Futility Closet - 166-A Dangerous Voyage

Starting point is 00:00:00 For over 70 years, Littleton has been helping people just like you sell their coins and currency. Whether you're an experienced collector or someone who needs help identifying what you have in your collection, Littleton Coin Company is the place to sell your U.S. coins and currency. The process is incredibly simple. Visit littletoncoin.com slash closet to learn more. 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 a railway hammock to a 61-minute hour. This is episode 166.

Starting point is 00:00:42 I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. This is episode 166. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. After Japan invaded the Philippines in 1941, two American servicemen hatched a desperate plan to sail 3,000 miles to allied Australia in a 20-foot wooden fishing boat. In today's show, we'll join Rocky Gause and William Osborne as they struggle to avoid the Japanese and reach safety.

Starting point is 00:01:04 We'll also tell time in Casablanca and puzzle over a towing fatality. In March 1944, an Army Air Corps pilot named Damon Gause was killed while testing dive bombers in England. His wife, Ruth, got a telegram from the War Department explaining what had happened, and a few weeks later she received his footlocker, which she put in a back bedroom closet. In the footlocker, among other things, was a manuscript of hand-cut sheets bound together with a copper wire, a diary that he'd kept during an adventure he'd had in the early days of the war in the Pacific. That adventure had made him briefly famous, and periodically publishers would approach her about publishing his memoir,

Starting point is 00:01:43 but she always refused. briefly famous, and periodically publishers would approach her about publishing his memoir, but she always refused. It wasn't until 1999 that her son, Damon Elgauz, took up the project and began to investigate his father's life. The adventure starts in the Philippines, which, as I mentioned in episode 156, was the scene of some dramatic fighting during World War II. Japan invaded the islands just nine hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and in overwhelming numbers, and a group of American and Filipino soldiers held on heroically for three months to a small piece of territory there, the Bataan Peninsula and the island of Corregidor off its coast. Rocky Gause,

Starting point is 00:02:14 who was caught up in all this, wasn't a soldier at all. He'd been trained, as I said, as a pilot. He'd arrived in the Philippines to fly dive bombers, but the planes themselves hadn't arrived when the Japanese attacked, and he was caught up in the fighting on the ground. About 80,000 Filipino and American troops were squeezed onto the peninsula of Bataan at this time. On April 8th, Gause commandeered a truck to get some food for the men on the front lines, and after a chase, he was captured by the Japanese. They threw a man with a group of American prisoners, who told him that they'd been

Starting point is 00:02:41 without food or water for two days. Gause was afraid that the Japanese would kill all of them pretty soon, so he jumped a guard, grabbed his knife, stabbed him with it, and sprinted into the bush. Then he swam out into the bay toward Corregidor, which is an island off the coast that was still held by the Americans. That was daring, but it was also fortunate. Eventually, those captured soldiers, as well as 70,000 others, began what's called today the Bataan Death March. They were forced by the Japanese to walk 64 miles across country without food or water.

Starting point is 00:03:11 About 10,000 of those prisoners died of hunger, thirst, disease, and brutality at the hands of the Japanese. If he hadn't broken out of the camp like that, Gause would likely have been one of them. Instead, he swam three miles to Corregidor, where the army put him in charge of a machine gun squad. They fought hard, but the attack was to Corregidor, where the army put him in charge of a machine gun squad. They fought hard, but the attack was overwhelming at this point, and the Japanese took the island on May 6th. Gause escaped that disaster, too. Just before the island fell, he sailed for the mainland in an outrigger canoe, and he spent the next three months hopping from one island to the next, stealing food and evading the Japanese.

Starting point is 00:03:42 Eventually, he met William Osborne, who was an American who had also fought on Bataan and escaped across Manila Bay just as Gause had. For two months, Osborne had been living in the jungle, surviving on wild vegetables and fruit. Together, they discussed their options, and they agreed on what's really a desperate plan. The Japanese at this point largely controlled the whole southern Pacific, so their best chance, they decided, was to run for Australia, which is more than 3,000 miles away, or 5,000 kilometers. Just an unthinkable distance, but it was really the only option they had, short of turning themselves in. So their first step was to find a boat. Gause had heard of a boat that had been confiscated by the Japanese, which was a 20-foot wooden motor

Starting point is 00:04:20 skiff, basically a fishing boat, and they decided to steal that. One native brought them an old National Geographic map of Oceania that would turn out to be incredibly valuable to them on the voyage, just literally a map torn out of a magazine. The natives told them about the best routes, the topography of the islands, and the possible dangers they'd meet. In fact, throughout this whole trip, the Filipino people they met were wonderfully supportive. Strangers were constantly giving them food, protection, and advice. Gause later said, With the Filipinos' help, Osborne and Gause sewed sails, raised a mast, and patched and scraped the boat. When it was ready, they filled a beer bottle with water and christened the boat Ruth Lee, named after their wives. They needed fuel, and the Filipinos told them they were

Starting point is 00:05:02 large supplies of kerosene on the lighthouse island of Capra, near the channel leading to Manila Bay. So together one night, Gause and Osborne surprised the Japanese soldier who manned that lighthouse, tied him up, and loaded the boat with kerosene and ammunition that was stored there, as well as rope, tea, coffee, sugar, and fruit. One last precaution, which showed, I think, an awful lot of foresight, was to prepare a collection of flags. They had an American flag from Corregidor, a Filipino flag from Bataan, and a Japanese flag that Gause made himself

Starting point is 00:05:29 with materials taken from the lighthouse. In the end, they'd wind up using all of those. They set out in late August, navigating by dead reckoning, using a compass and this National Geographic map, which were all they had. In the beginning, they were both seasick, but they quickly got over that. Generally, on the ship, boat, Osborne handled the cooking and commissary duties, and Gause handled the sails and the operation of the boat. Technically, Osborne outranked Gause, but he knew nothing about sailing, so they agreed that while they were in the boat, Gause would be in charge. When they were on the boat, they called each other skipper and mate, and on land, Gause called Osborne captain. On the very first night

Starting point is 00:06:06 of the voyage, there's a whole series of incredible lucky escapes right through the whole thing, and here's the first one. The very first night, a Japanese ship overtook them and flashed something at them with its signal lights. Gause had no idea what they were saying and knew only two words of Japanese, but he flashed back Bansai Nippon, which means long-lived Japan in international Morse code. There was a pause and the ship flashed back, proceed. That was a lucky break, the first of many. They had no instruments, but using this National Geographic map, they were able to trace their course from island to island, making their way gradually south. When their motor began to fail, they made for the island of Busuanga, which they knew was the site of the world's largest leper colony. They knew there'd be some American doctors there and that the Japanese

Starting point is 00:06:48 would probably give it a wide berth. As they approached it, some lepers on a raft rode up and asked if they had any sugar to sell. Gauze was repelled at first and drove them off, but when they landed, they got a great welcome there, and to their great surprise, one of the lepers turned out to be a former marine engineer who repaired their boat for them. Wow. More luck, I guess. As they made their way southward through the islands, they foundered continually on coral reefs. This was just happening constantly. They were everywhere, so they had to stop periodically to patch up the boat as they went along. Also, they were fighting what turned out to be a strong southwest wind that prevails in the islands at that time of year. They let the map guide them, and natives along the way kept them informed about the Japanese, so they were able to avoid

Starting point is 00:07:28 areas that were dangerous, for the most part at least. They made steady progress to the south, but along the way they had a whole odyssey of strange adventures. One day, sitting at the tiller, Gause looked behind him and saw an eight-foot shark following the boat. He made a crude hook, caught the shark, and they ate it for supper that night. On the island of Dumaran, they met an American soldier from Montana. His transport had been sunk about 60 miles offshore at the start of the war, and he'd swum ashore and had been living for more than six months with a native family there. They invited him to come with them. He declined, but gave them a letter to deliver to his mother and family back in the United States. As they were passing Palawan Island, they passed a Japanese

Starting point is 00:08:05 seaplane at anchor with a motor launch alongside it. This is another lucky escape. The Japanese seemed to recognize that they were Americans and made as if to pursue them, but couldn't start their engine and were reduced to just firing their rifles at them, and Gause zigzagged the boat into the islands and got away. At Puerto Princesa, they found a large garrison of Japanese with about 300 American prisoners. They tried to sneak past the garrison in the night, but the wind died at just the wrong time, and they were left floating in clear sight of the island as the sun came up. Two Japanese ships rushed out to challenge them, but Gauze raised their Japanese flag, and they retreated. This was just another piece of luck. Later, they passed a number of settlements that had been burned

Starting point is 00:08:44 by the Japanese, and they heard stories about their cruelties on the islands. So they're continually making these fluky, lucky escapes. And they use those to document their trip and to do some reconnaissance on their way through the Dutch East Indies, which is there. If you read Gause's manuscript, it's not written in any kind of breathless way. It's pretty matter of fact. But the things, as I say, there's all these remarkable incidents, just a whole string of them, which makes they took these photographs and because Osborne himself later wrote his own side of the whole story, which matches up largely with Gauze, and there were just a whole string of witnesses who'd seen them and met them as they'd gone down through the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. It's just amazing that all of this happened. So now they had to cross the Sulu Sea, headed for North Borneo. They were well-supplied and could make good time with the wind, but the wind turned into a typhoon. It rose to 70 miles an hour and heavy seas swamped the

Starting point is 00:09:49 boat, but fortunately it drove them out into the open sea rather than onto a reef, which would surely have wrecked them. They bailed as fast as they could, but the storm continued all the next day and left them with no time even to eat. Their brave little engine kept running, luckily. Late in the afternoon, they hit a strange calm and hoped that the storm might be over, but the winds just turned around and picked up from another direction, just as strong as ever. When it seemed that the boat would turn over, the mast was snapped off and their sail ripped apart and disappeared. The storm roared on mercilessly through another night while Gause tried to control the boat from the tiller. The weather had torn away many of their improvised patches, so the boat was leaking now.

Starting point is 00:10:30 And the sea was so violent that it broke off their rudder, so that Gause found he was steering with not much more than a stick. He made a crude replacement out of bamboo and tried to use that. Finally, they saw a little island dead ahead and off to their left. This turned out to be Kageyansulu, about 800 kilometers off the Borneo coast. Gause steered to the leeward side of the island and they landed. Gause later wrote that another hour at sea would probably have killed them and it was another two days before the typhoon broke up. The natives they met there fed them, helped with repairs and cut down a tree that they rigged up as a mast. Then with new supplies of rice and bananas, they headed toward Borneo. Another bizarre adventure here. Gause was sitting at the tiller one day when a

Starting point is 00:11:03 Japanese submarine surfaced right next to them. All these bubbles came up from the deep, and he looked over idly and thought, I wonder what that is. And a whole submarine came up. The three men came out, fiddled with the forward gun, and then went back down to the hatch. The sub picked up speed and ran out of sight on the surface. Gause wrote, I'm sure the Japs saw us, but their cocksureness or lack of interest, one or the other, made them careless.

Starting point is 00:11:23 Two days later, they sighted land which they were sure was British in North Borneo. The food was running low, so they raised their Japanese flag and sailed into the harbor. The natives there fled as they approached since they were afraid of the Japanese, so Gause and Osborne just helped themselves to supplies from the empty village. So they were well supplied now, but the right course wasn't always clear. They knew they wanted to go to Darvell Bay on the eastern coast of Borneo, where they'd heard that some English plantation owners lived, but they disagreed about how closely to follow the coast. Gause tended to fear the reefs and wanted to stay out to sea, and Osborne tended to fear the Japanese and wanted to stay inland.

Starting point is 00:11:57 Gause agreed to follow the coast, and that night, as luck would have it, they ran high and dry on a reef. That led to their first big argument. Gause wrote afterward, in the weeks to come, when our nerves were strained to the breaking point and we were sick of looking at each other, we were to have some more arguments, but when the trip was over, we laughed about what seemed to us at the time to be serious difficulties. They were hung up on that reef for two days and two nights. When they finally worked their way off, they took the route that Gause had suggested farther out to sea. When they finally reached Darvell Bay, they found that the plantation owners they'd been looking for had been captured, and a native chief there told them they should just surrender themselves. He said, you can't possibly hope to escape the Japanese. They're so thick down here. The closer they're getting to Australia,

Starting point is 00:12:36 the more fighting there is between the Japanese and the Australians. So they're just meeting more and more Japanese and encountering more and more ships, which is just going to become a bigger problem all the way south. But they met four British soldiers who gave them food and cigarettes, and they decided to keep going to the south through the Makassar Strait. Japanese transports and warships were passing them more frequently now as they approached the contested waters near Australia. When this happened, they'd lower the sail and let the boat founder as if it were a derelict. Generally, that worked, but they were running out of food and water and the intense heat was getting unbearable.

Starting point is 00:13:07 They started to see mirages. At one point, Gause even saw the Golden Gate Bridge. But on the 11th day, they saw a low-lying coast dead ahead and landed. When the natives there learned that they were American, they carried them into the village and fed them, and they stayed for several days there, repairing the boat again and stocking it with food. Now they were sailing down through the Dutch East Indies and into the Java Sea. The tension was growing between the two of

Starting point is 00:13:29 them, Gause wrote, from being constantly keyed up and living so close together and so poorly. But both of them made great sacrifices to keep going. At one point, the anchor stuck in the coral and Gause had to dive down 35 feet to free it. He came back to the surface blind with pain and with blood streaming from his nose and ears, but he had no permanent injuries. At one point, bizarrely, this has nothing to do with anything. I just think it's fascinating. A sailfish started jumping over the boat. Apparently he was curious. I don't know anything about sailfish, but this one determined and very curious sailfish jumped repeatedly over the boat for more than an hour. God's word, I thought at last I'd seen everything. That's not connected to anything else.

Starting point is 00:14:05 I just had to mention that. As they sailed through the Dutch East Indies, they met no Dutchmen. They had all been picked up and interned by the Japanese. Goss wrote, I couldn't help but think how different this was from the Philippines, where there was an American or two hiding on every island. That's another sign of how much danger there was from the Japanese in this area. That was the sign that the hardest part of the journey was still ahead of them. As they approached Australia, they'd encounter more and more Japanese warships,

Starting point is 00:14:28 and to reach their goal, they'd have to get through a Japanese cordon between the Indies and Australia and cross several hundred miles of open water. As if to emphasize that, at one point, a pair of Japanese warships sailed right past them, one on either side of the boat. By the time Goss saw them coming, he had no time to get out of the way. Fortunately, they were flying their Japanese flag at the time, and the ships just passed by them without investigating. Another morning, they went ashore for supplies and realized they were in the middle of a Japanese garrison that was just waking up. They headed back quickly to the boat and set sail while a single sentry fired a few shots after them. Just one lucky escape after another. To avoid the Japanese, they began sailing only at night.

Starting point is 00:15:05 During the day, they'd head into a lagoon or a deserted cove, anchor the boat, and camouflage it with boughs, palms, and straw. Once they discovered that they'd done this within a stone's throw of a Japanese airfield, and they spent the whole day cowering the boat while big bombers took off right over their heads, probably headed toward Australia. But they were never discovered, and finally they reached the southern coast of Timor. From there, they hoped to cross the Timor Sea due south and finally reach northern Australia. But they were never discovered, and finally they reached the southern coast of Timor. From there, they hoped to cross the Timor Sea due south and finally reach northern Australia. They found a group of friendly islanders who helped to prepare them for this last leg, but Gause was still concerned about their provisions. They were out of both kerosene

Starting point is 00:15:36 and lubricating oil, which meant they'd have to use coconut oil for both fuel and lubricant. They had this brave little engine that just wouldn't quit. Gause would just sit by the tiller and just bang on the engine with a wrench, and it would just keep going no matter how badly they mistreated it. Now they're only 600 miles from Australia, but it was mostly open sea, and the area was full of Japanese forces. On the first day, a dozen big Japanese bombers flew overhead, probably returning from a mission on the mainland. Gause knew that when they spotted the boat, they'd probably alert prowler vessels that would come to investigate, and that's exactly what happened.

Starting point is 00:16:08 Fortunately, the search planes and ships arrived after dark, and their lights didn't happen to pick them out on the surface. And as luck would have it, the wind rose before dawn, and they were able to sail away quietly before they were spotted. Gause judged that they were in allied waters now, so he took down the Japanese flag and raised the stars and stripes.

Starting point is 00:16:23 He wrote later, that was almost a fatal move. About four o'clock, they heard a lone plane engine. As the plane approached, Gause hoped it might be from an American ship, but as it descended out of the sun, it opened fire on them. The plane zoomed past no more than a hundred feet off the water, and Gause hurriedly put up the Japanese flag again, but the pilot wasn't fooled and sent another round of fire at them. One bullet grazed Osborne's shoulder, and an incendiary punctured the fuel oil cans. Smoke and flames began to lick out of the cabin and the boat began to sink. The plane flew off thinking they were done for, but luckily the rising water put out the flames. Osborne bailed and Gause jumped overboard and plugged the bullet holes as well as he could. They'd lost several cans of precious coconut oil in the fire and their water supply

Starting point is 00:17:01 had been tainted with the salt water that filled the boat, so now the only source of drinkable fluid they had was three green coconuts. Gause dressed Osborne's wounds and coaxed the motor to life again, and they limped on toward Australia. Three days later, they were still limping, and both were so dehydrated that they'd stopped perspiring. Gause wrote, it was maddening to be so close to our goal and yet so far. They finally hit the Australian coast but couldn't find any water, so they started heading east along the shore, periodically going ashore and scraping water out of rocky pools. Sometimes they saw Allied boats and planes passing by, and they waved and fired their guns, but no one ever stopped. On the afternoon of the sixth day sailing east, they entered a large bay and sailed up the mouth of a river.

Starting point is 00:17:38 There, finally, a motor launch approached them, an experience so strange now that they couldn't be sure they were really seeing it. It was manned by Australian soldiers. The boat circled them, apparently unsure who they were. By now they were just blasted to sunburn to smithereens and still sailing this rickety boat with a tree for a mast, so it's not surprising they couldn't understand what they were seeing. The Australian major told his men, keep the blighters covered, and came aboard. They told him their story, and Gause said, the Australians gave them all the water and food and cigarettes we could stand. In all, they had spent 59 days sailing 3,200 miles through the Sulu, Celebes, and Java Seas

Starting point is 00:18:13 and made landfall within 15 miles of the point they'd set as their goal, using just a National Geographic map. And both of them, believe it or not, had put on weight during the trip. They slept in beds that night, and the next day they were flown to a northern Australia air base where they were taken to Douglas MacArthur's headquarters. Gause walked up to MacArthur's desk, saluted, and said, Sir Lieutenant Gause reports for duty from Corregidor. MacArthur returned the salute, looked him over, stood up, and said, well, I'll be damned. On October 21st, 1942, MacArthur personally decorated both of them with the Distinguished

Starting point is 00:18:44 Service Cross for Extraordinary Heroism in Action. Newspapers and magazines across the country carried their story. The New York Daily Mirror ran a 22-part interview with the two of them. The government wanted them to spend the rest of the war making personal appearances at war bond rallies, but after a year of this, they both asked to return to active duty. Osborne went to Burma, and Gause died testing dive bombers in England in 1944. He had kept a battered ship's log and diary throughout this whole journey, and before his death he wrote up an account of his adventures and paid a sergeant to type it out for him. That's the manuscript that his wife received.

Starting point is 00:19:14 He called it By the Grace of God and the Filipino People. It was accompanied by photos taken with a box camera and eight rolls of film. Why do people love Harry's? Because Harry's offers you an amazingly high quality shave at an affordable price with no more inconvenient trips to the drugstore. Plus their products make great gifts for your friends or family. Harry's wants to prove to you that their products are great, so they'll give you a shave set for free when you sign up at harrys.com slash closet. Just pay three bucks for shipping. That's a $13 value for you to try for free. You can save $100 or more a year by shaving with Harry's, and Harry's is 100% risk-free guaranteed. Someone from the Harry's team will check in to see how your trial is going and you can call and cancel at any time.

Starting point is 00:20:09 Over 3 million men have switched to Harry's. Why not try them for yourself and let them prove to you that they've got great razors. Head over to harrys.com slash closet to check them out. Get started with your Harry's free trial offer today. All you cover is just a few bucks in shipping to get your free trial set, including a handle, blade, shave gel, and travel blade cover, go to harrys.com slash closet. That's harrys.com slash closet. Don't wait. Get started with Harry's today. Pete B wrote to us about episode 58, English as She Is Spoke, which was about a rather tortured English phrase book published in 1855 by Pedro Carolino, who unfortunately didn't actually speak any English. So it contained some wonderful phrases such as the rose trees begins to button and he burns oneself the brains. begins to button and he burns oneself the brains. We actually had a bit of a tough time recording that episode as it was hard to get through it without laughing so much that we couldn't be

Starting point is 00:21:10 understood. Pete said, I have been catching up on all the older podcasts since I discovered your site some months ago. Fascinating stuff, I must say. One episode reminded me immediately of a scene from the movie Casablanca where a foreign couple is heading for america and therefore is trying to speak only english when they check the time it sounds like they got the translation of the phrase for checking time from a certain or similar phrase book i do not have a copy of english as she has spoke to see if it is actually from that book thanks for all the thoughtful and informative work on the podcast and the website. And Pete sent a link to a YouTube clip of the scene in which the man asks his wife, sweetness heart, what watch? And she checks her watch and replies, 10 watch. And this does seem

Starting point is 00:21:59 like something that could come from English as she spoke. But I was able to find a copy of the book online and determine that it doesn't seem that the couple in Casablanca was actually using this particular phrasebook as their model. However, English as She Is Spoke gives us some of its examples, what o'clock is it, what o'clock you think it is, and what o'clock dine him. So not too dissimilar, maybe the Casablanca's writers were familiar with Carolino's work. I had never noticed that in Casablanca. I guess it goes by pretty fast, but it's a funny line. Yeah. Nathan Cross sent an email with the subject line, lighthouse for sale that would make

Starting point is 00:22:37 an excellent hermitage and said, hey guys, I just saw this and my first thought was, wow, this would be the perfect hermitage. I've clearly been listening to too much of your podcast. And maybe that might be one way to know that you have been listening to a lot of Utility Closet. The article that Nathan sent is about a 144-year-old lighthouse two miles offshore near Baltimore, Maryland that is currently being auctioned off by the U.S. government. I guess an offshore lighthouse would make a great hermitage and really cut down on the number of visitors you would get. Though the lighthouse was described

Starting point is 00:23:14 as being a fixer-upper, so you will need to be a handy hermit if you want to live there. And if you want more options, it turns out that there are actually five more lighthouses for sale around Michigan. Some of those have histories of being rather encased in ice during the winter months, so they might be better for someone who really doesn't want too many visitors. And while some of these lighthouses do look pretty picturesque, the interiors tend to look rather rough, and there's no word on whether they have Wi-Fi. But we'll have links, of course, in the show notes for anyone who aspires to be a lighthouse hermit. Christian Dainton wrote on the topic of decimal time,

Starting point is 00:23:52 which we had mentioned in episode one and then in episode 163, to note that one of our listeners had developed a clock that kept decimal time. Christian said, hi guys, which is used in the unisex multi-species sense. On the one hand, you have people saying that we should use decimal time to simplify things. On the other hand, you have people like me who wish that we used a duodecimal numbering system for everything else. 12 has more factors, making it easier to divide between e.g. 3, 4, or 6. And its ease of use in everyday life is shown by the fact that it was used historically for weights and measures. Unfortunately, evolution gave us 10 fingers and the rest is history. Keep up the good work. Christian does have a good point

Starting point is 00:24:37 about 12 having more factors, but maybe it is my 10-fingered biases that make decimal systems just seem more workable to me. With our current system for measuring time, it's not very easy to do things like adding one hour and 24 minutes to three hours and 52 minutes. I also think it's a real problem when people try to represent a non-decimal system like time or feet and inches in decimals. So you're told that something is 4.62 feet long, and you need to work out how many inches 6.62 feet would be. That just doesn't seem like a good system to me.

Starting point is 00:25:10 Yeah, imperial measures cause us problems on this show. We have a relatively large international audience, but two thirds of it is still in the United States. So if we're going to give a measure of, say, distance, it's still hard to decide whether to give it in miles or in kilometers. Yeah, that's just a problem with our being one of the few countries in the world that's still hard to decide whether to give it in miles or in kilometers. Yeah, that's just a problem with our being one of the few countries in the world that still stubbornly insists on not switching to the metric system. But actually the thing that I'm really hoping for is one of those calendar reform systems like we discussed in the first episode.

Starting point is 00:25:38 Instead of the really inconsistent system that we have now where we have different months having different numbers of days, which just seems kind of screwy when you think about it. And 31 is a prime number, so if you go with Christian's argument that having factors is a help, then that's just a really lousy number of days to have in a month. So I'm holding out for the calendar reforms. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. If you have any questions or comments, you can send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And bonus points to you if you give me some help with your name. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I am going to give him an

Starting point is 00:26:19 odd sounding situation and he has to try to figure out what is actually going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from David Prusiner, who let us know that he and his wife Becky have been married for 40 years, met in high school, and still love talking to each other, and now have our podcast to talk about in addition to their other subjects. Great. So way to go, David and Becky. Here's David's puzzle.

Starting point is 00:26:45 A farmer drove his pickup truck down the highway in front of his farm, turned onto a muddy side road and instantly became stuck in the mud. No worries. His farm was nearby. He walked back to his farm and soon returned on his tractor with a tow rope in hand. He attached the tow rope to his tractor and the back of his truck and began to pull the truck back towards the highway. He was seated in the tractor pulling. Suddenly, as a result of his efforts, he died. What happened? That was going so nicely there, wasn't it? And then the guy suddenly dies.

Starting point is 00:27:17 Suddenly, as a result of his efforts, he dies. Yeah. All right, so you've got a guy in a tractor. Yes. Towing a car. Trying to pull a car out of the mud. Truck out of the mud. And just for clarity, the car clarity the car and the tractor the truck opposite direction yeah yes the truck and the tractor pointed opposite direction i believe so yes with the tote with with a rope connecting

Starting point is 00:27:35 them yes do we need to know anything more about the truck than that um yes maybe i don't know okay i mean do we need to know that it was like it was in gear or Um. Yes. Hmm. Maybe. I don't know. Okay. I mean, do I need to know that it was like it was in gear or. No, nothing like that. Okay. So it would help me then to know how he died.

Starting point is 00:27:55 Obviously. That would. Did the rope break? No. Does it matter where this happened? Exactly. No. Or the weather.

Starting point is 00:28:01 No. Or time, you know, period. No. And it's a track by a tractor. You mean what I think of as a tractor that a farmer might have. Yes. Okay. All right. Did he die from some, I want to say, biological cause, like a heart attack or a stroke or something?

Starting point is 00:28:18 No. It wasn't through physical exertion that brought this on. And the rope didn't break, and I don't need to know much more about the truck. And I don't, are there other people involved? No. It's not that somebody's passing by on the road? Correct.

Starting point is 00:28:34 And I don't need to know where he was going? Right. Okay. Well, this is pretty straightforward then. That couldn't be more straightforward. All right, if the rope doesn't break, was the tractor moving when he died? I don't know. Possibly not.

Starting point is 00:28:53 Possibly not. Okay. So he hooks up the rope and it just gets back onto the tractor. Yes. And is attempting to pull the truck out of the mud. When he dies. Yes. And he's on the tractor when he dies. He doesn't fall off. Right. It's nothing like that. Right. He's on the tractor. When he dies? Yes. And he's on the tractor

Starting point is 00:29:05 when he dies? He doesn't fall off? Right. It's nothing like that? Right. He's on the tractor. He doesn't fall off. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:12 Would, I have to ask this, would you say that the cause of his death is related to what he was doing? Yes. Right. Always a good question.

Starting point is 00:29:21 So if he'd just driven down the road in the truck, he wouldn't have died at that same moment. Right. Right. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:28 A giant meteor. Yeah. Right. So his bomb went off or something. Yeah. Surprise. Nothing to do with it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:35 No. Okay. It was definitely as a result of his efforts. Was the tractor involved? Not directly. Okay, you wouldn't say the tractor caused his death by... I wouldn't. Exploding or falling over or something?

Starting point is 00:29:53 Right, I wouldn't. Do I need to know anything more about him, his identity, his past? Nope. How do you die on a tractor? Do I need to know anything more about him, his identity, his past? Nope. How do you die on a tractor? Would he have died if the truck weren't there, if he was just riding the tractor back toward the road? He would not have died in that situation. So the truck had to be there.

Starting point is 00:30:20 Okay, that ought to be helpful. Now you just have to figure out how. But you say he wasn't necessarily moving at the moment. He was not necessarily moving. That is correct. Does the rope have to be taut? Yes. Okay. Okay. That's helpful. Yeah. Good question.

Starting point is 00:30:35 So it's not just that he just climbed back onto the tractor and hasn't even started going yet. That's correct. He started moving back toward the road. Yes. He's pulling on the tractor and the rope is taut. When the rope goes taut, does it launch something in the air or anything like that? Not exactly, if I think I understand your question correctly. Are there any other living things involved? No.

Starting point is 00:30:57 It's like a snake or something. Right. Oh, whoa. It was a snake on the rope. And it's not that he pulls the bumper off the truck and that goes flying. It is like that. That is what it is. The farmer had tied the tow rope to the ball of the truck's trailer hitch, which was old.

Starting point is 00:31:16 The truck had stuck fast. When the tractor pulled, the tow rope was put under tremendous pressure, but the truck could not move. The rusty bolt holding the trailer hitch ball suddenly broke. The extreme tension of the tow rope then fired the ball back toward the farmer, striking him on the back of his head, killing him instantly. Is this true? He says it is. David says that he, yes, he'd heard this story and it supposedly actually happened. Because it sounds like something, you know, some freak story that actually did happen. Yeah. And David actually sent me a very amusing list of questions and answers to this puzzle so that I could read through them and try to guess it myself

Starting point is 00:31:49 before I posed it to you. It was very fun. And I'd actually guessed that the truck itself had become very suddenly unstuck and that the whole truck had gone into the tractor. Yeah, that's a good guess. But you actually got it much closer to what it actually was. Stumbled into it. So thanks to David and Becky for that puzzle. And if you have a puzzle you'd like to send in for us to try, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us. If you would like to help support the celebration of the quirky and the curious that is Futility Closet,

Starting point is 00:32:23 you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or you can join our Patreon campaign where you'll get outtakes, extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and updates on Sasha, the ever diligent Futility Closet mascot. Find that at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the website for the link. At the website you'll also find over 9,000 bite-sized distractions, the Futility Closet store, and the show notes for the podcast with the links and references for the topics we've covered in the show. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:33:01 Our music was written and performed by Greg's incredible brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 166-A Dangerous Voyage

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.