1: break it, and it was getting broken in pretty short order. Um,
22:57
Speaker 1: kind of like the dance a Thons. That was a
23:00
Speaker 1: woman named Bobby Mack from l A who did it.
23:02
Speaker 1: A guy named Joe hold Him Powers who did this
23:06
Speaker 1: in Chicago for sixteen days, um, another guy for fifty
23:11
Speaker 1: one days named Bill Bill Penfield. Yeah, so so let's
23:16
Speaker 1: point this out. Take a second here, ship Breck Kelly
23:18
Speaker 1: did thirteen hours and kicked off a national fad. These
23:21
Speaker 1: people are now in two weeks at a time. Fifty
23:24
Speaker 1: one days is more than seven weeks up there. It's
23:28
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. I'm impressed at least. Yeah, are you bucking
23:32
Speaker 1: the cerebral yes? Right now? Can you tell uh? Let
23:37
Speaker 1: me see here. In the twenties, it was a fifteen
23:39
Speaker 1: year old boy, um who set the kid record for
23:43
Speaker 1: ten days, ten hours, ten minutes, and ten seconds. I
23:46
Speaker 1: think that was planned. I yeah, if not, then but
23:50
Speaker 1: see there you go, Chuck, we're thinking about that. It's
23:53
Speaker 1: making us think. This little kid is making us think
23:55
Speaker 1: we got to avoid that it needs to be random,
23:58
Speaker 1: random combinations of no so we don't start thinking about it.
24:02
Speaker 1: We should also point out that not everyone was like, oh,
24:05
Speaker 1: this is the best thing ever. In Cosmopolitan magazine, Cosmo
24:09
Speaker 1: called it competitive uh imbecility. Yeah, this is fine, we
24:15
Speaker 1: need that too. I have to say, I want to
24:17
Speaker 1: say something. Here is a little p s A. This
24:19
Speaker 1: might not even ever make it in the final edit,
24:21
Speaker 1: so I'll just say it to you. How about that?
24:24
Speaker 1: I would say, the last like few weeks of episodes, Um,
24:30
Speaker 1: there's been like some some good ones here there, but
24:32
Speaker 1: overall I find that they've been less good because I
24:37
Speaker 1: am so sick of myself because we've been so entrenched
24:43
Speaker 1: in the book right now, so it's like living breathing
24:47
Speaker 1: s y s K, which is us, and having to
24:50
Speaker 1: confront and like myself and my own personality and sense
24:55
Speaker 1: of humor and whether that's actually funny, and just constantly
24:58
Speaker 1: thinking about this on top of doing the podcast, on
25:01
Speaker 1: top of the other stuff we're trying to do now too,
25:04
Speaker 1: and I am so sick of myself. I can barely
25:08
Speaker 1: tolerate listening to myself talk. So if anyone's picked up
25:12
Speaker 1: on the last few episodes, like in the last few weeks,
25:15
Speaker 1: just being a little ho hum, that's why. And I apologize.
25:19
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll go back and redo them one day. News
25:23
Speaker 1: to me, I think, okay, you've been great. Hey, thanks
25:29
Speaker 1: a lot, man, That's ultimately what I was fishing for.
25:31
Speaker 1: Al Right, well, if you want to cut that part out,
25:33
Speaker 1: let's let me pick this up by saying, and I'm
25:36
Speaker 1: sure you've made a great point, Josh. So so back
25:43
Speaker 1: to Kelly. Right, you've got all these what I'm sure
25:47
Speaker 1: shipwrecked Kelly deemed slack jawed, yokel's ho homes, that kind
25:51
Speaker 1: of thing. Um who were out there trying to topple
25:55
Speaker 1: his record, and they did, some did topple his record,
25:57
Speaker 1: but nobody had turned this into a business like shipwreck
26:00
Speaker 1: Kelly had. Here was a one man money making machine
26:05
Speaker 1: who made his money just by sitting on top of
26:07
Speaker 1: a flagpole. Good money because he was really good at
26:10
Speaker 1: self promoting, Like there wasn't a reporter who's the year.
26:12
Speaker 1: He wouldn't bend if he got the chance. And in
26:15
Speaker 1: these reports um or these articles, he would say things like, yeah,
26:19
Speaker 1: I'm in town for this, but if anybody has any
26:21
Speaker 1: other offers, I'm wide open. And I'm staying at you know,
26:24
Speaker 1: the Cambridge Arms um I Tinerant hotel for the next
26:28
Speaker 1: few days. If somebody wants to get in touch with
26:30
Speaker 1: me there with a job offer, like he was really
26:32
Speaker 1: good at at attracting job offers, specifically for flagpole sitting. Yeah,
26:37
Speaker 1: and he made good dough for back then. I mean,
26:40
Speaker 1: this is good money anytime. If he made a hundred
26:43
Speaker 1: dollars an hour like he claimed to um, other people said, now,
26:46
Speaker 1: it really wasn't that much. It was probably closer to
26:48
Speaker 1: anywhere between a hundred and five hundred dollars a day.
26:51
Speaker 1: Still a lot of money. And um, like you said,
26:55
Speaker 1: it was like he was almost like a celebrity version
26:59
Speaker 1: of a sign spinner, Like if you could pay George
27:04
Speaker 1: Clooney to sign spin in front of your mobile phone store.
27:09
Speaker 1: Uh huh. That was sort of what Chiprette Kelly was.
27:13
Speaker 1: That's a great one I got into. It's almost like
27:17
Speaker 1: if there was a cult of personality built up around
27:20
Speaker 1: like the flapping dancing windsock guy that they put out
27:24
Speaker 1: in front of like mattress mattress stores in like two
27:28
Speaker 1: thousand five. Ye I love those dudes. Okay, those are
27:32
Speaker 1: fun both I think both of those are high quality analogies. Well,
27:36
Speaker 1: we'll see which one Jerry's is in the end it okay, uh,
27:40
Speaker 1: let me see here here here are some of his
27:41
Speaker 1: longer sits. He did a hundred and forty six hours
27:45
Speaker 1: at the Old Westgate Hotel in Kansas City. Three hundred
27:50
Speaker 1: and twelve hours in Newark, New Jersey, atop the St.
27:54
Speaker 1: Francis Hotel. That's pretty good. Sure, I don't know what
27:59
Speaker 1: that is in days, but three twelve hours. Let's see
28:04
Speaker 1: if you divided that by twenty four, as you should,
28:07
Speaker 1: you would come up with something along the lines of
28:10
Speaker 1: thirteen days on the nose. M all right, Well, how
28:14
Speaker 1: about twenty two days? And this was in conjunction with
28:17
Speaker 1: a dance marathon at none other than Madison Square Garden. Yeah,
28:22
Speaker 1: because I don't know if we said or not, but
28:23
Speaker 1: there was a dance marathon at Madison Square Gardens that
28:26
Speaker 1: was actually shut down by the Health Department because they
28:29
Speaker 1: decided to have gone on too long ten days, and
28:32
Speaker 1: that it deemed a threat to the health of the participants.
28:36
Speaker 1: That wasn't the one that he he sat in, but
28:39
Speaker 1: there was one the following year where for what was
28:42
Speaker 1: it twenty two days. That means that the dance marathon
28:46
Speaker 1: went on for twenty two days. But imagine that. So
28:50
Speaker 1: you've got these two endurance fads just interweaved in this
28:54
Speaker 1: way that the universe almost like collapses in on itself
28:57
Speaker 1: because they're put together too too close together there, you know.
29:02
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And here's how he would do it. He
29:04
Speaker 1: would sit on a on that bar stool like thing,
29:07
Speaker 1: and it was padded and he would, um, you know,
29:13
Speaker 1: eat and smoke cigarettes and shave apparently, and they would
29:17
Speaker 1: send this up stuff up in like a with a
29:19
Speaker 1: bucket and a rope and tell him how he would sleep.
29:23
Speaker 1: Because this is what I really kind of wanted to know. So,
29:29
Speaker 1: so you said his his seat was like a bar
29:31
Speaker 1: stool around bar stool basically, right, and um, it was
29:36
Speaker 1: on a pole, flag pole appropriately, And then in the
29:39
Speaker 1: flag pole you'd have two holes drilled just beneath the seat.
29:42
Speaker 1: And now that I'm doing it, I'm like, that's really
29:44
Speaker 1: hard to reach. So now I'm questioning whether this is
29:46
Speaker 1: true or not. Maybe so, but he so he would
29:52
Speaker 1: plug his his thumbs into those holes drilled into each
29:56
Speaker 1: side of the flagpole, so that when he started to
29:58
Speaker 1: lean forward, the pressure from that the flagpole on his
30:02
Speaker 1: thumbs would kind of cut into his skin and wake
30:05
Speaker 1: him up just enough that he would adjust himself. And
30:08
Speaker 1: apparently he got so good at this that he would
30:10
Speaker 1: adjust himself to sit back up so he wouldn't fall
30:14
Speaker 1: over off of the flagpole while he was still sleeping,
30:16
Speaker 1: like he wouldn't he wouldn't wake up. He could just
30:18
Speaker 1: adjust himself in his sleep, that's right. And he'd have
30:21
Speaker 1: his little uh, I don't know if they're a little bit.
30:23
Speaker 1: He would have his ankles locked around the pole and
30:26
Speaker 1: apparently would tether a leg to keep him from a catastrophe.
30:32
Speaker 1: But I I think it's very dubious that that was
30:35
Speaker 1: a solid life saving rig. Yeah, And I mean, like
30:40
Speaker 1: some of these flagpoles, he's sitting on fifty ft um
30:44
Speaker 1: one of them. I guess the impression I had the
30:46
Speaker 1: one that you mentioned on um Kansas City's Westgate Hotel
30:51
Speaker 1: that that flagpole was on the top of the roof
30:53
Speaker 1: of the hotel. So I mean he was up there
30:56
Speaker 1: for sure, and if he had something gone wrong, he
30:58
Speaker 1: would have that tether probably would not have done terribly much,
31:04
Speaker 1: or it would have done a lot to keep his
31:06
Speaker 1: leg hanging up there, but the rest of him would
31:08
Speaker 1: have kept going to the ground. You know, how did
31:10
Speaker 1: he Uh he had a little contraption for that with
31:14
Speaker 1: the tube that went down. But here's the thing. So
31:18
Speaker 1: you're you're a traveling flagpole sitter. You're relying on the
31:22
Speaker 1: help of other people on the ground. You need food.
31:25
Speaker 1: You when you pee and poop into that contraption that
31:28
Speaker 1: leads to a tube that goes down to the ground,
31:31
Speaker 1: you don't want that just leaking out for the spectators
31:33
Speaker 1: to see and smell and experience. You needed to go
31:36
Speaker 1: into a bucket that somebody's going to go take away
31:39
Speaker 1: and dump. So you're relying on this kind of group
31:42
Speaker 1: of assistance in hands that probably the promoter maybe helped
31:46
Speaker 1: hire for you. Maybe you make a friend along the
31:49
Speaker 1: way who just kind of travels from town to town
31:51
Speaker 1: with you for a little while, an assistant. He had
31:56
Speaker 1: a boy business, right, he had a lad who would
32:01
Speaker 1: help him. Yeah, yeah, uh so, uh but it would
32:06
Speaker 1: be a pretty bad job. Yeah. But anyway, so he
32:09
Speaker 1: had to I mean, he had to eat, and he
32:11
Speaker 1: didn't eat much. He would apparently just kind of almost
32:14
Speaker 1: do a broth fast um augmented with cigarettes and coffee. Um,
32:20
Speaker 1: he would stay up for four days at a time,
32:22
Speaker 1: because like, living on a flagpole is not exactly like
32:25
Speaker 1: the most comfortable place you can exist for, you know,
32:30
Speaker 1: twenty two days or thirteen days or however long. No,
32:33
Speaker 1: And it eventually turned against him, and that the money
32:37
Speaker 1: dried up after he did this sort of big Atlantic
32:41
Speaker 1: city stunt that we talked about and it was the
32:44
Speaker 1: Great Depression, and eventually people were kind of like, I
32:47
Speaker 1: don't really care so much about this dumb stunt because
32:49
Speaker 1: I'm starving and I'm broke and I'm homeless, right, And
32:54
Speaker 1: that the kind of tide of public opinion turned such
32:57
Speaker 1: that he went to do this in the Bronx and
33:01
Speaker 1: he was actually arrested for public nuisance. Yeah, and I'm
33:04
Speaker 1: sure he was like, but I'm shipwreck Kelly, right, But
33:08
Speaker 1: I mean think about it, that's like everybody's sick of
33:10
Speaker 1: you now, Kelly and your stick. We're all just depressed
33:13
Speaker 1: in the depression. So maybe we'll do a dance marathon,
33:16
Speaker 1: but we're not gonna watch you sit around in a
33:18
Speaker 1: flag pole anymore. And um there was a contemporary article
33:23
Speaker 1: that was written at the time that said that um
33:26
Speaker 1: he he attributed the decline of Flagpole, sitting directly to
33:29
Speaker 1: the stock market crash, and he said that people didn't
33:32
Speaker 1: want to see anything higher than their securities stock securities
33:36
Speaker 1: at the time, which we're not very high. So then
33:38
Speaker 1: everyone went, that's just not even a joke in good
33:41
Speaker 1: taste and he and he punches human familiar in the
33:46
Speaker 1: mouth and say, you told me to tell that joke? Man?
33:52
Speaker 1: That was Gangbusters, Chuck? Do you watch that? Ship? Got me?
33:56
Speaker 1: What we do? What we do in the Shadows. I've
33:59
Speaker 1: seen some episodes of it, you know. We were talking
34:02
Speaker 1: about it, and one of the p a s I think,
34:05
Speaker 1: wrote in to say that they were they were just
34:08
Speaker 1: blown away that we were. We're giving such big ups
34:11
Speaker 1: to their show. If you talk to Matt Barry, tell
34:14
Speaker 1: him he's a comedy genius. I never heard anything back.
34:17
Speaker 1: But oh, have you seen an evening with Beverly luff Lynn? No,
34:23
Speaker 1: how do I know that name? So it's a um
34:27
Speaker 1: Craig Robinson, Yes, from the office, right, he plays a
34:33
Speaker 1: guy named Beverly luf Lynn And uh Aubrey Meadows, Audrey
34:39
Speaker 1: Meadows Plaza, that's right, man, I'm yeah, um And then uh, okay,
34:47
Speaker 1: so she's the main character, Jermaine Clement. I know him
34:51
Speaker 1: that he plays well, you just have to see it anyway.
34:55
Speaker 1: So what he was and what we do in the
34:56
Speaker 1: Shadows the movie right right, So he I think he
34:59
Speaker 1: coke eatd it too. This is what all ties into this.
35:02
Speaker 1: He and Matt Barry are also in this too. Matt
35:05
Speaker 1: Berry is in the TV version of what we do
35:07
Speaker 1: in the Shadows. The main Clement help help create it.
35:10
Speaker 1: But um, it's definitely worth watching. Is purposefully very bizarre,
35:15
Speaker 1: which can get really annoying really easily, but this movie
35:19
Speaker 1: pulls it off very well, like purposeful bizarreness and for humor. Um,
35:24
Speaker 1: And it's a good it's a good movie. It's worth watching. Okay,
35:27
Speaker 1: it's worth watching. I leave it to you to decide
35:31
Speaker 1: whether it's a good movie or not. Well, I love
35:33
Speaker 1: everybody in it. That's a great cast. Yeah, I mean
35:35
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a it's worth watching. How
35:38
Speaker 1: about that? All right? Should we take our second break here?
35:40
Speaker 1: Can you believe we haven't? Yes? I can. All right,
35:44
Speaker 1: let's do our other break and then we're gonna talk
35:47
Speaker 1: about we're gonna wind up this flagpole sitting thing. Right
35:51
Speaker 1: after this Okay, So Kelly, when we left off, the
36:26
Speaker 1: public turns on him. They don't care about him anymore.
36:29
Speaker 1: He's he's probably drunk in some hotel room somewhere with
36:33
Speaker 1: his human familiar talking about the good old days at
36:36
Speaker 1: this point, right, Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of sad. I
36:39
Speaker 1: get the impression, um, that the Memory Palace episode really
36:43
Speaker 1: focuses on the sad decline of shipwreck Kelly, because I mean,
36:47
Speaker 1: he was a celebrity, a national probably international celebrity, for
36:51
Speaker 1: like a decade, a decade for sitting on flagpoles, and
36:56
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, he's just done, Like society
37:00
Speaker 1: rops him like a hot potato, and he's penniless and
37:04
Speaker 1: on public assistance. Basically. Yeah, and he died a very
37:08
Speaker 1: sad death he did. Uh. And I think his final
37:12
Speaker 1: flagpole sit it was all the way in the nineteen
37:15
Speaker 1: fifties and Orange Texas in nineteen fifty two. He was
37:18
Speaker 1: almost sixty years old at this point, and he had,
37:23
Speaker 1: during the publicity run up to this, had two heart attacks. Um, well,
37:29
Speaker 1: was he sitting on his pole for publicity or was
37:33
Speaker 1: this part of the pole sitting when he had the
37:34
Speaker 1: heart attacks? He was? He had the heart attacks on
37:39
Speaker 1: the pole during the publicity. Oh so the the actual
37:43
Speaker 1: sit was another publicity stunt for some place, right, Yeah,
37:47
Speaker 1: I don't know what business it was for. I didn't
37:49
Speaker 1: see that, but I did see that. The promoters were like,
37:51
Speaker 1: come down right now, we we we don't think you're
37:54
Speaker 1: going to survive a third heart attack, so stop, which
37:58
Speaker 1: is crazy. I mean, it's only fifty nine at the time. Yeah,
38:02
Speaker 1: but fifty nine in the nineteen fifties, that was when
38:06
Speaker 1: your name was shipwreck. Yeah. But he did die of
38:11
Speaker 1: that third heart attack like a week after that, right, Yeah,
38:15
Speaker 1: he's walking around New York on fifty one Street and
38:18
Speaker 1: um he dropped that on the sidewalk from a heart attack.
38:22
Speaker 1: And he uh was found holding a scrapbook of all
38:28
Speaker 1: like clippings of newspaper articles about him during his heyday.
38:33
Speaker 1: Isn't that sad? It's like a movie. Yeah, I can't
38:37
Speaker 1: believe this is a movie. He's I mean, he's a
38:40
Speaker 1: gold mine just waiting to be well mined. Uh wait, wait, wait,
38:48
Speaker 1: there's one other thing about him. After he um was
38:54
Speaker 1: done with this flag poles sitting career, the heyday of it.
38:57
Speaker 1: He one of the jobs he had was as a
38:59
Speaker 1: jiggle oh, a male escort who would dance with whoever
39:04
Speaker 1: wanted him to dance at the Roseland ball Room near
39:08
Speaker 1: Times Square. He was a private dancer, a dancer for money.
39:12
Speaker 1: I've been to roseland they've seen some good shows there. Yeah,
39:16
Speaker 1: well you were where Shipwreck Kelly danced for a diamond
39:20
Speaker 1: dance because he was a jiggilow. I would have paid
39:22
Speaker 1: for that dance. Sure, tell him to sit on my head. Hey,
39:29
Speaker 1: he'll do what you want him to do. Oh boy, Um,
39:33
Speaker 1: So we looked, or rather you look, because you put
39:36
Speaker 1: this one together and you found one death from flagpole sitting.
39:40
Speaker 1: Isn't that right? That's all I could turn up. Surely,
39:43
Speaker 1: surely there were more, but I could really only find one.
39:47
Speaker 1: And this guy was wonderful in every way. Dick Blandy,
39:51
Speaker 1: Dixie Blandy, Richard Dixie d I x I E. Bland
39:56
Speaker 1: Dick Dixie Blandy. Sure so, Dixie Blandy. He was a
40:02
Speaker 1: flag pole sitter who was contemporaneous to Shipwreck Kelly, a
40:08
Speaker 1: little bit like during I. Surely he was directly inspired
40:11
Speaker 1: by Shipwreck Kelly. He came along and started in ninety nine,
40:15
Speaker 1: which was almost the worst year you could join the
40:19
Speaker 1: flagpole sitting movement, because just the next year shipwreck, Kelly
40:23
Speaker 1: had his triumphant sit aboard like a or above two.
40:28
Speaker 1: What triumphant sat? Yeah, Well it was triumphant for a
40:33
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. One it was his longest sit I
40:36
Speaker 1: believe twenty two days, twenty three days, something like that.
40:39
Speaker 1: And secondly, it's aboard or above um a top a
40:43
Speaker 1: two hundred foot flagpole for weeks he sat up there.
40:48
Speaker 1: That's triumphant if you ask me. But he did his
40:51
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty and everybody dropped him right after. Dixie
40:54
Speaker 1: Blandy just started in nine. But even though people said
40:59
Speaker 1: flag pole sitting so out, we're not going to bother
41:01
Speaker 1: even looking up when we see somebody on a flagpole,
41:04
Speaker 1: Dixie Blandy said, you know what, I'm not giving up
41:07
Speaker 1: on this. And he continued to make a career out
41:09
Speaker 1: of it wherever he could, yes, until he died from
41:13
Speaker 1: flagpole sitting, and at the age of seventy one in
41:17
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, he fell off of his flagpole. It
41:22
Speaker 1: was a fifty foot pole And uh, where was this
41:25
Speaker 1: in in Harvey? Yeah, I get the impression in Pennsylvania, Harvey, Pennsylvania. Yeah,
41:32
Speaker 1: because the article that reported on it as if it
41:35
Speaker 1: were something of a nearby event was called The Reading Eagle.
41:39
Speaker 1: And reading is in Pennsylvania, right, Uh yeah? Is it
41:42
Speaker 1: reading whatever? I can't tell you how many times I've
41:48
Speaker 1: been told that since I was a child playing monopoly,
41:51
Speaker 1: and it's just never stuck for some reason. Was that
41:54
Speaker 1: the titular railroad? M okay, well, reading railroad? We said, reading, Yeah,
42:01
Speaker 1: that's right, that's what I said too, But apparently he's ready.
42:04
Speaker 1: Well I don't know. I didn't know. It's the same thing. Um,
42:06
Speaker 1: but either way, this is where Harvey and of course
42:09
Speaker 1: it's all it's always like the grand opening of a
42:11
Speaker 1: chopping center or something, and that's what was going on.
42:14
Speaker 1: Here's a four day promotion and um he basically said,
42:20
Speaker 1: I think this pole was attached to a trailer and
42:23
Speaker 1: the trailer moved. Is that right? Well, he asked a
42:26
Speaker 1: security guard to move the trailers so they can make
42:28
Speaker 1: room for what I took to be a cherry picker
42:31
Speaker 1: that could go up and get them. This is hours
42:34
Speaker 1: before the end of his four day sit and um
42:38
Speaker 1: when the security guard, I guess who had never tried
42:41
Speaker 1: this before, moved the trailer guy wire that was stabilizing
42:45
Speaker 1: the pole, became taught and actually pulled the pole, snapped
42:48
Speaker 1: the pole in two with Dixie still on top of
42:52
Speaker 1: this fifty foot pole, and he landed scoll first, from
42:55
Speaker 1: what I can tell, onto the to the asphalt below.
42:59
Speaker 1: That's not what you want to to open your grocery
43:01
Speaker 1: store with no or, or to close your flagpole sit
43:05
Speaker 1: with no either way. He it's a bad jam. This
43:10
Speaker 1: was not his only accident to this is the one
43:12
Speaker 1: that got him, but he had fractured his skull before
43:16
Speaker 1: when he was thrown off a pole in a storm
43:18
Speaker 1: in n And then there was this is heartwarming. In
43:23
Speaker 1: X one, he was doing a pulse sit for promotion,
43:27
Speaker 1: dressed as Santa Claus and he was shouting Merry Christmas.
43:30
Speaker 1: That was his job, sit on the top of the
43:32
Speaker 1: flag pole and shot Merry Christmas. And apparently it got
43:35
Speaker 1: to the point where he finally yelled down that he
43:37
Speaker 1: was getting numb and he had to be taken to
43:40
Speaker 1: the hospital, which is this is what I'm talking about. Man,
43:45
Speaker 1: just no thought. It doesn't take thought to just think
43:48
Speaker 1: about flagpole sitting. And I love that about it Yeasry Christmas, Christmas.
43:54
Speaker 1: I think I think there's something wrong up here. I
43:57
Speaker 1: gotta go to the hospital because I'm sitting on top
43:59
Speaker 1: of a flagpole Justice Santa Claus shouting Merry Christmas for
44:02
Speaker 1: three days and it's December in Pennsylvania. In reading, it's
44:06
Speaker 1: reading right. Uh. And this was you know, these were
44:10
Speaker 1: definitely the waning days. This was in the nineteen seventies.
44:13
Speaker 1: There were some other stunts throughout the years. Here and there.
44:16
Speaker 1: A couple got married a top of flagpole. Um, let
44:21
Speaker 1: me see here. Seventeen year old in nineteen sixty three
44:25
Speaker 1: named Peggy Townsend spent two hundred and seventeen days on
44:28
Speaker 1: a pole for a contest for a radio station. And
44:32
Speaker 1: then the granddaddy of them all, this guy, Kenneth gedge
44:36
Speaker 1: ken Gidge two hundred and forty eight days in nineteen
44:40
Speaker 1: seventy one. This guy would later on be a state
44:43
Speaker 1: rep for New Hampshire. And uh, he I mean reading
44:49
Speaker 1: his account, he was he was basically like, it was
44:52
Speaker 1: terrible and I hated it. Every He had a parakeet.
44:58
Speaker 1: He had his parakeet with him named Nixon, and he
45:01
Speaker 1: said that his parakeet came to hate him, like despise him.
45:04
Speaker 1: He said he didn't think any animals ever hated somebody
45:07
Speaker 1: more than that parakeet hated him, probably because he made
45:11
Speaker 1: him stay up there in this little tiny house. The
45:13
Speaker 1: top of fiberglass poles sway back and forth. He couldn't
45:18
Speaker 1: lay down straight in it because the pole, so he
45:21
Speaker 1: had to lay wrapped around the pole. Um. It sounds
45:24
Speaker 1: really horrible and terrible, and he did it to get
45:27
Speaker 1: publicity because he was an out of work actor, I
45:29
Speaker 1: guess at the time. Yeah, like I said to called
45:32
Speaker 1: the thing of house is generous. It's this little you
45:34
Speaker 1: can see a picture of it, but it was it
45:37
Speaker 1: was some sort of shelter. At least he wasn't just
45:39
Speaker 1: sitting like on a bar stool like a shipwreck Kelly
45:43
Speaker 1: for two days. But it was bad and he and
45:47
Speaker 1: it's just funny reading these quotes from him. He he
45:49
Speaker 1: did not have a good time, and he just basically
45:51
Speaker 1: kind of talked about how awful it was. Yeah, he said.
45:54
Speaker 1: They said that he lost fifteen pounds three inches from
45:58
Speaker 1: his waist in thirteen days of sleep, just within the
46:00
Speaker 1: first three months, and that when people would come out,
46:03
Speaker 1: like when the weather is nice, people come out and
46:05
Speaker 1: shout questions up to him, and he talked to him. Uh,
46:08
Speaker 1: and he said the men usually asked, um, if he
46:11
Speaker 1: sleeps and how he goes to the bathroom, and then
46:13
Speaker 1: women asked if he was lonely, which I find very sweet.
46:17
Speaker 1: But um, I mean, remember we started out here at
46:20
Speaker 1: thirteen hours is what kicked this off. And this guy,
46:23
Speaker 1: Kenneth Gidge has has brought it up to two forty
46:27
Speaker 1: eight days. But Chuck, that does not seem to be
46:31
Speaker 1: the record any longer. In fact, the record may never
46:34
Speaker 1: be broken. Ever. What do you think? Yeah, h David
46:39
Speaker 1: Werder of Wiki Watchee, Florida, Man, this is unbelievable. Sat
46:44
Speaker 1: for four hundred and thirty nine days, eleven hours, six minutes. Yeah,
46:51
Speaker 1: his sit went from two to night. That's amazing. Yeah.
46:57
Speaker 1: And it was outside of an appliance center in clear Water.
47:00
Speaker 1: And he didn't do this as like a publicity stunt
47:04
Speaker 1: for that appliance center. He did it to protest gas
47:07
Speaker 1: prices at the time. Yeah, that's how you see these
47:10
Speaker 1: these days sometimes his protests, sure, but the gas at
47:15
Speaker 1: the time was nine cents a gallon. That's cute. So
47:17
Speaker 1: his protest didn't work at all. But he spent four
47:21
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty nine days of his life on a
47:23
Speaker 1: flag pole because it was mad about the price of gas.
47:27
Speaker 1: No thought whatsoever to a zen like beautiful state. Is
47:33
Speaker 1: what this man achieved? Is that the overarching theme? Yep,
47:37
Speaker 1: I think so man? Alrighty, you got anything else? Uh? Yeah,
47:40
Speaker 1: I mean we we should mention David Blaine. He very
47:42
Speaker 1: famously did this standing in two thousand two. Remember that
47:49
Speaker 1: for how long? No? I don't remember that at all.
47:51
Speaker 1: He stood atop of ninety ft pole for thirty five
47:54
Speaker 1: hours in Bryant Park in New York. And this is
47:58
Speaker 1: when he was doing those Uh. I'd love the guy
48:01
Speaker 1: as the street magician and give me a little levitation trick.
48:04
Speaker 1: But when he was like I'm gonna hold my breath
48:07
Speaker 1: or I'm gonna be encased in ice or stand on
48:09
Speaker 1: this thing, that's when I lost interest. Oh yeah, yeah,
48:13
Speaker 1: I like street magic too. It's pretty great stuff. Yeah,
48:15
Speaker 1: but yeah he stood. It's tough to stand. I mean,
48:19
Speaker 1: sitting is is hard, but standing as a whole different deal. Yeah,
48:23
Speaker 1: for sure. I wouldn't want to do it. Nope, So
48:28
Speaker 1: you got anything else about flagpoles? Sitting? I don't well
48:32
Speaker 1: then chuck. That means, of course, it's time for listener mail.
48:39
Speaker 1: This is Oh, this is just funny. Remember in the
48:43
Speaker 1: Brockism I talked about my doctor Tuggle. Uh, this comes
48:47
Speaker 1: from Joe and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He said, Hey, guys, thanks
48:52
Speaker 1: for you the entertainment knowledge. Your discussion of doctor names
48:55
Speaker 1: at the end of the Brocksis and podcast reminded me
48:57
Speaker 1: of two anecdotes. My ex wife had a dentist in
49:00
Speaker 1: San Francisco named Dr Drilling. No pretty good, huh sure,
49:08
Speaker 1: and this is even better, he said. Second, this one
49:10
Speaker 1: never gets appreciated as much by others for some reason.
49:13
Speaker 1: It must she just hit me the right way. But
49:15
Speaker 1: I'm with you, Joe, it hits me too. She worked
49:17
Speaker 1: with a medical worked in medical administration, and her boss
49:21
Speaker 1: at one point was named Dr Walked w A c
49:27
Speaker 1: h t e R pronounced Walked, and he said I
49:30
Speaker 1: could just imagine her submitting daily reports using baby talk,
49:34
Speaker 1: going here, Dr Walked, here your robots for the day. Man,
49:40
Speaker 1: this guy is our new mascot here on the show.
49:44
Speaker 1: I think we need to actually get him on here.
49:46
Speaker 1: What's his name? Joe and Gettysburg, I love it. Yeah, Joe,
49:49
Speaker 1: way to go. This is one of the best listener
49:52
Speaker 1: mails I think I've ever heard, Chuck dr walked Um. Well,
49:56
Speaker 1: if you want to be like Joe and try to
49:58
Speaker 1: topple his record as the eightist email listener mail writer
50:02
Speaker 1: of all time, um, let's take your best shot. You
50:06
Speaker 1: can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, running
50:08
Speaker 1: up the flag pole, and see who salutes it at
50:11
Speaker 1: stuffed podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
50:17
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
50:20
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50:22
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50:25
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