July 14, 2020 • 50 mins
The 1920s were just absolutely nuts. People got into weird fads really intensely and one of the strangest of all was flagpole sitting. It’s just what it sounds like – sitting on top of a flagpole for as long as you can. One man sat above them all.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody. You may not know this yet, and if
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(00:22):
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(00:42):
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That's right, everyone, We couldn't be more excited about this book.
It's really coming together. Well, it's us through and through
and you can go check out some excerpts at stuff
you Should Read books dot com. Welcome to Stuff you
Should know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(01:10):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant right over there. Jerry's out there somewhere,
and this is stuff you should know. You know, Chuck,
I have to say yes. Every once in a while,
the amazing theme song from our short lived television show
comes into my head and it'll just it's just a
(01:31):
complete earworm because I just hear the end of it
over and over and over again, and it's actually pretty
pleasant night. It doesn't bother me. I love it. I
haven't heard that song in a while. Well, you need
to go listen. That was the Henry Clay people, right, Yeah.
Our buddies, Joey and Andy Sierra California boys, Southern California
boys men. Didn't didn't they go to like Harvard or
(01:53):
something crazy like that. Joey ended up going to Harvard
and then I think Andy went to a f I
and then Joey I think went back to film school
and they're both writing, uh you know, screenwriting. Man. That's great,
and he's got a he wrote it the this uh
Andy Sandberg movie that's that's coming out soon. Really what
(02:14):
which what what's it called? Uh? It is called Palm Springs?
I think why? And he wrote it? Yeah, dude, that's fantastic.
Congratulations And he wrote on the TV show Lodge forty nine. Yeah,
I haven't seen the Springs, but that, um, that guy
Kurt Rustling Goldie hans Son. I love that guy. I
(02:37):
think he's one of the coolest people walking around on
the planet today. Yeah, I haven't seen Lodge forty Nine's
supposed to be awesome. And um, Andy was a writer's
assistant and then ended up on the staff and they're
they're both doing great. Man, that's great. A little baby
now they're both married. Nice man, that's nice. And that's
an update on the cra Club as um, let's see
(03:00):
what else? How was it? How did did that come
into your head? Though? The song? Like? What made you
think of that? Nothing? I was just out back, like
mowing the lawn with my big old lawnmower. Uh, and
it just popped in my head. I was probably thinking
of something I had to do that had to do
with stuff you should know, and I thought stuff you
should know? And when I thought it, I thought it
(03:21):
as stuff you should know. Duing it. This is the
then it just played on a loop. This is the
second time you mentioned the size of your lawnmower. Yeah,
and now you just gotta send me a picture. Is
this one of these things that you stand it and
it and it wheels you around like some weird land
speeder you mean, like a skag or something. Now, this
(03:41):
is just a good old fashioned toro. That is because
it's gas powered. I got it like on super discount. Um,
because everybody's making like really good electric lawnmowers, um, but
this one was you know, it was on discount, and
I like the look of it. Yeah, it's a good
looking more huh. Yeah. I was like, I like your style.
(04:03):
Is it red? Yep? Yeah, it was red toros. Yeah,
it's nice. It takes you back to days of paper
routes and stuff like that, don't I thought you were
mentioning the song because you were thinking of the song
Flagpole Sita by Harvey Danger. No, I wasn't at all. Okay,
(04:24):
but that's a great segue, Chuck, because it just so happens.
And you may be aware of this for talking about
Flagpole sitting to day in this episode, right, and I've
been singing that song in my head all day now,
I don't. I don't know that song? You know it?
It was a well maybe not, it was a It
was a top forty hit in the nineties, kind of
(04:44):
during the grunge era. It was. It was a power
pop hit that kind of Oh, don't, don't, don't, don't,
don't do do wait, don't said it at it? No,
my band actually covers a flagpoles. It it's a fun song. Okay,
(05:04):
that's great. I'm gonna have to go listen to it
because I feel like I'm missing out. But what that
song is? That song about flagpole sitting is about shipwreck
Kelly in particular. No, it's not. But it does have
one line that says, run it up the flagpole and
see And that's the only time it references flagpoles at all?
Sees what who salutes? But no one ever does? I think?
(05:29):
Is the next line? Mm hmm that rings a bill
I have, but the again end then and then I
was again to the mirror a little bit clearer. Run
it up the flagpole and see who salutes? But no
one ever does? Yeah, I'm not sick, but not well?
Who is that Harvey danger? Danger? Okay? Yeah, that's a
(05:50):
great song. I love it. Yeah. Who fellow podcasting friend
John Roderick. Actually, uh, Sean Nelson was a friend of
his in Seattle and Nate he played bass for a
little all in Harvey Danger. Oh very wow, man, this
is all coming first. So I got one more for you.
I used to have that song and I don't know
where I downloaded it from. This would have been probably
(06:11):
back in the napster days or something, um, and it
was mislabeled as Brian Jones how massacre. And I was
always like, this is not sound like Brian Jones how massacre.
Now I know it most definitely wasn't Brian Jones hown massacre. Wow. Alright,
we haven't even talked about flag pole sitting yet. No,
(06:31):
we haven't, um, which is a crime because it's actually
one of the more interesting, weird old fads that's ever
come this way in America, and it was in the
twenties started. We actually we know who patient zero was
a flagpole sitting and it's easy to tell because it
is such a bizarre thing to do that if you
(06:53):
can find the person who who who did it first,
who claims to have done it first, they're probably correct,
And in this case, you can trace it back to
sometime around January, supposedly potentially in Hollywood, California, part of
Los Angeles, and there was a man named Alvin Shipwreck
Kelly who supposedly climbed up on a flagpole as part
(07:17):
of a promotion for a movie and sat there for
full thirteen hours and thirteen minutes to help draw a crowd.
And boyditty ever, yeah, which you know, Uh, that sounds
like a long time to sit on a flagpole, but
that is kids stuff, yeah, compared to where this is. Yeah,
for sure, that's an appertif. But it's a good first attempt,
(07:39):
you know. Yeah. And so you know, it sounds strange
because when you think of a flagpole, you're like, what
are they sitting on? It's a it's a modified flagpole
that basically there are different kinds, but um usually it's
sort of like a bar stool at the top of
a flagpole and it's that low fi and you climb
up there and you sit and that's all you do.
(08:01):
That's that's it. I mean, whatever else you want to do, well,
sure you do use yourself or whatever that's up to you.
But as far as being considered a flagpole sitter. That's it.
You sit on top of a flagpole for as long
as you can. All right, So let's talk about this guy,
because Shipwreck Kelly was a pretty interesting character. Uh. And
I have to say there's a Memory Palace episode about
(08:22):
him that I specifically didn't listen to you beforehand because
I didn't want to unconsciously rip it off. Go listen
to that, yeah, or Buddy Nate, I'm gonna check that
out for sure. So Alvin Kelly, Uh, he was born
Aloysius Anthony Kelly in New York City, in Hell's Kitchen
in a tenement in eight and had a very sad
start to his life and that his father was had
(08:46):
already passed before he was born. His mother passed in childbirth,
and that basically meant he was shuttled around two relatives
and orphanages from you know, the minute he took his
first breath. Yeah. Um, And apparently from a pretty pretty
early age he would do things like climb flagpoles and
(09:06):
other tall stuff and like working at heights became a
kind of a recurring theme in his life. Um. Was
supposedly by age seven, he was climbing flagpoles. Within a
few years after that, he was starting to scale the
facades of some of the buildings in his neighborhood. And
by the time he was thirteen. And bear in mind,
if this guy's biography seems a little thin, he just
(09:29):
came out of nowhere in n for sitting on a flagpole.
So all of the info about him came from him
to reporters who were reporting in the nineteen twenties. So
just fabrications are flying around left and right. But um,
supposedly he ran away at age thirteen and ran off
to join uh the crew of a cargo ship and
(09:50):
start his life sailing the seas. Yeah, and he did
a lot of kind of odd jobs, or maybe not
odd jobs, but just jobs that didn't have anything to
do with one another. Uh. Over the next couple of decades,
he was in the movies as a a stand in
and a double He was a stunt person, a stunt pilot,
high diver, a boxer. Uh, this part I love. There's
(10:12):
actually a name for people that repair church steeples, and
what is that steeple jack. He was a steeplejack. That
is definitely a band name for sure. Steeple Jack oh yeah,
it sounds like maybe an industrial band, but like on
the light side, like they like they're technically too melodic
to actually be considered industrial, but they still call themselves industrial.
(10:34):
That's become my favorite part of this whole band name thing,
is you describing what kind of band it is? Okay,
well thanks man. That that that makes me feel warm
and funny. So, um, World War One comes along, and
he was in the Naval Auxiliary Reserve as an ensign
and served on the USS Edgar f Lukenbach during that war. Yep,
(11:00):
so he did have some sort of well I should say,
I don't know if anybody's corroborated that, um, but we'll
just take all that at face value because it doesn't
really matter at this point. But what he eventually picked
up the nickname shipwreck. And there's a lot of different
um explanations for this, and he's given or he gave
(11:20):
multiple different explanations depending on what reporter he was talking to.
But one of the numbers that gets bandied about pretty
frequently is that shipwreck Kelly was so named because he
survived thirty two different shipwrecks at sea. And where this
is where shipwrecks tend to happen with the good old days. Third, yeah,
up stories about yourself. Do you remember when we talked
(11:44):
about um, we did an episode on the World's Either
Luckiest or Unluckiest People? And do you remember that one
guy He was like, I I survived a car that
fell off a cliff, and I survived a train wreck
and all that. He was doing his jam in like
two thousand five, remember, was he? Yeah, he was pretty
pretty recent if I remember correctly. Remember his son came
(12:06):
out was like, everybody, this is not true, right, Like,
none of what you're talking about is true. Well, we
did had just fooled you all. We don't know if
a shipwreck Kelly actually survived the Titanic like he claimed,
but we do know that he was not on the
roster on the Titanic, So I am going to venture
to say that he made that one up. And there
were three Kelly's on board, but who were survivors? But
(12:29):
all three of them were women, So yeah, he probably
wasn't on the Titanic. Maybe he did survive from shipwrecks.
He was at sea most likely, But the point is
that they call him shipwreck Kelly, and I guess somebody
went to the trouble of digging up that. Uh. Some
reporters who covered his boxing career are probably the likeliest
(12:49):
source for where he got his nickname shipwreck, right, which
I love because I guess he wasn't a great boxer,
because they said that he was often adrift and ready
to sink that great shipwreck Kelly. It's a great nickname
and an even better origin story than surviving thirty two
shipwrecks if you asked me. Yeah. And the other thing
(13:09):
we don't know for sure is even if that Hollywood
movie premiere story is correct in his first major outing
as a flagpolesitter, because uh, yet another story says no,
this is actually in Philadelphia at a department store and
he just did it on a dare and the department
store got a lot of business because people are standing
around looking and then doing some shopping. So they were like, Hey,
(13:32):
stay up there and I'll give you some extra dough. Yeah. So,
either way, it's pretty widely held that Shipwreck Kelly was
the guy who started the flagpole sitting craze. And it
was a craze because this is a time where you
could go sit on a flagpole for thirteen hours and
thirteen minutes, and newspapers around the country would pick up
(13:56):
the story and write about it. Um, and you would say,
become famous overnight. And that's exactly what happened to Shipwreck Kelly.
So that's prong one towards this becoming a fad in
the nineties. The other criteria is that um, people have
to want to topple that record, and that was very
widespread at the time too, because the nineteen twenties were
(14:18):
actually really big into fads, like people would take up
weird fads and just go nuts over for basically the
whole decade. Yeah, you know, people had time, and they
had fewer distractions. Yeah, no TV. So like someone doing
a dance a thon for twenty eight hours or sitting
(14:39):
on a flagpole for a day. You know, it's a
it's an interesting story. Back then it's sad, but that
that was interesting, but it was so uh well, we'll
talk about dance marathons and then we'll take a break. Okay, okay, okay,
(15:26):
Oh wait, I got that backwards, Chuck. I just realized
hopefully Jerry figured it out and there was an ad
in there somewhere. I think we should just leave it
just like that though. That'll be fun. Okay, So um,
we're gonna talk about marathon's. Dance marathon's now after the
ad break, despite what I said before, and dance marathons
are a super twenties example of a crazy fad that
(15:51):
kind of came along and got everybody by the hackles,
and people across the country started entering basically dance marathon
competitions because of one person, one woman, a dance instructor
named Alma Cummings, that's right, thirty two years old. She
danced for twenty seven hours at the Audubon Ballroom in
New York in nine three with six different dance partners.
(16:14):
And uh, it was a weird time because it wasn't
just dancing, it was endurance challenges as a whole. We're
just all the rage and punishing your bodies and all
these weird random ways from yo yoing too hula hooping
to rocking in a rocking chair or skipping rope uh
(16:37):
to dancing dancing was the big one. That's where you
You know, if you see these videos of these marathon
dance competitions, it's just it looks like hell on Earth.
It looks awful. Yeah, oh yeah, they didn't seem very
fun at all, but um, Alma Cummings just kicked the
whole thing off. And again, just like Shipwreck Kelly, who
would follow I guess a year later, um or even yeah,
(16:59):
about a year later. Uh, she got a lot of publicity.
There's like a famous photo of her with her feet
in a tub of water soaking at home and she's
holding up her shoes and they have holes in the
souls where you know, she wore holes from dancing for
twenty seven hours. And I guess, like you're saying people
were bored or there wasn't as much to do, but
also there really seems to just be a profound hunger
(17:23):
for celebrity however you can get it, and that seemed
to be like really drive people who wanted to be like, well,
if this lady got this much attention for dancing twenty
seven straight hours, maybe I can get even more attention
for dancing thirty straight hours. And so within just like
I think three weeks of Alma Cummings setting this record
(17:44):
for dancing, um, it had been broken nine times at
least from people trying to seek the same kind of
publicity she got. Yeah, and you know, it's funny. It
really like we talked about these days, how everyone wants
their ten minutes or they want to be reality show
famous or whatever, and I been whittled down to ten Now.
I thought it was like fifteen. Well, like that's something new,
(18:05):
and it's really not like this is sort of this
The version of that back then was I want to
be famous, I want my names in the papers, but
I'm not particularly skilled enough to do anything to do that.
So I'll rock in a rocking chair for three days. Yeah,
you know, and hopefully they will come. Um rock, they
(18:25):
will come. And it's that was a pity laugh at best,
but I appreciate. Well it's a bad joke admittedly, Um,
but it would. And we we should shout out a
bunch of great websites here because um this next bit
came from Atlas Obscura, one of our favorite sites and
also our dearest of old sites that we always have
(18:48):
loved Mental Floss, Ripley's History Daily, j Mark Powell, and
Historic Pellem, which is great, but um, Atlas Obscura talks
about the in the thirties and this is really kind
of depressing. Um during the depression. It's very appropriate is
(19:09):
that sometimes people would enter these dance marathons because it
would be somewhere they could sleep and eat for a
week at a time when they didn't necessarily have a
home or food. Yeah, it's extremely depressing, or just the
prize money that was offered in the depression might be
enough to keep your house from being foreclosed on. So yeah,
(19:31):
the thing is is, you know, you can blame promoters
for continuing this long beyond the fad, but the promoters
wouldn't have been putting these on and offering these price
this prize money where it not for all the crowds
that would show up every day to watch these people
get increasingly closer to you know, catastrophic exhaustion from from
dance marathons. Because like there were there were rules where
(19:55):
you know, probably early on in the dance marathon, um,
you could sleep or rest for fifteen minutes of every hour,
and then after like a week a week of this
dance marathon going on, the promoter might be like, okay, well,
you know, we need to step things up a little
bit and you will now have three minutes per hour
(20:17):
every twenty four hour period in a day to where
you can rest and then towards the end, they'd be like,
no rest. I think I read about one where the
last fifty seven hours of a multi week um dance
marathon was like I had no rest. So these people
dance for more than two straight days constantly. You had
to constantly be in motion and your knees couldn't touch
(20:40):
the ground or else you'd be disqualified. Yeah, and if
you look at footage of this stuff, I mean it's charitable,
we'll call what they're doing is dancing. Toward the end,
it's just hanging. It looks like two corpses hanging on
each other, sort of swaying back and forth. Yeah, I
don't get I mean any of these things, even the
modern day versions of like these contest where you have
(21:01):
to keep your hand on a car or whatever, oh man,
or sit in the car. I knew a guy that
did one of those where you try to win a
Volkswagen Beetle by sitting in it with four other people
in a mall. I'm just like, oh, yeah, you told
us that story before. Did he win or not? I
think he did, But there's just no way kill me. Yeah,
(21:25):
it would be really awful for sure, because let's say,
for one of those contests. Let's say don't win, then
you've just sat in a car with three strangers for
a week and he didn't even get the car. But
even if you did get the car, imagine yourself five
years on and that car is like like curst, there's
tears in the seats or something like that, you know,
(21:47):
and like the glove compartment won't close. It's you know,
I mean, I guess you've got a story to tell
a cocktail parties, but even that would wear thin after
a while. But but Chuck, we need people to do
stuff like that because there's something about contests like this.
There's something about fads like flagpole sitting that keep humanity
(22:11):
from becoming too cerebral, you know what I mean, from
just becoming like computers. Basically, we need people to do
stuff like this because it brings out some juvenile something
in us that makes us want to find out about
it or learn about it or talk about it. And
I think that's good. I think that's healthy for our species.
(22:33):
All right, it's my it's my take. It's genuinely off
the cuff. I'm actually just surprised at myself that I
just said that out loud. You're just riffing. Yeah, so
shipwreck Kelly back to flagpole sitting. Uh, that initial thirteen
minutes sit, like you said, inspired so many others to
break it, and it was getting broken in pretty short order. Um,
(22:57):
kind of like the dance a Thons. That was a
woman named Bobby Mack from l A who did it.
A guy named Joe hold Him Powers who did this
in Chicago for sixteen days, um, another guy for fifty
one days named Bill Bill Penfield. Yeah, so so let's
point this out. Take a second here, ship Breck Kelly
(23:18):
did thirteen hours and kicked off a national fad. These
people are now in two weeks at a time. Fifty
one days is more than seven weeks up there. It's
pretty impressive. I'm impressed at least. Yeah, are you bucking
the cerebral yes? Right now? Can you tell uh? Let
me see here. In the twenties, it was a fifteen
(23:39):
year old boy, um who set the kid record for
ten days, ten hours, ten minutes, and ten seconds. I
think that was planned. I yeah, if not, then but
see there you go, Chuck, we're thinking about that. It's
making us think. This little kid is making us think
we got to avoid that it needs to be random,
random combinations of no so we don't start thinking about it.
(24:02):
We should also point out that not everyone was like, oh,
this is the best thing ever. In Cosmopolitan magazine, Cosmo
called it competitive uh imbecility. Yeah, this is fine, we
need that too. I have to say, I want to
say something. Here is a little p s A. This
might not even ever make it in the final edit,
so I'll just say it to you. How about that?
(24:24):
I would say, the last like few weeks of episodes, Um,
there's been like some some good ones here there, but
overall I find that they've been less good because I
am so sick of myself because we've been so entrenched
in the book right now, so it's like living breathing
(24:47):
s y s K, which is us, and having to
confront and like myself and my own personality and sense
of humor and whether that's actually funny, and just constantly
thinking about this on top of doing the podcast, on
top of the other stuff we're trying to do now too,
and I am so sick of myself. I can barely
(25:08):
tolerate listening to myself talk. So if anyone's picked up
on the last few episodes, like in the last few weeks,
just being a little ho hum, that's why. And I apologize.
Maybe we'll go back and redo them one day. News
to me, I think, okay, you've been great. Hey, thanks
(25:29):
a lot, man, That's ultimately what I was fishing for.
Al Right, well, if you want to cut that part out,
let's let me pick this up by saying, and I'm
sure you've made a great point, Josh. So so back
to Kelly. Right, you've got all these what I'm sure
shipwrecked Kelly deemed slack jawed, yokel's ho homes, that kind
(25:51):
of thing. Um who were out there trying to topple
his record, and they did, some did topple his record,
but nobody had turned this into a business like shipwreck
Kelly had. Here was a one man money making machine
who made his money just by sitting on top of
a flagpole. Good money because he was really good at
self promoting, Like there wasn't a reporter who's the year.
(26:12):
He wouldn't bend if he got the chance. And in
these reports um or these articles, he would say things like, yeah,
I'm in town for this, but if anybody has any
other offers, I'm wide open. And I'm staying at you know,
the Cambridge Arms um I Tinerant hotel for the next
few days. If somebody wants to get in touch with
me there with a job offer, like he was really
good at at attracting job offers, specifically for flagpole sitting. Yeah,
(26:37):
and he made good dough for back then. I mean,
this is good money anytime. If he made a hundred
dollars an hour like he claimed to um, other people said, now,
it really wasn't that much. It was probably closer to
anywhere between a hundred and five hundred dollars a day.
Still a lot of money. And um, like you said,
it was like he was almost like a celebrity version
(26:59):
of a sign spinner, Like if you could pay George
Clooney to sign spin in front of your mobile phone store.
Uh huh. That was sort of what Chiprette Kelly was.
That's a great one I got into. It's almost like
if there was a cult of personality built up around
(27:20):
like the flapping dancing windsock guy that they put out
in front of like mattress mattress stores in like two
thousand five. Ye I love those dudes. Okay, those are
fun both I think both of those are high quality analogies. Well,
we'll see which one Jerry's is in the end it okay, uh,
(27:40):
let me see here here here are some of his
longer sits. He did a hundred and forty six hours
at the Old Westgate Hotel in Kansas City. Three hundred
and twelve hours in Newark, New Jersey, atop the St.
Francis Hotel. That's pretty good. Sure, I don't know what
that is in days, but three twelve hours. Let's see
(28:04):
if you divided that by twenty four, as you should,
you would come up with something along the lines of
thirteen days on the nose. M all right, Well, how
about twenty two days? And this was in conjunction with
a dance marathon at none other than Madison Square Garden. Yeah,
because I don't know if we said or not, but
there was a dance marathon at Madison Square Gardens that
(28:26):
was actually shut down by the Health Department because they
decided to have gone on too long ten days, and
that it deemed a threat to the health of the participants.
That wasn't the one that he he sat in, but
there was one the following year where for what was
it twenty two days. That means that the dance marathon
(28:46):
went on for twenty two days. But imagine that. So
you've got these two endurance fads just interweaved in this
way that the universe almost like collapses in on itself
because they're put together too too close together there, you know.
Uh yeah, And here's how he would do it. He
would sit on a on that bar stool like thing,
(29:07):
and it was padded and he would, um, you know,
eat and smoke cigarettes and shave apparently, and they would
send this up stuff up in like a with a
bucket and a rope and tell him how he would sleep.
Because this is what I really kind of wanted to know. So,
(29:29):
so you said his his seat was like a bar
stool around bar stool basically, right, and um, it was
on a pole, flag pole appropriately, And then in the
flag pole you'd have two holes drilled just beneath the seat.
And now that I'm doing it, I'm like, that's really
hard to reach. So now I'm questioning whether this is
true or not. Maybe so, but he so he would
(29:52):
plug his his thumbs into those holes drilled into each
side of the flagpole, so that when he started to
lean forward, the pressure from that the flagpole on his
thumbs would kind of cut into his skin and wake
him up just enough that he would adjust himself. And
apparently he got so good at this that he would
adjust himself to sit back up so he wouldn't fall
(30:14):
over off of the flagpole while he was still sleeping,
like he wouldn't he wouldn't wake up. He could just
adjust himself in his sleep, that's right. And he'd have
his little uh, I don't know if they're a little bit.
He would have his ankles locked around the pole and
apparently would tether a leg to keep him from a catastrophe.
But I I think it's very dubious that that was
(30:35):
a solid life saving rig. Yeah, And I mean, like
some of these flagpoles, he's sitting on fifty ft um
one of them. I guess the impression I had the
one that you mentioned on um Kansas City's Westgate Hotel
that that flagpole was on the top of the roof
of the hotel. So I mean he was up there
(30:56):
for sure, and if he had something gone wrong, he
would have that tether probably would not have done terribly much,
or it would have done a lot to keep his
leg hanging up there, but the rest of him would
have kept going to the ground. You know, how did
he Uh he had a little contraption for that with
the tube that went down. But here's the thing. So
(31:18):
you're you're a traveling flagpole sitter. You're relying on the
help of other people on the ground. You need food.
You when you pee and poop into that contraption that
leads to a tube that goes down to the ground,
you don't want that just leaking out for the spectators
to see and smell and experience. You needed to go
into a bucket that somebody's going to go take away
(31:39):
and dump. So you're relying on this kind of group
of assistance in hands that probably the promoter maybe helped
hire for you. Maybe you make a friend along the
way who just kind of travels from town to town
with you for a little while, an assistant. He had
a boy business, right, he had a lad who would
(32:01):
help him. Yeah, yeah, uh so, uh but it would
be a pretty bad job. Yeah. But anyway, so he
had to I mean, he had to eat, and he
didn't eat much. He would apparently just kind of almost
do a broth fast um augmented with cigarettes and coffee. Um,
he would stay up for four days at a time,
(32:22):
because like, living on a flagpole is not exactly like
the most comfortable place you can exist for, you know,
twenty two days or thirteen days or however long. No,
And it eventually turned against him, and that the money
dried up after he did this sort of big Atlantic
city stunt that we talked about and it was the
(32:44):
Great Depression, and eventually people were kind of like, I
don't really care so much about this dumb stunt because
I'm starving and I'm broke and I'm homeless, right, And
that the kind of tide of public opinion turned such
that he went to do this in the Bronx and
he was actually arrested for public nuisance. Yeah, and I'm
(33:04):
sure he was like, but I'm shipwreck Kelly, right, But
I mean think about it, that's like everybody's sick of
you now, Kelly and your stick. We're all just depressed
in the depression. So maybe we'll do a dance marathon,
but we're not gonna watch you sit around in a
flag pole anymore. And um there was a contemporary article
that was written at the time that said that um
(33:26):
he he attributed the decline of Flagpole, sitting directly to
the stock market crash, and he said that people didn't
want to see anything higher than their securities stock securities
at the time, which we're not very high. So then
everyone went, that's just not even a joke in good
taste and he and he punches human familiar in the
(33:46):
mouth and say, you told me to tell that joke? Man?
That was Gangbusters, Chuck? Do you watch that? Ship? Got me?
What we do? What we do in the Shadows. I've
seen some episodes of it, you know. We were talking
about it, and one of the p a s I think,
wrote in to say that they were they were just
(34:08):
blown away that we were. We're giving such big ups
to their show. If you talk to Matt Barry, tell
him he's a comedy genius. I never heard anything back.
But oh, have you seen an evening with Beverly luff Lynn? No,
how do I know that name? So it's a um
Craig Robinson, Yes, from the office, right, he plays a
(34:33):
guy named Beverly luf Lynn And uh Aubrey Meadows, Audrey
Meadows Plaza, that's right, man, I'm yeah, um And then uh, okay,
so she's the main character, Jermaine Clement. I know him
that he plays well, you just have to see it anyway.
(34:55):
So what he was and what we do in the
Shadows the movie right right, So he I think he
coke eatd it too. This is what all ties into this.
He and Matt Barry are also in this too. Matt
Berry is in the TV version of what we do
in the Shadows. The main Clement help help create it.
But um, it's definitely worth watching. Is purposefully very bizarre,
(35:15):
which can get really annoying really easily, but this movie
pulls it off very well, like purposeful bizarreness and for humor. Um,
And it's a good it's a good movie. It's worth watching. Okay,
it's worth watching. I leave it to you to decide
whether it's a good movie or not. Well, I love
everybody in it. That's a great cast. Yeah, I mean
(35:35):
it's a it's a it's a it's worth watching. How
about that? All right? Should we take our second break here?
Can you believe we haven't? Yes? I can. All right,
let's do our other break and then we're gonna talk
about we're gonna wind up this flagpole sitting thing. Right
after this Okay, So Kelly, when we left off, the
(36:26):
public turns on him. They don't care about him anymore.
He's he's probably drunk in some hotel room somewhere with
his human familiar talking about the good old days at
this point, right, Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of sad. I
get the impression, um, that the Memory Palace episode really
focuses on the sad decline of shipwreck Kelly, because I mean,
(36:47):
he was a celebrity, a national probably international celebrity, for
like a decade, a decade for sitting on flagpoles, and
then all of a sudden, he's just done, Like society
rops him like a hot potato, and he's penniless and
on public assistance. Basically. Yeah, and he died a very
(37:08):
sad death he did. Uh. And I think his final
flagpole sit it was all the way in the nineteen
fifties and Orange Texas in nineteen fifty two. He was
almost sixty years old at this point, and he had,
during the publicity run up to this, had two heart attacks. Um, well,
(37:29):
was he sitting on his pole for publicity or was
this part of the pole sitting when he had the
heart attacks? He was? He had the heart attacks on
the pole during the publicity. Oh so the the actual
sit was another publicity stunt for some place, right, Yeah,
I don't know what business it was for. I didn't
see that, but I did see that. The promoters were like,
(37:51):
come down right now, we we we don't think you're
going to survive a third heart attack, so stop, which
is crazy. I mean, it's only fifty nine at the time. Yeah,
but fifty nine in the nineteen fifties, that was when
your name was shipwreck. Yeah. But he did die of
that third heart attack like a week after that, right, Yeah,
(38:15):
he's walking around New York on fifty one Street and
um he dropped that on the sidewalk from a heart attack.
And he uh was found holding a scrapbook of all
like clippings of newspaper articles about him during his heyday.
Isn't that sad? It's like a movie. Yeah, I can't
(38:37):
believe this is a movie. He's I mean, he's a
gold mine just waiting to be well mined. Uh wait, wait, wait,
there's one other thing about him. After he um was
done with this flag poles sitting career, the heyday of it.
(38:57):
He one of the jobs he had was as a
jiggle oh, a male escort who would dance with whoever
wanted him to dance at the Roseland ball Room near
Times Square. He was a private dancer, a dancer for money.
I've been to roseland they've seen some good shows there. Yeah,
well you were where Shipwreck Kelly danced for a diamond
(39:20):
dance because he was a jiggilow. I would have paid
for that dance. Sure, tell him to sit on my head. Hey,
he'll do what you want him to do. Oh boy, Um,
So we looked, or rather you look, because you put
this one together and you found one death from flagpole sitting.
(39:40):
Isn't that right? That's all I could turn up. Surely,
surely there were more, but I could really only find one.
And this guy was wonderful in every way. Dick Blandy,
Dixie Blandy, Richard Dixie d I x I E. Bland
Dick Dixie Blandy. Sure so, Dixie Blandy. He was a
(40:02):
flag pole sitter who was contemporaneous to Shipwreck Kelly, a
little bit like during I. Surely he was directly inspired
by Shipwreck Kelly. He came along and started in ninety nine,
which was almost the worst year you could join the
flagpole sitting movement, because just the next year shipwreck, Kelly
(40:23):
had his triumphant sit aboard like a or above two.
What triumphant sat? Yeah, Well it was triumphant for a
couple of reasons. One it was his longest sit I
believe twenty two days, twenty three days, something like that.
And secondly, it's aboard or above um a top a
(40:43):
two hundred foot flagpole for weeks he sat up there.
That's triumphant if you ask me. But he did his
in nineteen thirty and everybody dropped him right after. Dixie
Blandy just started in nine. But even though people said
flag pole sitting so out, we're not going to bother
even looking up when we see somebody on a flagpole,
(41:04):
Dixie Blandy said, you know what, I'm not giving up
on this. And he continued to make a career out
of it wherever he could, yes, until he died from
flagpole sitting, and at the age of seventy one in
nineteen seventy four, he fell off of his flagpole. It
was a fifty foot pole And uh, where was this
(41:25):
in in Harvey? Yeah, I get the impression in Pennsylvania, Harvey, Pennsylvania. Yeah,
because the article that reported on it as if it
were something of a nearby event was called The Reading Eagle.
And reading is in Pennsylvania, right, Uh yeah? Is it
reading whatever? I can't tell you how many times I've
(41:48):
been told that since I was a child playing monopoly,
and it's just never stuck for some reason. Was that
the titular railroad? M okay, well, reading railroad? We said, reading, Yeah,
that's right, that's what I said too, But apparently he's ready.
Well I don't know. I didn't know. It's the same thing. Um,
but either way, this is where Harvey and of course
(42:09):
it's all it's always like the grand opening of a
chopping center or something, and that's what was going on.
Here's a four day promotion and um he basically said,
I think this pole was attached to a trailer and
the trailer moved. Is that right? Well, he asked a
security guard to move the trailers so they can make
room for what I took to be a cherry picker
(42:31):
that could go up and get them. This is hours
before the end of his four day sit and um
when the security guard, I guess who had never tried
this before, moved the trailer guy wire that was stabilizing
the pole, became taught and actually pulled the pole, snapped
the pole in two with Dixie still on top of
(42:52):
this fifty foot pole, and he landed scoll first, from
what I can tell, onto the to the asphalt below.
That's not what you want to to open your grocery
store with no or, or to close your flagpole sit
with no either way. He it's a bad jam. This
was not his only accident to this is the one
(43:12):
that got him, but he had fractured his skull before
when he was thrown off a pole in a storm
in n And then there was this is heartwarming. In
X one, he was doing a pulse sit for promotion,
dressed as Santa Claus and he was shouting Merry Christmas.
That was his job, sit on the top of the
flag pole and shot Merry Christmas. And apparently it got
(43:35):
to the point where he finally yelled down that he
was getting numb and he had to be taken to
the hospital, which is this is what I'm talking about. Man,
just no thought. It doesn't take thought to just think
about flagpole sitting. And I love that about it Yeasry Christmas, Christmas.
I think I think there's something wrong up here. I
(43:57):
gotta go to the hospital because I'm sitting on top
of a flagpole Justice Santa Claus shouting Merry Christmas for
three days and it's December in Pennsylvania. In reading, it's
reading right. Uh. And this was you know, these were
definitely the waning days. This was in the nineteen seventies.
There were some other stunts throughout the years. Here and there.
A couple got married a top of flagpole. Um, let
(44:21):
me see here. Seventeen year old in nineteen sixty three
named Peggy Townsend spent two hundred and seventeen days on
a pole for a contest for a radio station. And
then the granddaddy of them all, this guy, Kenneth gedge
ken Gidge two hundred and forty eight days in nineteen
seventy one. This guy would later on be a state
(44:43):
rep for New Hampshire. And uh, he I mean reading
his account, he was he was basically like, it was
terrible and I hated it. Every He had a parakeet.
He had his parakeet with him named Nixon, and he
said that his parakeet came to hate him, like despise him.
(45:04):
He said he didn't think any animals ever hated somebody
more than that parakeet hated him, probably because he made
him stay up there in this little tiny house. The
top of fiberglass poles sway back and forth. He couldn't
lay down straight in it because the pole, so he
had to lay wrapped around the pole. Um. It sounds
really horrible and terrible, and he did it to get
(45:27):
publicity because he was an out of work actor, I
guess at the time. Yeah, like I said to called
the thing of house is generous. It's this little you
can see a picture of it, but it was it
was some sort of shelter. At least he wasn't just
sitting like on a bar stool like a shipwreck Kelly
for two days. But it was bad and he and
(45:47):
it's just funny reading these quotes from him. He he
did not have a good time, and he just basically
kind of talked about how awful it was. Yeah, he said.
They said that he lost fifteen pounds three inches from
his waist in thirteen days of sleep, just within the
first three months, and that when people would come out,
like when the weather is nice, people come out and
shout questions up to him, and he talked to him. Uh,
(46:08):
and he said the men usually asked, um, if he
sleeps and how he goes to the bathroom, and then
women asked if he was lonely, which I find very sweet.
But um, I mean, remember we started out here at
thirteen hours is what kicked this off. And this guy,
Kenneth Gidge has has brought it up to two forty
eight days. But Chuck, that does not seem to be
(46:31):
the record any longer. In fact, the record may never
be broken. Ever. What do you think? Yeah, h David
Werder of Wiki Watchee, Florida, Man, this is unbelievable. Sat
for four hundred and thirty nine days, eleven hours, six minutes. Yeah,
(46:51):
his sit went from two to night. That's amazing. Yeah.
And it was outside of an appliance center in clear Water.
And he didn't do this as like a publicity stunt
for that appliance center. He did it to protest gas
prices at the time. Yeah, that's how you see these
these days sometimes his protests, sure, but the gas at
(47:15):
the time was nine cents a gallon. That's cute. So
his protest didn't work at all. But he spent four
hundred and thirty nine days of his life on a
flag pole because it was mad about the price of gas.
No thought whatsoever to a zen like beautiful state. Is
what this man achieved? Is that the overarching theme? Yep,
(47:37):
I think so man? Alrighty, you got anything else? Uh? Yeah,
I mean we we should mention David Blaine. He very
famously did this standing in two thousand two. Remember that
for how long? No? I don't remember that at all.
He stood atop of ninety ft pole for thirty five
hours in Bryant Park in New York. And this is
(47:58):
when he was doing those Uh. I'd love the guy
as the street magician and give me a little levitation trick.
But when he was like I'm gonna hold my breath
or I'm gonna be encased in ice or stand on
this thing, that's when I lost interest. Oh yeah, yeah,
I like street magic too. It's pretty great stuff. Yeah,
but yeah he stood. It's tough to stand. I mean,
(48:19):
sitting is is hard, but standing as a whole different deal. Yeah,
for sure. I wouldn't want to do it. Nope, So
you got anything else about flagpoles? Sitting? I don't well
then chuck. That means, of course, it's time for listener mail.
This is Oh, this is just funny. Remember in the
(48:43):
Brockism I talked about my doctor Tuggle. Uh, this comes
from Joe and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He said, Hey, guys, thanks
for you the entertainment knowledge. Your discussion of doctor names
at the end of the Brocksis and podcast reminded me
of two anecdotes. My ex wife had a dentist in
San Francisco named Dr Drilling. No pretty good, huh sure,
(49:08):
and this is even better, he said. Second, this one
never gets appreciated as much by others for some reason.
It must she just hit me the right way. But
I'm with you, Joe, it hits me too. She worked
with a medical worked in medical administration, and her boss
at one point was named Dr Walked w A c
h t e R pronounced Walked, and he said I
(49:30):
could just imagine her submitting daily reports using baby talk,
going here, Dr Walked, here your robots for the day. Man,
this guy is our new mascot here on the show.
I think we need to actually get him on here.
What's his name? Joe and Gettysburg, I love it. Yeah, Joe,
way to go. This is one of the best listener
(49:52):
mails I think I've ever heard, Chuck dr walked Um. Well,
if you want to be like Joe and try to
topple his record as the eightist email listener mail writer
of all time, um, let's take your best shot. You
can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, running
up the flag pole, and see who salutes it at
stuffed podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
(50:17):
Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
Hey, everybody. You may not know this yet, and if
you don't, prepare to be blown away. We are creating
right now the first ever Stuff you Should Know book.
It's called Stuff you Should Know Colon, an incomplete compendium
of mostly interesting things. And you can preorder it now,
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incentive because you get a free gift. And don't worry
(00:22):
if you've already pre ordered, because you can just head
on over to stuff you Should Read books dot com.
It's a very beautiful little web page and it's got
all the information. And if you already pre ordered, can't
you just like upload your receipt and get that pre
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off to you and you will get in the mail
and say, oh, thank you. Don't mind if I do.
(00:42):
And it's a poster that you will love and cherish
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That's right, everyone, We couldn't be more excited about this book.
It's really coming together. Well, it's us through and through
and you can go check out some excerpts at stuff
you Should Read books dot com. Welcome to Stuff you
Should know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(01:10):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant right over there. Jerry's out there somewhere,
and this is stuff you should know. You know, Chuck,
I have to say yes. Every once in a while,
the amazing theme song from our short lived television show
comes into my head and it'll just it's just a
(01:31):
complete earworm because I just hear the end of it
over and over and over again, and it's actually pretty
pleasant night. It doesn't bother me. I love it. I
haven't heard that song in a while. Well, you need
to go listen. That was the Henry Clay people, right, Yeah.
Our buddies, Joey and Andy Sierra California boys, Southern California
boys men. Didn't didn't they go to like Harvard or
(01:53):
something crazy like that. Joey ended up going to Harvard
and then I think Andy went to a f I
and then Joey I think went back to film school
and they're both writing, uh you know, screenwriting. Man. That's great,
and he's got a he wrote it the this uh
Andy Sandberg movie that's that's coming out soon. Really what
(02:14):
which what what's it called? Uh? It is called Palm Springs?
I think why? And he wrote it? Yeah, dude, that's fantastic.
Congratulations And he wrote on the TV show Lodge forty nine. Yeah,
I haven't seen the Springs, but that, um, that guy
Kurt Rustling Goldie hans Son. I love that guy. I
(02:37):
think he's one of the coolest people walking around on
the planet today. Yeah, I haven't seen Lodge forty Nine's
supposed to be awesome. And um, Andy was a writer's
assistant and then ended up on the staff and they're
they're both doing great. Man, that's great. A little baby
now they're both married. Nice man, that's nice. And that's
an update on the cra Club as um, let's see
(03:00):
what else? How was it? How did did that come
into your head? Though? The song? Like? What made you
think of that? Nothing? I was just out back, like
mowing the lawn with my big old lawnmower. Uh, and
it just popped in my head. I was probably thinking
of something I had to do that had to do
with stuff you should know, and I thought stuff you
should know? And when I thought it, I thought it
(03:21):
as stuff you should know. Duing it. This is the
then it just played on a loop. This is the
second time you mentioned the size of your lawnmower. Yeah,
and now you just gotta send me a picture. Is
this one of these things that you stand it and
it and it wheels you around like some weird land
speeder you mean, like a skag or something. Now, this
(03:41):
is just a good old fashioned toro. That is because
it's gas powered. I got it like on super discount. Um,
because everybody's making like really good electric lawnmowers, um, but
this one was you know, it was on discount, and
I like the look of it. Yeah, it's a good
looking more huh. Yeah. I was like, I like your style.
(04:03):
Is it red? Yep? Yeah, it was red toros. Yeah,
it's nice. It takes you back to days of paper
routes and stuff like that, don't I thought you were
mentioning the song because you were thinking of the song
Flagpole Sita by Harvey Danger. No, I wasn't at all. Okay,
(04:24):
but that's a great segue, Chuck, because it just so happens.
And you may be aware of this for talking about
Flagpole sitting to day in this episode, right, and I've
been singing that song in my head all day now,
I don't. I don't know that song? You know it?
It was a well maybe not, it was a It
was a top forty hit in the nineties, kind of
(04:44):
during the grunge era. It was. It was a power
pop hit that kind of Oh, don't, don't, don't, don't,
don't do do wait, don't said it at it? No,
my band actually covers a flagpoles. It it's a fun song. Okay,
(05:04):
that's great. I'm gonna have to go listen to it
because I feel like I'm missing out. But what that
song is? That song about flagpole sitting is about shipwreck
Kelly in particular. No, it's not. But it does have
one line that says, run it up the flagpole and
see And that's the only time it references flagpoles at all?
Sees what who salutes? But no one ever does? I think?
(05:29):
Is the next line? Mm hmm that rings a bill
I have, but the again end then and then I
was again to the mirror a little bit clearer. Run
it up the flagpole and see who salutes? But no
one ever does? Yeah, I'm not sick, but not well?
Who is that Harvey danger? Danger? Okay? Yeah, that's a
(05:50):
great song. I love it. Yeah. Who fellow podcasting friend
John Roderick. Actually, uh, Sean Nelson was a friend of
his in Seattle and Nate he played bass for a
little all in Harvey Danger. Oh very wow, man, this
is all coming first. So I got one more for you.
I used to have that song and I don't know
where I downloaded it from. This would have been probably
(06:11):
back in the napster days or something, um, and it
was mislabeled as Brian Jones how massacre. And I was
always like, this is not sound like Brian Jones how massacre.
Now I know it most definitely wasn't Brian Jones hown massacre. Wow. Alright,
we haven't even talked about flag pole sitting yet. No,
(06:31):
we haven't, um, which is a crime because it's actually
one of the more interesting, weird old fads that's ever
come this way in America, and it was in the
twenties started. We actually we know who patient zero was
a flagpole sitting and it's easy to tell because it
is such a bizarre thing to do that if you
(06:53):
can find the person who who who did it first,
who claims to have done it first, they're probably correct,
And in this case, you can trace it back to
sometime around January, supposedly potentially in Hollywood, California, part of
Los Angeles, and there was a man named Alvin Shipwreck
Kelly who supposedly climbed up on a flagpole as part
(07:17):
of a promotion for a movie and sat there for
full thirteen hours and thirteen minutes to help draw a crowd.
And boyditty ever, yeah, which you know, Uh, that sounds
like a long time to sit on a flagpole, but
that is kids stuff, yeah, compared to where this is. Yeah,
for sure, that's an appertif. But it's a good first attempt,
(07:39):
you know. Yeah. And so you know, it sounds strange
because when you think of a flagpole, you're like, what
are they sitting on? It's a it's a modified flagpole
that basically there are different kinds, but um usually it's
sort of like a bar stool at the top of
a flagpole and it's that low fi and you climb
up there and you sit and that's all you do.
(08:01):
That's that's it. I mean, whatever else you want to do, well,
sure you do use yourself or whatever that's up to you.
But as far as being considered a flagpole sitter. That's it.
You sit on top of a flagpole for as long
as you can. All right, So let's talk about this guy,
because Shipwreck Kelly was a pretty interesting character. Uh. And
I have to say there's a Memory Palace episode about
(08:22):
him that I specifically didn't listen to you beforehand because
I didn't want to unconsciously rip it off. Go listen
to that, yeah, or Buddy Nate, I'm gonna check that
out for sure. So Alvin Kelly, Uh, he was born
Aloysius Anthony Kelly in New York City, in Hell's Kitchen
in a tenement in eight and had a very sad
start to his life and that his father was had
(08:46):
already passed before he was born. His mother passed in childbirth,
and that basically meant he was shuttled around two relatives
and orphanages from you know, the minute he took his
first breath. Yeah. Um, And apparently from a pretty pretty
early age he would do things like climb flagpoles and
(09:06):
other tall stuff and like working at heights became a
kind of a recurring theme in his life. Um. Was
supposedly by age seven, he was climbing flagpoles. Within a
few years after that, he was starting to scale the
facades of some of the buildings in his neighborhood. And
by the time he was thirteen. And bear in mind,
if this guy's biography seems a little thin, he just
(09:29):
came out of nowhere in n for sitting on a flagpole.
So all of the info about him came from him
to reporters who were reporting in the nineteen twenties. So
just fabrications are flying around left and right. But um,
supposedly he ran away at age thirteen and ran off
to join uh the crew of a cargo ship and
(09:50):
start his life sailing the seas. Yeah, and he did
a lot of kind of odd jobs, or maybe not
odd jobs, but just jobs that didn't have anything to
do with one another. Uh. Over the next couple of decades,
he was in the movies as a a stand in
and a double He was a stunt person, a stunt pilot,
high diver, a boxer. Uh, this part I love. There's
(10:12):
actually a name for people that repair church steeples, and
what is that steeple jack. He was a steeplejack. That
is definitely a band name for sure. Steeple Jack oh yeah,
it sounds like maybe an industrial band, but like on
the light side, like they like they're technically too melodic
to actually be considered industrial, but they still call themselves industrial.
(10:34):
That's become my favorite part of this whole band name thing,
is you describing what kind of band it is? Okay,
well thanks man. That that that makes me feel warm
and funny. So, um, World War One comes along, and
he was in the Naval Auxiliary Reserve as an ensign
and served on the USS Edgar f Lukenbach during that war. Yep,
(11:00):
so he did have some sort of well I should say,
I don't know if anybody's corroborated that, um, but we'll
just take all that at face value because it doesn't
really matter at this point. But what he eventually picked
up the nickname shipwreck. And there's a lot of different
um explanations for this, and he's given or he gave
(11:20):
multiple different explanations depending on what reporter he was talking to.
But one of the numbers that gets bandied about pretty
frequently is that shipwreck Kelly was so named because he
survived thirty two different shipwrecks at sea. And where this
is where shipwrecks tend to happen with the good old days. Third, yeah,
up stories about yourself. Do you remember when we talked
(11:44):
about um, we did an episode on the World's Either
Luckiest or Unluckiest People? And do you remember that one
guy He was like, I I survived a car that
fell off a cliff, and I survived a train wreck
and all that. He was doing his jam in like
two thousand five, remember, was he? Yeah, he was pretty
pretty recent if I remember correctly. Remember his son came
(12:06):
out was like, everybody, this is not true, right, Like,
none of what you're talking about is true. Well, we
did had just fooled you all. We don't know if
a shipwreck Kelly actually survived the Titanic like he claimed,
but we do know that he was not on the
roster on the Titanic, So I am going to venture
to say that he made that one up. And there
were three Kelly's on board, but who were survivors? But
(12:29):
all three of them were women, So yeah, he probably
wasn't on the Titanic. Maybe he did survive from shipwrecks.
He was at sea most likely, But the point is
that they call him shipwreck Kelly, and I guess somebody
went to the trouble of digging up that. Uh. Some
reporters who covered his boxing career are probably the likeliest
(12:49):
source for where he got his nickname shipwreck, right, which
I love because I guess he wasn't a great boxer,
because they said that he was often adrift and ready
to sink that great shipwreck Kelly. It's a great nickname
and an even better origin story than surviving thirty two
shipwrecks if you asked me. Yeah. And the other thing
(13:09):
we don't know for sure is even if that Hollywood
movie premiere story is correct in his first major outing
as a flagpolesitter, because uh, yet another story says no,
this is actually in Philadelphia at a department store and
he just did it on a dare and the department
store got a lot of business because people are standing
around looking and then doing some shopping. So they were like, Hey,
(13:32):
stay up there and I'll give you some extra dough. Yeah. So,
either way, it's pretty widely held that Shipwreck Kelly was
the guy who started the flagpole sitting craze. And it
was a craze because this is a time where you
could go sit on a flagpole for thirteen hours and
thirteen minutes, and newspapers around the country would pick up
(13:56):
the story and write about it. Um, and you would say,
become famous overnight. And that's exactly what happened to Shipwreck Kelly.
So that's prong one towards this becoming a fad in
the nineties. The other criteria is that um, people have
to want to topple that record, and that was very
widespread at the time too, because the nineteen twenties were
(14:18):
actually really big into fads, like people would take up
weird fads and just go nuts over for basically the
whole decade. Yeah, you know, people had time, and they
had fewer distractions. Yeah, no TV. So like someone doing
a dance a thon for twenty eight hours or sitting
(14:39):
on a flagpole for a day. You know, it's a
it's an interesting story. Back then it's sad, but that
that was interesting, but it was so uh well, we'll
talk about dance marathons and then we'll take a break. Okay, okay, okay,
(15:26):
Oh wait, I got that backwards, Chuck. I just realized
hopefully Jerry figured it out and there was an ad
in there somewhere. I think we should just leave it
just like that though. That'll be fun. Okay, So um,
we're gonna talk about marathon's. Dance marathon's now after the
ad break, despite what I said before, and dance marathons
are a super twenties example of a crazy fad that
(15:51):
kind of came along and got everybody by the hackles,
and people across the country started entering basically dance marathon
competitions because of one person, one woman, a dance instructor
named Alma Cummings, that's right, thirty two years old. She
danced for twenty seven hours at the Audubon Ballroom in
New York in nine three with six different dance partners.
(16:14):
And uh, it was a weird time because it wasn't
just dancing, it was endurance challenges as a whole. We're
just all the rage and punishing your bodies and all
these weird random ways from yo yoing too hula hooping
to rocking in a rocking chair or skipping rope uh
(16:37):
to dancing dancing was the big one. That's where you
You know, if you see these videos of these marathon
dance competitions, it's just it looks like hell on Earth.
It looks awful. Yeah, oh yeah, they didn't seem very
fun at all, but um, Alma Cummings just kicked the
whole thing off. And again, just like Shipwreck Kelly, who
would follow I guess a year later, um or even yeah,
(16:59):
about a year later. Uh, she got a lot of publicity.
There's like a famous photo of her with her feet
in a tub of water soaking at home and she's
holding up her shoes and they have holes in the
souls where you know, she wore holes from dancing for
twenty seven hours. And I guess, like you're saying people
were bored or there wasn't as much to do, but
also there really seems to just be a profound hunger
(17:23):
for celebrity however you can get it, and that seemed
to be like really drive people who wanted to be like, well,
if this lady got this much attention for dancing twenty
seven straight hours, maybe I can get even more attention
for dancing thirty straight hours. And so within just like
I think three weeks of Alma Cummings setting this record
(17:44):
for dancing, um, it had been broken nine times at
least from people trying to seek the same kind of
publicity she got. Yeah, and you know, it's funny. It
really like we talked about these days, how everyone wants
their ten minutes or they want to be reality show
famous or whatever, and I been whittled down to ten Now.
I thought it was like fifteen. Well, like that's something new,
(18:05):
and it's really not like this is sort of this
The version of that back then was I want to
be famous, I want my names in the papers, but
I'm not particularly skilled enough to do anything to do that.
So I'll rock in a rocking chair for three days. Yeah,
you know, and hopefully they will come. Um rock, they
(18:25):
will come. And it's that was a pity laugh at best,
but I appreciate. Well it's a bad joke admittedly, Um,
but it would. And we we should shout out a
bunch of great websites here because um this next bit
came from Atlas Obscura, one of our favorite sites and
also our dearest of old sites that we always have
(18:48):
loved Mental Floss, Ripley's History Daily, j Mark Powell, and
Historic Pellem, which is great, but um, Atlas Obscura talks
about the in the thirties and this is really kind
of depressing. Um during the depression. It's very appropriate is
(19:09):
that sometimes people would enter these dance marathons because it
would be somewhere they could sleep and eat for a
week at a time when they didn't necessarily have a
home or food. Yeah, it's extremely depressing, or just the
prize money that was offered in the depression might be
enough to keep your house from being foreclosed on. So yeah,
(19:31):
the thing is is, you know, you can blame promoters
for continuing this long beyond the fad, but the promoters
wouldn't have been putting these on and offering these price
this prize money where it not for all the crowds
that would show up every day to watch these people
get increasingly closer to you know, catastrophic exhaustion from from
dance marathons. Because like there were there were rules where
(19:55):
you know, probably early on in the dance marathon, um,
you could sleep or rest for fifteen minutes of every hour,
and then after like a week a week of this
dance marathon going on, the promoter might be like, okay, well,
you know, we need to step things up a little
bit and you will now have three minutes per hour
(20:17):
every twenty four hour period in a day to where
you can rest and then towards the end, they'd be like,
no rest. I think I read about one where the
last fifty seven hours of a multi week um dance
marathon was like I had no rest. So these people
dance for more than two straight days constantly. You had
to constantly be in motion and your knees couldn't touch
(20:40):
the ground or else you'd be disqualified. Yeah, and if
you look at footage of this stuff, I mean it's charitable,
we'll call what they're doing is dancing. Toward the end,
it's just hanging. It looks like two corpses hanging on
each other, sort of swaying back and forth. Yeah, I
don't get I mean any of these things, even the
modern day versions of like these contest where you have
(21:01):
to keep your hand on a car or whatever, oh man,
or sit in the car. I knew a guy that
did one of those where you try to win a
Volkswagen Beetle by sitting in it with four other people
in a mall. I'm just like, oh, yeah, you told
us that story before. Did he win or not? I
think he did, But there's just no way kill me. Yeah,
(21:25):
it would be really awful for sure, because let's say,
for one of those contests. Let's say don't win, then
you've just sat in a car with three strangers for
a week and he didn't even get the car. But
even if you did get the car, imagine yourself five
years on and that car is like like curst, there's
tears in the seats or something like that, you know,
(21:47):
and like the glove compartment won't close. It's you know,
I mean, I guess you've got a story to tell
a cocktail parties, but even that would wear thin after
a while. But but Chuck, we need people to do
stuff like that because there's something about contests like this.
There's something about fads like flagpole sitting that keep humanity
(22:11):
from becoming too cerebral, you know what I mean, from
just becoming like computers. Basically, we need people to do
stuff like this because it brings out some juvenile something
in us that makes us want to find out about
it or learn about it or talk about it. And
I think that's good. I think that's healthy for our species.
(22:33):
All right, it's my it's my take. It's genuinely off
the cuff. I'm actually just surprised at myself that I
just said that out loud. You're just riffing. Yeah, so
shipwreck Kelly back to flagpole sitting. Uh, that initial thirteen
minutes sit, like you said, inspired so many others to
break it, and it was getting broken in pretty short order. Um,
(22:57):
kind of like the dance a Thons. That was a
woman named Bobby Mack from l A who did it.
A guy named Joe hold Him Powers who did this
in Chicago for sixteen days, um, another guy for fifty
one days named Bill Bill Penfield. Yeah, so so let's
point this out. Take a second here, ship Breck Kelly
(23:18):
did thirteen hours and kicked off a national fad. These
people are now in two weeks at a time. Fifty
one days is more than seven weeks up there. It's
pretty impressive. I'm impressed at least. Yeah, are you bucking
the cerebral yes? Right now? Can you tell uh? Let
me see here. In the twenties, it was a fifteen
(23:39):
year old boy, um who set the kid record for
ten days, ten hours, ten minutes, and ten seconds. I
think that was planned. I yeah, if not, then but
see there you go, Chuck, we're thinking about that. It's
making us think. This little kid is making us think
we got to avoid that it needs to be random,
random combinations of no so we don't start thinking about it.
(24:02):
We should also point out that not everyone was like, oh,
this is the best thing ever. In Cosmopolitan magazine, Cosmo
called it competitive uh imbecility. Yeah, this is fine, we
need that too. I have to say, I want to
say something. Here is a little p s A. This
might not even ever make it in the final edit,
so I'll just say it to you. How about that?
(24:24):
I would say, the last like few weeks of episodes, Um,
there's been like some some good ones here there, but
overall I find that they've been less good because I
am so sick of myself because we've been so entrenched
in the book right now, so it's like living breathing
(24:47):
s y s K, which is us, and having to
confront and like myself and my own personality and sense
of humor and whether that's actually funny, and just constantly
thinking about this on top of doing the podcast, on
top of the other stuff we're trying to do now too,
and I am so sick of myself. I can barely
(25:08):
tolerate listening to myself talk. So if anyone's picked up
on the last few episodes, like in the last few weeks,
just being a little ho hum, that's why. And I apologize.
Maybe we'll go back and redo them one day. News
to me, I think, okay, you've been great. Hey, thanks
(25:29):
a lot, man, That's ultimately what I was fishing for.
Al Right, well, if you want to cut that part out,
let's let me pick this up by saying, and I'm
sure you've made a great point, Josh. So so back
to Kelly. Right, you've got all these what I'm sure
shipwrecked Kelly deemed slack jawed, yokel's ho homes, that kind
(25:51):
of thing. Um who were out there trying to topple
his record, and they did, some did topple his record,
but nobody had turned this into a business like shipwreck
Kelly had. Here was a one man money making machine
who made his money just by sitting on top of
a flagpole. Good money because he was really good at
self promoting, Like there wasn't a reporter who's the year.
(26:12):
He wouldn't bend if he got the chance. And in
these reports um or these articles, he would say things like, yeah,
I'm in town for this, but if anybody has any
other offers, I'm wide open. And I'm staying at you know,
the Cambridge Arms um I Tinerant hotel for the next
few days. If somebody wants to get in touch with
me there with a job offer, like he was really
good at at attracting job offers, specifically for flagpole sitting. Yeah,
(26:37):
and he made good dough for back then. I mean,
this is good money anytime. If he made a hundred
dollars an hour like he claimed to um, other people said, now,
it really wasn't that much. It was probably closer to
anywhere between a hundred and five hundred dollars a day.
Still a lot of money. And um, like you said,
it was like he was almost like a celebrity version
(26:59):
of a sign spinner, Like if you could pay George
Clooney to sign spin in front of your mobile phone store.
Uh huh. That was sort of what Chiprette Kelly was.
That's a great one I got into. It's almost like
if there was a cult of personality built up around
(27:20):
like the flapping dancing windsock guy that they put out
in front of like mattress mattress stores in like two
thousand five. Ye I love those dudes. Okay, those are
fun both I think both of those are high quality analogies. Well,
we'll see which one Jerry's is in the end it okay, uh,
(27:40):
let me see here here here are some of his
longer sits. He did a hundred and forty six hours
at the Old Westgate Hotel in Kansas City. Three hundred
and twelve hours in Newark, New Jersey, atop the St.
Francis Hotel. That's pretty good. Sure, I don't know what
that is in days, but three twelve hours. Let's see
(28:04):
if you divided that by twenty four, as you should,
you would come up with something along the lines of
thirteen days on the nose. M all right, Well, how
about twenty two days? And this was in conjunction with
a dance marathon at none other than Madison Square Garden. Yeah,
because I don't know if we said or not, but
there was a dance marathon at Madison Square Gardens that
(28:26):
was actually shut down by the Health Department because they
decided to have gone on too long ten days, and
that it deemed a threat to the health of the participants.
That wasn't the one that he he sat in, but
there was one the following year where for what was
it twenty two days. That means that the dance marathon
(28:46):
went on for twenty two days. But imagine that. So
you've got these two endurance fads just interweaved in this
way that the universe almost like collapses in on itself
because they're put together too too close together there, you know.
Uh yeah, And here's how he would do it. He
would sit on a on that bar stool like thing,
(29:07):
and it was padded and he would, um, you know,
eat and smoke cigarettes and shave apparently, and they would
send this up stuff up in like a with a
bucket and a rope and tell him how he would sleep.
Because this is what I really kind of wanted to know. So,
(29:29):
so you said his his seat was like a bar
stool around bar stool basically, right, and um, it was
on a pole, flag pole appropriately, And then in the
flag pole you'd have two holes drilled just beneath the seat.
And now that I'm doing it, I'm like, that's really
hard to reach. So now I'm questioning whether this is
true or not. Maybe so, but he so he would
(29:52):
plug his his thumbs into those holes drilled into each
side of the flagpole, so that when he started to
lean forward, the pressure from that the flagpole on his
thumbs would kind of cut into his skin and wake
him up just enough that he would adjust himself. And
apparently he got so good at this that he would
adjust himself to sit back up so he wouldn't fall
(30:14):
over off of the flagpole while he was still sleeping,
like he wouldn't he wouldn't wake up. He could just
adjust himself in his sleep, that's right. And he'd have
his little uh, I don't know if they're a little bit.
He would have his ankles locked around the pole and
apparently would tether a leg to keep him from a catastrophe.
But I I think it's very dubious that that was
(30:35):
a solid life saving rig. Yeah, And I mean, like
some of these flagpoles, he's sitting on fifty ft um
one of them. I guess the impression I had the
one that you mentioned on um Kansas City's Westgate Hotel
that that flagpole was on the top of the roof
of the hotel. So I mean he was up there
(30:56):
for sure, and if he had something gone wrong, he
would have that tether probably would not have done terribly much,
or it would have done a lot to keep his
leg hanging up there, but the rest of him would
have kept going to the ground. You know, how did
he Uh he had a little contraption for that with
the tube that went down. But here's the thing. So
(31:18):
you're you're a traveling flagpole sitter. You're relying on the
help of other people on the ground. You need food.
You when you pee and poop into that contraption that
leads to a tube that goes down to the ground,
you don't want that just leaking out for the spectators
to see and smell and experience. You needed to go
into a bucket that somebody's going to go take away
(31:39):
and dump. So you're relying on this kind of group
of assistance in hands that probably the promoter maybe helped
hire for you. Maybe you make a friend along the
way who just kind of travels from town to town
with you for a little while, an assistant. He had
a boy business, right, he had a lad who would
(32:01):
help him. Yeah, yeah, uh so, uh but it would
be a pretty bad job. Yeah. But anyway, so he
had to I mean, he had to eat, and he
didn't eat much. He would apparently just kind of almost
do a broth fast um augmented with cigarettes and coffee. Um,
he would stay up for four days at a time,
(32:22):
because like, living on a flagpole is not exactly like
the most comfortable place you can exist for, you know,
twenty two days or thirteen days or however long. No,
And it eventually turned against him, and that the money
dried up after he did this sort of big Atlantic
city stunt that we talked about and it was the
(32:44):
Great Depression, and eventually people were kind of like, I
don't really care so much about this dumb stunt because
I'm starving and I'm broke and I'm homeless, right, And
that the kind of tide of public opinion turned such
that he went to do this in the Bronx and
he was actually arrested for public nuisance. Yeah, and I'm
(33:04):
sure he was like, but I'm shipwreck Kelly, right, But
I mean think about it, that's like everybody's sick of
you now, Kelly and your stick. We're all just depressed
in the depression. So maybe we'll do a dance marathon,
but we're not gonna watch you sit around in a
flag pole anymore. And um there was a contemporary article
that was written at the time that said that um
(33:26):
he he attributed the decline of Flagpole, sitting directly to
the stock market crash, and he said that people didn't
want to see anything higher than their securities stock securities
at the time, which we're not very high. So then
everyone went, that's just not even a joke in good
taste and he and he punches human familiar in the
(33:46):
mouth and say, you told me to tell that joke? Man?
That was Gangbusters, Chuck? Do you watch that? Ship? Got me?
What we do? What we do in the Shadows. I've
seen some episodes of it, you know. We were talking
about it, and one of the p a s I think,
wrote in to say that they were they were just
(34:08):
blown away that we were. We're giving such big ups
to their show. If you talk to Matt Barry, tell
him he's a comedy genius. I never heard anything back.
But oh, have you seen an evening with Beverly luff Lynn? No,
how do I know that name? So it's a um
Craig Robinson, Yes, from the office, right, he plays a
(34:33):
guy named Beverly luf Lynn And uh Aubrey Meadows, Audrey
Meadows Plaza, that's right, man, I'm yeah, um And then uh, okay,
so she's the main character, Jermaine Clement. I know him
that he plays well, you just have to see it anyway.
(34:55):
So what he was and what we do in the
Shadows the movie right right, So he I think he
coke eatd it too. This is what all ties into this.
He and Matt Barry are also in this too. Matt
Berry is in the TV version of what we do
in the Shadows. The main Clement help help create it.
But um, it's definitely worth watching. Is purposefully very bizarre,
(35:15):
which can get really annoying really easily, but this movie
pulls it off very well, like purposeful bizarreness and for humor. Um,
And it's a good it's a good movie. It's worth watching. Okay,
it's worth watching. I leave it to you to decide
whether it's a good movie or not. Well, I love
everybody in it. That's a great cast. Yeah, I mean
(35:35):
it's a it's a it's a it's worth watching. How
about that? All right? Should we take our second break here?
Can you believe we haven't? Yes? I can. All right,
let's do our other break and then we're gonna talk
about we're gonna wind up this flagpole sitting thing. Right
after this Okay, So Kelly, when we left off, the
(36:26):
public turns on him. They don't care about him anymore.
He's he's probably drunk in some hotel room somewhere with
his human familiar talking about the good old days at
this point, right, Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of sad. I
get the impression, um, that the Memory Palace episode really
focuses on the sad decline of shipwreck Kelly, because I mean,
(36:47):
he was a celebrity, a national probably international celebrity, for
like a decade, a decade for sitting on flagpoles, and
then all of a sudden, he's just done, Like society
rops him like a hot potato, and he's penniless and
on public assistance. Basically. Yeah, and he died a very
(37:08):
sad death he did. Uh. And I think his final
flagpole sit it was all the way in the nineteen
fifties and Orange Texas in nineteen fifty two. He was
almost sixty years old at this point, and he had,
during the publicity run up to this, had two heart attacks. Um, well,
(37:29):
was he sitting on his pole for publicity or was
this part of the pole sitting when he had the
heart attacks? He was? He had the heart attacks on
the pole during the publicity. Oh so the the actual
sit was another publicity stunt for some place, right, Yeah,
I don't know what business it was for. I didn't
see that, but I did see that. The promoters were like,
(37:51):
come down right now, we we we don't think you're
going to survive a third heart attack, so stop, which
is crazy. I mean, it's only fifty nine at the time. Yeah,
but fifty nine in the nineteen fifties, that was when
your name was shipwreck. Yeah. But he did die of
that third heart attack like a week after that, right, Yeah,
(38:15):
he's walking around New York on fifty one Street and
um he dropped that on the sidewalk from a heart attack.
And he uh was found holding a scrapbook of all
like clippings of newspaper articles about him during his heyday.
Isn't that sad? It's like a movie. Yeah, I can't
(38:37):
believe this is a movie. He's I mean, he's a
gold mine just waiting to be well mined. Uh wait, wait, wait,
there's one other thing about him. After he um was
done with this flag poles sitting career, the heyday of it.
(38:57):
He one of the jobs he had was as a
jiggle oh, a male escort who would dance with whoever
wanted him to dance at the Roseland ball Room near
Times Square. He was a private dancer, a dancer for money.
I've been to roseland they've seen some good shows there. Yeah,
well you were where Shipwreck Kelly danced for a diamond
(39:20):
dance because he was a jiggilow. I would have paid
for that dance. Sure, tell him to sit on my head. Hey,
he'll do what you want him to do. Oh boy, Um,
So we looked, or rather you look, because you put
this one together and you found one death from flagpole sitting.
(39:40):
Isn't that right? That's all I could turn up. Surely,
surely there were more, but I could really only find one.
And this guy was wonderful in every way. Dick Blandy,
Dixie Blandy, Richard Dixie d I x I E. Bland
Dick Dixie Blandy. Sure so, Dixie Blandy. He was a
(40:02):
flag pole sitter who was contemporaneous to Shipwreck Kelly, a
little bit like during I. Surely he was directly inspired
by Shipwreck Kelly. He came along and started in ninety nine,
which was almost the worst year you could join the
flagpole sitting movement, because just the next year shipwreck, Kelly
(40:23):
had his triumphant sit aboard like a or above two.
What triumphant sat? Yeah, Well it was triumphant for a
couple of reasons. One it was his longest sit I
believe twenty two days, twenty three days, something like that.
And secondly, it's aboard or above um a top a
(40:43):
two hundred foot flagpole for weeks he sat up there.
That's triumphant if you ask me. But he did his
in nineteen thirty and everybody dropped him right after. Dixie
Blandy just started in nine. But even though people said
flag pole sitting so out, we're not going to bother
even looking up when we see somebody on a flagpole,
(41:04):
Dixie Blandy said, you know what, I'm not giving up
on this. And he continued to make a career out
of it wherever he could, yes, until he died from
flagpole sitting, and at the age of seventy one in
nineteen seventy four, he fell off of his flagpole. It
was a fifty foot pole And uh, where was this
(41:25):
in in Harvey? Yeah, I get the impression in Pennsylvania, Harvey, Pennsylvania. Yeah,
because the article that reported on it as if it
were something of a nearby event was called The Reading Eagle.
And reading is in Pennsylvania, right, Uh yeah? Is it
reading whatever? I can't tell you how many times I've
(41:48):
been told that since I was a child playing monopoly,
and it's just never stuck for some reason. Was that
the titular railroad? M okay, well, reading railroad? We said, reading, Yeah,
that's right, that's what I said too, But apparently he's ready.
Well I don't know. I didn't know. It's the same thing. Um,
but either way, this is where Harvey and of course
(42:09):
it's all it's always like the grand opening of a
chopping center or something, and that's what was going on.
Here's a four day promotion and um he basically said,
I think this pole was attached to a trailer and
the trailer moved. Is that right? Well, he asked a
security guard to move the trailers so they can make
room for what I took to be a cherry picker
(42:31):
that could go up and get them. This is hours
before the end of his four day sit and um
when the security guard, I guess who had never tried
this before, moved the trailer guy wire that was stabilizing
the pole, became taught and actually pulled the pole, snapped
the pole in two with Dixie still on top of
(42:52):
this fifty foot pole, and he landed scoll first, from
what I can tell, onto the to the asphalt below.
That's not what you want to to open your grocery
store with no or, or to close your flagpole sit
with no either way. He it's a bad jam. This
was not his only accident to this is the one
(43:12):
that got him, but he had fractured his skull before
when he was thrown off a pole in a storm
in n And then there was this is heartwarming. In
X one, he was doing a pulse sit for promotion,
dressed as Santa Claus and he was shouting Merry Christmas.
That was his job, sit on the top of the
flag pole and shot Merry Christmas. And apparently it got
(43:35):
to the point where he finally yelled down that he
was getting numb and he had to be taken to
the hospital, which is this is what I'm talking about. Man,
just no thought. It doesn't take thought to just think
about flagpole sitting. And I love that about it Yeasry Christmas, Christmas.
I think I think there's something wrong up here. I
(43:57):
gotta go to the hospital because I'm sitting on top
of a flagpole Justice Santa Claus shouting Merry Christmas for
three days and it's December in Pennsylvania. In reading, it's
reading right. Uh. And this was you know, these were
definitely the waning days. This was in the nineteen seventies.
There were some other stunts throughout the years. Here and there.
A couple got married a top of flagpole. Um, let
(44:21):
me see here. Seventeen year old in nineteen sixty three
named Peggy Townsend spent two hundred and seventeen days on
a pole for a contest for a radio station. And
then the granddaddy of them all, this guy, Kenneth gedge
ken Gidge two hundred and forty eight days in nineteen
seventy one. This guy would later on be a state
(44:43):
rep for New Hampshire. And uh, he I mean reading
his account, he was he was basically like, it was
terrible and I hated it. Every He had a parakeet.
He had his parakeet with him named Nixon, and he
said that his parakeet came to hate him, like despise him.
(45:04):
He said he didn't think any animals ever hated somebody
more than that parakeet hated him, probably because he made
him stay up there in this little tiny house. The
top of fiberglass poles sway back and forth. He couldn't
lay down straight in it because the pole, so he
had to lay wrapped around the pole. Um. It sounds
really horrible and terrible, and he did it to get
(45:27):
publicity because he was an out of work actor, I
guess at the time. Yeah, like I said to called
the thing of house is generous. It's this little you
can see a picture of it, but it was it
was some sort of shelter. At least he wasn't just
sitting like on a bar stool like a shipwreck Kelly
for two days. But it was bad and he and
(45:47):
it's just funny reading these quotes from him. He he
did not have a good time, and he just basically
kind of talked about how awful it was. Yeah, he said.
They said that he lost fifteen pounds three inches from
his waist in thirteen days of sleep, just within the
first three months, and that when people would come out,
like when the weather is nice, people come out and
shout questions up to him, and he talked to him. Uh,
(46:08):
and he said the men usually asked, um, if he
sleeps and how he goes to the bathroom, and then
women asked if he was lonely, which I find very sweet.
But um, I mean, remember we started out here at
thirteen hours is what kicked this off. And this guy,
Kenneth Gidge has has brought it up to two forty
eight days. But Chuck, that does not seem to be
(46:31):
the record any longer. In fact, the record may never
be broken. Ever. What do you think? Yeah, h David
Werder of Wiki Watchee, Florida, Man, this is unbelievable. Sat
for four hundred and thirty nine days, eleven hours, six minutes. Yeah,
(46:51):
his sit went from two to night. That's amazing. Yeah.
And it was outside of an appliance center in clear Water.
And he didn't do this as like a publicity stunt
for that appliance center. He did it to protest gas
prices at the time. Yeah, that's how you see these
these days sometimes his protests, sure, but the gas at
(47:15):
the time was nine cents a gallon. That's cute. So
his protest didn't work at all. But he spent four
hundred and thirty nine days of his life on a
flag pole because it was mad about the price of gas.
No thought whatsoever to a zen like beautiful state. Is
what this man achieved? Is that the overarching theme? Yep,
(47:37):
I think so man? Alrighty, you got anything else? Uh? Yeah,
I mean we we should mention David Blaine. He very
famously did this standing in two thousand two. Remember that
for how long? No? I don't remember that at all.
He stood atop of ninety ft pole for thirty five
hours in Bryant Park in New York. And this is
(47:58):
when he was doing those Uh. I'd love the guy
as the street magician and give me a little levitation trick.
But when he was like I'm gonna hold my breath
or I'm gonna be encased in ice or stand on
this thing, that's when I lost interest. Oh yeah, yeah,
I like street magic too. It's pretty great stuff. Yeah,
but yeah he stood. It's tough to stand. I mean,
(48:19):
sitting is is hard, but standing as a whole different deal. Yeah,
for sure. I wouldn't want to do it. Nope, So
you got anything else about flagpoles? Sitting? I don't well
then chuck. That means, of course, it's time for listener mail.
This is Oh, this is just funny. Remember in the
(48:43):
Brockism I talked about my doctor Tuggle. Uh, this comes
from Joe and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He said, Hey, guys, thanks
for you the entertainment knowledge. Your discussion of doctor names
at the end of the Brocksis and podcast reminded me
of two anecdotes. My ex wife had a dentist in
San Francisco named Dr Drilling. No pretty good, huh sure,
(49:08):
and this is even better, he said. Second, this one
never gets appreciated as much by others for some reason.
It must she just hit me the right way. But
I'm with you, Joe, it hits me too. She worked
with a medical worked in medical administration, and her boss
at one point was named Dr Walked w A c
h t e R pronounced Walked, and he said I
(49:30):
could just imagine her submitting daily reports using baby talk,
going here, Dr Walked, here your robots for the day. Man,
this guy is our new mascot here on the show.
I think we need to actually get him on here.
What's his name? Joe and Gettysburg, I love it. Yeah, Joe,
way to go. This is one of the best listener
(49:52):
mails I think I've ever heard, Chuck dr walked Um. Well,
if you want to be like Joe and try to
topple his record as the eightist email listener mail writer
of all time, um, let's take your best shot. You
can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, running
up the flag pole, and see who salutes it at
stuffed podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
(50:17):
Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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