The Evening Independent of December 28, 1965, hosts a touching story detailing the journey of a short letter - from the jungle of Vietnam to the somber Kansas home of Lt. Col. Gordon Lippman's widow. The letter was written by actor-comedian Bing Crosby and contained a handful of fat jokes about Bob Hope, whom Lippman was to see before his untimely death from V.C. small arms fire in Lai Khe. The next piece was on the death of a separated Siamese twin.
Conspicuously- more so rudely- the headline Really Big Shoe trumpets from the center of the page. The transition was so unnatural, and the tone change so abrupt, that it was as though even the AP wire itself had grown weary of all the death stories and gasped "really big shoe" as a last ditch effort to distract from the malaised seriousness. And the readers were grateful.
Really Big Shoe
On December 27, 1965, police in Nashville, Tennessee discovered a shoe measuring 32 inches long and 9 inches wide lying in a vacant lot. Papers around the country ran a picture of investigator Borden McNeill holding the shoe with two hands and gazing into its vast opening with a quizzical smile. They all had incredulous captions like the Evening Indpendent's Barefoot Giant?
As it happens: yes, actually. After that first story, calls flooded in from around the country from pranksters claiming that the shoe was theirs. But one call came from an official at the Genesco shoe company, who explained that the company had made two pairs of shoes for an 8 foot 6.75 inch man from Barranquitas, Puerto Rico. One of the pairs was sent to the giant, and the other collected dust in a storage room for a few years and then somehow one of the shoes found its way onto that vacant lot.
But the AP and Genesco's President of Lixico Division F. W. Parker got this story a little wrong. Parker said he could only remember that the shoe-owner went by "Barranquitas Giant" and was 8 foot 6.75 inches tall. But being 8'6.75'' would make his height the 4th tallest ever recorded. And there is no record of any giant from Barranquitas, Puerto Rico.
The shoe actually belonged to a 7'11'' man from Carolina, Puerto Rico named Felipe Birriel. Birriel suffered from a pituitary tumor which was diagnosed at an early age. A medical device intended to deliver him radio therapy for the problem was sent from the U.S. but spent a full 9 years in transit. Birriel was by all accounts a sweet and gentle man, and is pictured appearing cheerfully at hosts of children's and charity events. But how do I know for sure that it's the same guy? I recognize the shoe.
A Sampling of Stories About Large Items Inexplicably Appearing Places
Statues
- I was not at all surprised to learn that there have been many documented thefts of Ronald McDonald statues. I was surprised, however, at some of the motives, ransom notes, and especially at the cash value of a Ronald McDonald statue (over $3000). I'll summarise here my two favorite stories of Ronald McDonald statues inexplicably appearing places.
The January 27, 1982, Observer-Reporter reports that police in Huntsville, Alabama found a 7 foot tall Ronald McDonald statue standing in the middle of the street. They identified it as belonging to a franchise that had reported it stolen several weeks earlier. Officers attempted to put the statue in the back of their squad car, but it wouldn't fit. So naturally, they cut its head off. They tried once more to shove the statue in the back of the car, but it still wouldn't fit, so they strapped the decapitated Ronald McDonald statue to the top of their police car and drove it through town back to its owner.
The Southeast Missourian of May 25, 2001, reports that a caretaker for the owner of a large property opened a rarely-entered barn to do some reorganizing and discovered a Ronald McDonald statue sitting on a bench therein. This was the second time that exact statue had been stolen and recovered. The last time, it was found on its back in a forest a quarter mile from the nearest road, with beer cans scattered all around it. Police took the clown back to the station, and a tour group of second-graders were confused and elated to see it. - The Schenectady Gazette of August 10, 1983, describes a scene in which a startled man called police in Bradenton, Florida after spotting a naked body lying in some bushes next to the parking lot of a trailer park. The item did turn out to be a naked body, only it was 400 pounds and bronze and stolen from the mansion of circus-owner John Ringling 5 years prior.
- A bronze statue of football player O.J. Simpson was abandoned on the side of Interstate 77. Quelling the readers' certain concern, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of July 25, 1995 carried the headline Simpson Statue Found Undamaged. Simpson was standing trial for murder of his wife at the time. No arrests were made on the theft of the O.J. Simpson memorabilia item.
Incidentally, Simpson himself would be arrested a decade later for the theft of O.J. Simpson memorabilia items, along with charges related to the weapons and kidnappings that were necessitated for their procurement.
Pianos
- The Cape Cod News of November 23, 2008 reports that a grand piano was found in the middle of the woods of a Harvich, Massachusetts conservation area. Police looked throughout the region for reports of stolen pianos, but none were found. It is estimated, based on the location of condition of the instrument, that it took at least 6 people to move.
After no one claimed the piano, police gave the instrument to a local middle school. Several months later, it found a permenant home at the nearby Brooks Academy Museum. The episode inspired the Harwich Conservation Trust to hold a "musical stroll" through the park, allowing visitors to walk the trails of the Bell's Woods conservation while listening to performers of various instruments. - In late January of 2011, a 650 pound piano was discovered on a sandbar off the coast of Miami. The story came to an underwhelming conclusion when reporters discovered that it had been placed there by a group of teenagers for the expressed purpose of bemusing onlookers with a piano on a sandbar. The piano was removed after FWC threatened to pursue felony dumping charges.
The party responsible said that they had intended to keep the piano's origin a secret, but set the record straight after a disturbing number of people falsely claimed credit for the staging. - "This is the largest, heaviest and most unusual thing we've ever had left on the mountain." This from Sandy Maxwell of the John Muir Trust, a group that maintains a portion of Britain's highest mountain. In 2006, volunteers spotted the top portion of a piano that had been buried near the summit of Ben Nevis, a 4,049 foot-tall mountain in Lochaber, Scotland. Workers dug out the piano and dismantled it so that it could be carried down. The only indication of the piano's origin was a candy wrapper from 1986.
It turns out that it has been common practice to carry things to the top of Ben Nevis. In 1980, a strongman named Kenneth Campbell carried a different piano up the mountain as a part of a charity event, but was noted to have carried back down again. A year later, the summit was scaled by a group of university students carrying bedridden news caster Reginald Bosanquet.
Sharks
- The Bend Bulletin of August 7, 1957 carried the headline Shark Found in Phone Booth. Police in West Looe, England responded to complaints of a 5 foot shark stuffed in a phone booth. They speculated that "it was left there by an absent-minded fisherman."
- At 11:00 p.m. on September, 8 1985, Police in Downey, California found a dead, 8 foot blue shark in the middle of that city's well-trafficked Lakewood Boulevard. The AP reports that someone, presumably whoever left it there, had pinned a little blue "first place" ribbon onto the body of the animal.
The place of the shark's discovery, Lakewood Blvd at Florence Ave., just happens to be the site of the oldest surviving McDonald's.
- Dead shark found atop police car, read the second headline of the 5c page of the St. Joseph News-Press of October 2, 1975. In Baldwin Park, California, officer John Smart found a 6 foot blue shark resting on top of a police car behind the station. As there had recently been a string of police car bombings by leftist terrorist groups, officers suspected that the shark might be an elaborate explosives delivery device. So they tied a rope to the sharks body and pulled it off of the car.
Dispatcher Gary Powers was quoted: "When the shark went splash instead of thud, we stopped worrying."
