Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends

by Jan Harold Harold Brunvand

  “The Elephant That Sat on the VW”

  WE POP THE ELEPHANT MYTH

  It was a good story.

  A reliable guy called The Philadelphia Bulletin and said a girl he works with knows a woman who took her kids to the Philadelphia Zoo.

  When she came out, there was a big dent in her Volkswagen, and a zoo employee was waiting in the parking lot. He said an elephant being unloaded from a truck sat on the Volkswagen and the Zoo would pay the damages.

  Doc Rowe

  On her way home, the woman was mistakenly stopped for leaving the scene of an accident. She told the policeman she hadn’t been in the accident she had just passed. The dent in her car was caused by an elephant sitting on it.

  She was given a sobriety test at a police station. Finally the police called the Zoo and confirmed her story.

  The reliable guy said he would get the name and address of the woman and call right back.

  He never did.

  That was no surprise. A call to the Zoo immediately established that no Volkswagen has ever been abused by one of its elephants and that Zoo officials have heard this one before.

  Within two weeks, another reliable person from another part of the area called another Bulletin reporter and told him the same story….

  How these stories begin to circulate is a mystery. But anybody who has his Volkswagen dented by an elephant might as well keep quiet about it. No newspaperman will believe him.

  From an article by James Smart in Small World: For Volkswagen Owners in the United States, fall 1970, p. 7. This editor’s note follows: “Small World’s ‘elephant file’ contains 27 accounts of the sat-upon-VW story dating from as early as 1962. Depending upon which version you believe, the elephant came from the St. Louis Zoo, Benson’s Animal Farm in New Hampshire, California’s Marine World, or a circus in upstate New York, New Martinsville, West Virginia, Anaheim, California, or Paris, France, to name just a few. We hope these discrepancies will debunk the elephant story forever, but that may be too much to ask. Mr. Smart’s article appeared in the Philadelphia Bulletin last February. Shortly thereafter, elephants squashed two other Volkswagens in other sections of the country.” My own “elephant file” contains about another two dozen reports, including ones from Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, England, and New Zealand. The 1985 Australian film Bliss, based on Peter Carey’s 1981 novel of the same title, has a scene in which a circus elephant sits on an old red Fiat.

  “The Arrest”

  Every profession has its legends, and police work is no exception. Here’s the latest wild and wooly yarn to do the rounds in Fairfax County law enforcement circles:

  Seems a local motorist was pulled over by a local police officer. The motorist had had a bit too much to drink. Correction: He had had a lot too much to drink. He flunked the Breathalyzer test, the walk-the-straight-line test and the get-out-of-the-car-without-falling-on-your-face test. So, as any cop would in this situation, the officer announced that the motorist was under arrest.

  But at that very moment, on the other side of the road, a terrible accident took place. The police officer ran across the road to investigate. Because the accident was a messy one, the officer was busy with it for quite some time. So the inebriated motorist figured the cop had lost interest in him. He hopped behind the wheel and drove off.

  However, the wheel the inebriated motorist hopped behind was the wheel of the police car. When the cops finally tracked the guy down a couple of hours later, they found the police car parked in his garage. The motor was still running and the dome lights were still spinning and flashing.

  Ever since, according to the story, the police have been so embarrassed by what happened that they’ve tried to hush it up.

  However, Fairfax County police spokesman Warren Carmichael says there’s only one thing wrong with the story: It almost certainly isn’t true.

  “Certain stories develop and they seem to get a life of their own,” Carmichael told researcher Karina Porcelli.

  This one has had an especially long life. Carmichael said he first heard it about two years ago, and has been hearing it around Fairfax County ever since. Capt. Curt Durham of the Fairfax City police confirms the yarn’s longevity. He says he first heard it about 18 months ago at a party, and has been hearing it steadily from then on. But neither policeman has been able to verify the story—and both say they’d know about it if the incident had really happened.

  I can understand why people would want to spread this one. As legends go, it’s top-rank. But since its truth is doubtful, let’s give the tale early retirement, okay? The police have enough troubles without being accused of losing cars they almost certainly didn’t lose.

  From “Bob Levey’s Washington” column in the Washington Post, April 7, 1986. Paul Harvey broadcast a version of “The Arrest” from Raleigh, North Carolina, on January 15, 1986, and published it in his 1991 book, For What It’s Worth. I’ve received reports of the story from New York, Connecticut, West Virginia, Florida, Canada, Australia, and England. A version was in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, told by Will’s friend about his uncle. In most versions the man is said to have driven “the car” home, without any mention that it’s the wrong car. He convinces his wife to furnish an alibi if the police come looking for him, but her story falls flat when the cops find their cruiser in the garage. The flashing dome lights on the police car are evidence of just how drunk the man must have been. See the following for another legend about a drunken driver that became popular the same year.

  “The Body on the Car”

  A man came home at 2:00 a.m., drunk as a skunk. But he had managed to drive his car all the way home and to get it parked in the driveway before he stumbled into the house and fell asleep on the living-room couch.

  The next morning he was rudely awakened by his wife’s screams. She had gone outside to pick up the newspaper and glanced over at his car. There, embedded on the front grill of the car, she saw the twisted body of an eight-year-old girl!

  Reported to me several times in 1986 and 1987 as a cautionary story sometimes told by representatives of either SADD—Students Against Drunk Driving—or MADD—Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Ann Landers printed the story in her column on September 24, 1986, quoting a letter from Portland (Oregon, I presume). A horror comic-book version of the story published in the 1950s was reprinted in a Marvel Comics anthology in 1975, and cartoonist Gary Larson has his own version among the examples published in his 1989 book Prehistory of “The Far Side,” but never used it in daily newspapers. An allusion to the legend also appeared in a “Bizarro” cartoon in 1991. Readers have pointed out to me several well-documented accounts in newspapers of similar accidents, some occurring as long ago as the 1930s, but none exactly matched the legend. I conclude that victims of hit-and-run accidents have indeed sometimes become stuck to vehicles and dragged or carried for some distance, but “The Body on the Car” story seems to have a life of its own separate from any specific real-life incident. Whether literally true or not, it is certainly an effective warning against mixing alcohol and gasoline. It’s worth noting that a similar story circulates among seafaring folk: A large ship is said to have struck a small vessel in the dark without anyone aboard the ship noticing; the smaller boat is carried along, stuck to the bow, until the ship reaches port. This story has even been told on the Queen Elizabeth II and on U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and battleships.

  “The Wife Left Behind”

  In 1986, a family from Oregon traveling in their RV through California stopped at a freeway-interchange restaurant. The wife went to the restroom, and her husband drove off without her, believing she had gone to the back of their vehicle for a nap. He drove 300 miles before discovering his error. They were reunited with the help of the highway patrol.

  I know of six cases of this incident from 1986 to 1992, all reported in well-documented news stories; there’s no doubt that each incident really happened. The reports mention several different states and a variety of vehicles an
d stopping places. I also have reliable newspaper articles about a truck driver in 1986 leaving his wife behind in a New York State motel, a Democratic state senator from Indiana in 1988 leaving his campaign director behind in a Tennessee rest stop, and a husband in 1992 leaving his wife behind in another Tennessee rest stop. Adding to the data on riders left behind, I have a first-person account of a California family in 1973 leaving their nine-year-old son behind in a California gas station. I’m sure, if I applied myself to further research, I could easily double the number of reports of similar incidents. So is it an urban legend? Calvin Trillin, in discussing the 1992 Tennessee occurrence, which he heard of directly from the participants, described it as “a palpably authentic example of the sort of experience you hear now and then in the sort of modern folk-tales that usually carry the sniff of the apocryphal and the embellished.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. Surely “The Wife [and others] Left Behind” incident did happen—and several times at that—but in telling and retelling the story people tend to focus on the salient details, and the story probably becomes funnier and more pointed with each telling. At the same time, there’s a certain whiff of true legendry in the story when you encounter the undeniably 100 percent fictional story of “The Nude in the RV,” another left-behind-during-travel yarn containing further juicy details, which I’ve grouped with other slapstick humor in Chapter 19.

  “The Baby on the Roof”

  Did you hear about this couple driving through Southern Utah? They were on their way to California, and they went to change drivers and the wife took the baby out of the car and put him on the roof of the car. Then they both switched sides and got back into the car. She just assumed that the husband had put the baby back in, but he hadn’t even seen it.

  They drove off, and the baby slid off, but he was OK because he was in a plastic infant seat. About two hours later they realized that they forgot the baby. So they drove back, and someone had stopped for the baby, and the baby was OK.

  Collected from his mother in 1981 by M. Steven Marsden for his folklore project in one of my classes at the University of Utah. This is the generic, or “legendary,” form of an incident that has happened more often than you might think. I have on file documented news stories or firsthand accounts dating from 1975 to 1993 of 14 such incidents occurring in several states, as well as one in Germany. Not surprisingly, some babies have been injured or traumatized in these adventures. Other items forgotten on car roofs are purses, wallets, books, groceries, lunch bags or boxes, ski gloves, fishing rods, cameras, miscellaneous packages, a bottle of whiskey, and even a rare violin. It certainly happens, but as such stories circulate in oral tradition, they become “folklorized” when narrators generalize the plot details, elaborate on favorite points, and focus on a happy ending. Sometimes the baby is forgotten while the mother is loading groceries into the car, or while a family is repacking the car after changing a tire. The 1987 film Raising Arizona contained a hilarious scene based on this story, and I am told that a 1990 episode of the TV sitcom Married with Children referred to the story as well, but I’d rather ride clinging to the roof of a car than watch reruns of that program to verify this reference.

  “The Nut and the Tire Nuts”

  Summarized:

  Found both as a published “puzzle story” and an oral legend. A motorist changing a flat accidentally loses the four tire nuts from the wheel. A mentally retarded person (or perhaps an escapee from a nearby asylum) comes by and suggests a simple way to solve the problem. (What’s the answer?)

  How to tell this story:

  To wring the most enjoyment from this incident, it is imperative that the story embrace enough of the following detail for the listener to fully visualize the incident.

  The scene was rural, at near dusk, with the point made that the flat tire was on the left rear wheel and occurred while the motorist was driving along a winding, two-lane, rural road.

  The motorist drove off the road just a few feet from a fence surrounding the mental institution where an inmate was leaning idly against the fence.

  After the driver [here a stuffed shirt, pompous type can be identified] confidently jacked up the left rear of the car, thinking he would demonstrate his efficiency to the inmate-observer, he took off the wheel cover [the “hub cap” back in the ‘50s] and placed it, concave side up, behind him on the edge of the paving.

  The wheel had five, not four, lug nuts.

  As the driver removed the nuts with his lug wrench, he carefully deposited each lug nut in the wheel cover for what he intended to be efficient retrieval.

  The motorist then retreated to the trunk of his car to get the spare tire and wheel. Just as he lifted the wheel from the trunk, he noticed an automobile approaching on his side of the road.

  Conscious of his own safety, the man discreetly stepped back until the car could go by, then watched in dismay as the passing car’s right front wheel hit the edge of the wheel cover, launching the five lug nuts into space and scattering them over a wide area.

  His hands-and-knees search along the shoulders of the road and in the wild ground cover along the roadside in the diminishing daylight produced only one lug nut.

  Holding the single lug nut between a thumb and a forefinger, the driver was dejectedly contemplating his predicament when the inmate who had been watching the whole episode spoke up. He suggested that the driver take one lug nut from each of the other three wheels, which would give him four for the spare wheel and permit him to drive safely to a service station to replace the lost lug nuts.

  The driver, in his grateful astonishment, said, “Thanks for the great idea. But what in the world is someone as intelligent and resourceful as you doing in a mental institution?”

  The response: “I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.”

  The summary is from my article “Urban Legends in the Making: Write Me if You’ve Heard This,” in Whole Earth Review, fall 1985. The instructions on how to tell the story properly came in a letter from M. B. Cox of Bountiful, Utah. Cox, who said he had been telling it for more than 40 years, was responding—as did dozens of other people—to my newspaper column (“Flat Joke Drives Folklorist Nutty”) questioning what is so funny about this particular story. Numerous readers over the years have sent me “The Nut and the Tire Nuts,” declaring it to be their favorite joke or legend, and the puzzle version of the story has been published several times. Yet I’ve always failed to see the humor of the situation or of the punch line, even when it was pointed out to me that the latter is a twist on the expression “I may be stupid but I’m not crazy,” something one might say, for example, after taking an icy swim in the ocean on New Year’s Day, but remaining in the water for only ten seconds. The tire-nut story was formerly told as a rural anecdote, illustrating the triumph of native wit over city sophistication; in that spirit, Winston Groom included it in his 1986 novel Forrest Gump with the punch line “Maybe I am an idiot, but at least I ain’t stupid.” Lately the story has been given an urban setting, with the tire nuts disappearing down a street drain. I still don’t find it very funny, but I’m sure that if I failed to include it with other automobile legends some people would think I am either crazy or stupid.

  “The Pig on the Road”

  A friend of mine was driving along happily, minding his own business, when all of a sudden a woman driver came tearing round the corner in the opposite direction on the wrong side of the road. Passing him, she rolled down the window and shouted, “Pig.” My friend, quite astonished by this insult, replied, “Silly old cow.” On turning the corner, he drove straight into a herd of pigs.

  From Robert Morley’s 1983 book, “Pardon Me, But You’re Eating My Doily!” where it is credited to Serena Fass, travel agent. This version, from England, quotes the common British expression “silly old cow,” but lacks the usual line “Bloody pig!” The story popped up on the Benny Hill Show, and it was formerly told about an English driver in France where a passing Frenchman shouts “cochon!” (pig). In Ame
rican versions, such as the one broadcast by Paul Harvey in January 1988, the man is a police officer, so the word “pig” sounds like a specific crack about his profession. Harvey’s story named names and identified places, but an Associated Press writer tracked down the presumed source and learned that it was merely a story the policeman had repeated, not an actual occurrence. Leo Buscaglia, the Southern California “professor of love,” has used the story in his lectures, and published it in his 1982 book Living, Loving, and Learning. The humorist Bennett Cerf beat him to it, though, by publishing it in a 1970 collection, and several writers since then—as well as Reader’s Digest—have used the story.

  “Let’s Give Toll Takers a Hand”

  I was in Johns Hopkins Medical School at the time. As a prank, somebody cut one of the fingers off the cadaver I was working on and kept it. When I went to turn in the cadaver, I couldn’t account for the finger.

  I knew who’d done it. So the next day, while he was doing a dissection on the leg, I took the arm off his cadaver and snuck it out. I put it in an ice chest and drove out to the Beltway around Baltimore. At a tollbooth, I stuck the frozen arm out of the window with some money in the hand and left the toll attendant with the arm.

  This got back to the president of the school, who was Dwight Eisenhower’s brother, Milton, a real fucking hawk. He told me to take a leave of absence to reconsider my commitment to medical school. I thought that was probably a good idea. I said, “Great.” A week later I had my draft notice. They turned me right in to the board.