Futility Closet - 071-Godless in Missouri

Episode Date: August 31, 2015

In 1880, freethinking attorney George Walser tried a new experiment in the American heartland -- a community dedicated against Christianity, "the only town of its size in the world without a priest, preacher, saloon, God or hell." In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we'll tell the story of Liberal, Missouri -- its founding, its confrontations with its Christian neighbors, and its ironic downfall. We'll also puzzle over how a woman can suddenly be 120 miles away in just a few minutes. Sources for our feature on Liberal, Mo.: J.P. Moore, This Strange Town -- Liberal, Missouri: A History of the Early Years, 1880 to 1910, 1963. Lawrence O. Christensen, William E. Foley, and Gary Kremer, Dictionary of Missouri Biography, 1999. Tom Flynn, ed., The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, 2007. Steve Everly, "History of Southwest Missouri Town Shows Triumph of Faith Over Skepticism," Nevada Daily Mail, Dec. 26, 2001. Marvin Vangilder, "Missouri Town Might Assure Stockton as Atheist Target," Associated Press, Sept. 4, 1963. "Necrology," Missouri Historical Review, July 1910. "Missouri Geography: Community Experiments," in Walter Barlow Stevens, Missouri the Center State: 1821-1915, Volume 2, 1915. George Henry Walser, The Life and Teachings of Jesus, 1909. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener David White, who sent these corroborating links (warning -- these spoil the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation via the Donate button in the sidebar of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to Futility Closet, a celebration of the quirky and the curious, the thought-provoking and the simply amusing. This is the audio companion to the website that catalogs more than 8,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Episode 71. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1880, Missouri attorney George Walzer tried a new experiment in the American heartland. He founded a town devoted to secular principles and opposed to Christianity. In today's show, we'll tell the contentious story of liberal Missouri,

which Walzer called the only town of its size in the world without a priest, preacher, saloon, god, or hell. We'll also puzzle over how a woman can suddenly be 120 miles farther away in just a few minutes. This is the story of the founding of a town called Liberal, Missouri, which was a town that was founded in 1880 with the explicit aim of excluding religion, or I should say excluding Christianity in particular, for reasons that aren't very clear. But the town itself tried to make an example of that way of life and pretty quickly devolved into what I think you'd have to call self-satire. See what you think. The town is still there, Liberal, Missouri. It's in southwestern Missouri. It's about 125 miles south of Kansas City. Today, it's just a regular town, but it was founded under very different principles.

It was founded by a very zealous man named George Walser, who was an attorney. Basically, he was born in Indiana, served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and afterwards moves west to Barton County, Missouri, and began practicing law there in Lamar, which is the county seat. He entered local politics as a Republican and served the county as superintendent of entered local politics as a Republican and served the county as superintendent of schools and a prosecuting attorney, and he was even elected a couple times to the state house of representatives. Why he hated Christianity, I don't know, and

neither does any source I've been able to find. The only biographer I can find who even takes a stab at it says that he was born when the Salem witch trials were still a memory, but even that's not true. He was born in 1834, and the trials, the last trials were held at the end of the 1600s, so no one feels that strongly about it at that great distance. So nobody really knows. I guess the 1900s were a time of great ferment and change in the country, and there was a movement of free thinking, which is basically the idea that you should establish your beliefs for yourself based on evidence and reason as opposed to accepting what other people tell you.

Like tradition and authority. Yeah, and so there were speakers and writers about that, including in particular a man named Robert Green Ingersoll, who was and is a really compelling writer about this stuff, and Walser was a fan of his, but why he felt so strongly about this, no one seems to know. Anyway, feel strongly he did, and in 1880, he went so far as to buy 2,000 acres of arable farmland

about 17 miles west of Lamar. This had good prospects, just from an economic standpoint. The farmland was good. It had underlying coal deposits, so they hoped they could mine for coal as well. There was one railroad that already went through the area, and a second one was being planned, so they would cross nearby. So that all looks good. This is all about six miles from the Kansas border. He drew up a plat, which is basically a plan for the town, which is relatively small,

eight city blocks, 25 business lots, 57 residential lots, and a city park. And the plat was dedicated and recorded on October 26, 1880. Right from the beginning, he was, I think, way too zealous about this. On the plat itself, he wrote, it is the only town in the United States set apart for liberalism alone and the only town of its size in the world without a priest, preacher, saloon, god, or hell. This is before they'd even built the town. He later described liberal in these words, We have here neither priest, preacher, justice of the peace, or other peace officer,

no church, saloon, prison, drunkard, loafer, beggar, or person in want, nor have we a disreputable character. This cannot be truthfully said of any Christian town on earth. So he was going to somehow keep out drunkards and anybody who would need a prison or a justice of the peace? Evidently, yes. He had this sort of idealistic vision of this utopian little town in Missouri. Did he think that Christians were drunkards and caused disruptions,

or he just was going to keep out Christians and... Christians and drunkards. Okay, okay. He was opposed to both. Which is something, I guess. I just wanted to be clear on that. Anyway, this is for whatever it's worth. This was all planned out ambitiously, I guess I should say.

Here's a list of the institutions he set up in this town. A National Liberal Orphans Home, whose incorporation papers say that orphans would be taught an upright life, but not exposed to, quote, a sectarian or a supernatural religion, a freethought university with a faculty of seven that was established to provide a place for freethinkers where they could confidently send their children. According to one surviving publication, courses of study were, quote, untrammeled by Bible, creed, or isms,

and the catalog described it as, quote, the only institution of learning in America that is absolutely free from superstition. A normal day school, a secular Sunday school, which is a Sunday school that meets on Sundays to teach kids, but they get lectures about science instead of religion, and they conclude their lessons with chemistry experiments. And sort of the crowning part of all of this was a big public building, a sort of public forum that he called the Universal Mental Liberty Hall, where lectures

were given each Sunday evening, and anyone at all could speak there. Scientists, philosophers, socialists, atheists, Protestant ministers, and Catholic priests were all invited to speak. The only rule was that everyone had to observe the sort of respectable decorum, and by all accounts, it was actually pretty active. I mean, people took it seriously, and it was a sort of popular place to meet on Sunday evenings and discuss ideas. Also, he founded a fraternity that he called the Brotherhood, whose purpose was to visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead, and educate the orphan, which all sounds good enough. Also, interestingly, he even introduced a different dating system.

I don't know how well this worked, but instead of using the date of the birth of Jesus Christ as the base for the system, they used the year 1600 AD. For any particular reason? To honor Giordano Bruno, who that year was burned at the stake by the Catholic Church for his free thinking. So instead of saying, for instance, referring to the year A.D. 1882, you'd call that the E of M. 282 for Era of Man 282. Oh, wow.

But that's how Deepu's thinking. They're even going to change the way they reckon time. That could get confusing fast. I don't know how well that worked, but I'm kind of impressed that they even tried it. Anyway, this all succeeded fairly well in attracting people. I don't know how many came particularly. He promoted it nationwide to free thinkers, but I think people probably came for other reasons.

Who knows? So he founded it in 1880, and the population grew to 300 within three years. From 1887 to 1889, the estimates of the population varied from 500 to 800, and it may have topped 1,000 by 1900. My sources say that newcomers had to sign an agreement with Walser not to hold religious services on their properties. So I don't think a practicing

Christian could or would show up and take up residence there. I'm not positive about that. By 1903, Walser claimed that, quote, liberal received more newspaper publicity than any other town of its size in the United States, which might be true, and issued a brochure for the new town that read in part, liberal now has such an impetus that it can smile at the combined powers of priest, preacher, church, saloon, God, or hell, and they are the happiest and purest people on earth, the only fit home for liberally disposed persons. Liberal is in a good country, rich in all the needs of life usually found in good countries, addressed G.H. Walser, liberal, Barton County, Missouri. So that's how he set it up, and he got a thousand people to live there. Unfortunately, it started to unravel pretty

quickly because he kept trash-talking Christians so badly, and it sort of attracted opposition. In 1880, the idea of a freethinker basically meant an infidel, which was an offense to Christianity that some Christians at least felt ought to be opposed. And so after less than a year after the original plat was filed, he was already attracting opposition. Liberal became a mission field. If you were a Christian who felt that unbelievers ought to be converted, this was a goldmine that would attract people actively. And Walser realized this as Christians started to show up to try to convert people. According to an 1896 article in the Kansas City

Star, Walser tried to keep them out by posting his followers at the liberal train station to tell passengers that if they were Christians, they were not welcome. I hope that's not true, but I found that at least a couple sources. I think that's actually true. So now it quickly gets pretty silly. On May 20th, 1881, so this is seven months after the town is founded, a man named William H. Wagoner platted and began building his own addition just north of liberal. So you have a godless town in southwestern missouri and then just north of it this explicitly christian town waggoner let it be known that he hoped christians would flock to his settlement which is just north um and the way that also reacted to that was to build a high barbed wire fence between the two oh this is even sillier than it sounds the barbed wire fence doesn't go all the way around liberal it's just a pointless

bit of barbed wire a quarter mile long that the way around Liberal. It's just a pointless bit of barbed wire a quarter mile long that goes straight east to west between the two towns, just explicitly to keep Christians out of Liberal. And they shouted each other through that for two full years. They shouted each other through the barbed wire? Yeah.

I often, when I was researching, I was thinking if you were just a bluebird flying over this, all you would see is a pointless barbed wire fence with humans on each side yelling at each other. Like, what? Only humans would do this. The Christians put up a sign on their side that said, get thee out of Sodom. And Walzer stuck to the fence. He said, he wrote in his newspaper, by the way, he was editing a newspaper on top of all this, called The Liberal. He wrote, by this fence they could neither get ingress nor egress.

They could not climb over the fence because it was too high. They could not crawl under it because it was too low. And they could not crawl through because of the stickers on the wires. So they just sat down and swore that we were the meanest set on earth, and I guess we were. We saved the town by it, and now we are happy. He just declares that they're happy. I should just put my cards on the table here.

I guess I agree with his, the idea behind all this. I mean, I agree with the idea of his setting around beliefs based on reason and evidence. I guess I try to live my own life that way, or at least I admire people who do. But it seems to me if you want to convert anyone to any way of thinking, you have to show that it leads you to living a life that's sort of exemplary that someone would want to emulate. Yeah. And he didn't do that.

Being hateful isn't something you want to... Yeah, if you just shout hate through a fence, you're not going to inspire anyone to do anything. Anyway, this went on for one year and 11 months, and finally Wagoner, the guy who built the Christian town, just sort of gave up and sold out and left. So that takes care of the northern boundary of the town. In 1884, the next year, a rival town was set up to the west,

doing basically the same thing. This was at first called Denison and later Pedro. It wasn't explicitly against freethinkers, but it did appeal to Christians in sort of the same way, to have people show up and establish a town right next door to this godless town. And when this happened, a bunch of people left Liberal to go move into this new town, which I think is probably normal.

If you were just observing this sort of dispassionately, what happened is a bunch of people moved out from Liberal into Pedro and then eventually moved back in as Liberal began to revive. That just sort of happens normally with towns in general, I think. At the peak during the exodus, there was only one store remaining in liberal, but by the time people started to move back, in Pedro there was left only a post office, the school, the church, the hotel, and one store. Eventually, Pedro just became part of liberal in 1902. So there's nothing surprising about that, but Walser was so doctrinaire or tended to see

things with a certain slant. This is how he described that. The first two houses erected on the town site of Pedro were a church and a saloon. In a short time, the post office was established for their use and things went on swimmingly, but business did not follow. The people said they would rather stay with liberal and free thought than Christianity and drunkenness for they could send their wives and children to liberal without being insulted

by drunkards. Being unable to take business from liberal, their town dwindled, their church became a haunt of bats and cockroaches, and now the wind

whistles through the walls and caved in windows the requiem of spent nonsense. So that's a second town that disappeared. So now we've had Christian opposition towns north and west of the city. They might have built further ones on the south and east, but the

railroads raised their transportation rates, which made mining coal unprofitable, and that kind of pulled the rug out from under the whole experiment. I'm confused a little bit about how the saloons seem to go with the churches, or the drunkards seem to go with the Christians. Because I would have assumed that the more Christian towns would have not had alcohol. I guess that's just how I would have associated. But it seems like he's saying the Christian towns had more drinking and his secular town did not have drinking. I think liberal was completely dry. So there may, I don't know, there may have been Christian towns that explicitly completely banned alcohol banned alcohol but if they didn't if they had even one one saloon he would have seen

it badly yeah exactly uh so the railroads rates their transportation rates and that pretty much killed the town economically he also had substantial holdings in local mines which were now unprofitable he got into financial trouble and went to the extreme uh end of selling his precious universal mental liberty hall to the methodists of all people for 485 dollars and they built a church on the site this is less than 10 years after he'd founded the site oh uh walser had a lot of money but he invested most of it in the town including this uh public park full of catalpa trees it cost him 40 000 which is a huge sum today but back then it was unthinkably huge um there was also a spate of fires in 1895 that basically cost drove a lot of people out and drove down the population of the site so the whole thing

just sort of started to the whole dream started to fall apart yeah um liberal as i say is still there it's not explicitly anti-Christian anymore. It's home to seven different church fellowships, one for every hundred residents, in fact. And the original street names have been preserved, which are named after freethought heroes such as Robert Green Angersoll, Charles Darwin, and Thomas Paine. So it has that still

as a memory of how all this started out. But the bottom line is that the whole dream lasted for less than 10 years and fell apart really for economic reasons rather than the opposition of these hated Christians. There's a twist ending. Walser, the man who had founded this whole town and kept it going for as long as he could

explicitly to oppose Christianity, converted to Christianity at the end of his life. No, seriously. And I can't guess. I said in the beginning, I don't know why he hated Christians. I can't even tell you why he converted. At first he went to spiritualism, which was this movement in the 19th century that basically that if you can connect, there is a spirit world and if you can communicate with it,

the spirit will educate you about the larger meaning of the universe and knowledge of God. And so that, I guess, may have been a stepping stone into it. But he was explicitly Christian at the end of it. His last book is called The Life and Teachings of Jesus, and in that sands of desolation. I have looked for hope, and I found none. I felt there was something more, there must be something more, where nature is a fraud and life the gall of a bitter cheat. We are all passengers on the great ship of life going to another country to encounter new realities and experiences. Every person has a ship of his own and is his own pilot. To reach the port safely, we should study the chart which Jesus has given us. So make of that what you will.

I don't know, maybe he was just a very zealous man and just felt passionately about whatever he wound up believing. Maybe the spirits in spiritualism told him to convert. Yeah, if there's a moral to any of this, I'm not quite sure what it is. I guess try not to hate each other. I do have one question at the end here. This is just my own ignorance. It's not quite clear to me how any of this was legal.

Freedom of religion is considered a fundamental right in this country, and it certainly was in 1880. I don't think they passed any laws explicitly banning Christianity, but if the founder of the town meets you at the train station and says, Christians aren't welcome here, it seems to me if that happened today, you'd have grounds for some sort of complaint. So maybe if anyone knows the answer to that, as I say, I just, I'm certainly not a lawyer and I don't have these things work, but it sounds like something that ought not to be legal. So if you can shed any light on that, please write to us at

podcast at futilitycloset.com. This podcast is supported primarily by our phenomenal patrons. Greg does such a good job with his feature stories that it's easy to overlook how very much time goes into creating one. He spends many hours a week tracking down various sources, reading them, and then integrating all the information into a smooth and coherent story. So if you like Futility Closet and want to help support the show so that we can keep on making it, check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset

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Thanks so much to everyone who helps support Futility Closet. Greg's going to be solving a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to present him an interesting sounding situation, and he's going to have to try to figure out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. Are we ready? ready yes we hope we are uh this one was sent in by david white we have done several of his puzzles here good i like his yeah david usually sends in some good stuff so here's his most recent puzzle a street crew was doing noisy road work when a woman came up and demanded that

they stop the street crew agreed and a few minutes later they wanted to talk to the woman again. They were unable to do so, however, because by then she was over 120 miles away. How was that possible? All right. Did this really happen? Yes. This really happened. This really happened. A street crew is doing some noisy road work. Yes. Is everyone involved in this story human? Yes. Is the time period important? No. Is the...

Well, I was going to ask if the location's important, but it's sort of got to be. Is the location important? Some aspects of it, yes. All right. A noisy street crew is doing some road work. Right. A street crew was doing some noisy road work. Do I need to know more specifically what kind of work they were doing? Not necessarily.

So it's really just the fact that they were making noise that's important? Is that fair to say? No. No. All right. Let's go at it this way. You said a woman comes up? Yes. Is that how you phrased it? A woman came up and demanded that they stop.

On foot came up? Yes. Oh, really? Didn't drive up? Correct. Well, she probably drove into the area. Okay, but she approached them on foot. Yes.

They were doing noisy road work. She asked them, what did she ask them? She demanded that they stop. She demanded that they stop because they were making noise? Not completely, no. So it wasn't the noise that was her full concern? Correct. Were they, okay, so you say, I can't remember what you said.

Do I need to know specifically what they were doing on the road? No. I know what they were doing, but that's not necessary for solving the puzzle. So, all right. So if that's not necessary, then it means that the reason she asked them to stop wasn't because she didn't want the road repaired. I mean, she wasn't concerned about the actual substance of the work they were doing. Is that right? Right.

Yeah. There was another reason. It was the noise and perhaps something else well not really the noise some other concern yeah some other concern was paramount did she live nearby no she didn't live nearby are there other people involved no really just do i need to know how many people are in the road crew? No. Just some group of men? Can I call them men? Sure. Working on a road. Yes.

She approaches on foot and asks them to stop. Yes. And they do. And then read the rest of it? A few minutes later, they wanted to talk to her, but they were unable to do so because by then she was over 120 miles away. She was over 120 miles away. You say that's a few minutes later? Yes. away uh you say that's a few minutes later yes that's that's the that's the crux of the puzzle right there all right i'm i'm eager to get to that but let me ask first yes um do they do i need to

know the reason they wanted to talk to her no okay the point is just that she was too far away. Right, yes. She was a great distance away. She was 120 miles away. Was she overhead? No. No. Really? She covered 120 miles along... No, she did not. Read it again. She was over 120 miles away. Was she 120 miles away when she spoke to them the first time?

No. She approached them on foot and spoke to them. Yes. At that moment, was she sort of right next to them, like right inside of them? Yes. Okay. Good puzzle, David. So she's next to the road crew.

Yes. And then I think you said a few minutes later she was over 120 miles away? Yes. Do I have that right? Yes. You sound interestingly hesitant. Yes. There's different ways things can mean things, but...

But you say it's not quite accurate to say that she traveled 120 miles in a few minutes. Yes, exactly. Yes, it's not accurate. Yes, that is not accurate. This means something different. All right, let's come at this from the other direction. At the end of this story, is she 120 miles from the road crew? No.

Well, yes and no. I would have to say yes and no, depending on what you mean. Be more specific. Read it. It seems like the wording is really important. Read the end of it. Well, what David wrote was by then she was over 120 miles away. Okay.

All right. 120 miles away from the road crew? In some respects, yes. By a mile, you mean 500 and what is it, 52, 80 feet? Yes. Yeah. In distance, a distance measure, right? By mile, I mean a distance measure, right.

Okay, and there's 120 of those. Yes. Meaning a total distance of 120 miles. Yes. But you're saying that distance doesn't separate this woman from the road crew. In some ways it does, and in some ways it doesn't. Did the woman travel? She speaks to the road crew, and then something happened.

Yes. They stopped work. Yes. Was the road crew moving? No. They were just working stationary on a road? Yes. Yes. Okay, so she speaks to them. Yes. And then some minutes pass. Yes. During those minutes, does she move relative to the road crew? Yes, but not very far.

She's 120 miles. She's 120 miles. Is this... How do I say this? Are the miles figurative or representative? Like if this was on a Monopoly board or something like that. Yeah, no, it's not like that. They're actual miles.

Yes. Figure out what happened after, between the time that they talked to her, and then she's suddenly a distance away. Well, you say, okay, so she asked them to stop work, and they do stop. Yes. And some time passes, and they want to speak to her for some unimportant reason. That's all accurate? Right, right. What is important is why she asked them to stop, and then what happened next.

But you say that the actual type of work they were doing isn't particularly... Correct. So it's not the fact of stopping that produced this effect, whatever it is. Exactly. And you say she's still somewhat nearby. Did she move on foot? Yes. Let's say she moved on foot elsewhere.

Is her occupation important? Yes. Oh. I should have asked that in the beginning. That doesn't help at all. But it's good to know. She was there performing her occupation. She was there in the role of her occupation.

Did she work for the government? Is she enforcing some rule or law regulation and asking them to stop? No, no. Does she work with the road crew? Does she work with the road crew? Does she work with the road crew? Is she assisting them in telling them to stop? She doesn't work with the road crew, but I think they would consider it very helpful that she told them to stop. Because there was some danger?

Yes. She said, stop doing your road work. Was there an explosion? No. She said, stop doing your road work. If she hadn't, okay, if she hadn't asked them to stop. Right. Would some misfortune have occurred?

Yes. To the road crew? Yes. Because they were, were they digging a hole? Was it something like that? Do you know specifically what the, obviously what the misfortune was? I do. She was over a hundred miles.

And that the misfortune connects to, or what the potential misfortune would have been connects to now, why she suddenly 120 miles separated from the road crew. She wasn't, would you say she wasn't 120 miles separated before she spoke to them? Yes, that's correct. She was standing like right next to them and it would not have taken 120 miles to get to her. I really like this puzzle, but I feel like I'm not.

Is the location of the road or? Yeah, early on I said that some aspects of the location were important, but you didn't follow that. The location of the road is important. Okay, meaning the setting, like how the road is... Yes. Arranged, or you mean like actually that it's in Massachusetts or something? Not that it's like in Massachusetts, but... Is it an elevated road? I don't know.

That's not relevant. Is it on a cliffside or at some height? No, not necessarily. Is it what you'd call, say, ground level, just say sea level, just sitting there like a regular road? Sure. Is there something above it? Yes.

A structure? No. Is something falling? Does something fall? Yes. Something falls onto the road? Yes. Yes, let's go with that.

Okay, so she sees... That's the closest you've gotten. She sees that something is falling. No, but. She's aware that something. Is the road crew aware that something is falling? No. So she's warning them that something is falling.

Close enough. That's close. All right. So, and so she's giving them what you'd call a warning. Yes. Not so much to tell them to stop the road work as just to get out of the area. Yes. Okay. I'm not getting somewhere.

This is good. And they do? Yes. And so when they want to speak to her again later, the cause of the distance between them is not so much that she's moved, but that they have? No. Well, they've both moved a little bit because everyone's moved out of the area. It's a runway?

No. All right, something falls. I need to know what it is that falls. Yes and no, but falls is not exactly the right verb, but it's very close. Something comes out of the sky, descends? No, something descends. Something, is it, I have this picture of like a plane landing or something. No, it's nothing like that.

Is it a man-made's nothing like that is it a man-made object no is it a living thing no man-made it's not man-made it's not living is it so it's like a meteorite or something no something that was next to the road descends so something yes Descends. Descends, yes. But it's not a tree falls? No. Think bigger. You say it's not man-made, though. It's not man-made. A landslide?

Close enough. An avalanche? Something along those lines, yes. And what would happen? Well, that would endanger the road crew. Right. So they leave and... She warns them they leave. So no one's injured?

No one's injured, yes. They get out of harm's way. Yes. She apparently is not in harm's way. Right. So all that remains is to figure out this distance thing. Okay, so you just call it like a natural disaster? Yes, yes.

Is that the cause of this 120 miles 120 miles whatever that is yes between the right why and her why would there now suddenly be potentially 120 miles distance to be traveled if you wanted to talk to this woman because of change in the geography that's that's close did a river change course or some boundary was changed? No, no, no. Sounds like that's sort of what we're headed for, though. Something along those lines. If they wanted to speak to her, they then would have had to travel 120 miles, even though, as the crow flies, there's not such a long distance between them. Right, exactly, exactly.

So what sort of natural disaster could cause that? Was it just that whatever descended now blocked them? Exactly. I mean, it fell between the two of them? Yes, yes. 120 miles? So the road was completely blocked. And in order to get to her, they'd have to go a 120-mile detour around

because the main road through the area was now completely blocked. Basically what happened, David said, This puzzle is based on the dramatic rock slide that covered Highway 64 in Tennessee on November 10, 2009. Road crews were on site that morning to clear away large boulders and debris that already covered the highway. The work came to a sudden halt, however, when DOT geologist Vanessa Bateman arrived on the scene. Within a few minutes of her arrival and survey of the area, she ordered everyone to stop

working and get away from the work site. Less than 15 minutes later, the side of the mountain broke apart and slid onto the highway directly where the crew had been working. Thanks to Vanessa Bateman's timely arrival, there were no injuries, but there was some inconvenience for the road crews on either side of the rock slide. Although they were standing just a few yards apart, they were now separated by a 120-mile detour. I see. That's why you were sort of hesitating about, well, are they separated or are they? They sort of are and they sort of

aren't. There was a news crew covering the whole story that got some great video of the, basically a mountain sliding onto a road, and we'll put some links in the show notes for some great video on that. One member of the road crew said there was one rock in the road and now there

is no road. A TV news presenter on the story said they would have liked to have interviewed Ms. Bateman for the story, but she was unfortunately on the other side of the 120 mile detour and they couldn't get to her. That's a really good puzzle then. So thanks so much to David for sending in an excellent puzzle. And if anyone else has something they'd like to send in for us to use, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Well, that's one more episode for us. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, you can check out our books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com,

where you can sample over 8,000 enthralling beguilements. At the website, you can see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. Just click Podcast in the sidebar. If you'd like to support Futility Closet, please consider becoming a patron to help keep us going. You can find more information at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. You can also help us out by telling your friends about us or by clicking the Donate button on the sidebar of the website. If you have any questions or comments about the show, Thank you.