by Ben Sherwood
Next, a fellow in Canada purported he could make a high-pitched noise emanate from the top of his head and shatter glass. Ludicrous. He X’d the box. Rejection.
A woman in France asserted she could gallop on her hands and knees and jump 16-inch hurdles. Merely a variation on crawling, and there were already plenty of these records in The Book. Rejection. X’d again.
A man in Pakistan proposed walking backward from Gilgit to the Mintaka Pass. The Book had plenty of walking-backward records, but who had ever heard of Mintaka? He made a note that the applicant should consider walking backward on the better-known Khyber Pass and it would be considered for a record.
A team of salt miners in Poland planned to set the record for the deepest subterranean hot-air balloon flight. Their goal was to fly the length of a cavern more than one mile underground. An excellent prospect. He marked an X: accepted. He would look into it later, but it was hardly the kind of big record Peasley wanted.
A gentleman in Huntsville alleged he could divine water with his private parts. Out of the question. No records were allowed involving private parts.5 This was a book for all ages. The arbiters of decency and decorum always prevailed. Another X. Rejected.
J.J. finished the general submissions and turned to another folder, the Kids’ File. This was the weekly compilation of letters from youngsters across the country, The Book’s most devoted readers. His very first job, entry level all those years ago, had been answering thousands of these letters. Rising through the ranks, he often returned to this file for inspiration. These scrawled notes sprang from hope not yet hardened, from dreamers who still thought everything was possible.
He knew that feeling somewhere deep inside. It touched him first at age ten. It was a hot summer day on the little square lawn behind his house, the day he collected 116 four-leaf clovers. He ran straight to his mother in the kitchen, where she helped him compose a letter to The Book of Records. He wrote it longhand, lovingly, and sent it off to the Review Committee. Every day after school, he waited by the mailbox, hoping for good news. At last a letter in a fancy envelope arrived, and he ripped it open to see the blunt words. The world record in this category was set by a Pennsylvania prison inmate who gathered 13,382 four-leaf clovers during his recreation time in the yard. There was not even a thank-you or the slightest hint of encouragement.
He knew then, shaking beside the mailbox, that he would never set a world record. After all, he was just another John Smith from Ohio, ordinary in every respect. From that searing moment, though, he found his life’s ambition. He would work for The Book of Records. He would know and bestow greatness.
He shuffled through a stack of messy letters, block printed on scraps of notebook paper.
Whoever Opens the Mail,
My cow is the oldest cow.
What is the age of the oldest cow that you know?
Look on the back of this paper. I drawed a rooster for you.
Tommy Ruskin
Fremont, Wyoming
He turned the page and inspected the crayon drawing of a rooster. Then he scanned the photocopied response that was paper-clipped to the boy’s letter. He had dictated it before he left for Paris.
Dear Tommy,
Your rooster picture is great. A Rhode Island Red! I’m very impressed.
Thank you for writing about your cow. According to our records, the oldest bovine lived 48 years 9 months. Big Bertha died on December 31, 1993, in County Kerry, Ireland. By the way, the record for the heaviest cow is 5,000 pounds.
Good luck setting your own world record someday, Tommy. You’re well on your way.
Yours,
J.J. Smith
Keeper of the Records
The rest of the pile would have to wait for his response, but he thumbed through, loving the misspellings and funny grammar, hoping to find something, anything, worth pursuing.
Dear Mister,
I’m Hank Caldwell and my speciality is meat-loaf sculptures.
I read your book and don’t see a record of meat-loaf sculptures. Is there one?
Hank Caldwell
Chilton, Alabama
To the Book of Records,
This is a new record catagory. My 2 front teeth are the mostest spread apart. Docter Honig measured and the distance is ⅓ inches. I can push a fish stick sideways between them.
Everyone thinks I got a tooth knocked out, which I didn’t. I’m sending a picture for you to see.
Thanks,
Jeanie Vandeveer
Boone, Indiana
Dear Mr. or Mrs.,
I have the hardest hair in the whole world! Every day before school, I spray it with hair spray so when my friends touch it it doesn’t move even a little. I spray at night and it stays in the same place even sleeping. I use gel sometimes to make it more harder. Will you put me and my hardest hair in your book?
Sincerly,
Brett Kwong
Madera, California
Dear Book of Records,
Hi it’s Daryl again. This time I want to set the record for having the most sleep in my eyes. Does it count?
Send info.
Daryl Healey
Braxton, West Virginia
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Record Keeper,
My mother has the loudest yell. You can hear her all the way at the Ferguson’s at night. My dad and me would like it a lot if you wrote her in your book for this.
Becky Lunzer
Hernando, Florida
He felt as if he knew each one of these kids. He wished he could make their dreams come true and put them all in The Book. But it was getting late. He was out of luck this time. He flipped through the last few letters.
Hello,
I want to stay in front of the TV the longest. My mom and day care providor don’t think it’s a record. Please help me prove it to them.
From,
Pete Persinger
Chatham, North Carolina
Dear Editor,
My parakeet has the longest name. It has 20 seperate names and 135 letters.
Here it is.
Tweetie Valentine Popcorn Anna Dolly Ceci Sara Barbie Dumpling Peach Daisy Francesca Dominique Madeleine Fruity Poptart Sweetness Beverly Jesus Krotzinger.
Signed,
Tracy Krotzinger
Wexford, Michigan
As he closed the file, he noticed one letter had slipped onto the floor. It was written on a piece of lined, hole-punched paper.
Dear Record Man,
You won’t believe it, but I know someone eating a 747, the airplane with the hump on top.
Every day he eats some, no matter how bad it tastes. I sware.
People think he’s crazy, but he isn’t. I know why he’s eating it. He has a good reason. Believe me.
I looked in your book. You don’t have this one yet.
The Guy Who Knows Superior, Nebraska
Ps. I’ll get in trouble if anyone finds out I sent this letter.
PPs. What’s the record for flying the furthest on a kite?
On its face, the submission deserved an automatic rejection. For starters, anonymous submissions—The Guy Who Knows—turned out to be hoaxes most of the time. There were plenty of practical jokers out there, and the record keepers had to be vigilant. Furthermore, The Book had officially banned gluttony records in 1989 for a simple reason: It couldn’t afford the legal exposure with all those gourmands choking on hot dogs, goldfish, lightbulbs, and once even a Cadillac Seville.
Still, he reread the letter. There was something authentic about it. He searched the penciled lines for clues. I know someone eating a 747. It was ludicrous but delicious, absolutely too good to be true, the kind of record Peasley craved. Lumpkin and Norwack would be put in their places. Gastronomical feats had always been the most popular in The Book until the ban, and J.J. had inventoried plenty of them.6
The blank gray face of the computer stared at him. He slid his mouse over the pad, tapped his password on the keys. In a moment, he logged on to the Internet. There were a few ea
sy traps to run. If a man was eating a 747 in America, no matter where, someone, somewhere must have written about it. He entered key words to form a search request, but nothing came up.
Hope faded and the bleakness of the meeting with Peasley descended over him. In the gloom, he inspected the letter again. Superior, Nebraska. He clicked the map finder on his computer. There were 23 towns and cities in America named Superior, not including two South Superiors and one North Superior. It was hardly notable. Midway held the U.S. record with 212, followed by Fairview with 202.
With a few more mouse clicks, he located Superior smack in the middle of the country, right on the border with Kansas. The town was exactly 1,499 miles from New York and 1,519 miles from Los Angeles. It called itself the Victorian Capital of Nebraska, whatever that meant. Then he found the town newspaper, The Superior Express. He rummaged through its archives. There were articles galore on grain prices, the Future Farmers of America, and high school football, but nothing, not a mention of a man eating a 747.
As he turned the idea around, it seemed more and more impossible. The problem really wasn’t consuming an airplane. God knows, people ingested all sorts of things. In fact, J.J. verified the record for the worst compulsive swallowing. A woman with “slight ab-dominal pain” turned out to have 2,533 objects in her stomach, including 947 bent pins.
Gobbling a grocery cart, golf clubs—no sweat. Even an airplane was feasible. The biggest obstacle would be getting your hands on a jumbo jet. It certainly didn’t come cheap, and they weren’t exactly giving airplanes away on the Great Plains.
An idea. He turned to a database of newspaper and magazine articles. He entered a new combination of words and waited while the computer chewed on the request. Then, a flashing light on the screen. One hit. He tapped a key and scanned the story.
SUPERIOR, NEBRASKA (AP)—(July, 1990) A Boeing 747 cargo jet crash-landed today in a cornfield.
Eyewitnesses said the plane was forced down in a lightning storm. The pilots abandoned the jet and were seen hitchhiking north on Route 14.
There were no passengers on the plane and no reported injuries. The aircraft survived the impact largely intact.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the plane was en route from Chicago to an aviation junkyard in Arizona.
The plane is owned by PLF, Inc., an air freight company that recently filed for protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy regulations.
Bingo. A 747 had crash-landed in a farmer’s field. Abandoned there as junk. J.J. fell back into his chair. It was conceivable—albeit preposterous—that someone actually had a jet in his backyard and was trying to eat it. Perhaps the whole idea was the product of an overly active imagination, the cruel invention of a young letter writer. Or maybe, the record of all records. J.J. knew what he had to do. If it turned out to be bunk, he could certainly stir something up. Somewhere out there in Nebraska, there was a farmer with the biggest ear of corn or a schoolboy with 13 toes.
He booked the next Dollar Jet to Omaha.
4 In point of fact, both hunters were wrong. The blue whale’s tongue is the world’s longest, measuring up to 25 feet, weighing as much as a full-grown elephant, with enough space for 50 humans to stand.
5 One small exception should be noted. The world’s most valuable privates officially belong to Napoleon. Removed during his autopsy and put up for auction, the one-inch-long specimen was described in the catalog as a “small dried-up object.” It was later purchased by an American urologist for $3,800.
6 To be specific: J.J. watched Peter Dowdeswell scarf 13 raw eggs in one second; John Kenmuir eat 14 cooked eggs in 14.42 seconds; Bobby Kempf consume 3 lemons, including skin and seeds, in 15.3 seconds; and Jim Ellis down 3 pounds 1 ounce of grapes in 34.6 seconds.
THREE
The wind hurried over the vast flatness as if it wanted to get somewhere, fast.
J.J. felt the same impatience, but kept his rented Taurus at the posted 75-mile speed limit. The drive from Omaha took three hours, a straight shot west on Interstate 80, past Lincoln, south at Exit 332 Aurora onto Route 14. It was early morning, the sun glancing off the rearview mirror. The highway led to the middle of absolutely nowhere or the middle of absolutely everything, depending on how you looked at it.
Usually in neutral on his way to a record event, J.J. was in high gear today, like his early days with The Book. A procession of country singers drawled on the radio:“If the phone don’t ring, it’s me.” At the top of his lungs, he joined the chorus. The windows were down, the air warm and dry. He liked to drive and certainly knew about roads. His father, John Smith, had worked his whole life for the Department of Transportation, 40 years as a route marker in northeast Ohio. He painted stripes on every road in District Four all the way to Lake Erie. Every marking, perfect and precise. Each line exactly 4 inches wide. Each dash precisely 10 feet long. Each imprint exactly 15/1000th of an inch thick. “Son,” he liked to say, “I’ve learned one thing in life: Stick to the straight and narrow and stay in your own lane.” His father did just that, kept to the slow lane, until a Mack truck jackknifed outside Akron and he was gone.
To honor his dad, J.J. proposed and created a whole section on roads in The Book. He measured the longest, the worst, the highest, the lowest, the widest, the steepest. He traveled to Ripatransone, Italy, to verify the narrowest: Vicolo della Virilita, 1 foot 5 inches wide. He visited Bacup, England, to inspect the shortest: Elgin Street, 17 feet long.
J.J. knew the merit of his father’s philosophy and he, too, stayed in his own lane. No point going fast, no point slow. He drove that way as the road, a smooth two-lane affair, passed through the town of Clay Center. A sign pointed the way to the Roman L. Hruska Meat Animal Research Center. J.J. knew his American history. Roman Hruska, the late senator from Nebraska, was infamous for defending a lackluster Supreme Court nominee, declaring, “There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance?”
The mediocre are entitled to a little representation and a little chance?
J.J. knew the answer. Here, in this utterly ordinary countryside, he hoped to find the greatest record of them all. The map on his lap indicated he was entering the Republican River Valley—hardly a valley at all, more like a little dent in the plains. Pressing forward, as the blacktop became narrower, squeezed on both sides by the fields, he had a sensation of living in a closed loop. Born in one of these interchangeable towns off the interstate, he fled Ohio as soon as he could drive. Yet no matter how far he traveled, to Australia, Zanzibar, and beyond, he always seemed to end up on a road to a small town, measuring the biggest watermelon or the longest clothesline.7
Today it was Superior, population 2,397. The sign on the outskirts of town was simple: NEBRASKA—THE GOOD LIFE. He drove slowly, past the tallest landmark, a blue water tower, and down streets lined with brightly painted Victorian homes, well-sprinkled green lawns, and flower beds of blooming zinnias and orange lilies. He explored the business district, four blocks of tidy storefronts. The windows were sprayed with messages: GO WILDCATS. The only sign of intrusion from the outside world was a Pizza Hut. The streets and sidewalks were empty. The white sun flattened what was already flat enough.
He pulled to a stop in front of the Hereford Inn, a red-shingled saloon on Main Street, got out of the car and stretched his legs. The wind streamed across his face, a warm wind, different from the sharp, quick gusts on the East Coast. This was an old wind, roaming the plains, covering hundreds of miles, taking with it, speck by speck, the towns and lives along the way. The wind seemed to welcome him to Superior.
The Hereford Inn was deserted. The room was long and dark and smelled of frying pans and beer. A policeman under a big hat read the newspaper in the corner.
“Morning,” said the woman at the bar. She was short, squat, and stuffed into her red and white uniform. The pin on her blouse said: MABEL.
“Can I help you?”
“Cup of coffee, please.”
“Sure, anything else? Eggs? A doughnut? We make ’em fresh.”
“You got glazed?”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “You passing through?”
“Not sure yet.” J.J. took a bite of the doughnut.
“That’ll be a dollar even.”
“Got a question for you,” J.J. said. “You happen to know a guy around here eating an airplane?”
“Guy eating a what?” Mabel glanced over at the policeman, who looked up from his newspaper. “Why would anyone in his right mind do something like that?”
“Good question,” J.J. said.
“Hey, Shrimp,” Mabel called out. “You hear about anyone eating an airplane in these parts?”
The policeman sprang from the table. He was as short and skinny as a Slim Jim, his slight stick figure overwhelmed by the folds of a well-starched uniform. His gaunt face was hidden under the shadow of an enormous hat. Strapped to his slender waist, his Colt .45 automatic looked more like a cannon.
“Who’s asking?” the policeman said.
“J.J. Smith. From New York City. I’m with The Book of Records and I’m here to—”
By the look on their faces, he knew he had their attention.
“What do you know? New York City,” Mabel said.
“Welcome to Superior,” the policeman said. “You just pull into town?”
“Just got here.” J.J. handed over a business card.
The police chief inspected it carefully.
“‘Keeper of the Records,’” he read. “My wife is never gonna believe this. You know, she has the worst breath on earth. You might want to look into that.”
Mabel laughed. “Speaking of records, you should see my boyfriend, Hoss. He’s got the world’s biggest, uh,—”
J.J. cut her off quickly. “I’m in a bit of a hurry. Can you help me find this man eating the plane?”
The police chief tightened his belt a notch.
“We can help you find anything you want,” he said. “We know everyone’s business around here.”
