Futility Closet - 102-The Bunion Derby

Episode Date: April 18, 2016

In 1928, 199 runners set out on a perilous 3,400-mile footrace across America, from Los Angeles to Chicago and on to New York. The winner would receive $25,000 -- if anyone finished at all. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the Trans-American Footrace, better known as the Bunion Derby, billed as the greatest footrace the world had ever known. We'll also learn some creepy things about spiders and puzzle over why one man needs three cars. 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. Sources for our feature on the Trans-American Footrace: Charles B. Kastner, The Bunion Derby, 2007. "Mr. Pyle's Professional Bunion Derby," Pittsburgh Press, April 19, 1928. "Payne Wins First Prize in Pyle's Bunion Derby," Associated Press, May 27, 1928. "C.C. Pyle Hopes Bunion Derby to Net Him Profit," Ottawa Citizen, March 29, 1929. "Sport: Bunion Derby," Time, June 24, 1929, 58. "Bunion Derby' Hero Elected," Associated Press, Nov. 8, 1934. "Bunion Derby Director Dies," Associated Press, Feb. 4, 1939. "Mapping the Way," Runner's World, July 1992, 94. "Harry Abrams Is Dead at 87; Ran Across the Country Twice," New York Times, Nov. 28, 1994. Jack Rockett, "The Great 'Bunion Derby,'" Runner's World, Nov. 7, 2006. Laura Ruttum, "Endurance Racing: First Leg, the Bunion Derby," New York Public Library, April 2, 2010. Some footage from the race -- winner Andy Payne wears number 43: Listener mail: Kiona Smith-Strickland, "This Is How to Find the Spiders That Are Staring At You in the Dark," Gizmodo, Aug. 2, 2015. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Patrick Riehl. 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 the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from reincarnated governors to impossible home plates. Welcome to episode 102. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1928, 200 runners set out on a perilous footrace across America, from Los Angeles to Chicago and on to New York. The winner would receive $25,000 if anyone finished at all. In today's show, we'll tell the story of the Bunyan Derby, billed as the greatest footrace the world had ever known.

Derby, billed as the greatest foot race the world had ever known. We'll also learn some creepy things about spiders and puzzle over why one man needs three cars. Route 66, which is sometimes called the Main Street of America, was opened in 1926, a federal highway that crosses the whole American West, 2,400 miles from Los Angeles to Chicago. It was designated a federal highway when it opened, but at the time it was still largely a mix of old pioneer trails and byways. In fact, west of Oklahoma, little of it was even paved. It was just gravel and rutted dirt roads. But once it was opened, the business owners who owned properties along it wanted to come up with some way to promote traffic along it, and someone came up with the idea of a foot race all the way from Los Angeles to Chicago and then on to New York, basically going cross-country

all the way across the United States, 3,400 miles. It's not clear who came up with that idea, but the one who took it up and championed it was a man named Charles Pyle, who was arguably the greatest sports promoter of his age, and his deputy director in this whole project was Red Grange, the greatest football player of the 1920s. Together, they came up with the idea of how this would work. The whole race would last 84 days and cover 3,400 miles. If you divide one of those into the other, you get an average of 40 miles a day, which is a lot. It's basically a marathon and a half every day for two and a half months.

Each day's race would be what they called a stage race, which means you start at the town where you wake up in, and then they say, okay, the next town is the one over the hill there, and everyone runs there at whatever pace they want to, and when they arrive, their elapsed time is recorded, and over the course of the race, you do 84 of those stages, and they total up your total elapsed time, and whoever gets to New York City with the lowest total time wins the race which makes sense uh it wasn't clear at all if this was even possible no one had ever even tried this before and it happened in an era when doctors thought that prolonged exercise would actually permanently damage your health uh some of the boston the boston marathon champion clarence del

mar declined to participate saying that he thought no one could run the equivalent of a marathon in a half or two and a half months every day and survive, which, as far as anyone knew at the time, was true. Altogether, Pyle, this promoter, he finds it largely himself. He paid $350,000 of his own money to hold the race, and that's about $3 to $4 million in today's dollars. And he hoped to defray that by getting pledges from chambers of commerce along the way. If you lived in a city that was more or less along the route and you paid him something like $1,000, he'd route the race through your town so you could get income to your business. Publicity and people would show up to see the race.

Also, he'd get advertiser revenue and receipts from a traveling carnival that he would bring along with all of this. That was the plan anyway. In the months preceding the race, Pyle advertised it in national media and even sent emissaries to Europe inviting able-bodied men to come to Los Angeles and test themselves in what he called the greatest foot race the world had ever known. And he offered some pretty big prizes. You'd get $25,000 if you came in first, $10,000 for second, $5,000 for third,

and so on through 10th place. If you finished anywhere in the first 10 positions, you'd win pretty substantial money for those days. And he added a few stars with international reputations, both professional runners and race walkers from Europe and from America, just to fill up the field and encourage other people to participate. The press assumed that one of these pros would win, but it wasn't clear what the right strategy was. It might be smart to run as fast as you could. Maybe you could even get across the whole country that way. But it might be smarter to hold back and just walk and trust that the people who went any faster than that would either fall out from burning out or injure themselves and

have to withdraw themselves. No one knew because no one had ever done this before. Anyway, to sign up, all you had to do was pledge $125 for an entrance fee, and if you got all the way to New York at the end, you'd get that back. And in return, you were guaranteed free food, lodging, and medical care as long as you stayed in the race. This allowed people of limited means to enter the race. Most of the entrants, in fact, in the end turned out to be tradesmen and farmers. You got a locker, a cot, and space in a huge communal sleeping tent, as well as meals served by a dietician and access to what they called a shoe hospital. This was all promised at the beginning, and it sort of fell apart as the race went along. Pyle was a lot better at promoting things than in actually administering them, as it turned out.

A shoe hospital? Yeah. You'd go through a lot of shoes. These are 1928 shoes, so they're not what we're used to now. Oh, okay, yeah. Plus, you're running 3,400 miles. And then Pyle himself and a core of reporters would accompany all these runners in buses as they went from town to town. He hired an experienced trainer to train the men. And at this

training camp in Los Angeles before the starting time, most of the men put in at least 25 miles of running a day just to get into shape for the race. And that alone was so punishing that by the time the training camp was over, 76 men had already dropped out. Oh, wow. It's much, much harder even than you think it's going to be. And you already think it's going to be very hard. And most of these people had no experience at all back then of long-distance running. Very few people did. But 199 people, men, all men, lined up at the starting line on March 4, 1928.

The youngest was 16 years old and the oldest was 63. 63. I'm impressed. There's no precedent. Maybe he's going to win. Most of them wore tracksuits. Some wore overalls. Some wore street clothes and flannel shirts. The best prepared had specially made running shoes with dozens of pairs and reserves, but others wore logging boots or moccasins or, in a few cases, went barefoot. I'm trying to decide which would be worse, logging boots or barefoot. In the first few days, there were the greatest number of dropouts.

They were losing a dozen men a day in the first four days because it was just... Yeah. Both because it was much harder than people realized and because a lot of the people who signed up for this had no experience and weren't in shape for it if they kept losing 12 minute day the whole race would be over when they hit arizona so they hoped this would kind of level out after a while among those who dropped out was the elite runner willie kolomainen of finland who was uh running very fast and led the pack for those four days he'd been running at a six minute mile pace which is 10 uh miles per hour every day for four days but he just found

he couldn't sustain that pace and dropped out so it became clear as they all sort of eyed each other what the optimum pace was shaping up to be and it turns out you can't sprint across america it was becoming clear as i said that the plans to support the men that pile had laid were inadequate he'd promised them food but it turns out you can't supply food and drink efficiently to a line of 150 men strung across several miles which is what the race turned out to be some ran a lot some walked there was one millionaire son who just resolved to walk the whole way he was going wasn't going to run he's just going to bank on the fact that walking would turn out to be the smartest way to do it and others were moving quite fast um and also uh it turned out that they failed

to wash the men's clothes and bedding so after a long day of running you'd have to sleep in dirty sheets in your dirty running clothes in a big communal sleeping tent with dozens of other runners outside there was this carnival running that Pyle was running to try to recoup some of his losses for the race. So it was really miserable conditions. Some of the runners had supporters who would feed and clothe them, and that turned out to be a great advantage. They were sort of haves and have-nots. Day five brought them into the western edge of the Mojave Desert, where temperatures were in the 90s. They covered themselves in grease to avoid sunburn, but most of them got burns and heat blisters on their right sides. Because if you're running east in the Mojave

Desert in March, the sun is to your right. It's in the south. And so you're just constantly getting slammed by the sun all day. But there's nothing for it. They had to keep going through the desert. Everyone faded in these conditions. And for the first time, the walkers began to finish in the top 20. It was just impossible to keep running. The leaders had, by now, had settled into a pace of about 9 to 10 minutes per mile, which is about 6 or 7 miles an hour, and they hoped they could sustain that all the way across the country. But still, 8 men dropped out,

and one of them, I'm sorry to say, Walter Ricketts of Southampton, Ontario, was hit by a drunk driver. Oh, so a fatality. Wow. Almost. You would think you'd be safe from drunk drivers in 1928 in the middle of the Mojave Desert, but it turns out that's not true. He got seven broken ribs and was left for dead at the side of the road, but he was evacuated to a Los Angeles hospital and survived. But he was certainly out of the race.

And I'm sorry to say that was not the last time this happened. After eight days of running, they reached the end of the Mojave Desert happily. running. They reached the end of the Mojave Desert happily. The race was led at this point by a South African runner named Arthur Newton, who had trained in the Natal region of South Africa, which is hot and dusty, so he had sort of an advantage in the desert. He led the field by five hours in the cumulative standings. Second place went to Andy Payne, who was a 20-year-old Oklahoman who was somewhat favored in the race. He just showed a lot of promise. The key at this point, the emerging key, seemed to be slow, constant running. I'm getting a lot of promise. The key at this point, the emerging key, seemed to be slow, constant running. I'm getting a lot of this story from Charles Kastner's book, The Bunyan Derby,

and he says at this point it looked like the prize would go to what he called a fast tortoise. You couldn't afford to walk the whole way, but fast runners burned out, so it looked like sort of a sedate running pace would actually get you all the way across the country. Pyle, the organizer, was still having trouble organizing. His cook quit when he couldn't afford to pay him the promised salary. And so instead of feeding them the promised dietician-registered meals, he just paid them a food allowance. He'd just give you $1.50 a day, and you'd have to go find food yourself. And the runner said they actually preferred that because the food was so bad. Oh, I was going to say, so you have to scrounge for food on top of running, but...

Yeah. If you didn't have money or support in this, it was really grueling. On day nine, the field was down to 130 men. They'd started with 199. And now they were ferried across the Colorado River to Arizona and they entered the high country in late winter. So instead of running across, they went from running across low, hot desert into high, cold mountains. Cold winds, steep climbs, and high altitude running. In 1928, Arizona's portion of Route 66 was completely unpaved. It was just a rutted dirt road. At the 12th stage, they rose above 5,000 feet, which Kestner calls the death zone for endurance

athletes. Up there, the body's intake of oxygen is only about 90% of what it is at sea level, on top of all these other hardships. Also, to add injury to injury, they moved out of the Pacific time zone and found themselves cheated out of an hour's sleep, on top of all these other hardships. Wow. Are any of them still barefoot, do you know? I don't think so. I don't know when the last barefoot ran out, but I think he probably quit in the early going.

See, now logging boots might make sense. Eight more runners dropped out before the start on. See, now logging boots might make sense. Eight more runners dropped out before the start on day 13, leaving 102. So after 13 days of racing, almost half the field was gone, and they're only in Arizona. The following day, they reached 49 Hill, which is the highest point then on Route 66 at 7,410 feet above sea level, and now they went down into the high desert. As I said, the race was developing haves and have-nots. There were some well-financed contestants who could afford to stay in local hotels and buy their own food,

and the rest had to sleep in this big, noisy tent and eat whatever they could find for $1.50 a day, sometimes scrounging among local citizens. I think if someone makes a movie out of this, you could make it into a real metaphor of America. I mean, it's not always that the race goes to the swift you also have to have connections and resources really to make it to the to the front of the pack on day 21 the field was down to 96 men now they crossed into new mexico where they would spend

11 days in similar high altitude primitive road conditions this was the first day after three weeks when none of the starters dropped out it so it looks like most of the people who remain are pretty good, in pretty good shape, and maybe you can hope to make it all the way to the East Coast. A runner named Johnny Salo, this is my favorite part of this whole story, picked up, there were some stray dogs that would occasionally appear and just run along the race with the runners just out of friendliness. A similar story happened just this year in January in Alabama. A dog showed up at the starting line of a half marathon and ran 13 miles with the runners just out of friendliness. Yay, people are running. Team spirit, yeah. And won a medal. This is sort of like that. Akali showed up and ran along with the runner

Johnny Salo. He named him Shinsplintz. And another man named a stray German shepherd, Blisters. Blisters turned out to be something special. I'll get back to that in a second. They all crossed the continental divide at 7,200 feet. And now the days of hill work were over, but things get, if anything, even worse. On the 22nd day, sandstorms reduced visibility to nearly zero. Officials were reduced to flagging down cars and telling them to mind the racers, otherwise they would just run into them. And the runner, Eddie Gardner, said, I walked six hours with both hands beside my face for protection from the sand, and I was lost off the road for about 40 minutes in the sandstorm. As they neared Texas, the black runners began to get racist catcalls and media treatment,

where they hadn't really gotten them before. This was the era before civil rights, so sort of the unwritten rules, at least in northern Texas, was that blacks do not compete with whites, much less beat them in sporting events, and they didn't live as equals, all of which had been happening in the race up to this point. One white farmer rode up behind Eddie Gardner, who was black, and threatened to kill him if he passed another white man. So he had to fall back somewhat in the standings just to get across the Texas panhandle, where they spent six days. In that period, the black runners slept in a colored only tent, which they hadn't before, which confused the international runners who thought they'd all dropped out because all of a sudden they didn't see them anymore.

Also, one odd note here. They had the evenings to themselves. Most of them spent them just being exhausted or giving interviewers or socializing with each other, but occasionally they'd go out and do social things. Frank Chavez of Pasadena, California turned an ankle while dancing at a VFW charity dance in Amarillo, Texas, and had to drop out the next day, and everyone swore off dancing for the remainder of the race. It's kind of an odd thing to tell your grandchildren that that's why you dropped out of a transcontinental race. They left the Texas Panhandle finally and entered Oklahoma, which was the home state of Andy Payne, who I'd mentioned before, and who was among the leading runners and a big popular favorite at home, so much so that he had trouble getting

through the state. There were so many people who stopped him for autographs and handshakes that he had trouble even making progress, which he kind of good-naturedly complained about. One Oklahoman joked that the Republicans should nominate Payne for political office, quote, simply because he could run so well. On day 47, 76 men remained. They left Oklahoma, crossed the southeast corner of Kansas, and crossed into Missouri. They'd spend the next nine days taking them across Missouri and up to the Mississippi River. In the hills of the Ozark Mountains, reporter Bill Witt ran with Andy Payne and Peter Gavuzzi, the two leading runners at this point, just to see what it was like. He found that the first few miles were easy,

but then became much harder. He quit after 10 miles and wrote, I began to think my chest was bursting. My feet were on fire. My muscles like red hot wires drawing tighter at every bounce. This isn't a race at all. It's a miracle. Blister is the German shepherd I told you about back in Arizona, was still with the race. Now he joined the race in Navajo, Arizona, and now turned up again. He traveled with the Derby as far as Missouri, and then became lost somehow. But now he reappeared in Pontiac, Illinois, 500 miles later, a bit dirty but unharmed. I looked all over to see what happened to him. It doesn't appear that he made it all the way to New York, but even going 500 miles is amazing.

Yeah. I mean, and that they lost sight of him, and then he showed back up. Yeah. So, I don't know. I'm going to keep digging on that one because I've really grown attached to blisters, but I haven't been able to find out anything more than that. In Chicago, five runners voluntarily dropped out because that was the other end of Route 66. It runs from Los Angeles to Chicago.

So they figured, well, we're not going to finish in the money. We have no chance at all of that, so we can tell our grandchildren that we made it all the way along Route 66, and they dropped out. They'd gone 2,402 miles. 1,000 miles still remained to get to New York. But the runs were getting longer. The longest run yet was to Mishawaka, Indiana, 66 miles in one day. And Gavuzzi, who was in the lead here, stopped at this point, not because he was out of shape. He was still in fine shape for running. But for two weeks, he'd had an ulcerated tooth that had prevented him from eating solid food he tried to continue by drinking drinking soup and sucking hard candy but that

wasn't enough an ultra marathoner has just gigantic calorie needs and you couldn't supply that by by drinking soup so he had to drop out for that reason which is kind of sad um another in this tradition of of when the race runs through someone's home state or hometown often they were celebrated uh my running mike joy Joyce visited his family when the race ran through Cleveland, and he didn't recognize him. He knocked on his own front door, and his wife gave him a cold reception,

not realizing that this sunburned, wid-burred, wiry, nut-brown man was her husband. His children cried at the sight of him and hid under their beds. Now they leave Ohio and enter Pennsylvania, finally getting to the East Coast. As they entered New York, Johnny Salo actually slowed down at the state line to allow Sam Richman the honor of entering first. Richman was from New York State and just wanted to at least say that he'd gotten

to his own home state first. He said, thanks a lot, Johnny. That's all I wanted, and now I'm satisfied. On May 19th, they'd covered 3,000 miles, and the finish line was only 400 miles away. The organizers, now in financial trouble, did something that i think is unconscionable they sped the race up in order to stem the the flood of red ink just to get the race over as quickly as possible they did that by extending the length of each daily run also they thought that would shake off some of the weaker runners and reduce the number of mouths to feed so these people have already run for two months uh continuously and now it's getting even harder. They ran 52 miles on May 19th in torrential rains running on hills, 58 miles the next day, more rain in hills, and then 75 miles in one day in blistering sun on a winding mountain road, which is three marathons in one day after having run

one and a half marathons every day for two months. Just unbelievable that anyone's even still in the race. There were now only two days left, though. They headed to Passaic, New Jersey, which was Johnny Salo's hometown. Andy Payne, who was the leader here, feared violence at the hands of Salo's supporters and said so publicly, so the police escorted him. And that's probably a good thing because it was just gridlocked. There were thousands of people cheering. Sometimes the runners had to run on the sidewalk. It was actually Sal Sal's 35th birthday when they got to Passaic, and he was coming home.

He was the first into town, which had declared a half holiday in his honor. And in fact, he got a job out of this. The superintendent of public safety, Benjamin Turner, made him a member of the Passaic Police Department the night before. The age cutoff was 35, so they awarded that to him

on the day before his birthday. But he got a job out of this. All he had to do was run 3,000 miles to get it before he'd only worked intermittently in shipyards uh the last day was day 84 55 men they started late on 4 p.m and would run 10 miles to the hudson river and crossing to manhattan and ran 200 laps around a slippery track in madison square garden as this is added late by the organizers, trying to sell tickets to make up some of the revenue again, which was kind of silly at this point, because at this point, the standings were so well established that it was no little chance for any runner to pass another one in the

standings. So most of them just walked around their 200 laps. And in fact, after the 10 men who finished and the money finished, Charlie Pyle just waved the rest of them off because there was no point in continuing. Johnny Sallow finished the day ahead of Andy Payne, but Andy Payne, the Oklahoman, won. He'd finished a few months short of his 21st birthday. He'd worn out five pairs of rubber-soled canvas shoes running 3,400 miles in 573 hours, four minutes and 34 seconds, an average of 10 minutes per mile or six miles an hour all across America. Each of the unpaid finishers got his deposit back, even if he didn't win any money, which is enough for a trip back to the real world that he'd left three months before, and they just picked up their lives again. Even finishing it all was something of a victory because 70% of the entrants had dropped

out on the way. So it was really saying something even to finish it all. Doctors, interestingly, had examined all the runners at the start in Los Angeles and now examined them again, doctors from Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, and found to their own surprise that there was nothing really abnormal about them. It was thought at the time that running a race like this and completing could take as much as 10 years off your life. And it was kind of a breakthrough to discover that that's not the case. You can do pretty intense exercise without doing long-term damage to your health. In fact, the last surviving competitor in this race, Harry Abrams, passed away just 20 years ago in 1994 at age 87.

Andy Payne, the winner, was honored by Congress in Washington, then returned to Oklahoma, where he used the prize money to pay off the mortgage on his family farm and build his family a new home. He invested most of the rest of his winnings in land in northeastern Oklahoma, which turned out to be a really good investment because they discovered gas and oil on those lands shortly thereafter. I cannot place a limit on his endurance, his trainers said at the end of the race. To me, there has been only one runner in the race, and he is Andy Payne, the greatest marathon runner in the world.

We frequently tell you that our podcast would just not still be here if it weren't for the support that we get from our listeners, and that really is the case. If you've been listening to our show for a while, you'll know there's a Patreon campaign that we talk about, and that really is the main thing that keeps this show going. But if you like the show and you'd like to support us in other ways, there are several other things you can do that could really help us out. You can make a one-time donation on the website at futilitycloset.com. Just look for the donate button on the sidebar. And we can always use help spreading the word about the show. So if you like the podcast, please consider recommending it to your friends or giving it a rating on iTunes or some other podcast directory.

And if you'd like to join our Patreon campaign, for a dollar an episode, you can get access to our activity feed, where you'll get outtakes and extralateral thinking puzzles and find out what's going on behind the scenes of the show. You can find more information on that at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or you can use the link in our show notes. And thanks so much to everyone who helps us keep Futility Closet going. In episode 99, Greg recounted a story of how Frederick the Great was saved from being poisoned by his cook when a spider fell into his cup of cocoa and asked if anyone knew the truth of this tale. Frank Kroger wrote to say, I just listened to your latest podcast and did some research on the Frederick the Great spider story. story. Apparently, this is an urban legend that was inspired by the sudden arrest of Frederick the Great's trusted valet, a certain Friedrich Glasow, in 1757. There are lots of different stories about the supposedly poisoned cocoa cup. According to popular belief, the event took place

in Lachwitz, not Sanssouci Castle, on 25 March 1757. As usual, Glassao, who was 21 years old at the time, served the king his cup of morning cocoa and dropped it, either because he got too nervous or was plagued by pangs of conscience. When confronted about his odd behavior by the king, he supposedly made a full confession on the spot. Whatever crime he confessed, the king apparently considered his crime so severe that he had him thrown into Spandau prison the next day. He was sentenced to one year of solitary confinement and was also put into chains, which was usually only done for

very serious crimes. And Frank says that German historians believe that Glossau had most likely committed a different crime than the story suggests, probably something like embezzlement or spying. Frank also notes that Frederick the Great not only drank cocoa in the morning, but that he supposedly also sometimes added powdered mustard and or pepper along with champagne to strong coffee. And Frank is glad to report that this concoction has not caught on. coffee. And Frank is glad to report that this concoction has not caught on. Frank suggests that the story that you saw written by a British author was actually based on a story in a German book by Carl Friedrich Novak. In Novak's version, the cook was bribed

by the Austrians and Frederick gave the poisoned cocoa to one of his beloved dogs because a spider had fallen into it, and thus the plot was discovered that way. That sounds about right. Frank didn't mention whether the dog died or not. I guess it would have had to have, or did something. So in the end, we still don't know why there's a spider painted on the ceiling at Sanssouci Castle, but it's probably not because one saved Frederick the Great's life or at least not by falling into a cup of cocoa. So there is a real story there, but it just sort of got romanticized.

That happens in American history too. That makes sense. Yeah. In your discussion of spiders and Frederick the Great, you mentioned that you'd come across a reference to hunting spiders at night by using a flashlight in which the spiders would be reflected. And a few listeners did write in to confirm that fact.

So we did get confirmation on one thing about spiders. Kendall Williams wrote to say, hey, Greg and Sharon, I have been enjoying the podcast since its inception. I heard episode 99 today and you mentioned spiders and flashlights. I have some personal experience with this. I found that when I wore my headlamp out at night to walk my dogs,

I was seeing a lot of shiny pinpoints of light in the grass. For a while, I assumed it was water droplets, but then I noticed one moving. I stayed focused on this one. As I got close enough, I saw that it was the eyes of a spider. And Kendall recommended that we get a headlamp to check out this effect for ourselves and even nicely included a link to a model that we could try. Adam Bering also wrote to say that it's the spider's eyes that are reflecting the light.

He says, the light hitting the spider's eyes will reflect green. This pertains to spiders that hunt at night, as the structures that reflect the flashlight also help the spider see in the dark. And Adam sent a link to an article on Gizmodo with the great title of, This is how to find the spiders that are staring at you in the dark. The Gizmodo article explains that many animals that hunt or forage at night, such as cats or deer or some spiders,

have an iridescent layer behind their retinas that reflects the light back through the retina again from behind it to basically, in effect, increase the amount of light that's hitting the retinas. And this improves the animal's ability to see at night and creates what's called eye shine. So Gizmodo notes that if you see these bright green spots when you shine your light, then that means the spiders are looking at you. And they say, enjoy thinking about that. And similarly Carl Abrahamson said

on the topic of reflective spider eyes I learned about this after moving to Australia which is notorious for its ridiculously large spiders. It turns out that a headlamp is all you need for this effect and it certainly makes the spiders easier to find although that isn't always a good thing. Sometimes it's best not to know. So we'll leave it up to you

whether you want to know or not. The Gizmodo article, which we'll link to in the show notes, gives instructions on how to best spot spiders at night with a flashlight, or you can try Carl's and Kendall's suggestions of using a headlamp. And I'm personally going with Carl's idea

that it might be best not to know. So thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. Next week, we plan to cover the rest of the subjects from episode 99 that we weren't able to fit into this episode. So tune in then to hear more about accidental acrostics and the confused identity of turkeys. Here's one last thing.

In episode 101, we read a lateral thinking puzzle by nine-year-old Catherine Sherman, and that prompted listener Fred Kearns to several tries, says, I don't know, I give up. The father says, a herring. The son says, what, but a herring isn't green. The father says, why not? You can paint a herring if you want. But a herring isn't wet. It is if it's just painted. But a herring doesn't have wheels. There's nothing to stop you putting wheels on a herring if you choose to.

But a herring doesn't hang on the wall. Sure it does if you hang it there. But a herring doesn't whistle. And the father says, you're right, I just put does if you hang it there. But a herring doesn't whistle. And the father says, you're right. I just put that in to make it difficult. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation and he has to puzzle out what's going on asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from listener Patrick Real. All right. One day prior to moving out of his apartment, a man rents three cars. Why? That's the whole puzzle. That's the whole puzzle. One day

prior to moving out of his apartment, a man rents three cars. Yes. Okay. Is a man's occupation important? No. Is this true? Yes, actually. It happened to a friend of Patrick's. Okay, so then is the location important? Meaning what? No, not strongly. Like a particular country with a certain... No. Okay.

With certain... Okay. Is the time period important? Cars are invented, but otherwise no. But otherwise no. Is there anything unusual about the cars that I need to know about? No. So it's not a particular maker model or anything like that?

They're not identical necessarily? Not necessarily. Rents three cars? Yes. Are there other people involved? No. No. So does he plan to use all three cars?

Yes, obviously. Yes. I would say he's going to use all three cars. You look very careful when you say that. Okay. One day prior to moving out of his apartment. Yes. Does he plan, the obvious question, does he plan to use the cars to move his belongings to a new location?

Nope. Does he plan to use the cars to store, one or more of the cars to store anything? Nope. Without moving it? Nope. Does he plan to drive all three cars? At some point. At some point.

Is his occupation important? No. Is there any crime involved in any of this? No. Do I need to know anything about the apartment itself or its contents? Is he just some guy with typical stuff in his... Sure. Okay.

One day prior, is that significant? Somewhat, yeah. Like he wouldn't have done this three days, I mean, three months prior or six months after. Okay. All right. Rents three cars. Yeah. Would it help me to know how long the period of the rental was?

Not necessarily. All right. So he rents the cars, and then he starts moving out of the apartment. At the time that he rents the cars, he's not yet moved out? That's correct. So let's just follow this out. Okay. Does he move his belongings into the cars?

No. Does he have another place to move to? Yes. So he moves his stuff the way anybody would to the new location? Sure. Does he use the cars to do that? No. He uses the cars for some other purpose?

Yes. Do I need to know anything about the destination about the new? I'm not getting off this first square. Do the cars? Okay. So he moves to the new location and then returns the cars. Sure. And the cars are accepted.

There's nothing unusual about them. Right. He probably even returned the cars before he moved to the new location. Do the cars move at all during any of this? Well, they move off the rental lot and back to the new location. Do the cars move at all during any of this? Well, they move off the rental lot and back to the rental lot, but... So he moves the cars and parks them on the street outside his old apartment?

Yes. Oh, wow, look at that. Yes. Eyebrows went right up. I'm going to give you a strong yes on that one. And then moves them back from that location directly to the rental lot? Is that right?

Yeah, or probably soon after. But doesn't necessarily drive them anywhere else. That's correct. Oh, oh, oh. Does he use the cars just to occupy space, say, for example, for the moving van? Yes. That's exactly it. That's clever.

That's very clever. Yeah. Apparently his friend lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the apartment was on a narrow street without a parking lot. So the street is normally full of parked cars, and you can request a no parking sign from the city to reserve your spot for moving day, but the friend forgot to do this. So his solution was to go to the local car place and rent, he says, a PT Cruiser because I guess that's a nice big car, And then park it in front of the building as soon as a space opened up. And then do that two more times as spaces opened up so that he had three spaces together to fit the moving truck in. That's really clever.

So then when the moving truck showed up, they just moved the cars out. And that's a perfectly legit way to do it. I like that. That's actually a really clever solution to a last-minute problem. Yeah. I'm impressed he thought of it. So thank you, Patrick. And if anybody else has a puzzle for us, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

That's another episode for us. If you're looking for more quirky curiosities, you can check out our books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com, you can sample more than 9,000 hand-picked esoterica. 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 Thank you. Talk to you next week.