Flagpole Sitting: A Real Fad

It's a very beautiful little web page and it's got all the information. And if you already pre ordered, can't you just like upload your receipt and get that pre order gift. Yep, you can, and they will mail it off to you and you will get in the mail and say, oh, thank you. Don't mind if I do. And it's a poster that you will love and cherish and possibly pass on down to your children as an heirloom. That's right, everyone, We couldn't be more excited about this book.

It's really coming together. Well, it's us through and through and you can go check out some excerpts at stuff you Should Read books dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant right over there. Jerry's out there somewhere, and this is stuff you should know. You know, Chuck,

I have to say yes. Every once in a while, the amazing theme song from our short lived television show comes into my head and it'll just it's just a complete earworm because I just hear the end of it over and over and over again, and it's actually pretty pleasant night. It doesn't bother me. I love it. I haven't heard that song in a while. Well, you need to go listen. That was the Henry Clay people, right, Yeah. Our buddies, Joey and Andy Sierra California boys, Southern California

boys men. Didn't didn't they go to like Harvard or something crazy like that. Joey ended up going to Harvard and then I think Andy went to a f I and then Joey I think went back to film school and they're both writing, uh you know, screenwriting. Man. That's great, and he's got a he wrote it the this uh Andy Sandberg movie that's that's coming out soon. Really what which what what's it called? Uh? It is called Palm Springs? I think why? And he wrote it? Yeah, dude, that's fantastic.

Congratulations And he wrote on the TV show Lodge forty nine. Yeah, I haven't seen the Springs, but that, um, that guy Kurt Rustling Goldie hans Son. I love that guy. I think he's one of the coolest people walking around on the planet today. Yeah, I haven't seen Lodge forty Nine's supposed to be awesome. And um, Andy was a writer's assistant and then ended up on the staff and they're they're both doing great. Man, that's great. A little baby

now they're both married. Nice man, that's nice. And that's an update on the cra Club as um, let's see what else? How was it? How did did that come into your head? Though? The song? Like? What made you think of that? Nothing? I was just out back, like mowing the lawn with my big old lawnmower. Uh, and it just popped in my head. I was probably thinking of something I had to do that had to do with stuff you should know, and I thought stuff you should know? And when I thought it, I thought it

as stuff you should know. Duing it. This is the then it just played on a loop. This is the second time you mentioned the size of your lawnmower. Yeah, and now you just gotta send me a picture. Is this one of these things that you stand it and it and it wheels you around like some weird land speeder you mean, like a skag or something. Now, this is just a good old fashioned toro. That is because

it's gas powered. I got it like on super discount. Um, because everybody's making like really good electric lawnmowers, um, but this one was you know, it was on discount, and I like the look of it. Yeah, it's a good looking more huh. Yeah. I was like, I like your style. Is it red? Yep? Yeah, it was red toros. Yeah, it's nice. It takes you back to days of paper routes and stuff like that, don't I thought you were mentioning the song because you were thinking of the song

Flagpole Sita by Harvey Danger. No, I wasn't at all. Okay, but that's a great segue, Chuck, because it just so happens. And you may be aware of this for talking about Flagpole sitting to day in this episode, right, and I've been singing that song in my head all day now, I don't. I don't know that song? You know it? It was a well maybe not, it was a It was a top forty hit in the nineties, kind of during the grunge era. It was. It was a power pop hit that kind of Oh, don't, don't, don't, don't,

don't do do wait, don't said it at it? No, my band actually covers a flagpoles. It it's a fun song. Okay, that's great. I'm gonna have to go listen to it because I feel like I'm missing out. But what that song is? That song about flagpole sitting is about shipwreck Kelly in particular. No, it's not. But it does have one line that says, run it up the flagpole and see And that's the only time it references flagpoles at all? Sees what who salutes? But no one ever does? I think?

Is the next line? Mm hmm that rings a bill I have, but the again end then and then I was again to the mirror a little bit clearer. Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes? But no one ever does? Yeah, I'm not sick, but not well? Who is that Harvey danger? Danger? Okay? Yeah, that's a great song. I love it. Yeah. Who fellow podcasting friend John Roderick. Actually, uh, Sean Nelson was a friend of his in Seattle and Nate he played bass for a little all in Harvey Danger. Oh very wow, man, this

is all coming first. So I got one more for you. I used to have that song and I don't know where I downloaded it from. This would have been probably back in the napster days or something, um, and it was mislabeled as Brian Jones how massacre. And I was always like, this is not sound like Brian Jones how massacre. Now I know it most definitely wasn't Brian Jones hown massacre. Wow. Alright,

we haven't even talked about flag pole sitting yet. No, we haven't, um, which is a crime because it's actually one of the more interesting, weird old fads that's ever come this way in America, and it was in the

twenties started. We actually we know who patient zero was a flagpole sitting and it's easy to tell because it is such a bizarre thing to do that if you can find the person who who who did it first, who claims to have done it first, they're probably correct, And in this case, you can trace it back to sometime around January, supposedly potentially in Hollywood, California, part of Los Angeles, and there was a man named Alvin Shipwreck Kelly who supposedly climbed up on a flagpole as part

of a promotion for a movie and sat there for full thirteen hours and thirteen minutes to help draw a crowd. And boyditty ever, yeah, which you know, Uh, that sounds like a long time to sit on a flagpole, but that is kids stuff, yeah, compared to where this is. Yeah, for sure, that's an appertif. But it's a good first attempt, you know. Yeah. And so you know, it sounds strange because when you think of a flagpole, you're like, what

are they sitting on? It's a it's a modified flagpole that basically there are different kinds, but um usually it's sort of like a bar stool at the top of a flagpole and it's that low fi and you climb up there and you sit and that's all you do. That's that's it. I mean, whatever else you want to do, well, sure you do use yourself or whatever that's up to you. But as far as being considered a flagpole sitter. That's it. You sit on top of a flagpole for as long

as you can. All right, So let's talk about this guy, because Shipwreck Kelly was a pretty interesting character. Uh. And I have to say there's a Memory Palace episode about him that I specifically didn't listen to you beforehand because I didn't want to unconsciously rip it off. Go listen to that, yeah, or Buddy Nate, I'm gonna check that

out for sure. So Alvin Kelly, Uh, he was born Aloysius Anthony Kelly in New York City, in Hell's Kitchen in a tenement in eight and had a very sad start to his life and that his father was had already passed before he was born. His mother passed in childbirth, and that basically meant he was shuttled around two relatives and orphanages from you know, the minute he took his

first breath. Yeah. Um, And apparently from a pretty pretty early age he would do things like climb flagpoles and other tall stuff and like working at heights became a kind of a recurring theme in his life. Um. Was supposedly by age seven, he was climbing flagpoles. Within a few years after that, he was starting to scale the facades of some of the buildings in his neighborhood. And

by the time he was thirteen. And bear in mind, if this guy's biography seems a little thin, he just came out of nowhere in n for sitting on a flagpole. So all of the info about him came from him to reporters who were reporting in the nineteen twenties. So just fabrications are flying around left and right. But um, supposedly he ran away at age thirteen and ran off to join uh the crew of a cargo ship and

start his life sailing the seas. Yeah, and he did a lot of kind of odd jobs, or maybe not odd jobs, but just jobs that didn't have anything to do with one another. Uh. Over the next couple of decades, he was in the movies as a a stand in and a double He was a stunt person, a stunt pilot, high diver, a boxer. Uh, this part I love. There's actually a name for people that repair church steeples, and what is that steeple jack. He was a steeplejack. That

is definitely a band name for sure. Steeple Jack oh yeah, it sounds like maybe an industrial band, but like on the light side, like they like they're technically too melodic to actually be considered industrial, but they still call themselves industrial. That's become my favorite part of this whole band name thing, is you describing what kind of band it is? Okay, well thanks man. That that that makes me feel warm

and funny. So, um, World War One comes along, and he was in the Naval Auxiliary Reserve as an ensign and served on the USS Edgar f Lukenbach during that war. Yep, so he did have some sort of well I should say, I don't know if anybody's corroborated that, um, but we'll just take all that at face value because it doesn't really matter at this point. But what he eventually picked

up the nickname shipwreck. And there's a lot of different um explanations for this, and he's given or he gave multiple different explanations depending on what reporter he was talking to. But one of the numbers that gets bandied about pretty frequently is that shipwreck Kelly was so named because he survived thirty two different shipwrecks at sea. And where this is where shipwrecks tend to happen with the good old days. Third, yeah,

up stories about yourself. Do you remember when we talked about um, we did an episode on the World's Either Luckiest or Unluckiest People? And do you remember that one guy He was like, I I survived a car that fell off a cliff, and I survived a train wreck and all that. He was doing his jam in like two thousand five, remember, was he? Yeah, he was pretty pretty recent if I remember correctly. Remember his son came out was like, everybody, this is not true, right, Like,

none of what you're talking about is true. Well, we did had just fooled you all. We don't know if a shipwreck Kelly actually survived the Titanic like he claimed, but we do know that he was not on the roster on the Titanic, So I am going to venture to say that he made that one up. And there were three Kelly's on board, but who were survivors? But all three of them were women, So yeah, he probably wasn't on the Titanic. Maybe he did survive from shipwrecks.

He was at sea most likely, But the point is that they call him shipwreck Kelly, and I guess somebody went to the trouble of digging up that. Uh. Some reporters who covered his boxing career are probably the likeliest source for where he got his nickname shipwreck, right, which I love because I guess he wasn't a great boxer, because they said that he was often adrift and ready to sink that great shipwreck Kelly. It's a great nickname and an even better origin story than surviving thirty two

shipwrecks if you asked me. Yeah. And the other thing we don't know for sure is even if that Hollywood movie premiere story is correct in his first major outing as a flagpolesitter, because uh, yet another story says no, this is actually in Philadelphia at a department store and he just did it on a dare and the department store got a lot of business because people are standing around looking and then doing some shopping. So they were like, Hey,

stay up there and I'll give you some extra dough. Yeah. So, either way, it's pretty widely held that Shipwreck Kelly was the guy who started the flagpole sitting craze. And it was a craze because this is a time where you could go sit on a flagpole for thirteen hours and thirteen minutes, and newspapers around the country would pick up the story and write about it. Um, and you would say, become famous overnight. And that's exactly what happened to Shipwreck Kelly.

So that's prong one towards this becoming a fad in the nineties. The other criteria is that um, people have to want to topple that record, and that was very widespread at the time too, because the nineteen twenties were actually really big into fads, like people would take up weird fads and just go nuts over for basically the whole decade. Yeah, you know, people had time, and they had fewer distractions. Yeah, no TV. So like someone doing a dance a thon for twenty eight hours or sitting

on a flagpole for a day. You know, it's a it's an interesting story. Back then it's sad, but that that was interesting, but it was so uh well, we'll talk about dance marathons and then we'll take a break. Okay, okay, okay, Oh wait, I got that backwards, Chuck. I just realized hopefully Jerry figured it out and there was an ad in there somewhere. I think we should just leave it just like that though. That'll be fun. Okay, So um,

we're gonna talk about marathon's. Dance marathon's now after the ad break, despite what I said before, and dance marathons are a super twenties example of a crazy fad that kind of came along and got everybody by the hackles, and people across the country started entering basically dance marathon competitions because of one person, one woman, a dance instructor

named Alma Cummings, that's right, thirty two years old. She danced for twenty seven hours at the Audubon Ballroom in New York in nine three with six different dance partners. And uh, it was a weird time because it wasn't just dancing, it was endurance challenges as a whole. We're just all the rage and punishing your bodies and all these weird random ways from yo yoing too hula hooping to rocking in a rocking chair or skipping rope uh

to dancing dancing was the big one. That's where you You know, if you see these videos of these marathon dance competitions, it's just it looks like hell on Earth. It looks awful. Yeah, oh yeah, they didn't seem very fun at all, but um, Alma Cummings just kicked the whole thing off. And again, just like Shipwreck Kelly, who would follow I guess a year later, um or even yeah, about a year later. Uh, she got a lot of publicity.

There's like a famous photo of her with her feet in a tub of water soaking at home and she's holding up her shoes and they have holes in the souls where you know, she wore holes from dancing for

twenty seven hours. And I guess, like you're saying people were bored or there wasn't as much to do, but also there really seems to just be a profound hunger for celebrity however you can get it, and that seemed to be like really drive people who wanted to be like, well, if this lady got this much attention for dancing twenty seven straight hours, maybe I can get even more attention

for dancing thirty straight hours. And so within just like I think three weeks of Alma Cummings setting this record for dancing, um, it had been broken nine times at least from people trying to seek the same kind of publicity she got. Yeah, and you know, it's funny. It really like we talked about these days, how everyone wants their ten minutes or they want to be reality show famous or whatever, and I been whittled down to ten Now.

I thought it was like fifteen. Well, like that's something new, and it's really not like this is sort of this The version of that back then was I want to be famous, I want my names in the papers, but I'm not particularly skilled enough to do anything to do that. So I'll rock in a rocking chair for three days. Yeah, you know, and hopefully they will come. Um rock, they will come. And it's that was a pity laugh at best, but I appreciate. Well it's a bad joke admittedly, Um,

but it would. And we we should shout out a bunch of great websites here because um this next bit came from Atlas Obscura, one of our favorite sites and also our dearest of old sites that we always have loved Mental Floss, Ripley's History Daily, j Mark Powell, and Historic Pellem, which is great, but um, Atlas Obscura talks about the in the thirties and this is really kind

of depressing. Um during the depression. It's very appropriate is that sometimes people would enter these dance marathons because it would be somewhere they could sleep and eat for a week at a time when they didn't necessarily have a home or food. Yeah, it's extremely depressing, or just the prize money that was offered in the depression might be

enough to keep your house from being foreclosed on. So yeah, the thing is is, you know, you can blame promoters for continuing this long beyond the fad, but the promoters wouldn't have been putting these on and offering these price this prize money where it not for all the crowds that would show up every day to watch these people get increasingly closer to you know, catastrophic exhaustion from from

dance marathons. Because like there were there were rules where you know, probably early on in the dance marathon, um, you could sleep or rest for fifteen minutes of every hour, and then after like a week a week of this dance marathon going on, the promoter might be like, okay, well, you know, we need to step things up a little bit and you will now have three minutes per hour every twenty four hour period in a day to where you can rest and then towards the end, they'd be like,

no rest. I think I read about one where the last fifty seven hours of a multi week um dance marathon was like I had no rest. So these people dance for more than two straight days constantly. You had to constantly be in motion and your knees couldn't touch the ground or else you'd be disqualified. Yeah, and if you look at footage of this stuff, I mean it's charitable, we'll call what they're doing is dancing. Toward the end, it's just hanging. It looks like two corpses hanging on

each other, sort of swaying back and forth. Yeah, I don't get I mean any of these things, even the modern day versions of like these contest where you have to keep your hand on a car or whatever, oh man, or sit in the car. I knew a guy that did one of those where you try to win a Volkswagen Beetle by sitting in it with four other people in a mall. I'm just like, oh, yeah, you told us that story before. Did he win or not? I

think he did, But there's just no way kill me. Yeah, it would be really awful for sure, because let's say, for one of those contests. Let's say don't win, then you've just sat in a car with three strangers for a week and he didn't even get the car. But even if you did get the car, imagine yourself five years on and that car is like like curst, there's tears in the seats or something like that, you know,

and like the glove compartment won't close. It's you know, I mean, I guess you've got a story to tell a cocktail parties, but even that would wear thin after a while. But but Chuck, we need people to do stuff like that because there's something about contests like this. There's something about fads like flagpole sitting that keep humanity from becoming too cerebral, you know what I mean, from

just becoming like computers. Basically, we need people to do stuff like this because it brings out some juvenile something in us that makes us want to find out about it or learn about it or talk about it. And I think that's good. I think that's healthy for our species. All right, it's my it's my take. It's genuinely off the cuff. I'm actually just surprised at myself that I just said that out loud. You're just riffing. Yeah, so

shipwreck Kelly back to flagpole sitting. Uh, that initial thirteen minutes sit, like you said, inspired so many others to break it, and it was getting broken in pretty short order. Um, kind of like the dance a Thons. That was a woman named Bobby Mack from l A who did it. A guy named Joe hold Him Powers who did this in Chicago for sixteen days, um, another guy for fifty one days named Bill Bill Penfield. Yeah, so so let's point this out. Take a second here, ship Breck Kelly

did thirteen hours and kicked off a national fad. These people are now in two weeks at a time. Fifty one days is more than seven weeks up there. It's pretty impressive. I'm impressed at least. Yeah, are you bucking the cerebral yes? Right now? Can you tell uh? Let me see here. In the twenties, it was a fifteen year old boy, um who set the kid record for ten days, ten hours, ten minutes, and ten seconds. I think that was planned. I yeah, if not, then but

see there you go, Chuck, we're thinking about that. It's making us think. This little kid is making us think we got to avoid that it needs to be random, random combinations of no so we don't start thinking about it. We should also point out that not everyone was like, oh, this is the best thing ever. In Cosmopolitan magazine, Cosmo called it competitive uh imbecility. Yeah, this is fine, we need that too. I have to say, I want to

say something. Here is a little p s A. This might not even ever make it in the final edit, so I'll just say it to you. How about that?

I would say, the last like few weeks of episodes, Um, there's been like some some good ones here there, but overall I find that they've been less good because I am so sick of myself because we've been so entrenched in the book right now, so it's like living breathing s y s K, which is us, and having to confront and like myself and my own personality and sense of humor and whether that's actually funny, and just constantly thinking about this on top of doing the podcast, on

top of the other stuff we're trying to do now too, and I am so sick of myself. I can barely tolerate listening to myself talk. So if anyone's picked up on the last few episodes, like in the last few weeks, just being a little ho hum, that's why. And I apologize. Maybe we'll go back and redo them one day. News to me, I think, okay, you've been great. Hey, thanks a lot, man, That's ultimately what I was fishing for.

Al Right, well, if you want to cut that part out, let's let me pick this up by saying, and I'm sure you've made a great point, Josh. So so back to Kelly. Right, you've got all these what I'm sure shipwrecked Kelly deemed slack jawed, yokel's ho homes, that kind of thing. Um who were out there trying to topple his record, and they did, some did topple his record, but nobody had turned this into a business like shipwreck

Kelly had. Here was a one man money making machine who made his money just by sitting on top of a flagpole. Good money because he was really good at self promoting, Like there wasn't a reporter who's the year. He wouldn't bend if he got the chance. And in these reports um or these articles, he would say things like, yeah, I'm in town for this, but if anybody has any other offers, I'm wide open. And I'm staying at you know, the Cambridge Arms um I Tinerant hotel for the next

few days. If somebody wants to get in touch with me there with a job offer, like he was really good at at attracting job offers, specifically for flagpole sitting. Yeah, and he made good dough for back then. I mean, this is good money anytime. If he made a hundred dollars an hour like he claimed to um, other people said, now, it really wasn't that much. It was probably closer to anywhere between a hundred and five hundred dollars a day.

Still a lot of money. And um, like you said, it was like he was almost like a celebrity version of a sign spinner, Like if you could pay George Clooney to sign spin in front of your mobile phone store. Uh huh. That was sort of what Chiprette Kelly was. That's a great one I got into. It's almost like if there was a cult of personality built up around like the flapping dancing windsock guy that they put out in front of like mattress mattress stores in like two

thousand five. Ye I love those dudes. Okay, those are fun both I think both of those are high quality analogies. Well, we'll see which one Jerry's is in the end it okay, uh, let me see here here here are some of his longer sits. He did a hundred and forty six hours at the Old Westgate Hotel in Kansas City. Three hundred and twelve hours in Newark, New Jersey, atop the St. Francis Hotel. That's pretty good. Sure, I don't know what

that is in days, but three twelve hours. Let's see if you divided that by twenty four, as you should, you would come up with something along the lines of thirteen days on the nose. M all right, Well, how about twenty two days? And this was in conjunction with

a dance marathon at none other than Madison Square Garden. Yeah, because I don't know if we said or not, but there was a dance marathon at Madison Square Gardens that was actually shut down by the Health Department because they decided to have gone on too long ten days, and that it deemed a threat to the health of the participants. That wasn't the one that he he sat in, but there was one the following year where for what was it twenty two days. That means that the dance marathon

went on for twenty two days. But imagine that. So you've got these two endurance fads just interweaved in this way that the universe almost like collapses in on itself because they're put together too too close together there, you know.

Uh yeah, And here's how he would do it. He would sit on a on that bar stool like thing, and it was padded and he would, um, you know, eat and smoke cigarettes and shave apparently, and they would send this up stuff up in like a with a bucket and a rope and tell him how he would sleep.

Because this is what I really kind of wanted to know. So, so you said his his seat was like a bar stool around bar stool basically, right, and um, it was on a pole, flag pole appropriately, And then in the flag pole you'd have two holes drilled just beneath the seat. And now that I'm doing it, I'm like, that's really hard to reach. So now I'm questioning whether this is

true or not. Maybe so, but he so he would plug his his thumbs into those holes drilled into each side of the flagpole, so that when he started to lean forward, the pressure from that the flagpole on his thumbs would kind of cut into his skin and wake him up just enough that he would adjust himself. And apparently he got so good at this that he would adjust himself to sit back up so he wouldn't fall over off of the flagpole while he was still sleeping,

like he wouldn't he wouldn't wake up. He could just adjust himself in his sleep, that's right. And he'd have his little uh, I don't know if they're a little bit. He would have his ankles locked around the pole and apparently would tether a leg to keep him from a catastrophe. But I I think it's very dubious that that was a solid life saving rig. Yeah, And I mean, like some of these flagpoles, he's sitting on fifty ft um

one of them. I guess the impression I had the one that you mentioned on um Kansas City's Westgate Hotel that that flagpole was on the top of the roof of the hotel. So I mean he was up there for sure, and if he had something gone wrong, he would have that tether probably would not have done terribly much, or it would have done a lot to keep his leg hanging up there, but the rest of him would have kept going to the ground. You know, how did he Uh he had a little contraption for that with

the tube that went down. But here's the thing. So you're you're a traveling flagpole sitter. You're relying on the help of other people on the ground. You need food. You when you pee and poop into that contraption that leads to a tube that goes down to the ground, you don't want that just leaking out for the spectators to see and smell and experience. You needed to go into a bucket that somebody's going to go take away

and dump. So you're relying on this kind of group of assistance in hands that probably the promoter maybe helped hire for you. Maybe you make a friend along the way who just kind of travels from town to town with you for a little while, an assistant. He had a boy business, right, he had a lad who would help him. Yeah, yeah, uh so, uh but it would be a pretty bad job. Yeah. But anyway, so he had to I mean, he had to eat, and he didn't eat much. He would apparently just kind of almost

do a broth fast um augmented with cigarettes and coffee. Um, he would stay up for four days at a time, because like, living on a flagpole is not exactly like the most comfortable place you can exist for, you know,

twenty two days or thirteen days or however long. No, And it eventually turned against him, and that the money dried up after he did this sort of big Atlantic city stunt that we talked about and it was the Great Depression, and eventually people were kind of like, I don't really care so much about this dumb stunt because I'm starving and I'm broke and I'm homeless, right, And that the kind of tide of public opinion turned such that he went to do this in the Bronx and

he was actually arrested for public nuisance. Yeah, and I'm sure he was like, but I'm shipwreck Kelly, right, But I mean think about it, that's like everybody's sick of you now, Kelly and your stick. We're all just depressed in the depression. So maybe we'll do a dance marathon, but we're not gonna watch you sit around in a

flag pole anymore. And um there was a contemporary article that was written at the time that said that um he he attributed the decline of Flagpole, sitting directly to the stock market crash, and he said that people didn't want to see anything higher than their securities stock securities at the time, which we're not very high. So then everyone went, that's just not even a joke in good taste and he and he punches human familiar in the mouth and say, you told me to tell that joke? Man?

That was Gangbusters, Chuck? Do you watch that? Ship? Got me? What we do? What we do in the Shadows. I've seen some episodes of it, you know. We were talking about it, and one of the p a s I think, wrote in to say that they were they were just blown away that we were. We're giving such big ups to their show. If you talk to Matt Barry, tell him he's a comedy genius. I never heard anything back. But oh, have you seen an evening with Beverly luff Lynn? No,

how do I know that name? So it's a um Craig Robinson, Yes, from the office, right, he plays a guy named Beverly luf Lynn And uh Aubrey Meadows, Audrey Meadows Plaza, that's right, man, I'm yeah, um And then uh, okay, so she's the main character, Jermaine Clement. I know him that he plays well, you just have to see it anyway. So what he was and what we do in the Shadows the movie right right, So he I think he coke eatd it too. This is what all ties into this.

He and Matt Barry are also in this too. Matt Berry is in the TV version of what we do in the Shadows. The main Clement help help create it. But um, it's definitely worth watching. Is purposefully very bizarre, which can get really annoying really easily, but this movie pulls it off very well, like purposeful bizarreness and for humor. Um, And it's a good it's a good movie. It's worth watching. Okay, it's worth watching. I leave it to you to decide whether it's a good movie or not. Well, I love

everybody in it. That's a great cast. Yeah, I mean it's a it's a it's a it's worth watching. How about that? All right? Should we take our second break here? Can you believe we haven't? Yes? I can. All right, let's do our other break and then we're gonna talk about we're gonna wind up this flagpole sitting thing. Right after this Okay, So Kelly, when we left off, the public turns on him. They don't care about him anymore.

He's he's probably drunk in some hotel room somewhere with his human familiar talking about the good old days at

this point, right, Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of sad. I get the impression, um, that the Memory Palace episode really focuses on the sad decline of shipwreck Kelly, because I mean, he was a celebrity, a national probably international celebrity, for like a decade, a decade for sitting on flagpoles, and then all of a sudden, he's just done, Like society rops him like a hot potato, and he's penniless and on public assistance. Basically. Yeah, and he died a very

sad death he did. Uh. And I think his final flagpole sit it was all the way in the nineteen fifties and Orange Texas in nineteen fifty two. He was almost sixty years old at this point, and he had, during the publicity run up to this, had two heart attacks. Um, well, was he sitting on his pole for publicity or was this part of the pole sitting when he had the heart attacks? He was? He had the heart attacks on

the pole during the publicity. Oh so the the actual sit was another publicity stunt for some place, right, Yeah, I don't know what business it was for. I didn't see that, but I did see that. The promoters were like, come down right now, we we we don't think you're going to survive a third heart attack, so stop, which is crazy. I mean, it's only fifty nine at the time. Yeah, but fifty nine in the nineteen fifties, that was when

your name was shipwreck. Yeah. But he did die of that third heart attack like a week after that, right, Yeah, he's walking around New York on fifty one Street and um he dropped that on the sidewalk from a heart attack. And he uh was found holding a scrapbook of all like clippings of newspaper articles about him during his heyday. Isn't that sad? It's like a movie. Yeah, I can't believe this is a movie. He's I mean, he's a gold mine just waiting to be well mined. Uh wait, wait, wait,

there's one other thing about him. After he um was done with this flag poles sitting career, the heyday of it. He one of the jobs he had was as a jiggle oh, a male escort who would dance with whoever wanted him to dance at the Roseland ball Room near Times Square. He was a private dancer, a dancer for money. I've been to roseland they've seen some good shows there. Yeah, well you were where Shipwreck Kelly danced for a diamond dance because he was a jiggilow. I would have paid

for that dance. Sure, tell him to sit on my head. Hey, he'll do what you want him to do. Oh boy, Um, So we looked, or rather you look, because you put this one together and you found one death from flagpole sitting. Isn't that right? That's all I could turn up. Surely, surely there were more, but I could really only find one. And this guy was wonderful in every way. Dick Blandy, Dixie Blandy, Richard Dixie d I x I E. Bland

Dick Dixie Blandy. Sure so, Dixie Blandy. He was a flag pole sitter who was contemporaneous to Shipwreck Kelly, a little bit like during I. Surely he was directly inspired by Shipwreck Kelly. He came along and started in ninety nine, which was almost the worst year you could join the flagpole sitting movement, because just the next year shipwreck, Kelly had his triumphant sit aboard like a or above two. What triumphant sat? Yeah, Well it was triumphant for a

couple of reasons. One it was his longest sit I believe twenty two days, twenty three days, something like that. And secondly, it's aboard or above um a top a two hundred foot flagpole for weeks he sat up there. That's triumphant if you ask me. But he did his in nineteen thirty and everybody dropped him right after. Dixie

Blandy just started in nine. But even though people said flag pole sitting so out, we're not going to bother even looking up when we see somebody on a flagpole, Dixie Blandy said, you know what, I'm not giving up on this. And he continued to make a career out of it wherever he could, yes, until he died from flagpole sitting, and at the age of seventy one in nineteen seventy four, he fell off of his flagpole. It was a fifty foot pole And uh, where was this

in in Harvey? Yeah, I get the impression in Pennsylvania, Harvey, Pennsylvania. Yeah, because the article that reported on it as if it were something of a nearby event was called The Reading Eagle. And reading is in Pennsylvania, right, Uh yeah? Is it reading whatever? I can't tell you how many times I've been told that since I was a child playing monopoly, and it's just never stuck for some reason. Was that

the titular railroad? M okay, well, reading railroad? We said, reading, Yeah, that's right, that's what I said too, But apparently he's ready. Well I don't know. I didn't know. It's the same thing. Um, but either way, this is where Harvey and of course it's all it's always like the grand opening of a chopping center or something, and that's what was going on. Here's a four day promotion and um he basically said, I think this pole was attached to a trailer and

the trailer moved. Is that right? Well, he asked a security guard to move the trailers so they can make room for what I took to be a cherry picker

that could go up and get them. This is hours before the end of his four day sit and um when the security guard, I guess who had never tried this before, moved the trailer guy wire that was stabilizing the pole, became taught and actually pulled the pole, snapped the pole in two with Dixie still on top of this fifty foot pole, and he landed scoll first, from what I can tell, onto the to the asphalt below.

That's not what you want to to open your grocery store with no or, or to close your flagpole sit with no either way. He it's a bad jam. This was not his only accident to this is the one that got him, but he had fractured his skull before when he was thrown off a pole in a storm in n And then there was this is heartwarming. In X one, he was doing a pulse sit for promotion, dressed as Santa Claus and he was shouting Merry Christmas. That was his job, sit on the top of the

flag pole and shot Merry Christmas. And apparently it got to the point where he finally yelled down that he was getting numb and he had to be taken to the hospital, which is this is what I'm talking about. Man, just no thought. It doesn't take thought to just think about flagpole sitting. And I love that about it Yeasry Christmas, Christmas.

I think I think there's something wrong up here. I gotta go to the hospital because I'm sitting on top of a flagpole Justice Santa Claus shouting Merry Christmas for three days and it's December in Pennsylvania. In reading, it's reading right. Uh. And this was you know, these were definitely the waning days. This was in the nineteen seventies. There were some other stunts throughout the years. Here and there. A couple got married a top of flagpole. Um, let

me see here. Seventeen year old in nineteen sixty three named Peggy Townsend spent two hundred and seventeen days on a pole for a contest for a radio station. And then the granddaddy of them all, this guy, Kenneth gedge ken Gidge two hundred and forty eight days in nineteen seventy one. This guy would later on be a state rep for New Hampshire. And uh, he I mean reading his account, he was he was basically like, it was terrible and I hated it. Every He had a parakeet.

He had his parakeet with him named Nixon, and he said that his parakeet came to hate him, like despise him. He said he didn't think any animals ever hated somebody more than that parakeet hated him, probably because he made him stay up there in this little tiny house. The top of fiberglass poles sway back and forth. He couldn't lay down straight in it because the pole, so he

had to lay wrapped around the pole. Um. It sounds really horrible and terrible, and he did it to get publicity because he was an out of work actor, I guess at the time. Yeah, like I said to called the thing of house is generous. It's this little you can see a picture of it, but it was it was some sort of shelter. At least he wasn't just sitting like on a bar stool like a shipwreck Kelly for two days. But it was bad and he and

it's just funny reading these quotes from him. He he did not have a good time, and he just basically kind of talked about how awful it was. Yeah, he said. They said that he lost fifteen pounds three inches from his waist in thirteen days of sleep, just within the first three months, and that when people would come out, like when the weather is nice, people come out and

shout questions up to him, and he talked to him. Uh, and he said the men usually asked, um, if he sleeps and how he goes to the bathroom, and then women asked if he was lonely, which I find very sweet. But um, I mean, remember we started out here at thirteen hours is what kicked this off. And this guy, Kenneth Gidge has has brought it up to two forty eight days. But Chuck, that does not seem to be the record any longer. In fact, the record may never

be broken. Ever. What do you think? Yeah, h David Werder of Wiki Watchee, Florida, Man, this is unbelievable. Sat for four hundred and thirty nine days, eleven hours, six minutes. Yeah, his sit went from two to night. That's amazing. Yeah. And it was outside of an appliance center in clear Water. And he didn't do this as like a publicity stunt for that appliance center. He did it to protest gas

prices at the time. Yeah, that's how you see these these days sometimes his protests, sure, but the gas at the time was nine cents a gallon. That's cute. So his protest didn't work at all. But he spent four hundred and thirty nine days of his life on a flag pole because it was mad about the price of gas. No thought whatsoever to a zen like beautiful state. Is what this man achieved? Is that the overarching theme? Yep, I think so man? Alrighty, you got anything else? Uh? Yeah,

I mean we we should mention David Blaine. He very famously did this standing in two thousand two. Remember that for how long? No? I don't remember that at all. He stood atop of ninety ft pole for thirty five hours in Bryant Park in New York. And this is when he was doing those Uh. I'd love the guy as the street magician and give me a little levitation trick. But when he was like I'm gonna hold my breath or I'm gonna be encased in ice or stand on

this thing, that's when I lost interest. Oh yeah, yeah, I like street magic too. It's pretty great stuff. Yeah, but yeah he stood. It's tough to stand. I mean, sitting is is hard, but standing as a whole different deal. Yeah, for sure. I wouldn't want to do it. Nope, So you got anything else about flagpoles? Sitting? I don't well then chuck. That means, of course, it's time for listener mail. This is Oh, this is just funny. Remember in the Brockism I talked about my doctor Tuggle. Uh, this comes

from Joe and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He said, Hey, guys, thanks for you the entertainment knowledge. Your discussion of doctor names at the end of the Brocksis and podcast reminded me of two anecdotes. My ex wife had a dentist in San Francisco named Dr Drilling. No pretty good, huh sure, and this is even better, he said. Second, this one never gets appreciated as much by others for some reason. It must she just hit me the right way. But

I'm with you, Joe, it hits me too. She worked with a medical worked in medical administration, and her boss at one point was named Dr Walked w A c h t e R pronounced Walked, and he said I could just imagine her submitting daily reports using baby talk, going here, Dr Walked, here your robots for the day. Man, this guy is our new mascot here on the show. I think we need to actually get him on here. What's his name? Joe and Gettysburg, I love it. Yeah, Joe,

way to go. This is one of the best listener mails I think I've ever heard, Chuck dr walked Um. Well, if you want to be like Joe and try to topple his record as the eightist email listener mail writer of all time, um, let's take your best shot. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, running up the flag pole, and see who salutes it at stuffed podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.

For more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H