Copyright @ 2020 Larry Lockridge
Iguana Books
720 Bathurst Street, Suite 303
Toronto, ON M5S 2R4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise (except brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of the author or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Publisher: Meghan Behse
Editor: Paula Chiarcos
Cover design and drawings: @ 2020 Marcia Scanlon
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77180-424-0 (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-77180-423-3 (paperback). 978-1-77180-425-7 (ebook).
This is the original electronic edition of The Cardiff Giant.
to my brother Ross,
in gratitute
— Part One —
SPOOKED
— Chapter One —
THE CARDIFF GIANT
I arrived in Cooperstown, New York, in mid-June 2003, two weeks after the Cardiff Giant disappeared. Newly hired as an investigative reporter for the Discovery Channel, I was to size up this and other weird goings-on in the famed village.
The assignment lifted the torpor of spirit that often befell me. On my own I’d done little in life, waiting to be prodded, hoping to stumble onto something. My stumbles had yielded an early divorce and a humdrum journalistic career set within the same Midwest venues that bored me even as a toddler. Cooperstown to me was exotic, and you’ll see that the village was caught up in one of the few passions of my youth.
My new job augured well. I admit to a superstitious streak, and the producers were eager to have superstition confirmed. Enlightenment was bad for ratings. I set about squashing the bah-humbug aspect of my personality. Let the ordinariness of life give way to the extraordinary, the marvelous—the paranormal!
For those of you not up on your anthropology, the Cardiff Giant was unearthed on a farm near Cardiff, New York, in 1869. He measured ten feet five inches, and had a six-inch nose, a thirty-seven-inch neck, and an unnerving five-inch smile. His weight of 2,995 pounds was owing to petrification—this giant was pure gypsum. Within hours the farm’s owner had him on display, charging fifty cents each of the hundreds who came daily to gape. An imposing groin on full view made this something other than your routine Sunday family entertainment.
The discovery should not have surprised anybody. Doesn’t the Bible tell us outright that there were giants in the earth in those days? The state geologist was on hand to inspect its underside when the giant, sold to area businessmen for $30,000, was hoisted off to Syracuse. There the exhibit pumped cash into the local economy. The Syracuse Standard ridiculed any and all skeptics. Barred from purchasing him, P. T. Barnum made a fake and exhibited it in Manhattan, setting off a public debate over who had the genuine giant. When an atheistic cigar maker from Binghamton and two inebriated sculptors stepped forward to claim the giant as a hoax, many continued to argue in favor of petrification, including the scientific community of Boston. Passed along by many owners up to 1948, he was dumped into a shallow pit at the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, where he lay unmolested until the night of June 1, 2003.
After checking into the Otesaga Hotel, I met with its owner, Thor Ohnstad, head of the local Chamber of Commerce. I assumed he was of Norwegian stock. A tall gangly gent of middle age, he began plugging the unmatched treasures of the village, but I sensed right away a weariness beneath his script.
“Jack, welcome to the Great American Village. You’ll like Cooperstown. Home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Natty Bumppo, the Ommegang Brewery, the Glimmerglass Opera, the Fenimore House Museum, the life mask of Thomas Jefferson and, uh, the Cardiff Giant. That’s just for starters. Don’t worry, no quiz. But we’re down one attraction now. Hope you can lend a hand finding our giant.”
I felt there might be a quiz—Ohnstad already seemed a noodge—but he was my entrée into the culture of Cooperstown and I needed to be receptive. In the Hawkeye Bar, I asked him to bring me up to date. We were joined by Barry Tarbox, sheriff and local pig farmer.
“Big mystery about the giant. Everybody’s got a theory,” said Ohnstad.
“Mine’s no goddam theory,” grunted Tarbox. “Aliens behind this.” Tarbox was a stocky hairy man with a snout for a nose. “No sign of burglars. Aliens done it. Snuck the giant out and hoisted ’im up ter their saucer. Bastards left no trail. Took one of my goddam pigs too. Same night.” He guzzled his kir.
“Why would aliens abduct a fossil instead of a real live man? And why a pig?” I asked.
“There’s no telling with aliens,” said Ohnstad, with a hint of the sarcasm I’d learn was his linguistic hallmark.
“Already clear why they done it, I told yah,” said Tarbox. “Brought the giant back ter life—sightin’s all over the county. Giant’s been having sex with our women. Knockin’ ’em up. You watch—a breed of giant aliens!”
“I must admit, there’s no evidence against your theory,” said Ohnstad. “And we’d all like to believe it. That’s already two points in favor of aliens.”
“Yeah, they’re colonizing us. It’s a plot. Worse than faggots and pod people.”
I’d learn that Tarbox had run for sheriff on a “Take Back Otsego County” platform and was hostile to the usual suspects—outsiders, artists, environmentalists, gays, lesbians, and the lame—whereas Ohnstad favored an influx of capital and was liberal-minded. And yet the redneck and the entrepreneur were still oddly chummy.
“Other stuff’s been happ’nin’,” continued Tarbox, lowering his voice to a rasp. “Appointed extra deputies ter keep up. A crop circle over at Millhollow . . . spontaneous combustion on Dog Kennel Road . . . two nuns assaulted by an incubus near Hyde Hall . . . five Presbyterians on a picnic at Gilbert Lake saw the Loch Ness Monster . . . three Shriners on minicycles saw Bigfoot near the taxidermist’s on Highway 23, but mebbe dat was just the giant. You oughta interview these folks, Jack. Find out fer yerself.”
“Spontaneous combustion?” I asked.
“Yeah, by the time we got there old Farmer Buckbee was a heap of ashes. Coroner said he was just smokin’ in bed, but we knew better. They couldn’t find the cigarette.”
“That is puzzling,” I said, trying to ingratiate myself with Tarbox yet not come over as a total ass to Ohnstad.
“There’s talk the Bermuda Triangle’s moved here,” said Tarbox solemnly.
Ohnstad rose abruptly as if he’d heard enough and punched Tarbox on the shoulder. “And can the Lost Atlantis be far behind? Jack, you know my old friend Barry may be jumping to conclusions, but it’s been one thing after another since the disappearance . . . Hey, did you hear? You’ve got competition. Tabby and Harris—they’re moving The Morning Show up here for the season. I for one never watch them, but it’s good for business.”
Tarbox excused himself. “Gotta meet with my posse. Work on our nets.” Nets of varying sizes were being specially woven for the capture of aliens.
“Jack,” said Ohnstad. “Allow me to give you a quick tour of the town before dinner. You should see what you’re getting into.”
At the time this remark seemed innocent enough. Only now, as I reflect on the astonishing events that would follow, do I see that his cautionary words contained a dark prophecy.
— Chapter Two —
ABOUT TOWN
“No town in America packs as much history and legend into so small a space,” said Ohnstad, as we set out on foot. He was bigger on legend than on history. And for a tour guide, he was damned nosy, asking me
about matters that were none of his business.
“Midwesterner,” I replied to a question, “from Muncie, Indiana, heart of the heart of the country . . . No, not a prosperous family. My father was adjunct lecturer in geography at Ball State, an alcoholic. My mother was a harridan . . . No, got away, went to the IU School of Journalism, Ernie Pyle’s school . . . No, never covered a war, mostly postal rage shootings and mall openings . . . No, not married, divorced twenty years . . . No kids . . . Yes, she was a Midwesterner too, from Des Moines, but a snob—you’d think she was from Greenwich—and bad-tempered . . . No, didn’t beat me but was good at withholding and throwing milk cartons . . . quiet-spoken up to the wedding night when she yelled at me—I’d forgotten the pralines . . . Yes, you could say that I married my mother . . . No, not with anybody right now, I’ve been adrift many years . . . Hey, Thor, would you mind? What are we looking at?”
We had taken Lake Street past the Masonic Hall, then the home of Erastus Beadle, the dime novel king, to the source of the Susquehanna at the southern tip of Otsego Lake. “That’s Council Rock where Mohawk Indians held their powwows,” said Ohnstad. “Legend has it a Christian missionary told them his god could move mountains. They dropped that rock on top of him just to see for themselves. You had one mashed missionary. Bones still there, they say, but I put no stock in it . . . Jack, where do you stand on legends?”
“Well, I’m willing to think anything’s possible. I’m a reporter and follow up leads. Legends are leads.”
“There’s another pertains to that wall over there,” he said as we walked along the river. “White Man’s Wall. An Indian chief buried next to it, upright. Has a chip on his shoulder. Whenever he feels like it, he climbs out of his grave and knocks the wall down. His way of making a statement. I don’t put any stock in that either, but have to say, that wall keeps falling down!” He clumsily thrust both hands out as if to stop the falling wall. “What’s your stand on race relations?”
“I’m all for them. The usual liberal notions.”
We walked along River Street, across from where the gallows had stood, and turned right on Church Street, stopping for the Cooper family plot in Christ Churchyard. “This whole area is haunted by Coopers,” said Ohnstad, as we read the gray horizontal slabs. “Town was founded by William Cooper in 1786. Clever fellow married an heiress, bought up land grants on the cheap from ruined investors, sold small urban lots to poor folks and presided over the community like a patriarch. Then somebody brained him. Well, he may not have been brained . . . that’s just a legend. Best evidence is that he did die.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“His son James Fenimore lived here—our most unpopular citizen ever. Banned townsfolk from Three Mile Point, their picnic spot. Said riffraff shouldn’t have access. Wrote a novel to justify his No Trespassing sign and sued six newspaper editors who called him names. He won the suits. Nice irony, the writer as censor. Hey, don’t quote me. To the world, Cooperstown’s a harmonious village, and up on Pioneer Street you’ll find a harmonious blacksmith. The village’s oldest building, the Smithy—William Cooper built it in 1786.”
I didn’t let on, but I already knew a lot about the Coopers. We walked north on Fair Street through Cooper Park, where the old Cooper house had stood. Now there was a statue of James Fenimore with walking stick and bowler. I beheld again in the distance the lake that the novelist dubbed “Glimmerglass.” Here it was that Natty Bumppo, the Leatherstocking, teamed up with the Mohican chief Chingachgook and the giant Hurry Harry to help Hutter, Hetty and Hist stamp out heathens. Here it was that Bumppo slew obliging deer and saved the virtuous Elizabeth Temple from a forest fire.
These things happened in the penumbra of Cooper’s frontier novels and were for me embedded in the landscape. During a three-week siege of teenage mumps when the family VCR wasn’t working, I read Cooper’s novels, musty leather-bound volumes passed down from my paternal great-grandfather. It was my one profound reading experience. This put me out of step with my generation, most of whom never read a book they weren’t forced to.
There’s a weighty difference for me between a fictional Bumppo and a real-life Bumppo. A real-life Bumppo would be long dead by now.
I looked north to Mount Wellington, known as the Sleeping Lion, and surveyed the water’s edge, where swamp milkweed, silky willow, and cattails flourished. Surrounding the lake was the Great Forest that Cooper bequeathed to the American imagination and that his daughter Susan described with a more precise portrait of its flora and fauna in her Rural Hours. It was a forest of black willows, sugar maples, shagbark hickories, and red oaks. I had already absorbed this landscape in Muncie and, in my mind’s eye, was now traipsing through skunk cabbage, marsh fern, burreeds, and thimbleberries. I was swatting at deerflies and horseflies and dodging the terrifying crane flies. I saw the common loons, great blue herons, mallards, red-breasted mergansers, and belted kingfishers. Also lurking Indians. I felt their eyes fixed eerily upon me, the white intruder destined to slay them.
Ohnstad was right to talk up his town. I’ll say something more about what it was like for me to be here, drawing on what I already knew and what I’d encounter in coming weeks. Cooperstown was your consummate all-American village but a bit off-balanced. Only two Blacks and three Native Americans in its population of two thousand. The town had seven Black slaves in 1803, three of them owned by William Cooper, a Quaker not fastidious about following his religion to the letter. One of these he and his family had fun calling “The Governor” because of his elegant bearing—they even let him be buried in the family plot. Another gave William Cooper trouble: “A young wench for sale . . . None can exceed her if she is kept from Liquor.” The Blacks mostly cleared out of Cooperstown after the 1827 emancipation in the North. They are still gone.
As for Native Americans, they were pretty much done in by invading Europeans and their diseases in the late eighteenth century. The white invaders improved on history. They claimed that the villages and fortifications around Otsego Lake had been created not by these Indians but by a noble and vanished race—probably the lost tribes of Israel. The Iroquois barbarians had come along centuries later and destroyed this early high culture. So it was only fair in turn to destroy the Iroquois.
The white population now is mostly Irish, German, and English, with a dash of Italian, Dutch, and French. And with them comes the striking mix of architectural styles that makes the village so damned quaint. You’ve got your Greek, Egyptian, Gothic, and Colonial Revival, your Romanesque, your Victorian gingerbread, your Federal and Italianate brick. Nothing is distinctly American except the occasional redneck shack. Jane Clark, heir to the Singer Sewing fortune and wealthier than Ohnstad, buys up properties and keeps them spiffy. She’s also kept chain retails out, so the village has remained a village. This too makes it off-balanced—no Wendy’s!
For true American balance, you’ve got my hometown, Muncie, Indiana, subject of the Lynds’ infamous Middletown, a sober sociological study that dubbed drab Muncie the quintessentially mediocre American burgh. No high culture, no fine art or distinguished architecture, no food you’d wish to eat, no creative leisure—just men’s clubs, a work force all too sober during the day and drunk at night, the diversion of prosaic adultery, and an entire population living lives of quiet desperation.
So for me to be in Cooperstown—with its architecture, literature, art museum, chamber music, theatre, opera, and gorgeous romantic setting—was to be wholly out of my element. I was also living out an American archetype—the Midwesterner who goes East and is transformed by the vestiges of Old World culture. At forty-five, still feeling like damaged goods after my early marriage, I hoped to seize on a larger life. And for the first time in many years I had a hankering for romance.
Cooperstown has been a tourist and summer escape village since the mid-nineteenth century. Its principal fame is baseball, the all-American sport. The Hall of Fame induction ceremony in late July throws the entire town off-balance.
The streets are clogged, the networks and cable companies descend, and a village tries to accommodate an invasion of people hoping for a story where there really isn’t any.
Here too, I was out of my element, for I have always hated baseball. Any passion for the field of dreams was blunted when my bicycle was stolen and ceremonially burned on a pyre by seventh-grade thugs in a Little League dugout. Whenever these same thugs chose sides, I’d be the last picked. I was no good at sports. As a Boy Scout I failed canoeing merit badge, hard to do.
I’m also squeamish. If I were baseball commissioner, my first decree would be a ban on spitting. But I’ve got to acknowledge that Cooperstown has given us, in baseball, the emblem of our culture.
We turned on Main Street where a startling all-American ritual could be witnessed virtually every day during the season. A petulant boy wearing a baseball cap was swinging a bat at his dad. The dad in Bermuda shorts leapt and ducked and tried to placate.
This was much of the tourist culture of Cooperstown—feckless fathers, separated or divorced, trying to make amends and bond with sons through baseball. The sons always look cheated upon exiting the Hall of Fame, which is no Disneyland. “Now what?”
The legend is that one Abner Doubleday of Cooperstown invented baseball in 1839. One skeptic said that Jane Austen knew more about the sport than did Doubleday, who “couldn’t tell a baseball from a kumquat.” No matter. On Main Street, we passed on our left the Hall of Fame and Doubleday Field of Dreams. Here too I’d done my homework and knew that enshrined in the museum was the original baseball, a small shriveled brown sphere.
“Doesn’t matter that radiocarbon dates that baseball 1939 instead of 1839,” said Ohnstad. “People believe what they believe, and sometimes it’s good for business. I’m all for that baseball!”
The Cardiff Giant Page 1
