Chapter Twelve
Does Anyone Want
Seven Brave Dogs?
With Kaasen gone, the dogs had no one to tell their story. With no story, our heroic huskies were, well, just seven cute but mute dogs. The theatrical agency that had booked them on their long Vaudeville tour was miffed. As far as it was concerned, it now had no act. The dogs didn't do any tricks, after all. And so many people already had seen them that their fame had dimmed; audiences wanted something new.
Who owned the dogs? Was it Seppala? Was it the theatrical agency? Was it Kaasen, who could have bought the dogs from Seppala with money from his earnings as a Vaudeville presenter? Was it Lesser, as one book on Seppala, written in 1930, claims? Lesser's son, Bud, who was alive when this book was written, insisted his father never owned the dogs. We may never know. What is known is that at some point after Kaasen left for Nome, the dogs were sold to a man named Sam Houston and ended up in a Los Angeles dime museum, one of the lowest forms of entertainment in the United States at that time — or ever.
Chapter Thirteen
The End of the Trail
By the 1920s, dime museums were no longer a dime a dozen in the United States. Like Vaudeville, their day was over. But unlike Vaudeville, whose passing is still lamented, the death of dime museums today is considered a good thing.
Most dime museums were “freak shows,” a term for cruel exhibits that featured people with physical deformities or abnormalities: women with beards or terrible skin disorders; men with excessive hair on their faces and bodies; people who were extremely short or tall; very, very fat people; people so skinny they looked like human skeletons; Siamese twins, or two people joined together at birth; albinos, or people whose hair and skin were milky white because they lacked the pigment that creates color; people with extra limbs or no arms or legs at all; even children with humps on their backs who couldn't stand and had to crawl.
Such “human oddities,” as they were shamefully advertised, were given names like “elephant girl,” “green alligator boy,” “the human ostrich” and “half man-half monkey.”
Today, it's hard to imagine that dime museums ever existed — or that Balto, Fox, Alaska Slim, Billy, Sye, Old Moctoc and Tillie could have ended up in one. But they did — unbeknownst to their millions of fans around the world.
The faithful dogs had done nothing but help humans in every way they could. They had helped Kaasen carry serum to Nome, helped save the lives of the city's children, helped Lesser make a movie, helped countless Vaudeville theater owners make money, helped Roth create a prize-winning statue. In every case, they had done their best, putting their big husky hearts into the job at hand.
Now, they were being discarded like so many rusted out sleds. What else are we to think about the sad conditions in which the dogs now found themselves?
The dime museum had seen happier days, too. Like many such “museums” in the 1920s, it had once been a nickelodeon, one of the country's first movie theaters. (Lesser, you may recall, had worked in his father's nickelodeon as a boy.)
“Nickelodeon Madness” swept the country in 1905, when thousands of the tiny theaters opened. They were mostly converted stores, with only 50 to 100 plain wooden chairs. Short films — each only a few minutes long — were projected onto a sheet of white canvas. The stories were simple and action-oriented: chase scenes, bank robberies, three-alarm fires, boxing matches.
Kids loved nickelodeons, though some adults spoke out against them, saying they taught boys how to be bandits and girls how to kiss! The theaters were open from 10 a.m. to midnight, with three or four films running continuously with short intermissions. For a nickel, you could stay as long as you liked, cheering for the good guys, booing the bad guys and shouting made-up dialogue with your friends.
It was okay to talk and make noise because the films were silent — you couldn't hear the actors speak because the technology hadn't yet been invented. So the nickelodeons were like parties, sometimes with ice cream and peanuts. At intermission, the audience sang songs like Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Some nickelodeons had piano players or player pianos, mechanical devices that played themselves as if they were being played by ghosts.
But by 1915, “Nickel Madness” was over. The nickelodeons disappeared almost as quickly as they had opened. Small and poorly ventilated, they were driven out of business by bigger theaters that showed longer, more interesting silent films.
By 1927, the Los Angeles dime museum that had featured the famous dogs from the serum run was a mere ghost of its former fun-filled self. It was impossible to imagine children's laughter or anyone having a good time in the place, let alone seven Siberian huskies with thick fur and a craving for fresh air and freezing temperatures.
The dogs were visibly suffering — panting non-stop, which is how dogs sweat, and drifting in and out of dark dreams. If dogs feel the same emotions we do — as some scientists now believe — every member of the once-happy dog team was listlessly depressed. And as the team's leader, Balto was the most depressed of all. Would they ever be able to run and play again? Would they ever get out of this forlorn place?
They were not the first brave huskies to give their all to humans only to be discarded. Seppala's boyhood hero, Fridtjof Nansen, had used 30 huskies to haul supplies on his grueling but unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole — and killed them one by one for dog food.
“We wear our dogs to shreds, like articles of clothing,” Hjal-mar Johansen, Nansen's companion on the journey, wrote in his diary. Nansen and Johansen had to shoot the last two huskies, Thug and Caiaphas, near the end of their trip when they set out in kayaks to finally reach land. The dogs’ additional weight might have toppled the craft, and leaving them behind would have sentenced them to an even crueler fate — starvation.
Amundsen, too, had used huskies to win the South Pole. But of 52 dogs, only 18 survived the trip. After estimating how much food each man and dog would need, Amundsen decided it was too much, that hauling so much food would slow down the dogs, which could threaten the trip's success and even the lives of his men. To lighten the load, Amundsen changed his nutrition plan: Some of the dogs would be eaten — as dog food and food for the men. When Amundsen later was criticized by animal rights groups, he said, simply: “You slaughter beef cattle for food. We used dogs.”
Balto hadn't been eaten, but he and the other dogs had been used — and discarded. Who would not agree?
Balto lay his head on his snow-white paws. Overcome by a sadness deeper than the deepest snowdrift, he sank into a paralysis of uncaring — about either himself or the other dogs. Following Balto's lead, as always, Fox, Alaska Slim, Billy, Sye, Old Moctoc and Tillie soon sank into the terrible emotional quicksand, too.
The dogs drifted into a no-dog's-land of near-wakefulness, not-quite-sleeping. It was torpor, a state of semi-hibernation. But unlike animals that are meant to hibernate — and dogs are not — the huskies were not conserving energy and consuming their own body fat to get them through winter. Their life-force — their very will to live — was draining away. It was their darkest hour, the point at which living becomes dying if no medicine or miracle intervenes. The dogs were so beaten down that they barely looked up when a man walked into the dime museum.
Chapter Fourteen
The Rescue
George Kimble had a heart as big as Antarctica. Short and bald, the Cleveland businessman had been a boxer in his youth in Brooklyn, New York. Boxing — and life in the working-class borough across the bridge from upscale Manhattan — had made him tough and street-smart. But it was his big heart that had made him a success.
Kimble was a sheet metal contractor. He traveled around the country selling tons of metal sheets to factories to build things like cars, appliances and shelving. He was good at it because he knew his market and because he liked people. He liked to meet new people; he had a good time visiting with them in their offices and taking them out to lunch.
Kimble liked animals, too. He never wa
lked by a dog without stooping to pet it and whisper a few kind words. He treated all living things with respect, even when he was angry or frustrated. And Kimble was plenty angry when he chanced upon the dime museum one afternoon in February, 1927. He was in Los Angeles on business and happened to be walking through the city's seedy entertainment district.
Looking up, he saw the word “MUSEUM” plastered in letters so big he could have read them from a block away. Underneath “MUSEUM,” were crude, hand-lettered signs that read: “Big Act,” “All Alive!” But it was a small black-and-white photograph in the dirty window that caught Kimble's eye.
The portrait was of a hero as familiar to most Americans as would be Charles Lindbergh, the dashing young aviator who would soon make the first nonstop solo crossing of the Atlantic in his monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis.
It was Balto! Kimble stopped with a jolt. He studied the museum's short handout: “Last Chance to See the Great Balto and His World-Famous Alaska Huskies, Undoubtedly the Bravest Dogs That Ever Lived.”
Kimble was incredulous (in-KREj-yew-luss) — unwilling to believe the claim was true. How could Balto possibly have become an exhibit in a cheap sideshow? Was it some sort of gimmick, or trick, to get people to spend a dime? Frowning sternly at the ticket-taker, he paid his dime and stepped through the darkened door.
What Kimble saw in the museum's hot, airless back room appalled him. Adrenalin surged through his body like an electrical charge, just as in the old days, when he would step inside the boxing ring. But he didn't want to hit anybody. He simply wanted to help the scrawny, whimpering dogs. And he saw instantly that it wasn't going to be enough to pet them and fill their empty water bowls. He had to get them out of there — as soon as possible. In a flash of inspiration, he knew exactly how.
Chapter Fifteen
Read All About It!
Kimble, who was well-known in Cleveland's business community, immediately sent a dispatch to an editor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In the telegram, he described the dogs’ plight and asked the paper to help him launch a campaign to raise money to buy the dogs from whoever owned them.
“It was some kind of shame that those heroic dogs — who had saved a city — should end their days in a dusty dime museum,” Kimble wrote, ending: “Shame on mankind.” The paper responded quickly — as good newspapers should in times of crisis. Within hours, it authorized Kimble to negotiate the deal. Once the owner agreed to sell the dogs, the paper would launch a campaign to raise the money.
The next day, February 21, the Cleveland Plain Dealer printed a short story about the dogs’ plight. Kimble was good at making deals and soon made one with Sam Houston, who agreed to sell the seven dogs for $2,000, which was a lot of money in those days — $19,420 in today's dollars. But there was one major sticking point: The money had to be raised in 10 days, or the deal was off.
A Cleveland Balto Committee of prominent citizens was formed, and on March 1, the Plain Dealer ran a story announcing the campaign to raise money to buy the dogs. Within 24 hours, more than $200 was raised.
That news was reported on March 2 in a story listing the name of every person who had contributed, along with the amount he or she had given.
The Western Reserve Kennel Club had given $50 — $485.50 in today's dollars! Kimble had given $25; several people had given $1, and one person had given 50 cents — for a total of $205.50.
The city's response was explosive. People from every segment of society responded — adults as well as children, rich people as well as poor, each giving what he or she could, sometimes quarters, nickels or even pennies.
To keep the campaign alive, the Plain Dealer wrote daily stories about the citizens’ generosity and continued to list the names of every contributor and contribution. “CHILDREN CHIP IN TO SWELL BALTO FUND; Contributions Reach $338 as Invalids, Workers and Institutions Get Behind the Campaign,” the headline on the March 3 story heralded. The story began, “Balto's fund took another leap toward its goal of $2,000 yesterday as children, invalids and employes of several companies, and workers in offices, public libraries, banks and the Museum of Natural History got behind the movement.” (“Invalids,” a term rarely used today, meant people in nursing homes and sanatoriums, or places where sick people went to rest and recuperate.) Some kids chipped in their lunch money or the money they would have spent on candy.
Three Cleveland radio stations helped out by broadcasting appeals for contributions. Radio stations in New York and Detroit broadcast appeals, too. Theaters donated a percentage of their box office receipts or put collection boxes in their lobbies; restaurants set special “Balto” cans on their counters. Three glamorous young models, wrapped in raccoon coats and wearing cloches, or cute little close-fitting hats, sailed through the streets in an open convertible, even though it was cold out, holding a sign that boasted: “Watch the Cleveland Plain Dealer Bring Balto to Cleveland.”
Every day, there was a new story with a new total for the amount of money raised. Then on Tuesday, March 8, the campaign hit a potentially serious snag: The paper announced that another group, the Los Angeles Alaskan Society, had told Houston it was prepared to buy the dogs if Cleveland failed to meet its 10-day deadline. “WEST EAGER TO BUY BALTO BEFORE CITY” the Plain Dealer warned. “Los Angeles Society Set to Make Purchase; Option Expires Tomorrow; Don't Fail at $1,382!”
Roald Amundsen, who was to speak in Cleveland on Friday, had sent a telegraph to the paper the previous day in support of the campaign, and his statement was included in the March 8 story: “Do what you can for these brave dogs and secure them a bright future. They certainly deserve it.”
The Plain Dealer's March 9 story was even more ominous: “BALTO MUST HAVE $500 BY TONIGHT.” It ran on the front page with a large photograph of five of the dogs, including Balto, and five children — Clevelanders and former Clevelanders who were in Los Angeles and had visited the dogs. The plea and picture sparked a last-minute spurt of generosity, pushing the fund over the top.
The next morning, the fund hit $2,245.88 — more than enough to buy the dogs. “CITY WINS BALTO BY GOOD MARGIN; Huskies to be Shipped at Once,” the day's headlines proudly proclaimed.
In a short interview, Amundsen, who had arrived in Cleveland, commended the city for its humanitarianism. The City of Oslo, Norway, had once done for another dog what Cleveland was doing for Balto, he said. The dog had accompanied him on his historic expedition to the South Pole — and was the only husky of 100 to return. (Does the story sound familiar? It should.) Amundsen said that when he returned home, Oslo voted to let the dog roam freely around the city for the rest of its life, as a kind of canine honorary citizen. Butcher shops agreed to give the dog free meals. When it died — its name wasn't given in the story — taxidermists preserved the corpse, which Amundsen said was in an Oslo museum. (And what about the other 99 dogs — or 53 dogs, depending on whose version of the expedition you read — that failed to return from the trip? The story didn't say, but we already know, don't we? They were eaten!) Elation swept through Cleveland, filling everyone with pride — as if the Cleveland Indians had won the World Series. The 1,200 people who had given money — and even those who hadn't — felt really good about what their city had accomplished in record time. It was as if everyone had gotten report cards with all “As” — As for Altruism, or do-goodism. The final tally was $2,362.94 — enough to pay for first-class shipping for what would be the dogs’ last, but best, train ride across the country.
Chapter Sixteen
All Aboard the Balto Express
Balto, Fox, Alaska Slim, Billy, Sye, Old Moctoc and Tillie emerged from the dime museum into the soft California sunlight. As weakened as they were, they felt hopeful and happy — as if the long Arctic winter had just ended and the sun had just popped over the horizon after months and months of darkness. They stopped whimpering, and their hearts began to sing again. The strongest among them even sang a few trial notes of the happy song for which huskies are so famous.
Ki
mble had arranged for the dogs to be trucked to a ranch outside the city to rest up for their long train ride home. Home? At last, they became part of the lush California landscape, with its fertile valleys, faraway mountains and sweet scent of ripening oranges. It was like a trip to a spa!
After weeks without sunshine, fresh air or human warmth, the dogs got to run again and were showered with attention and affection. They were bathed and professionally groomed. They dined al fresco, or outside in the open air. They ate fish laced with ground up pills with all the nutrients they had been deprived of for so long. Their fur began to regain its beautiful luster. Balto's white “socks” looked freshly laundered; his dark brown fur gleamed like sable. The dogs looked — and smelled — like great, regal Siberians again — awesomely handsome (except for Tillie, the only female, who was awesomely beautiful).
Finally, the dogs were crated up individually and sent with their sled and harnesses in a cargo car of a train bound for Cleveland. But these crates were like roomy, first-class kennels, little relaxation tanks where the dogs could float in a waterless sea of comfort. And the cargo car was posh: Owned by the American Railway Express Company, it was filled with gold and silver bullion, or gleaming bars that had not yet been minted into coins, and fresh flowers — a trove worthy of Tutankhamen, the ancient Egyptian pharaoh buried in a vault of gold!
The cross-country trip took three days and seven hours, with many stops along the way. Each day at 6 p.m., Mr. G. M. Watson, a Balto Committee member and American Express official, tapped into his national telegraph wire and interviewed the train's baggage agent — in Santa Fe, Denver, St. Louis. “How are the dogs doing?” he would ask. “What did they eat for dinner?” He would take notes and relay the information to the Plain Dealer. The dogs’ cargo car was dubbed the “The Balto Pullman,” a reference to the famous Pullman passenger car, which had especially comfortable furnishings. Excitement mounted as the train rolled closer and closer to Cleveland.
Alaska Dogs and Iditarod Mushers Page 4