Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader Read online

  Location: St. Augustine, Florida

  Background: In the same town as the supposed location of the Fountain of Youth and Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum is this attraction that celebrates the grislier parts of history. Curator Buddy Hough said, “Tragedy is what makes America great.” He began collecting in 1963, making several trips to Dallas to get whatever artifacts he could from the Kennedy assassination.

  Be Sure to See: The ambulance that took Lee Harvey Oswald to the hospital after he was shot, the furniture from the Dallas room Oswald stayed in before the assassination, the car Jayne Mansfield died in, and the bullet-riddled 1933 Ford in which Bonnie and Clyde were supposedly killed. There’s also a copy of Elvis Presley’s will, antique torture equipment, and a Spanish jail cell from 1718 with real skeletons inside.

  Update: Want to visit the museum? You can’t. Tragedy struck in 1996, when Buddy Hough died. His wife auctioned off the museum’s contents two years later. (The ambulance sold for $17,500, Bonnie and Clyde’s car went for $1,900, and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum bought Lee Harvey Oswald’s furniture for $6,000.)

  FUTURE BIRTHPLACE OF CAPTAIN KIRK

  Location: Riverside, Iowa

  Background: Boldly going beyond a single building, the entire town is a Star Trek museum. According to the TV series, Captain Kirk will be born here on March 22, 2233. The town wanted to erect a statue of William Shatner as Kirk, but Paramount Pictures, which owns Star Trek, wanted a $40,000 licensing fee. So instead, docked in the town square is the U.S.S. Riverside, which bears a striking (but not copyright infringing) resemblance to the U.S.S. Enterprise.

  Be Sure to See: The annual Kirk Birthday celebration in March. Souvenirs are available. The bestseller: Kirk Dirt, a $3 vial of soil dug from the fictional space captain’s future birth site.

  Good strategy? Costa Rica has no army.

  STRANGE LAWSUITS

  These days, it seems that people will sue each other over practically anything. Here are some real-life examples of unusual legal battles.

  THE PLAINTIFFS: Sixteen violinists

  THE DEFENDANT: The city of Bonn, Germany

  THE LAWSUIT: In March 2004, violinists from the Beethoven Orchestra sued for a pay raise on the grounds that they play more notes than musicians in the woodwind or brass sections. They demanded an extra $123 per rehearsal (or performance) for the “extra notes” they have to play, adding that they were actually being generous by not asking for more. “We could have calculated the surcharge per eighth note, but we chose to take an easier course,” one violinist said. Orchestra director Laurentius Bonitz said, “The suit is absurd.”

  THE VERDICT: The violinists changed their tune and took an even easier course: they dropped the suit.

  THE PLAINTIFF: Isabel Barros of Santiago, Chile

  THE DEFENDANT: A bank

  THE LAWSUIT: Barros was making a withdrawal when one of the cashiers loudly asked, “Who is the lady for the £9,000?” When Barros left the bank with the money ($16,000), she was robbed, so she filed a lawsuit to get the money back, saying it was the clerk’s fault. “Why I was so stupid to answer him when he asked who was the £9,000 lady I don’t know, but it was his unsubtlety that drew attention to me. Plus he counted the money out loud so everyone could hear.” The bank denied that the clerk shouted, and said they have video footage to prove it.

  THE VERDICT: Pending.

  THE PLAINTIFF: Donald Johnson of West Palm Beach, Florida

  THE DEFENDANT: Shoney’s Restaurant

  THE LAWSUIT: Johnson ordered potato soup from the restaurant and they gave him clam chowder by mistake. He’s allergic to clams, but he ate the whole bowl. He had an allergic reaction that required a visit to the emergency room and sued the restaurant for giving him “psychological sleep disorders” when they served the wrong soup.

  A mirage can be photographed.

  THE VERDICT: He won, but didn’t get the $4,070 he wanted to cover his medical bills. The jury said that Shoney’s was 10% responsible for serving the wrong soup—but that Johnson was 90% responsible for eating it, and awarded him $407.

  THE PLAINTIFF: Will Wright

  THE DEFENDANTS: Producers of Wheel of Fortune

  THE LAWSUIT: In 2003 Wright won a $48,000 jackpot on the game show. It was a big moment for everybody, but Wright claims host Pat Sajak got too carried away. “I stick out my hand thinking he’s going to shake it,” Wright said. “Instead he jumps onto me.” Wright sued the show for $2 million, claiming that Sajak’s assault resulted in his needing back surgery. “They say I signed a release,” he said, “but that was for things like if you hurt yourself spinning the wheel. It doesn’t cover the host jumping on a contestant.”

  VERDICT: Pending.

  THE PLAINTIFFS: Lance and Misty Westmoreland

  THE DEFENDANT: Scenic Igloo Village, Cordova, Alaska

  THE LAWSUIT: The Westmorelands visited the tourist site in 1997 with their six-year-old son Cody, who “wanted to see Eskimos.” There were no Eskimos, but they did see John “Chico” Williams, 47, an actor at the village, dressed as a woman. “I don’t know what you call it up there,” Lance Westmoreland later said from his Texas home, “but down here it’s just plain sick.” Igloo Village manager Dave Moka said, “I tried my best to placate them. I told them they were lucky—Chico once came to work dressed as the Madonna. Another time he showed up wearing only a bagel. I refunded their money, and thought that would be the end of it.” It wasn’t: the couple sued for $600,000 in damages, claiming the “cross-dressing Eskimo” traumatized their son. “Eskimos are supposed to be normal Eskimos,” Misty Westmoreland said. “You go to a tourist igloo village, you want to see whale blubber and mukluks and stuff like that.” Williams kept a sense of humor about the incident. “I am an Aleut, not an Eskimo,” he said.

  THE VERDICT: None. The trial ended in a hung jury.

  A giant panda consumes about 120 pounds of bamboo a day.

  HAIRY HOUDINIS

  Are humans really the smartest primates?

  THE BALLAD OF KEN ALLEN

  As a baby at the San Diego Zoo, an orangutan named Ken Allen taught himself to take his crib apart and to unscrew lightbulbs. By adulthood, he was breaking other orangutans out of their cages and leading them on covert trips around the zoo. During the 1980s, Ken broke out nine times, delighting zoo visitors and frustrating zoo workers. How’d he do it? Keepers discovered dozens of makeshift finger and foot holds in the artificial rock walls of Ken’s pen. The holes were smoothed over, ending Ken’s escapes, but he’d already become a media hero, with magazine profiles, a fan club, T-shirts, and even a country song: “The Ballad of Ken Allen.”

  MMMM...PASTRIES

  In 2001 a gorilla in the Pittsburgh Zoo leapt eight feet over a moat and grabbed onto an inch-wide bamboo stem leaning against the enclosure wall. Then she climbed the bamboo like a rope, all the way up the 16-foot wall. Easily hopping over a short retaining wall, the gorilla began foraging...for junk food. She raided a concession stand, consuming muffins, pastries, and orange soda. Some resourceful zookeepers finally figured out how to lure her back into captivity: they used Hershey’s Kisses as bait. The gorilla was tranquilized and returned to her habitat, and the bamboo was immediately trimmed.

  TARZAN THE APE APE

  The Los Angeles Zoo assumed an area designed to hold bears would be sufficient to house gorillas. Wrong. In October 2000, a gorilla named Evelyn took a running jump, grabbed a hanging vine, and vaulted over a 15-foot-wide moat. For the next hour, Evelyn leisurely wandered around the zoo, visiting the orangutan, giraffe, and elephant houses. She also played in flower gardens, rummaged through garbage cans, and played hide-and-seek with the frantic zookeepers trying to catch her. Evelyn broke out several more times, even after the walls of her enclosure were raised. The Los Angeles Zoo finally gave up and sent her to a new home in the Denver Zoo, from which she continues to escape.

  The word “galaxy” comes from the Greek gala, for “milk.”

 
PLANT A TREE, SAVE A PRIMATE

  After Jonathan the orangutan escaped from his enclosure numerous times, the Los Angeles Zoo designed a state-of-the-art, escape-proof outdoor habitat. They were so sure it would hold Jonathan, they arranged for local officials and reporters to witness him enter his new home for the first time. Bad idea: as zookeepers, dignitaries, visitors, and the media watched in disbelief, the ape went straight to a tree, uprooted it, leaned it against a wall, and climbed out.

  BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WIRES

  After the headaches Jonathan caused in Los Angeles, the Kansas City Zoo didn’t take any chances with Jonathan’s son, Joseph. Keepers lined the ground around Joseph’s enclosure with electrified wires, which would give Joseph a potent jolt should he ever try to break out. It didn’t work. He took an old rubber tire he’d been given as a toy, laid it across the wires, and simply walked to freedom. Nobody even noticed that he was gone until visitors found him in the petting zoo playing with the sheep.

  GREEN THUMBS

  An orangutan in a Texas zoo figured out how to overcome the electric fence around his cage. He ripped out big chunks of grass from the ground and held them in his hands and feet. Using them as insulating mittens, he climbed over the electrified wires without getting zapped.

  GIMME A “C,” GIMME AN “H,” GIMME AN “I”...

  Resembling a cheerleading squad, chimpanzees at the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands formed a pyramid to collectively escape from their pen. They stacked on top of each other until they were high enough to scale the walls. The first one to the top then reached down and helped the others get out.

  Zoologist Ben Beck once said that if you give a screwdriver to a chimpanzee, it will use the tool for everything except its intended purpose. A gorilla will first be scared of it, then try to eat it, and finally forget about it. An orangutan, however, will hide it and then, when the coast is clear, use it to dismantle the cage.

  There are no rhymes in the English language for orange, silver, or purple.

  CELEBRITY TWO-TIMERS

  One of the nice things about living in anonymity is that if you make a mess of your private life, the whole world doesn’t have to find out about it. Here’s what can happen when your private life is made public.

  JACQUES COUSTEAU

  Claim to Fame: Oceanographer, inventor of the aqualung, and host of TV’s The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau from 1968 to 1976.

  Secret Life: Not long after Cousteau’s wife of 50 years, Simone, passed away in 1990, the famous oceanographer revealed to his son, Jean-Michel, that he’d been carrying on a 13-year affair with a former flight attendant named Francine Triplet, and had fathered two children by her. Cousteau married Triplet in 1991, and his relationship with Jean-Michel, already tense, soon got worse.

  A year later, Cousteau transferred control of his nonprofit Cousteau Society to his new wife, prompting Jean-Michel to resign in protest. When Cousteau passed away in 1997, Francine Cousteau seized full control of the Cousteau Society, appointing herself president and chairwoman and reserving for herself “the exclusive use of the Cousteau name.” Cousteau’s children and grandchildren from his marriage to Simone were forbidden from using their last names to promote their own oceanographic ventures. Soon the entire family was in court, battling it out to see which Cousteaus had the right to use the family name.

  Update: Francine won. In a 2003 settlement, Cousteau’s grandchildren won the limited right to use the family name on a Web site, but amazingly, Francine was awarded sole ownership of “Cousteau” as a trademark.

  THE REVEREND HENRY LYONS

  Claim to Fame: From 1994 to 1999, leader of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., the largest organization of black churches in the United States, with 8.5 million members.

  Secret Life: The first sign that something was amiss in Lyons’s life came in 1997 when his wife was arrested and charged with setting fire to a waterfront mansion in St. Petersburg, Florida. The mansion turned out to be owned by the reverend and a church employee, Bernice Edwards, whom Lyons described as his “business partner.” Mrs. Lyons hadn’t known about the house until she found the deed in her husband’s briefcase. So she drove to the house to look around and discovered some of her husband’s clothing hanging in the “business partner’s” bedroom closet. Drawing her own conclusions, she set fire to the house.

  What do Cary Grant and Billy Joel have in common? Neither graduated from high school.

  Update: The fire touched off an investigation into National Baptist Convention’s finances, which culminated in Lyons being charged with grand theft, racketeering, tax evasion, money laundering, and bank fraud. In 1999 he was convicted of swindling companies that did business with his organization out of more than $4 million and was sentenced to five years in prison.

  CHARLES LINDBERGH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  CHARLES KURALT

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

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

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

  Kuralt’s wife of 35 years apparently had no inkling of his secret life until Shannon showed up at his funeral with the notarized letter and tried to stake her claim on the fishing retreat. When that failed, Shannon filed suit against the estate, and her relationship with Kuralt became public.
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  Update: Shannon won. Not only did she inherit the cabin and the 110 acres, but Kuralt’s daughters (his widow had since passed away) were ordered to pay $350,000 in property taxes out of their share of the estate.

  Yuck! Cockroaches have white blood.

  UNCLE JOHN’S STALL OF FAME

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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