Futility Closet - 090-The Candy Bar War

Episode Date: January 18, 2016

In 1947, the price of a candy bar in British Columbia rose from 5 to 8 cents, and the local teenagers organized a surprisingly effective "strike" that soon spread across the country. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow Canada's unlikely "candy bar war," which gripped the nation for 10 days before ending with a surprising twist. We'll also take a grueling automobile ride across 1903 America and puzzle over the intentions of a masked man. 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. Our feature on Canada's candy bar war of 1947 was suggested by listener Randy Banderob. Sources: Tom Hawthorn, "From a Shop in Ladysmith, Chocolate Strike Affected Sales Across the Country," Globe and Mail, April 23, 2012. "Auld Lang Syne," Ladysmith-Chemainus Chronicle, May 4, 1977. "Putting Their Three Cents In," Ladysmith-Chemainus Chronicle, June 12, 2007. "'War' Fought Over Chocolate," Now, April 18, 2007. Dave Obee, "Candy Price Hike Sent Kids Into the Streets," Victoria Times-Colonist, Dec. 7, 2008. Travesty Productions, The Five Cent War. Burnaby History Tour: The Five Cent Chocolate War (accessed Jan. 3, 2016). Lenny Flank, "The 1947 Candy Bar Strike," Hidden History, July 28, 2015. Listener mail: Sources for our story on Horatio Nelson Jackson and his 1903 auto journey across the United States: Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, Horatio's Drive, 2003. Horatio's Drive (DVD), 2003, written by Dayton Duncan, directed by Ken Burns. Here's a photo of Bud the transcontinental bulldog: Sources on Dwight Eisenhower and the Cross-Country Motor Transport Train: U.S. Federal Highway Administration, "Why President Dwight D. Eisenhower Understood We Needed the Interstate System" (accessed Jan. 15, 2016). David A. Pfeiffer, "Ike's Interstates at 50: Anniversary of the Highway System Recalls Eisenhower's Role as Catalyst," Prologue, Summer 2006. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Craig Murphy. 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. 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 90. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1947, the price of a chocolate bar in British Columbia rose from five to eight cents, and the local teenagers went on strike, picketing stores and besieging the

legislature. In today's show, we'll follow Canada's unlikely candy bar war, which gripped the nation for 10 days and ended with a surprising twist. We'll also take a grueling auto journey across 1903 America and puzzle over the intentions of a masked man. I have to thank listener Randy Bandarab for suggesting this one. One April weekday in 1947, 16-year-old high school senior Parker Williams and his classmates were walking along First Avenue in Ladysmith, British Columbia. This is on Vancouver Island in western Canada. And one of them went into the Wigwam Cafe, which is a popular luncheonette and confectionery there, and came running out with some alarming news. The price of a

candy bar had risen from 5 cents to 8 cents. Oh no! That's only 3 cents, but it's a 60% price hike, and this is at a time when a child's allowance rarely exceeded 15 cents. Williams said 65 years later, The nickel to us had some purchasing power. You could get your ice cream, your bottle of pop, or your chocolate bar. And he recalls thinking, we can't tolerate this. The other kids felt the same way, and they responded in an unusual way.

They went on strike. The kids went on strike. Yes, many of them were the sons and daughters of loggers and coal miners, say they were sort of used to the idea of people banding together in this sort of way to press against the economic issues that were affecting them. So they declared a strike on the purchase, in other words, we should call this a boycott, of the purchase of pricey candy. Parker Williams later said,

We expressed our feelings and opinions about the situation. A couple of students planted the idea, and the rest of us jumped in. And I must say they went about it in an admirably well-organized way. They couldn't have done this better if they'd had a publicist. The first strikes were held at noon and 6 p.m. near the Wigwam Cafe on April 24, 1947. Thirty students marched at first. They chalked slogans on the side of Williams' old 1923 car saying, Don't be a sucker. cafe on April 24th, 1947. 30 students marched at first. They chalked slogans on the side of William's old 1923 car saying,

don't be a sucker, which is a candy pun. It is a candy pun. And he said, we made a couple of passes up and down the street with kids marching behind and hanging all over the car. His schoolmates, who were ages 10 to 16, carried signs protesting the price hike, and they posed in front of the wigwam for a Vancouver newspaper reporter. Many of them were shown eating ice cream cones, which were still priced at a nickel. One picket sign read,

Don't buy 8-cent bars. Lower prices to 5 cents. We are smart. We are smart? Meaning we know the difference between 5 cents and 8 cents? Yes, that 8 is greater than 5. One girl told a reporter from the Daily Columnist, Chocolate bars are not worth six cents,

but at eight cents, we think we're being robbed. And this yielded results right away, surprisingly. The Odeon Theater in Ladysmith said that it sold just 40 bars that evening down from a normal sale of 200. Wow, that is a difference. The Daily Colonist wrote, it is a sign that the strike mania of the age

has penetrated even to school children. It is doubtful whether children would stage a boycott because of an advance in the price of milk, Their protest in Ladysmith lasted only for a few days and then petered out, although they did continue to boycott expensive candy. But the news of the protest spread to other cities, and it found a receptive audience there because this was touching a sore spot in the whole nation. This is 1947, so World War II had just ended. And during the war, the government had imposed price controls to keep inflation down. And so when peace came, they lifted those controls, and the prices naturally went up again, which is causing headaches and just pain for workers across the country.

So this was sort of touching a sore point for grownups as well as for kids. This is like symbolic of a bigger issue. Yeah. The candy manufacturers who were sort of painted as the bad guys here, they argued that they had to raise prices. They'd lost their lucrative wartime contracts and the price controls on cocoa beans had been eliminated with everything else. So they had to raise their prices. But the press attacked them anyway and the public cheered for the kids, and the whole conflict came to symbolize the nation's frustration with the rising post-war prices. So this protest, this candy strike, spread eastward and had a lot of popular support behind it. Local print shops donated signs and banners. Three high schools in Toronto saw student strikes,

and there were marches in Montreal, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Quebec City. In Ottawa, ten buglers led a throng of 60 students to Parliament Hill. One carried a sign reading, We'll eat worms before we eat 8-cent chocolate bars. I'd like to have seen them put to the test on that one. In Fredericton, New Brunswick, teenagers pooled their sugar ration coupons to cook batches of fudge to eat instead of chocolate bars.

This is all very resourceful. This is much more resourceful than I would have been at that age. And in time, children organized boycotts in every major city in Canada, and chocolate bar sales dropped 80%. In Winnipeg, merchants reported one day of zero sales of chocolate bars. Wow. Which is impressive. That is very striking.

And they had some success in actually bringing the prices down, at least here and there. In Victoria, a druggist named John Pesey yielded to pressure and started selling chocolate bars for five cents again in his store on Menzies Street. And the Veterans Memorial Center in Vancouver also agreed to sell chocolate bars for five cents each, but it set a limit of one per customer and buyers had to be no older than 14, which is some kind of weird discrimination. This all came to a head, or was going to. They made plans for a protest on Saturday, May 3rd, in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, with a rally in Central Park and a parade through the downtown area to the legislature. In fact, some of the teenagers were so enthusiastic that they actually invaded the legislature a few days early.

This is impressive. More than 200 children marched through the Capitol building with their placards, chanting that they wanted five-cent candy bars, and they actually forced the provincial legislature to close down for the day. When the day came for this big final culminating protest, Saturday, May 3rd, it did go forward. Children with placards on foot and on bicycle paraded through downtown Victoria to protest the eight-cent bars.

There are different estimates as to how big the crowd was, but by any estimate that's fairly large, a Times reporter estimated a crowd of 300, and the Colonist actually reported that 700 children took part in this. And now the whole thing takes a very strange twist. On that very day, May 3rd, the Toronto Evening Telegram ran an editorial under this headline, Communists Run Candy Bar Strike, comma, recruit young children for parade.

Oh, that is a weird, I mean, so they were saying the communists were behind the whole thing. Yes. They noted that one of the organizations that was endorsing the candy bar protest was the National Federation of Labor Youth, which was a labor union group that was funded by the Canadian Communist Party. So the newspaper said that claiming the candy bar strike, they claimed that the candy bar strike was a communist plot. What's striking about this, at least to me, is that this is 1947. This is the very beginning of the Cold War. Yeah.

But the pitch of the rhetoric is incredibly high. Here's some of that editorial. Communist youth organizers have been instructed to use every possible means of developing and encouraging the chocolate bar agitation. Chocolate bars and a world revolution may seem poles apart, but to the devious communist mind, there is a close relationship. Oh my, yeah. That's really sweet. Reading something into, you know. And I'm sorry to say, this's really reading something into, you know. And I'm sorry to say this worked really well. The grownups who were already driven by Cold War anxieties worked to stop the strike now.

It just reversed everything. The SAT team club in Vancouver, which had 2,500 members, sort of caved in under pressure from priests, parents, teachers, and city officials and agreed that, quote, mob demonstrations and strikes are not consistent with the ideals of the club. On Monday, May 5th, Victoria's Youth Action Committee announced that it was withdrawing its support as well because it had found reason to believe that the Communist Party had been behind it. A spokesman said, we thought the idea had come from the children themselves, and therefore we were willing to organize them. Now we found the real truth, and we will not have anything further to do with it. John Hope, who had been parade marshal just two days earlier, now said it appeared that quote, the children were just being used as puppets while communists pulled the string.

It's a strange direction for the whole story to turn. And it's strange that like everybody just immediately bought it. Like it gets reported, you know, by someone in the media and everybody immediately goes, oh, it must completely be true as far far-fetched as it sounds. Yeah, because these were children. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to believe this. Anyway, it started to really, the support just faded away.

Public reaction just completely turned. Yeah, and other youth organizations soon followed. In an editorial, the colonists said that the communist connection helped explain why the placards had all been so neat. I see. Communists are neat? Or they think that it was just the adults were doing it for them? I guess they were even making up the placards for them. They said, quote, the boycott movement has become too well organized to be the spontaneous reaction of chagrined boys and girls over a sweet. The candy bar boycott movement all over the Dominion has the earmarks of an attempt to indoctrinate young people with the principles

of revolt and indiscipline. Fortunately, some youth groups have recognized in time the elements making use of them for alien purposes. The columnist editorial also noted that children would be better off if they didn't eat so many sweets anyway in the first place, and I agree with that part. And I hope it doesn't need to be said, but none of this was true. A newspaper tracked down Parker Williams in 2012 and asked him about these claims of communist infiltration. And he said, quote, that really blew us away. I still have a problem with that one. There was no political connotation whatsoever.

It was a simple strike against inflation that can be a force on your economic well-being. We recognized it was a losing battle, but we stood up to be counted. In time, the price did drop from 8 cents to 7, so that's some solace. But it seems that even despite these charges of communist infiltration, the students really did get sort of a real-life civics lesson that

if you speak up, you can get at least temporarily what you want. Right, so it's actually a good political lesson that if something bothers you enough, you can work for change. Yeah. William said in 2012, at least we didn't sit idly by and let this terrible thing happen. We recognized we did have some power to make a protest.

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the show mascot, has been up to lately. You can check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the link in the show notes. And thanks so much to everyone who has been supporting Futility Closet. We wouldn't be able to keep doing this without you. Listener Charles Hargrove wrote to say that he had recently listened to episode 12, which covered the great race of 1908.

And that was where six teams attempted an automobile race from New York to Paris at a time when the automobile was called the most fragile and capricious thing on earth. In his email, Charles said, I was struck by two other events that helped to popularize the car and help the driving experience. The first was the cross-country road trip of Horatio Nelson Jackson, undertaken in 1903 to win a $50 bet. It was memorably covered by Ken Burns in his documentary Horatio's Drive, which my wife and I really enjoyed back in the early 2000s, but which we have found that no one else seemed to watch.

And Greg and I certainly fell into the category of those who hadn't watched it, as we had never heard of it until Charles wrote in. But we immediately rectified the situation by watching the documentary and then checking out the book by the same name, by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns. It really is quite a story. In 1903, Jackson, a 31-year-old doctor from Vermont, was in San Francisco on his way back home from Alaska. He stopped in California intending to buy one of these newfangled automobiles he'd been hearing about and to learn how to drive it there

before having it shipped across the country to Vermont. And while he was at a men's club in San Francisco, he became caught up in a debate about these new inventions, with the great majority of men arguing against Jackson's opinion that these new horseless carriages were just going to be a passing fancy in American life. They were simply rich men's toys that were entirely too unreliable to be suitable for anything more than very short distances. that were entirely too unreliable to be suitable for anything more than very short distances. Despite Jackson's only very recent acquaintance with automobiles,

he immediately wagered $50 that he could cross the country in one, from San Francisco to New York in less than three months. Just on the spot. He was just like, put down his money and said, boom, I can do it. This was kind of a rash bet, as two previous attempts to do this had been rather miserable failures. At this time, there were only about 150 miles total of paved roads in all of America, and very little in the way of maps for most of the country. Automobiles really were pretty unreliable at this stage, and of course there weren't the gas stations and repair shops like we're used to today. So conditions for road travel were so rough and cars so unreliable that a previous attempt to cross the country in 1889, excuse me, 1899,

a couple left for New York in their auto. And before they'd even made it out of the state, they had been passed by a one-armed bicyclist who had left 10 days after they had. That's how good it was to drive a car in those days. So here was Jackson. He's determined to be the first person to actually do this, although he had no background, no preparation for such a venture, and he didn't even have an appropriate automobile to do it in. He prepared for the whole trip in four days, buying supplies, hiring a mechanic to travel with him, and finding the right car. And that actually proved to be quite a challenge in itself. Jackson's mechanic, Sewell Crocker, recommended a Winton Touring car, but Jackson couldn't find a new one anywhere on the West Coast. At that time, cars tended to be pre-ordered directly from the manufacturer. And he didn't have the luxury of

being able to pre-order one and get one shipped from the manufacturer. So he ended up buying a used one that already had a thousand miles on it, which was actually quite a lot for autos in those days. And the car was already in need of some repairs. So this is what he's going to go in. And he ended up having to pay $3,000 for the car, which was more than it had cost new and more than six times the average American's annual salary for the time. And this is to win a $50 bet. Really important bet for him. So Jackson and Crocker set out on May 23, 1903. There were so few cars in the United States that they caused quite a sensation everywhere they went. When they asked a woman for directions early on in the trip, she sent them miles in the wrong direction so that

they would end up at her parents' farmhouse and then her family would be able to see the automobile. Autos were such a novelty that towns would telegraph other towns giving them warning that Jackson and his automobile were heading their way and people would travel for miles just to line the streets and wait for him to drive past in his car. The Winton had no windshield or top, so Jackson and Crocker were completely exposed to the elements, and this also meant that as they bounced and jostled along the rough terrain, various items would just bounce out of the car and be lost, including at one point all of Jackson's cash, extra containers of gasoline, and all of their cooking equipment. And sometimes parts of the car itself would just bounce right off as they were jostling along. Not only was there not much in the way of roads in most of the country, but

there were also no bridges in most areas. They would attempt to cross creeks and streams by just trying to race across them at top speed. And oftentimes this didn't work, so they would end up having to haul the car manually out of the water and the car would just get stuck partway through a creek or a stream. They also had to repeatedly haul the auto out of deep mud, sometimes as many times as 18 times in a single day. The Winton just broke down constantly. And ironically ironically they were frequently dependent on other means of transportation such as horses to tow them to a town or trains or stagecoaches to bring them necessary parts to repair the car they would lose just days at a time waiting and

waiting for parts to arrive somewhere at times one or the other of them would have to strike off on foot sometimes in the total darkness of night, hoping to get someplace where they could buy gasoline or oil or find someone to help them yet again pull the hopelessly stuck car out of the mud. I think I remember that from the Great Race story as well. It was just constantly breaking down. Yeah. That was the biggest challenge, just getting anywhere.

Being able to move, right. And as I said before, there weren't any maps for most of these areas, so just finding the next town where they could get help or gasoline or find a horse to help tow them out of the mud was a real challenge. And when the car was moving, they sometimes drove hours in the wrong direction before even realizing it. They spent two days hopelessly lost in Wyoming with no food before finally coming upon a sheep

herder who hadn't seen another human being for three weeks until they showed up. That must have been kind of startling. I kept picturing it from the sheep herder's point of view. The sheep herder was able to feed them and give them some directions, and they were so grateful that Jackson said of the encounter, if he had asked us then for my car, I believe I would have given it to him. In Idaho, Jackson purchased a bulldog named Bud who became the mascot for the trip. Bud was outfitted with a little pair of goggles to keep the stinging dust out of his eyes

and he seemed to take to motoring quite readily. He ended up becoming almost as much of a celebrity as Jackson and the car. Jackson later said that Bud was the one member of our trio who used no profanity on the entire trip. We'll have a photo in the show notes of Bud in his little goggles, which is really pretty cute. Much of Jackson's trip is well documented in the letters

that he kept sending to his wife Bertha to let her know where he was and how it was going. And to me, the most striking thing about these letters is his continued optimism. He would frequently say that he was sure that the worst of it was over, that they had had bad luck, but that was sure to change. And while the previous teams that had attempted to do this had given up after hitting their obstacles, quitting just never seemed to occur to him.

Which really seemed to make the difference. I mean, I would have given up 50 times over. It was only his optimism that really... Right. The previous teams, it was just, you know, the car would get hopelessly stuck somewhere or they would just try for days and days or, you know... Because it's just so hard. And they would just be like, forget it.

I just can't do this any longer. But he kept saying, the Borsig's behind us. It's downhill from here. Right, yeah. I'm going to... He was like so sure he was going to be able to do this. Partway through his trip, the endeavor became more than his just trying to win his bet and prove that he was right to have faith in the automobile.

Two other teams also set out from San Francisco after he did to try to be the first to make it to New York. These other expeditions were put together by two other car manufacturers, Packard and Oldsmobile, who wanted to win glory for their product lines. The Oldsmobile and Packard teams had the advantage of more preparation and experience than Jackson had, and the advanced planning of the other teams included things like having trained mechanics supporting the teams and supplies that would be waiting for them in predetermined places. This was very different from Jackson's more seat-of-the-pants attempts to get repairs or equipment wherever and however he could.

The Packard team was taking a much shorter route also than Jackson and hoped that between that and their better preparation that they would be able to overtake him despite leaving after he had. But in the end, Jackson beat them both, and he, Crocker, and Budd made it to New York City in 63 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes, well under the 90 days that were allotted in his bet. So he did it really well. well under the 90 days that were allotted in his bet.

So he did it really well. He had lost 20 pounds and spent a total of $8,000. But he now had the record as the first person to drive across the continent. And apparently he never did collect the $50 that he had wagered. He just wanted to do it. He just wanted to do it. For him, it was just about proving that he could do it. Both of the other two teams did also make it to New York, though well after Jackson did. And despite their advantages and better funding, both of those teams

had run into various difficulties themselves and had struggled mightily to finish their own trips. The team in the Packard made their trip in a day and a half less than Jackson's total time, but given their later start, they still arrived well after he did. And as one of that team got out of the car in New York, he said, thank the Lord it's over. So they apparently didn't have a very good time. After this, Jackson drove himself, his wife, and Bud from New York to his home in Vermont, though of course the Winton broke down several times on the way. Ten miles outside of his home, Jackson's two brothers showed up in their own automobile to escort them the rest of the way, but their car broke down and Jackson ended up having to tow them.

When he finally did reach his home and went to drive the Winton into the stable where he planned to keep it, the drivetrain, one of the very few parts that had made the whole trip without breaking, snapped right through. So kind of a fitting end to the story. So that was one event that Charles mentioned in his email. And he had said that there were two events that helped popularize and improve driving. He says the second was the cross-country military convoy that a young Dwight Eisenhower participated in in 1919. It was apparently a nightmare of logistics breakdowns and mud. It was supposed to have directly influenced Eisenhower to push for the formation of the interstate highway system

when he became president. So this is the U.S. Army's transcontinental motor convoy that Charles is referring to, and that was 81 Army vehicles that set off to drive from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco in 1919. So they're going the opposite direction. All right. The Army wanted to see if its various motor vehicles could actually make such a trip and to assess the feasibility of moving an army across the continent if they needed to. As Charles indicated, it was pretty rough going. Much of what they were traveling over was no better than what Jackson had found,

and it consisted of dirt roads or simply trails or even just plain desert. Even though that's 16 years later. Yeah, yeah. I mean, still automotive travel was still so limited. Nothing much had been done yet to make roads. One of the most important people in the convoy was the scout, who drove ahead each day to mark the route for the vehicles, but even so, vehicles slid off the roads into ditches, overturned, were blown off cliffs, and got stuck in sand or mud. There were more than 230

recorded road accidents on the trip, and of course they also suffered the breakdowns that Jackson had as the rough travel wore out tires and axles and motors. The convoy did manage to reach San Francisco in 62 days after leaving Washington, and Eisenhower apparently remembered the experience his whole life. It was just very memorable. Later, Eisenhower's experiences in Europe in the 1930s and 40s really showed him the value of good roads. He had been particularly impressed with Germany's Autobahn four-lane superhighways, which were probably the best roads in the world at the time. In his memoir written in 1967, he wrote, the old convoy had started me thinking about good

two-lane highways, but Germany had made me see the wisdom of broader ribbons across the land. He added, this was one of the things that I felt deeply about, and I made a personal and absolute decision to see that the nation would benefit by it. So because of his experiences, when he was president, Eisenhower really pressed Congress to pass the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. And one of the main things that he's remembered for today is championing the interstate highway system that we Americans benefit from now. That's amazing because that was only 100 years ago and it completely transformed the whole country.

I mean, the difference between then and now. Yeah. Well, and apparently much of it happened after 1956, so that wasn't even really all that long ago. Yeah. I mean, that's really astonishing how it completely changed the whole character of the nation and transportation and the whole economy. Right. And now a trip that was taking these people over two months can now be done in less than a week by car. It's a huge difference.

So thanks so much to Charles for writing in on this. And if you have any questions or comments, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an interesting sounding situation, and I have to try to figure out what the back story is, asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Craig Murphy. Okay. In a hurry to get home one night, a man takes a path through a park. Suddenly his way is blocked by a man wearing a mask. Is it Halloween?

No. Or something similar like, you know, Mardi Gras. I don't know, something where everybody's wearing masks? No. Ah, darn. That's a good guess. Okay, does it matter where this happens? Perhaps.

Does it matter the time period? Not really, no. Not really. Perhaps it matter where this happens uh perhaps does it matter the time period not really no not really perhaps it matters where it happens um does it matter where it happens in terms of like what country or city no does it matter something else about the setting yes okay something about the setting is important you said it's in a park yes does it matter what kind of park yes ah an amusement park? No. Ah, shoot. It's a Disney World and everybody's wearing masks. So it matters what kind of park.

It's not an amusement park. Okay, by park, do you mean like a natural area? No. No, some other kind of park. Some other kind of park. What else do we call a park? Okay. Is it out of doors? Yes. I can't think what else I call a park? Okay. Is it out of doors?

Yes. I can't think what else I call a park. It's outside. Would there be trees there? No. No, definitely no trees. You're very sure of that. Water?

No. No water and no trees. Desert? No. There's probably a national, like a national park could be in the desert um is it a national park no no no so it's not like the grand canyon or something um is there some um feature of the land that would be important like water or mountains or canyons or something like that i think i'll say no. It's kind of tricky to answer that one.

Hmm. Is there some naturally occurring something there that would be important for me to figure out? No. Is there some man-made something there that would be important for me to figure out? I think I have to say yes to that. I don't want to mislead you. It's not natural and it's only sort of man-made. Hmm.

It's man-made. It's man-made. It's man-made. Okay. There's something man-made there that I need to know about. Yes. Should I work more on something other than this? Or is this like really key? Like I need to figure out what kind of park this is.

Why you're calling this a park. What it is if it's not a park. The man's... I'm trying to give you a hint. The man in the mask. Should I work on what kind of mask it is? Or what his purpose was? Yes.

Okay. The person who's traveling through the park, right? Yes. Is he there for entertainment or recreation purposes? For his own? For his own entertainment or recreation purposes. No. I'll say no.

Is he there performing a job or occupation yes okay so he's trying to make his way through the park to perform is the man in the mask there for his entertainment purposes yes so the man no no no not him sorry i thought you're gonna say something else okay the man in the mask is he performing a job also yes both of them are both of them are is this on the earth yes space or something a space park um but it's on the earth? Yes. Is this not in space or something? A space park. But it's on the surface of the earth. It's not like underwater. Right. It's like a scuba mask. Oh, you said there's no water. Nevermind. So the man in the mask is actually wearing the mask as part of his job. Yes. And his job is legal. Yes. He's not a burglar or something. That's right.

Okay. So is he wearing a mask for protection purposes? To protect him? Like from breathing something in or, you know, that sort of type of mask? He is wearing it for protection. Okay. To protect him from something he shouldn't breathe in? No. No. To protect his face from, to protect his face from something?

To protect some specific area of his face? No. To protect his face in general? Yes. Okay. To protect his face from heat? Yes. Okay. To protect his face from heat? No. From objects? Yes. From small objects like sand? No. From larger objects than sand? He's wearing... Oh, oh, oh, oh, it's like a baseball game.

Exactly. In a hurry to get home one night, a man takes a path through a park suddenly his way is blocked by a man wearing a mask so that's why the other people don't help him that is very good that is very cute thank you craig for sending that in yes thank you and if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to use you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. 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 more than 8,000 delightful distractions.

At the website, you can also 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, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and produced by Doug Ross.

Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.