The Man Who Walked Backward

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The Man Who Walked Backward Page 4

by Ben Montgomery


  Fox-related advertisements filled the newspapers front to back. He would be treated before and after the stunt by Dr. Nisbet, chiropractor, the ads said. He would be driven to and from the stunt in a Lincoln, “BENNY FOX’S OFFICIAL CAR.” He would tell time on a watch from Joe Ellis Jewelry Co. He would eat frozen custard from Polar Bear Products, milk and butter from Pangburn’s Milk and Butter, and “pure, clean wholesome bread” from Mead’s while “enduring the pangs of 100 hours.” He would quench his thirst with Weber’s Root Beer, “Benny Fox’s favorite drink,” and also Nehi, “his chief refreshment.”

  For days and days the advertisements ran.

  Benny Fox says “the water’s fine” at Johnston’s Swimming Pool, on Fort Worth Pike.

  Radio music from Majestic will help Benny Fox endure his 100 hour sit on the Hilton flag pole. Benny says, “I’m way up where the tone quality means a lot.”

  Will Mrs. Fox worry-worry-worry with Benny’s Laundry? NO! She will call 8866, the Abilene Laundry. We will keep Benny’s clothes clean during his 100 hour sit.

  Up goes Benny Fox…Down go the prices at Barrow Furniture Co., Inc.

  When he came down, Benny Fox went to sleep in a bed in the Barrow showroom window and didn’t wake up for eleven hours, three minutes. Nearly three thousand people gambled on guesses at how long he would slumber, but Mrs. Ben H. Gray won a free mattress for being astonishingly close with a guess of eleven hours, two minutes. Before Benny skipped town to start training for his next stunt, crossing the Atlantic on a flagpole above the rigging on the steamship Leviathan, the Hilton hosted a dance in his honor, and long was the line of Texas girls wanting a spin with Benny. One lovely lady, Pearl Pilkington, had been gazing at the Fox all week from an office window, and wrote him a peachy poem:

  Stark against the lucid sky

  You sit, an ominous bird, and survey the town,

  Like a huge insect—a fly—

  Impaled upon a pin

  Under the shimmering waves of heat

  You seem to float at noon;

  Or drenched by the lurid sunset

  Thankful for the coming gloom

  Gloating, at midnight line and black,

  Jutted sharply

  Between me and the puzzled moon,

  Stubbornly you defy the hours,

  Stringing them slowly, as beads upon a string,

  Greedily—one by one.

  A man reads something like that, sees Benny Fox twirling the ladies and riding up front in a parade, sees how a show of endurance and good salesmanship makes people gush and practically hand over their money, well, it impacts him, gets him to thinking. Makes him wonder if he might have a stunt or two up his own sleeve. How long would his parade be? Would it stretch from Fort Worth all the way to Dallas?

  And when the stock market crashes in New York, and the cash register falls silent in a café in Abilene, and the owner begins to wonder how he’ll pay his own bills and keep his family fed, thoughts that once seemed crazy don’t seem so crazy anymore.

  And so at a birthday party the following year, as the boys and girls were in the parlor talking nonsense about how everything under the sun had been done and how there were no more stunts to pull, how a man had pushed a peanut up Pikes Peak with his nose and how a man had flown from New York to Paris alone and how you couldn’t even find an empty flagpole anymore, Plennie Wingo looked over the top of his newspaper and came right out and said something he could not put back in the bottle.

  “Well,” he said. “Not everything has been done.”

  3.

  Dirt Devils and Details

  He could see the Dallas skyline growing larger in his rearview mirrors when a man pulled onto the shoulder and climbed out of his car.

  “What are you doing?” the fella asked Plennie. “Where are you going?”

  “Fort Worth,” Plennie said.

  “But you are going from Fort Worth,” the man said.

  Plennie explained that, yes, he was backing away from Fort Worth, but eventually he would circle the globe and, thus, come to Fort Worth, his absolute certainty such that it made perfect sense to him. The sun beat down on them both on the dry and dusty shoulder. The man shook his head.

  “How are you going to make a living?” the man asked.

  That was a fine question.

  * * *

  He’d certainly thought through the economics of his plan, but the math remained a little fuzzy.

  After the bank took the Mobley Café, Plennie took a job at the K.C. Waffle House on Pine Street. He was working ten hours a day, seven days a week, and his take-home pay was a measly twelve bucks. Seventeen cents an hour. It was something, but he had to draw money from his savings every week to feed his family, maintain the house, and keep Vivian in school. And little by little his stash dwindled away. But that’s what made the stunt seem even more appealing. If you’re working seventy hours a week for scraps, is it really that big a gamble to try to make money by walking backward around the world?

  He had tried his best to sell Idella on the idea long ago, backing into it gently at first, talking about folks like Benny Fox and Babe White. He’d show her articles in the newspaper and comment upon how much money other people were making off stunts. He was so persistent that she cut him off one day.

  “You’ve got something foolish on your mind,” she said. “If so, out with it.”

  He felt the courage slip up into his throat. He spilled.

  “Is it so bad to appear foolish if you’re well paid for it?” he said. “Suppose it pays off. Look at Lindbergh. Everybody called him crazy too.”

  He kept it up, trying to wear his practical wife down, eroding the edges of her resistance.

  What about Vivian? Idella asked one day. She wouldn’t like the idea of her daddy doing such a thing.

  The girl came along easier. He suggested to her that someone could make a boatload of money by reversing around the globe. He told her that he was going to pass his good idea along to a friend. Somebody should give it a shot, he said.

  “Why give it to someone else?” Vivian replied. “Why don’t you do it for yourself?”

  One down, one to go.

  He kept plying Idella while he made preparations. He knew a chiropractic doctor, a Scotsman, who had advertised that he could train a human being to overcome any physical challenge whatsoever. Plennie walked to his office one morning, waited until he had a free minute, then described his idea. He asked the doctor what he thought of it.

  “Mr. Wingo,” the doc said, “if you want to try it, I’ll be glad to give it some thought and work out some exercises to develop the muscles you’ll need.”

  Part of Plennie had been hoping the good doctor would talk him out of it.

  “But it will take work on your part to get ready,” the doctor said.

  “Well, it won’t hurt to train, will it?” Plennie said.

  “Not at all,” the doctor said. “It will help you physically, even if you eventually give up the trip.”

  The doctor thought about it for a week, then devised an exercise routine that would work the set of leg muscles Plennie would need to walk twenty or thirty miles a day, backward. He gave Plennie the instructions, then insisted he would take no payment for his help. He said he wanted to help prove that a human could do whatever he set his mind to. He said he’d be repaid with satisfaction when Plennie returned.

  He also predicted a challenge Plennie hadn’t really thought about. So far, Plennie had been holding a mirror in his extended arm and using the reflection to guide his walking. Alas, that didn’t seem practical if Plennie intended to put in serious mileage, or traverse highways, crowded city boulevards, stairs, hills, dales. Who knew how many mountain ranges there were out there? This posed a problem, both men agreed.

  The answer appeared a few days later, almost like magic, in the back of a magazine. An advertisement featured a pair of sunglasses with small mirrors affixed to each side, meant for motorcyclists and sports car drivers for extr
a safety. Plennie couldn’t believe it, took it as a sign that this was meant to be. He pulled more from his savings and sent money along with his order. When the glasses arrived, he’d been at his exercises for several weeks. He’d lost weight. Gained confidence. Felt great. He practiced by wearing the glasses around the house, then ventured out in the daylight, making sure he turned around and walked forward when a car slagged by so no one thought him a fool or tried to steal his idea.

  When the plan began to feel real, he started corresponding with shoe companies, but didn’t let on in the letters what he planned to do, just that it would be big and would involve shoes and that they’d want a piece of it, definitely. He received several kind replies, but no takers, not until they learned what it was he had in store. He kept the letters anyway, and waved them in front of a few close friends, passing them off as propositions for sponsorship contracts. He was surprised by how suddenly they went out of their way to do him favors.

  He convinced one of them, a young friend who was about twenty, to join his endeavor and work as an advance publicity man. Basically, Plennie told him, your job will be to drive ahead to the next town of size, where you’ll contact the city officials, newspaper types, businesses that might need the advertising, and get them all interested and ready for Plennie L. Wingo, the Backward Walking Champion of the World. Whatever ventures you line up, Plennie said, we’ll split fifty-fifty. Sounded to the boy like a good deal.

  The two hit up the Abilene Chamber of Commerce first, with a grand offer: Plennie would talk up the beautiful city of Abilene everywhere he went if the chamber would offer a purse at the end of the journey, some sizable amount of money that would make it all worthwhile. The chamber folks seemed deeply interested but admitted they were broke. The Depression had wiped out the budget for ambitious…world advertising. But, they said, try a larger city.

  The next day, Plennie and his new partner climbed in the car and headed east 150 miles on State Highway 1 to Fort Worth. They tried the chamber of commerce first, but again, no luck. An official there directed the pair to the Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show, which was opening in a few days. Plennie let his partner do the talking as he watched the faces of the stock-show men change from curious to jaded. Before they had a chance to say no thanks, Plennie jumped in and turned on his Texas charm.

  “Mr. President,” he said, “suppose we travel through towns within a hundred-mile radius of here, I will get out at the city limits and walk into town backwards, while my partner gets publicity for your show’s opening date?”

  The president consulted with his men and came back with a question.

  Would they work for ten days, carrying signs advertising the stock show in towns like Plennie said, for $250?

  Two hundred fifty dollars. It would’ve taken Plennie fifteen weeks to earn that at the K.C. Waffle House. Yes, he said. And he signed a contract immediately.

  He made his first nervous appearance on March 3, the same day President Herbert Hoover signed a law making “The Star-Spangled Banner” the official national anthem of the United States, and maybe that was fitting. Plennie wore cowboy clothes, cowboy boots, and a ten-gallon hat. He backed timidly at first, but his training took over and before long he was crossing busy streets and climbing easily over curbs. A crowd gathered to stare at the fella scooting around like an upright crab for no apparent reason. They had a thousand questions. Was it natural for him to walk backward? Where did he learn it? How long had he been practicing? What would he do when he came to the ocean?

  The publicity man told the people to read about it in the papers the next day, and they did.

  REVERSE WALKER IN CORSICANA TUESDAY ADVERTISING SHOW, read the headline in the Corsicana Daily Sun, eighty miles southeast of Fort Worth.

  Plennie Wingo, claiming to be the first reverse walker of the world, was in Corsicana Tuesday boosting the Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show which opens at Fort Worth Friday night, March 6, and which will continue through Sunday, March 15.

  Wingo is beginning a world tour. He says he will walk backwards around the world. He climbs stairs, dodges pedestrians or automobiles and otherwise walks backwards and apparently about as good as the average person does normally. His only aid is eye glasses which he wears and which have tiny mirrors at the side of each eye.

  Wingo has been in training for months for his world tour and decided to open it by boosting the Southwestern Exposition. While walking around here he bore signs which read: “Walking Back to the Rodeo, Fort Worth, March 7 to 15.”

  Six months ago Wingo decided that to walk backwards would be novel. He went into constant training because he says that if a person walks backwards even for a short distance he becomes fatigued and suffers discomfort. He did not want any other person to get on to his idea so he trained at night at his Abilene home, walking 15 to 20 minutes each night.

  Many stared at Wingo as he walked backwards here.

  They drove across God’s country for the next six days, stopping in any town with enough people to form a crowd. Waco, Hillsboro, Burleson, Cleburne, Weatherford, Decatur, Denton. The newspapers in every city printed favorable stories, usually accompanied by photographs. Plennie spent the last four days of the contract walking around the showgrounds wearing the advertising and silly cowboy getup.

  The turnout for the show broke every record, and the officials were well pleased.

  Plennie was exhilarated. Felt like he was made for this moment. He had expected public reaction, but nothing on the level he’d witnessed. If only he had more money—or the promise of money—he could get started. His advance man drove home to Abilene to tie up loose ends and Plennie again approached the chamber of commerce, this time with two items of collateral: proof that he could and would walk backward, and that doing so would get results. The chamber board agreed that if he mentioned Fort Worth everywhere he went, the publicity alone would be worth about $5,000. But they couldn’t afford to offer that as things were.

  Plennie was disappointed, but he soon had another idea. If no purse was promised and no sponsor materialized, he could sell postcards to the curious featuring an image of the Backward Walking Champion himself.

  Postcards.

  * * *

  “How are you going to make a living?” the man asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Plennie said. “But I have plans to sell my pictures on postcards.”

  Without missing a beat, the man replied: “We’ll take one.”

  Plennie pulled out his black notebook and his new ballpoint pen as he explained that he didn’t quite have them made, not yet, but they’d be ready soon.

  “If you’ll give me your name and address I will be glad to mail you one from Dallas,” Plennie said. An investment, so to speak.

  There at the top of the first page he had typed and pasted the following:

  Starting without a single pinney depending on selling postal cards with my picture and details of the trip around the world walking backwards.

  Your name and address will be placed below for cards to be mailed to you later the price is what you feel like paying. I am doing this stunt to raise money to educated my sixteen year old daughter, Thanks very much.

  He took down the man’s name and said nothing else. He just stood there in awkward silence until the man realized what he was waiting for and went for his wallet.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “However much you want to pay,” Plennie said. Again, he hadn’t fully thought it through, but the names and home addresses of travelers who stopped him on the highway began to add up.

  CC Pierce, 804 W 3rd St, Fort Worth, Texas

  Carl Hendren, 11 16th, Houston

  Dick Hamblin, 407 N 58th, Dallas

  He let folks try out his glasses and handle his walking cane. They looked foolish, but he decided he would oblige anyone who asked.

  Steen Service Station, Arlington

  Miss Flassie Watson, Arlington, Tex

  Jack Gilstrap (city hall) F
ort Worth

  He soon realized he had to keep the visits short if he wanted to get anywhere. He’d chat awhile and then finally say, “Well, it has been nice talking to you, but I had better be going. It’s a long way around the world.”

  H. P. Hoffman, Route 6, Arlington

  Eleanor Truelove, 907½, Throckmorton, Tex

  Arcadia Garage, Route 8, Box 438, Dallas

  A few gave a dollar. A few gave a dime. Some didn’t pay at all. Plennie hassled no one. He kept sliding back until he reached Arlington, a full sixteen miles from where he’d begun, and checked in at the Western Union, where the man behind the counter stamped his book with the time and date. A large crowd had gathered outside and Plennie did brisk business when he emerged. They were especially interested in his walking cane, which he graciously displayed and permitted them to touch. The coffeewood cane with a polished buffalo-horn handle was a gift from a friend in Abilene. Plennie had no idea what the mystic symbols carved into it meant, but he thought it was beautiful and mysterious. He didn’t need it, but carrying the cane made him appear dapper, and it gave him something to do with his hands. It would come in useful. He lent out his glasses, too, and put new names in his book, orders for postcards he didn’t yet have.

  He stayed the night in Arlington with a friend from high school, then put in a few more miles the following day, but found himself quickly exhausted. All the training had helped, but twenty miles backward was a struggle. He slept the night at a tourist court outside the big city, compliments of the Richardson family, who thought he was curious.

  By the time he set off in the morning, he had fifty-nine names in his notebook and $23.50 in his pocket. He was hoping that when he reached Dallas he wouldn’t wind up getting hassled by the police. That had happened before, when he was advertising the stock show.

  4.

  Postcards and Publicity

 

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