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Short Stuff: Poe Toaster · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck, and it's just the two of us, just
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a couple of a couple of hanchos, a couple of ombres,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: just doing our thing, rattling off facts in a superspeedy
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: manner with a limited amount of time. So this is
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: short stuff, so we don't want to waste time with
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: long intros saying unnecessary thing right exactly? Uh so the
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: po toaster. Huh is this the beginning of our spooky content? Yes,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: it is, if that's okay with you. Yeah, it's our
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: favorite month. I love October, I love Halloween. I've been
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: sitting on this one since last year. Actually, have you
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: heard of this guy before? Now? And and obviously I
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: didn't just ask Chuck everybody if he's sort of ed
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Growl and Poe. We're talking about a corollary to the
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: po legend. Everybody knows about Poe, the master author, the
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: creator of the short story um, believed to be the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: first person to ever write a genuine detective story, Ed
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Gralan Poe. Everybody knows about him. We're not talking about
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: just him, no, but we are talking about his dead body, Yeah,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: which Pope would love. Oh, he would totally love it
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: he died, and he probably would even love dying under
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: mysterious circumstance. There's no way he didn't. He was probably like,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: as they were dragging him out of the street, he
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: was probably like, this so great. Well, he was forty
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: years old. This was an eighty nine and he was
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: buried in Westminster Burying Ground in Baltimore, where he made
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: his home. And it was kind of not a big
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: deal at the time as far as you know, paying tribute.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: He had an unmarked gray for a while. Finally a
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: relative stepped up and said, can we at least get
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: you know, his name carved into something. He just showed
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: up with a stick and carved it in the dirt.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: It he may have, yeah, but yeah, it was. He
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: was still fairly obscure enough that he yeah, he was
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: able to first be buried in the on Mark grave.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: But some local academics started to recognize the man's genius
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: and they actually held like an early go fund me
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: to to create a monument for pose Um grave actually,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: and they were successful finally in eighteen seventy five, that's right,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: So they had a monument carved it was Um. He
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: was actually moved. It was dedicated on a on a
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: space a little more befitting one of the great authors
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: of his time. And they, you know, they exhumed him,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: moved the body, and about ten years after that his
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: wife and his mother in law were buried along with him,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: which is sort of key in this story. And hopefully
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: he wasn't like a Fred Flintstone type where that would
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: have really bothered him to have his mother in law
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: so close by for eternity. Instead, I have the feeling
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: that it was a very sweet gesture, sure so that
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: you would think, well, that's it there there, That's the
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: most you could possibly say about pose remains laying in
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: the ground at a grave. Not true. That was the
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: case from about eight to eighteen forty or nineteen forty nine,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: i should say. And then allegedly on that year, the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: centennial of his death, UM, he was visited by somebody
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: who came to be known as the Poe Toaster, a
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: mysterious stranger who showed up at his grave on his
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: birthday January nine every year, dressed in an all black suit,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: a white scarf, and a big black, wide brimmed hat
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: to cover his face. And created this ritual out of
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: whole cloth that eventually attracted the notice of people in Baltimore. Yeah,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: so what would happen is this man presumably would show
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: up with a bottle of cognac and literally toast po
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: and leave three red roses along with that bottle. Uh,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: they are not. And this would happen sometime between usually
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: midnight and six am. So it was even led more
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: to the creepiness of the whole thing. Yea, and no
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: one did anything about it. No one said, hey, grab
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: that guy and let's see who it is, get his
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: rip off that hat and expose him. Right, it's Roy Kane.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: But um, so what happened was, well, first of all,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: we should address the cognac. No one was exactly sure
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: why he toasted with kognac, even though I read very
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: quickly on the Internet that Poe loved kognac. Wasn't in
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: his stories. Yeah, he supposedly loved it, but couldn't afford
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: it unless someone else was buying, because you know, he
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: didn't he didn't get rich, right, So yeah, a lot
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: of people are like, well, he should be using a
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: mantiato because obviously the cask of Amontiado is one of
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: his great stories. I don't know why he would be
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: using cognac. Apparently now we do know why. You just
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: solve that mystery for me, Chuck, Thank you. What about
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: those roses? So he would leave three roses on the grave,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: like you said, and they've people have come to believe
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: that that's a gesture to to Um to give a
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: rose to each of the people who are buried beneath
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: that monument, Poe, his wife, Virginia, and his mother in
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: law Maria. UM. So that one's probably the likeliest explanation
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: of that. Should we take a break? I think we should, Um,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: but first will reveal the identity of the po Toaster
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: after this. How's that for a cliffhanger? Pretty great? So
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: I totally lied on the cliffhanger. Um. No one knows
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: who the Poe Toaster is as far as we can tell,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: and we certainly don't, so there will be no revealing.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: We just wanted to keep you tuned in. Well, I mean,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: there is one guy who claims he was the Poe Toaster,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: and two thousand seven, a ninety two year old man
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: named Sam Porpora claimed it was him. He was a
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: former ad executive and he in nineteen sixty was made
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: history in Westminster Presbyterian Church, which was apparently in disrepair
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: at the time and kind of just full of people
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: getting drunk and you know, uh, not treating the graves
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: with respect. So he claims he did it as a
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: promotional thing to sort of raise money in publicity, and
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: it was he and his tour guides. Uh, this gentleman
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Jeff Jerome, who was the curator of the Poe Museum.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I think his quote was there are holes big enough
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: in his story you could drive a mack truck through.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: So I couldn't find those holes. I couldn't, Like, I
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: looked everywhere and I couldn't find him specifically saying why
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: he did not think it was him. Well, so Jeff
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Jerome has kind of become like the de facto historian
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: of the Poe Toaster because he ran the po Historical
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Society for a while or the Poem Museum. I'm sorry, um,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people put a lot of weight
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: into what he says. He claims that he had worked
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: out a um signal with the po Toaster so that
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: the po Toaster would signal him and let him know
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: that he was the real deal, because over the years,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: there were right, there were, um, there were what are
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: known as photoasters who people who pretended to be the
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Poe Toaster after the thing be kind kind of became
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: a big deal, um starting in the seventies. Um, so
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: that Jeff Jerome at least would know it was the
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: real article. Um. But he swears up and down and
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: most people believe him that he has no idea the
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: actual identity of the Poe Toaster. The only interaction he'd
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: had with the po Toasters at was grave on these
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: specific nights over the years. Yeah. And I wonder why
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Sam Porpora would come forward and claim to be such
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: so late in life. And they even asked him that
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: in this article, and he said, like why he came
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: forward and he went, I don't know. Uh, yeah, that's
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: not a very good Yeah that that's a big hole
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: in your story right there. To not have a motivation. Yeah,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: if you're somebody who who starts out and here's the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: thing like this, This whole Poe Toaster thing became a
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: kind of a cause celeb in in Baltimore and places
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: outside of Baltimore. People would show up and there'd be
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: little groups of onlookers who would watched this thing every year. Um,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: and like you said, very coolly, never tried to find
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: out who it was. They just respected it from and
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: watched from a distance. Um. So it kind of became
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: like this this cool thing. But this guy was doing
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: this for decades before it became a cool thing. So
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: of course there's some sort of motivation behind all this,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: And people who do stuff like they have a motivation
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: behind everything they're doing. There's some larger meaning or some
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: something to what they're doing. So, yeah, he would I
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: don't believe the poet Toaster would have come forward just
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: for I don't know. Well, I mean, he said he
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: said why he did it. He didn't say why he
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: came forward and invited that he was the Poe Toaster. Yeah,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: I don't buy that kind story. Who knows I buy it.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I think it makes sense as a former ad guy.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: But at any rate, the and he was on the
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: scene as well as the historian of the church, so anyway,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: I think it's Uh. I think there's a lot of
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: credence there. But at any rate, the the gentleman, whoever
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: it was, would leave these notes occasionally, and one note
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: in said the torch will be passed it to be
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: read in creepy Vincent Price voice when read out loud. Uh.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: And then there was one that said the toaster had died,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: and there was a theory, and I think Jeff Jerome
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: buys the theory that, um, the torch was passed to
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: his sons because they kind of did a uh they
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: were sort of lackadaisical about how spirited they were with
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: their efforts. Let's just say that was that was a
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: really diplomatic way to put it. Yeah. Sometimes they would
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: show up in street clothes, and from what I've gathered,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: like the the minimum criteria for being the Poe toaster
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: is that all black suit, white scarf and a huge hat.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: That's yeah, there's a certain amount of dapperness that needs
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: to be brought to this. And showing up in like
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: jeans and vans and like a you know, Counting Crow's
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: T shirt, that doesn't cut it, buddy, Although the Crows,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Counting Ravens maybe Baltimore maybe maybe. Uh So. One of
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: these notes though that supposedly was left by one of
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the sons, if you buy that theory, was a prediction
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: of the Super Bowl in two thousand one, that the
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: giants would beat the ravens. So if if it was
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: his sons, then I totally see how Jeff to Rome
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: would be like, they're not doing a great job exactly. So. Um.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: So finally, in two thousand nine, I guess that's twenty years.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Ten years, yes, ten um, ten years after the torch
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: was passed, After the original Poe Toaster died allegedly, Um,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: they just stopped showing up all together. And they didn't
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: show up in two thousand and ten eleven, and then
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: finally in two thousand twelve, when they didn't show one
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: more time. Um, Jeff Jerome said, well, I guess I
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: have as much cloud as anybody. Being the curator of
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the Poem Museum, I'm gonna officially declare this tradition ended forever. Yeah,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: but not so, because he turned on his heels four
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: years later and in said, you know what, let's just
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: throw a big party. Uh, we're gonna audition Poe Toasters.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: And this is where the story really like. It's disappointing
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: to me. I wish they would have just let it die.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: It's this mysterious weird thing, is it the raffle. Yeah,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: they have a raffle. They have a po themed cake
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: that you can win, um, you know, hundreds of people.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: They toast apple cider, and I don't mind them honoring Poe,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: but it just I think they could have just divided
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: it and not made it part of the Poe toasting
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: thing that came and went yeah, yeah, I have to
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I have to agree. I like that it's a I
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: like the idea of what they're doing. I like the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: toast with apple cider like, but I think, yeah, maybe
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: hold it at the local library or something, because it
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: really smacks of like the kind of event you would
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: hold at a local library. Yeah, and it's during the daytime.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned which I mean, if it's
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: not between midnight and six am, then just get out
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: of here with that. True, But it does give the
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Poe Toaster an excuse to do some day drinking of
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: cognac once a year at least or apple cider. Yeah,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: supposedly the po Toaster does does drink yex still a tradition. Yeah,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: so I don't. Did you say that they held auditions
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: for the new pot toaster. I did, And the new
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: pot Toaster plays the violin, though added a little extra flare. Yeah,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: maybe you know what's gonna happen is they're going to
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: hear about this and then make us honorary po toasters,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna be way into it. Yeah right exactly.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna wear a Counting Crow's T shirt and I
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: learned to play the violin, all right, So that's it,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: everybody the pot toaster. This is one of those legends
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: where I hope we never ever find out who it was,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: because I think that's wildly appropriate in this case. Okay,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: ad executive, Well, since Chuck said ad executive, that's the
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: secret word for short stuff to be out. Stuff you
• 13:45
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• 13:53
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