Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader)

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Davis started her climb at 5:30 a.m. “Over and over in my mind, I repeated ‘be relaxed, have good feelings,’” Davis said. If she made it to the top, she’d be only the second person with a recorded free-solo of Pervertical Sanctuary. The first: prolific British free-soloist Derek Hersey (who plunged 200 feet to his death in 1993 while free-soloing Yosemite’s Sentinel Rock). The sky was clear, the air freezing, and she found herself climbing with cold feet and hands. That made it harder to relax. “I was hoping to feel solid,” Davis said later. But instead, she found herself wedged in the bulging section of Pervertical Sanctuary with one hand in a hand jam and her feet splayed out. She stretched high for a side pull with one hand and checked again to make sure the other hand was securely jammed. “I reminded myself that I am a crack climber,” Davis said, and climbed past her fear and onto Table Ledge—the top of the climb—at 7:45 a.m.

  The athletes featured here have survived their deadly pursuits…so far. But others have not been as lucky. On page 495, meet some of the daring sportsmen (and women) who paid the ultimate price for the chance to fly like an eagle or climb like Spider-Man.

  * * *

  “The end is nothing, the road is all.”—Willa Cather

  Tater tots were created to use up the potato shreds left over from French-fry production.

  RANDOM FIRSTS

  Here at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute, we love amazing origin stories. For example, you are reading the first-ever Bathroom Reader to have parachuting duckies on the cover. (Just wait—parachuting duckies will soon be all the rage.) Here are a few more fun firsts.

  THE FIRST PRANK PHONE CALL

  For years, author and Portland State University English professor Paul Collins has been searching for the first documented prank phone call. In 2011 he stumbled across this item in the February 2, 1884, edition of The Electrical World:

  A GRAVE JOKE ON UNDERTAKERS—Some malicious wag at Providence R.I. has been playing a grave practical joke on the undertakers there, by summoning them over the telephone to bring freezers, candlesticks and coffins for persons alleged to be dead. In each case the denouement was highly farcical, and the reputed corpses are now hunting in a lively manner for that telephonist.

  Finding no evidence of an earlier prank call, Collins has deemed this the very first one.

  THE FIRST COFFEEHOUSE

  Nearly 500 years before Starbucks, there was Hakam and Shams. The two Syrian traders—Hakam from Aleppo, and Shams from Damascus—introduced coffee to Turkey in the 16th century. It was so popular that in 1554 they opened a shop in Constantinople to sell the new drink. Except for the fact that women weren’t allowed in, Hakam and Shams’s place wasn’t too different from today’s coffeehouses: It featured poetry readings, music recitals, and impromptu political debates concerning the reach of the Ottoman Empire. Or patrons could just sit and talk, play chess or backgammon, and, of course, sip coffee.

  THE FIRST INTERNET COUPLE

  In 1982 a Chicago woman named Pam Jensen logged onto a CompuServe CB Simulator, a very early Internet chat room. Before long, Jensen found herself having an online conversation with Chris Dunn, a computer geek living in New York. Their first chat lasted for five hours. They kept up their correspondence, and a few months later Dunn flew to Chicago to meet Jensen in person. A year later they were married. “At that time,” recalled Jensen on their 25th wedding anniversary in 2008, “computers weren’t as pervasive in our daily life. To a lot of people, especially my parents and their friends, it seemed very suspicious to even be communicating like that.”

  At any given time, about 4% of American women are pregnant.

  THE FIRST FRISBEE DOG

  On August 5, 1974, during the eighth inning of a nationally televised Los Angeles Dodgers home game, 19-year-old Ohio State student Alex Stein ran onto the field and threw a Frisbee toward the outfield fence. To the crowd’s delight, Stein’s dog, Ashley Whippet, sprinted through the grass, leaped high in the air, and caught the disc in his teeth. Stein threw another; Ashley caught that one, too. By this time, police were chasing both of them as the crowd cheered wildly. Stein was arrested, but his stunt caught the attention of Irv Lander, director of the International Frisbee Association, and within a year, Stein and Ashley were the ambassadors of a new sport (officially called “Disc Dog”—Frisbee is trademarked). Ashley went on to perform his feats at the White House and Super Bowl before going to doggie heaven in 1984.

  THE FIRST FASHION MODEL

  Marie Vernet was an attractive young French woman in the 1840s when she met up-and-coming British clothier Charles Frederick Worth, now considered the father of haute couture (the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing). The two married, and Vernet became Worth’s “living mannequin.” In the 1850s, she traveled to the homes of the Paris elite to model Worth’s creations, but as his wares became more in demand, the couple started holding fashion shows at their shop, where Vernet and other models would parade on a runway showing off new Worth creations. (He was also the first designer to put his name in his garments.) And with that, the modern fashion industry was born.

  THE FIRST VENDING MACHINE

  The first coin-operated vending machine debuted in London in the early 1880s. (It sold postcards.) But that was the first modern vending machine. Its design was actually based on a contraption invented in the first century A.D. by Greek mathematician Heron of Alexandria. Heron was commissioned by the church to build a device that would stop parishioners from taking too much holy water. Author Daniel Smith describes it in his book Forgotten Firsts:

  Frogs croak faster on warm days than on cold days.

  A coin was deposited through a slot in the top of the box and fell into a pan that, when weighed down, operated a lever. When the lever rose, it opened a valve that allowed holy water to flow out into a receptacle. When the lever had tilted far enough that the coin fell out of the pan, a counterweight returned it to its original position, closing off the valve and ceasing the flow of water.

  THE FIRST BABY BOOMER

  The post–World War II “baby boom” officially ran from January 1, 1946, to December 31, 1964. Of the approximately 78 million Americans born during that time, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling was the first. Born early on New Year’s Day in 1946, she grew up to become a school teacher and is now retired and living in Florida. In 2011, on her 65th birthday, a reporter asked Casey-Kirschling to sum up her generation: “We get a bad reputation for being materialistic, but I think by our sheer numbers and our education—we’re the most educated generation that’s ever been—we really built a lot of what the country is today. A lot of it is very good. And, of course, some of it was on the negative side.”

  THE FIRST SILICONE BREAST IMPLANT RECIPIENT

  Timmie Jean Lindsey is an octogenarian great-grandma living in Texas. In 1962 she wanted to have a tattoo removed from her chest (roses…but that’s another story), so she went to a Houston doctor named Frank Gerow, who told her that she was the perfect candidate for an experimental procedure he’d invented—silicone implants designed to increase breast size. “I’d never heard the term ‘guinea pig’ back then,” said Lindsey, “I just thought it was privilege to have it done.” (She went from a B cup to a C cup.) Lindsey is proud of her increasing role in medical history.

  * * *

  “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  If the name fits: A man who rents mobile jets to executives in Texas is named Rich Mann.

  BATHROOM JOKES FOR 10-YEAR-OLDS

  If you’re an adult, society at large expects you restrain yourself from laughing at these jokes—not even a snicker through your nose. You’ve been warned.

  Q: Why did Tigger put his head in the toilet?

  A: He was looking for Pooh.

  Kid #1: I have to go to the doctor to get my butt fixed.

  Kid #2: Why?

  Kid #1: It’s got a crack in it!

  A man goes to the store to buy some toilet
paper. The clerk asks him what color he’d like. “White,” the guy says. “I’ll color it myself!”

  Two old women are sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. “You know,” one of the women says to the other, “I’ve been sitting here so long, my butt fell asleep.” The other woman turns to her and says, “I know! I heard it snoring!”

  A cowboy goes into an outhouse, and hears a strange noise. He looks down the hole—and sees an Indian. “How long you been down in that hole?” he asks. The Indian replies, “Many moons.”

  Q: If H2O is on the inside of a fire hydrant, what's on the outside?

  A: K9P.

  Mother: Billy! Why are you sitting on the toilet and hitting yourself on the head?!

  Billy: Works for ketchup!

  Q: How can you tell if a woman is wearing pantyhose?

  A: If she farts, her ankles swell.

  Q: Why did the little boy put candles on his toilet?

  A: He was having a birthday potty.

  Did you hear about the constipated accountant?

  —He couldn’t budget.

  Q: Why did God make farts smelly?

  A: So deaf people can enjoy them too!

  Confucius say: Man who fart in church sit in his own pew.

  Study results: U.S. drug companies spend twice as much on advertising as they do on research.

  AMERICA’S FORGOTTEN FIRE

  You’ve probably heard of the Great Chicago Fire that started on October 8, 1871. But have you ever heard of the devastating fire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, just 250 miles north of Chicago? It made the Chicago Fire look like a marshmallow roast…and it occurred on the exact same day.

  PRELUDE TO PERIL

  In 1871 Peshtigo, Wisconsin, was a thriving lumber town in an area of virgin forest a few miles from the shores of Green Bay. As the town grew, it spiderwebbed outward along both sides of the Peshtigo River. It had a sawmill that produced 150,000 board feet of lumber a day and a woodenware factory—at the time, the country’s largest—that made all kinds of products, from pails and tubs to tool handles and shingles, located on the river’s edge. Almost all of the 2,000 people who lived in Peshtigo made a living from the forests that surrounded the town.

  During the winter of 1870–71, little snow fell on the region’s pine, oak, and tamarack forests. Spring brought far less rain than usual. As summer started, the forest-savvy folks of Peshtigo had sense enough to know that if drought set in, the town could be at risk, but no one was really worried. Loggers kept felling trees and piling up slash (treetops and branches). Railroad workers cleared brush and left it along the wayside. People piled bark against their homes for insulation.

  May and June were parched; July saw a single cloudburst. In August, when springs started drying up and drinking water became scarce, a firebreak was cut between the forest and the town—just as a precaution. Loggers kept cutting trees, but with the woods bone-dry, they didn’t dare burn the debris. By September, the forest was ankle-deep in dry slash.

  JUDGEMENT DAY

  In and around Peshtigo, small fires started popping up in the slashings, in the brush piles along railroad lines, and in the nearby peat bogs that had dried out during the scorching summer. The autumn air became so smoky that harbormasters on Lake Michigan blew their foghorns constantly to keep ships from running aground. On Sunday, October 8, 1871, a pall of brown smoke hung over Peshtigo. During the evening service at one of the town’s two churches, the preacher reportedly said, “I have prophesied that the day would come when God would punish man’s wanton destruction of the forests. That day is coming near!” As churchgoers headed home, a deathlike stillness hung over the town, but a half hour later, the eerie quiet was broken by an ominous roar from the south. Fire, whipped by the wind, was heading toward town.

  First recorded mastectomy: performed in A.D. 548 on Theodora, Empress of Byzantium.

  RAINING FIRE

  Near dusk, James Langworth, a farmer living on the outskirts of Peshtigo, saw dozens of rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and raccoons fleeing from the pines into the open area around his house. The warning gave him barely enough time to toss some valuables into a blanket, throw it over his shoulder, and run for his life. Not everyone was that lucky. As fire consumed the forest, it swept toward the farms outside of town. A farm family was later found huddled in a clearing near their home, apparently sure the flames would never reach them. They were wrong: The entire family had been incinerated.

  Inside the town, encircled by the firebreak cut earlier in the summer, fathers reassured their families that the flames couldn’t jump the fire line. What they didn’t know was that a massive low-pressure system over the Midwest was turning what had been many small scattered forest fires into a single massive, unstoppable firestorm. At 9:00 p.m., pillars of fire towered into the sky south of town and church bells began to toll ominously. And then, in one survivor’s words, “The heavens opened up and it rained fire.”

  NOWHERE TO RUN

  The firestorm brought with it a cyclonic wind that exploded houses, sent roofs spinning through the air, and pulled flaming trees up by their roots. One eyewitness saw “large wooden houses torn from their foundations and caught up like straws by two opposing currents of air which raised them till they came in contact with the stream of fire.” People panicked, rushing from both sides of town to the river that bisected Peshtigo.

  Australian McDonald’s restaurants offer the McOz, a cheeseburger with beets.

  The fire sucked oxygen from the air, which became so superheated that some people literally burst into flame before they could reach the water. Those who managed to make it to the river converged on the wooden bridge from both sides, but the bridge was already burning. It strained and swayed as 300 frantic people streamed toward the middle. One survivor, a French missionary, reported seeing “cattle, vehicles, women, children, and men,” on the bridge, “all pushing and crushing against each other.” Unable to bear the strain, the flaming bridge collapsed, sending a roiling mass of people and animals into the river below. Many drowned. But what about the people who didn’t reach the river? Peter Leschak, a firefighter and the author of Ghosts of the Fireground, says, “The ambient air temperature was probably between 500 and 700 degrees,” hot enough to melt some metals.

  ASH MONDAY

  For a short time, a few firefighters tried to get the town’s single horse-drawn steam pumper to pull water from the river, but the pump was designed for fighting structure fires, not for taking on a hurricane of flame. When the telegraph operator rushed out of the railroad station yelling, “Chicago is burning!” the firefighters lost hope. “Maybe the preacher was right,” one of them said. “This is Judgement Day.”

  On Monday, October 9, 1871, Big John Mulligan, foreman of the Peshtigo lumber gang, wandered into Marinette, a village seven miles north of Peshtigo. Bewildered, covered with soot, his clothes nearly scorched from his body, he spread the news. “Peshtigo is gone,” he said. “Not a building is standing. People are dead in the streets.”

  On Tuesday, October 10, while reporters nationwide rushed to file stories about the Great Chicago Fire, one reporter—from the Marinette and Peshtigo Eagle—went to view the devastation of Peshtigo. What he found: “Frightfully mutilated corpses of men, women, children, horses, oxen, cows, dogs, swine, and fowls. Every house, shed, barn, outhouse, or structure of any kind swept from the earth. No pen dipped in liquid fire can paint the scene or give the faintest impression of its horrors.”

  Survivors told horrific tales:

  • One young woman’s long hair caught fire, and the blaze sucked the air from her lungs, suffocating her instantly.

  Turkeys originated in Mexico.

  • A man jumped into a watering trough to escape the flames and was boiled alive.

  • A farmer, realizing that it was too late to outrun the holocaust racing toward his farm, shot his cows, his family, and then himself.

  • A group of men, women, and children huddled inside one of the town’s few brick
buildings. They were baked alive.

  • A father slit his children’s throats to spare them the agony of burning to death.

  FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLED

  Everyone remembers the Great Chicago Fire, but few people (not counting anyone who went to elementary school in Wisconsin) have heard of Peshtigo. Was property damage what made Chicago’s fire stand out? No. Each fire caused about $200 million in property loss. Size? No. Chicago’s fire covered a little more than three square miles, while the Peshtigo Fire swept across 2,400 square miles and devastated 1.5 million acres of land—that’s as much land as the entire state of Delaware.

  Because Chicago was a major city with a population of 324,000, some might think that the Chicago Fire caused a far greater loss of life. It did not. Chicago’s death toll: 250. The Peshtigo Fire death toll was somewhere between 1,200 and 2,400—but the exact number will never be known. Why? An 1873 report to the Wisconsin State Legislature offers this chilling explanation: “The very sands in the street were vitrified [turned to glass]. Many perished…of whom not a vestige remains.”

  So why didn’t this monster firestorm blast Chicago’s off the front page? Word of the Chicago fire went out quickly, but Peshtigo’s single telegraph line burned along with everything else in town. When word finally reached the Wisconsin governor’s mansion, the governor and most state officials were away, in Chicago, helping the victims there. America’s forgotten fire has become a historical footnote to the Great Chicago Fire, yet it was, and remains to this day, the deadliest forest fire in modern world history.