Futility Closet - 194-The Double Life of Clarence King

Episode Date: March 26, 2018

American geologist Clarence King led a strange double life in the late 1800s: He invented a second identity as a black railroad porter so he could marry the woman he loved, and then spent 13 years living separate lives in both white and black America. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll consider the extraordinary lengths that King went to in order to be with the woman he loved. We'll also contemplate the dangers of water and puzzle over a policeman's strange behavior. Intro: Artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster arrange household trash to cast shadow self-portraits. Participants 140 meters apart can hold an inaudible conversation across South Australia's Barossa Reservoir dam. Sources for our feature on Clarence King: Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange, 2009. Bill Croke, "The Many Lives of Clarence King," American Spectator, Feb. 28, 2011. John Koster, "He Tried to Solve Earth’s Mysteries And Left a Few Mysteries of His Own- Clarence King," Wild West, February 2014. William Grimes, "Recalling a Geologist, Adventurer and Raconteur Whom Henry Adams Looked Up to," New York Times, Feb. 22, 2006. David L. Beck, "A Geologist's Secret Life," St. Petersburg Times, April 12, 2009. William Howarth, "Sex, Lies and Cyanide," Washington Post, May 20, 1990. Michael K. Johnson, "Passing Strange," Western American Literature 44:4 (Winter 2010), 404-405. Martha A. Sandweiss, "Ada Copeland King," American National Biography (accessed March 23, 2018). Thurman Wilkins, "Clarence Rivers King," American National Biography (accessed March 23, 2018). "American Lives: The 'Strange' Tale of Clarence King," Morning Edition, National Public Radio, Aug. 18, 2010. Annette Gordon-Reed, "Color Blind," Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2009. Jennifer Greenstein Altmann, "Sandweiss Unearths a Compelling Tale of Secret Racial Identity," Princeton University, Dec. 17, 2009. Baz Dreisinger, "A Transracial Man," New York Times, March 5, 2009. "American Lives: The 'Strange' Tale of Clarence King," WBUR News, Aug. 18, 2010. Elinore Longobardi, "Two Lives," Columbia Journalism Review, Feb. 4, 2009. "King Peak," Antarctica: An Encyclopedia, 2011. Listener mail: Wikipedia, "Bhopal Disaster" (accessed March 23, 2018). Alan Taylor, "Bhopal: The World's Worst Industrial Disaster, 30 Years Later," Atlantic, Dec. 2, 2014. An example of a current safety manual warning of the dangers of rust in steel tanks, from Gillian Brent. "The Case of the Rusty Assassin," Maritime Accident Casebook (accessed March 25, 2018). Steve Selden, "Polar Bear Encounters on Rise in Churchill," Churchill Polar Bills, Feb. 29, 2016. A Colorado bear breaks into Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Scott Miller. Here's a corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from artistic shadows to a whispering wall. This is episode 194. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. This is Episode 194. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross.

American geologist Clarence King led a strange double life in the late 1800s. He invented a second identity as a black railroad porter so he could marry the woman he loved, and then spent 13 years living separate lives in both white and black America. In today's show, we'll consider the extraordinary lengths that King went to in order to be with the woman he loved. We'll also contemplate the dangers of water and puzzle over a policeman's strange behavior. And a quick programming note, we'll be off next week, so look for the next episode on April 9th. Clarence King was such a dynamic figure during this country's expansion that it's amazing he's been forgotten as thoroughly as he has. He was a geologist, mountaineer, and author who mapped the West after the Civil War,

helped champion the national park system, surveyed the path of the Union Pacific Railroad, and wrote a best-selling book about his adventures. He dined at the White House and counted Henry James and Bret Hart among his friends. The historian Henry Adams called him the most remarkable man of our time, and John Hay, the Secretary of State under McKinley and Roosevelt, called him the best and brightest man of his generation. He was born in Newport, Rhode Island, to a distinguished family. One of his father's ancestors had come to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637, and his mother could trace her ancestry back to signers of the Magna Carta. But he spent most

of his life as a gentleman scientist, cobbling together an income from government appointments, writing projects, and rich friends. He got a doctorate in chemistry at Yale in 1862, but was uncertain what to do with himself. Shortly after that, he heard one of his teachers read a description of Mount Shasta in California, which he'd recently climbed with a fellow student. King looked at his teacher and said, that settles it, and he set out for the West. He'd spend the next decade mapping and surveying the American West, often using federal funding that he'd secured himself. He co-discovered Mount Whitney, and he made a boundary survey of the Yosemite Valley. And in 1872, he wrote up his adventures in a book called Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, which became a bestseller back East.

The novelist William Dean Howells told Rutherford B. Hayes that his only complaint was, quote, that a man who can give us such literature should be content to be merely a great scientist. King surveyed enormous tracts of land along the 40th parallel, the route of the new transcontinental railroad. His methods of topographic mapping there set a new standard, and he was appointed the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey to consolidate that work. In 1872, he became famous for exposing a hoax. Some prospectors in the Colorado Territory had claimed to find diamonds near Browns Park, and that set off a craze that set 25 companies working feverishly in the field. King examined the land and found that it had been deliberately salted with diamonds.

That prevented a disastrous economic bubble and made King famous for integrity in an age of financial scoundrels. He was dubbed the King of Diamonds. One newspaper editorial said, we have escaped thanks to God and Clarence King, a great financial calamity. King traveled so widely and so often that his friends were seldom sure where he was, and none of them knew much about his private life, and so none of them knew that in the 1880s he had begun to go slumming after hours, setting out anonymously after dark into the streets of lower Manhattan. His secretary wrote that King would go, quote, wandering not infrequently throughout the live-long night in quixotic search of adventure. He wasn't alone in doing this.

Slumming had become a fashionable amusement among the upper classes in London and Paris in the early 1880s. He'd meet and talk to people, participate in the nightlife, and sometimes even get into fights. He lived in a succession of Manhattan hotels, which gave him anonymity and privacy, and eventually he asked his friends to write to him at his clubs, so he wasn't even receiving mail at home. He could disappear for extended periods without anyone's knowledge. He spent years making nocturnal rambles throughout New York in the mid and late 1880s, and at some point in late 1887 or early 1888, he met a woman named Ada Copeland.

She'd been born a slave in West Point, Georgia around 1860 and had gained her freedom at the end of the Civil War. She left Georgia in the 1880s and went to New York, where she eventually found work as a nursemaid with a friend in lower Manhattan. She was 20 years his junior, but King was attracted to dark-skinned women and she could read and write, which was unusual for a black woman at the time. She told him she was Ada Copeland. He told her he was James Todd, a black Pullman porter, and she believed him. That can be hard to understand. Clarence King was almost as white as it's possible to be.

He had sandy blonde hair and blue eyes, and he could trace his European ancestry back to the Middle Ages. But after slavery was abolished in this country, the notion of race had become rather abstract. Slavery had such a long history here that many African Americans had European ancestry, and some of them passed or identified as white. That created a problem for whites. How could you identify a black person if it wasn't by their enslavement?

One solution was to focus on ancestry rather than appearance. In many states, if one of your eight great-grandparents was black, then you were black, no matter your actual appearance. And that made it possible for a fair-haired, blue-eyed, white-skinned man like Clarence King to claim to be black. Those rules were often still in place in the 20th century. If you want a striking example of this, look up Walter White, who led the NAACP for 24 years. White looked European. Of his 32 great-great-great-grandparents, only five were black, and the other 27 were white. But he was considered black. In his 32 great-great-great-grandparents, only five were black and the other 27 were white, but he was considered black. In his 1948 memoir, he wrote, I am a Negro. My skin

is white. My eyes are blue. My hair is blonde. The traits of my race are nowhere visible upon me. Ironically, judging race by ancestry made it easier to move between racial categories rather than harder. Blacks with light skin could pass as white and get jobs and social advantages that otherwise wouldn't be open to them. And Clarence King could pass in the other direction, claiming to be black when in fact he was white. He reinforced that by claiming to be a Pullman porter, since it was well known that only black men were employed to work as porters in Pullman sleeping cars. Possibly Ada had doubts about what King told her. We don't really know what she was thinking, but if she liked King personally, as apparently she did, his story would have made him an appealing partner. Pullman porters were among the elite of the black working class, almost within reach of

the middle class. A relationship with a prosperous, light-skinned black man might seem like a step up the social ladder for Ada. In contrast, a relationship with Clarence King, a powerful white man, would only invite trouble in a society where both whites and blacks frowned on mixed-race relationships. In any case, she accepted him, and they started seeing each other. For King, this was a risky step. Once he told her he was James Todd, he couldn't afford to see her in the presence of either her employers or his own friends. If they called him Clarence, or if she called him Jim, his double identity might be exposed. double identity might be exposed. To be with her, he'd have to invent a whole past, hiding his worldliness and education and avoiding any mention of his real family, friends, travels, cultural

tastes, or employers. Why would King take this step given all the danger? The Princeton historian Martha Sandweiss, who's written the best book about all this, says King was a racial radical. He'd been raised by a mother and grandmother who were abolitionists, and he believed in an America without race. As early as the 1880s, he was envisioning an American future in which, quote, the composite elements of American populations are melted down into one race alloy, when there are no more Irish or Germans, Negroes and English, but only Americans belonging to one defined American race. But his friends didn't share that view, and they might have cut him out of their lives if he'd revealed a secret

relationship with a black woman. As much as Clarence loved Ada, they were living in a time in which no one else would accept their relationship. Nonetheless, they were married in September 1888 in a small ceremony at the home of Ada's aunt. He was 46. She would have been about 27. The ceremony was religious, but they never got a civil marriage license. That meant they had a common law marriage, which was valid in most states at that time. But the guests must have wondered why none of the groom's family or friends came to the wedding. King would remain devoted to Ada for 13 years, secretly supporting her and their growing family as he moved around the country living two separate lives. In Manhattan and in his travels, he was Clarence King, the famous white geologist, and when he crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, he became James Todd, a black railroad porter. And he interacted with Ada and her world, her

friends, neighbors, and family, as a black man. In doing this, he was moving away from social privilege, and she was moving toward it. Soon after their marriage, Ada quit her job and moved into an apartment on Hudson Avenue in Brooklyn. At the same time, King moved to a hotel that was closer to Brooklyn, but he had to maintain his old life. In order to support Ada, he needed to earn a living as Clarence King. She believed he worked as a railroad porter, so he could easily explain his long absences from home, and his friends had never been able to keep track of him in any case. Living a double life was taxing, but he did it by choice. Rather than marry Ada, he could simply have asked her to become his mistress, but she might well have resisted that, wanting a respectable life. And his surviving

letters show his love for her. He wrote to her from the road, I thank God that even if I am forced to travel and labor far away from you, I have the daily comfort of remembering that far away in the east there is a dear brown woman who loves me and who I love beyond the power of words to describe. If it were not for the vision of your dear self and my absolute confidence in your love and your being true to me in act and thought at all times, I fear I should not have the faith and courage to struggle on away from you. In 1889, she gave birth to their first child, a son they named Leroy, which is French for the

king, which might have been a private joke that King made with himself. The following spring, Ada was pregnant with their second child, a girl they named Grace Margaret. That was the name of an infant sister King had lost in childhood, which is perhaps another inside joke. He was traveling most of the time now, working tirelessly to try to support the growing family while maintaining two identities. Soon she was pregnant again, and in 1891, he helped the family move to a quieter, more residential neighborhood in the northwestern part of Bedford-Stuyvesant. As King's family grew, the strain was beginning to tell on him. He began to borrow money. He requested at least six loans from his friend John Hay in this period without telling him the reason. When King's first child, Leroy, died in 1891, Hay wrote that he sensed despair about King, but of course he didn't know the reason.

Ada delivered a girl in 1892 and a boy the following year, their fifth child together. King was away constantly while she cared for the children and managed the household in Brooklyn. He wrote to her, my first duty in these times is to make enough for your expenses, and on that I will use all my strength. But he had a breakdown that fall at a menagerie in Central Park where he flew into a rage. Two physicians said he was suffering from mental disturbance with occasional acute symptoms, and he was committed to the Bloomingdale Asylum for the insane. That story appeared in the newspapers, but there was nothing about it that would have made Ada suspicious. King left the asylum after two months. The discharge notice read,

form of insanity, acute melancholia. He returned to her in Brooklyn, offered some excuse for his long absence, and stayed two weeks. Then he was off again, leaving her some money. Due to some business reverses, he was in quite serious financial straits now, but his friends saw too little of him to know quite why. He wrote to Hay, oh, when shall I be free once again and stand as I once did? But throughout all this, his love for Ada never changed. He wrote to her, Lonely seems my bed, lonely is my pillow. I think of you and dream of you, and my first waking thought is of your dear face and your loving heart. In late 1896 or early 1897, he helped the family move to a quiet residential area of single-family homes in Flushing, Queens. There, Ada had five servants, a nurse, a music teacher for the children, a cook, a maid, and a laundress.

Clarence wrote, Ever since I put that ring on your finger, I have worked and prayed for you, and will do so until God parts us by death. But he added, I think you're a good housekeeper and manager and know that you don't waste money. Our family has grown expensive and I will struggle to keep you and them up well. God bless you, my own, my only one. It's hard to know whether Ada suspected that he wasn't telling the whole truth. She might have wondered why she never met his family or friends and might even have suspected that he changed jobs and was now passing for white somewhere. But being his wife had given her a middle-class life she could scarcely have hoped for in Georgia during her girlhood. And he'd given her a reason for secrecy. He told her that he had a wealthy aunt whom he couldn't afford to alienate and who would disapprove of his marriage to a much

darker wife who had been born into slavery. If they kept their marriage secret, they could hope for a large inheritance from her one day. He wrote, the more important thing to us of all others is that the property which will one day come to me shall not be torn away from us by some foolish idle person talking about us and some word getting to my old aunt. And he himself took care to guard the secret. No picture exists of the two of them together. No document bears both of their signatures. And apparently he destroyed whatever letters she wrote to him, apparently because they constituted evidence that he was James Todd. Apparently, he destroyed whatever letters she wrote to him, apparently because they constituted evidence that he was James Todd. The only letters that remain are the ones that she saved.

As he grew older, King withdrew from science and tried to improve his fortunes by promoting gold and silver mines in Mexico. His friend Henry Adams wrote, Whatever prizes he wanted lay ready for him. With ordinary luck, he would die at 80, the richest and most many-sided genius of his day. But his hopes for the mining ventures were disappointed, and his taste for art, travel, and fine living soon left him heavily in debt, and his health was growing worse. By 1901, King was seriously ailing with tuberculosis, and he set out for Arizona in one last attempt to recover his health. He wrote to John Hay,

I have been trying to understand why a man as well endowed with intelligence as I should have made such a failure of many matters as I have. In Phoenix, he wanted to receive letters from Ada, but he feared that letters addressed to James Todd wouldn't get past his caretakers, so he sent her a letter finally explaining that he was Clarence King. They'd been together 13 years at this point. We don't know whether he also told her his race, profession, background, or birthplace. Ada opened the letter, but we don't know how she reacted,

as with so much of the story, we just don't know the details. King apparently still urged her to keep the relationship private. He wrote to her in late October to tell her how relieved he was that she'd got away from the place, quote, where so many people felt curiosity about you and me. He had asked to make his final arrangements, but when he died on Christmas Eve, just shy of 60 years old, the only will he left was one he'd drawn up in 1886, which left everything to his mother. His funeral was held on New Year's Day 1902 at the Brick Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. He was buried in his family's plot in Newport, Rhode Island. Now Ada began a 31-year legal battle to establish some claim to King's legacy.

He'd said he'd left $80,000 in a trust fund for her with his friend James Gardner. That would be more than $2 million today. He wrote, you need never worry. Gardner started sending her monthly checks of $65, about $2,000 today, and he bought a house in Flushing where she and the children could live. But when she tried to press her case, they stonewalled her and warned her that they'd cut her off if she made an outcry. The attorneys she engaged advised her to drop the case, and eventually she did so, but she took it up again in the 1920s and finally got her day in court on November 20th, 1933. King's love letters to her were read into the record, which made a small sensation in the press, but by then King's reputation had

already begun to fade. The fact that King had lived a double life never came to light, nor did the fact that Ada herself might have been deceived. In the end, the trial found that King had been broke. There was no trust fund. The flow of money that had been supporting Ada in the house had been arranged by King's old friend John Hay to protect King's name and prevent any scandal. Ada was disappointed in her lawsuit and she lost the monthly payments, but she'd established her family links to King and she got titled to the house where she lived with two of her children until her death on April 14, 1964, at age 103. She'd outlived her husband by more than 62 years. And there was one last milestone that Clarence King, the racial radical, would have appreciated. In 1963, the year before she died, Ada King became

one of the few former American slaves who heard Martin Luther King give his I Have a Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This episode is brought to you by our patrons and by Away. Away offers high-quality luggage that is designed to be resilient, resourceful, and essential to the way you travel. Available in a variety of colors and four sizes, including carry-on sizes that are compliant with all major U.S. airlines, the Away suitcase is lightweight and made with premium German polycarbonate that's unrivaled in strength and impact resistance. It features a TSA-approved combination lock, four 360-degree spinner wheels, and both sizes of the carry-on are able to charge anything that's powered by a USB cord. A single charge will power your iPhone five times.

We have an Away carry-on, and it really does maneuver much more smoothly than any other wheeled suitcase we've had. And the removable battery seems really practical. Try out Away for 100 days, and if at any point you decide it's not for you, return it for a full refund. Shipping is free within the lower 48 states, and thanks to Away's lifetime warranty, if anything breaks, they'll fix it. So you've got nothing to lose. For $20 off a suitcase, visit awaytravel.com slash closet and use promo code closet during checkout. That's awaytravel.com slash closet and promo code closet for $20 off your Away suitcase. We have some follow-up on the puzzle from episode 190, so the usual spoiler alert here.

That was the puzzle about the man who died in a tank that had a small amount of water in it because the rusting steel had depleted the oxygen. Gillian Brent, who had sent in the puzzle, sent us an email with the subject line, woohoo, I'm famous, and said, follow up to that steel tank problem and well done, Sharon, for getting it. There are lots of mentions of similar issues in current day safety materials because it still happens. People assume that, hey, it's just water, nothing dangerous, and don't realize the issue. I read the book in about 2000, and it had been published just after Beau Paul, 1984. So while that's now over 30 years ago, the same situation is still causing fatal accidents.

And Gillian closed with, does the happy dance of worldwide fame. So we're so glad to have made someone's day, though I'm not quite sure that we can guarantee worldwide fame. The Bhopal disaster of 1984 that Gillian refers to is considered to be the world's worst industrial disaster, when at least 30 tons of highly toxic gas leaked from the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant, leading to more than 600,000 people being exposed to gas, with an estimated 15,000 fatalities and more than 550,000 injuries. And apparently, one key element that caused the disaster was water getting into a tank where it shouldn't

have been and starting an exothermic reaction that led to a critically high temperature and pressure in the tank. So as Gillian notes, water can be a lot more dangerous in some situations than people might give it credit for. Yeah. Gillian sent a link to a UK governmental guide that tries to impress upon workers how dangerous confined spaces can be. And Brian Husa wrote in about some workers who really could have used such a guide. Hello, Sharon, Sasha, and Greg. I was just listening to your lateral thinking puzzle involving an enclosed space lacking oxygen due to rusting steel, and it reminded me of an actual tragedy with a similar cause. Warning, it's a very grim story.

with a similar cause. Warning, it's a very grim story. Three men on the emergency response and rescue vessel Viking Isla died after entering an unventilated anchor cable locker that had been depleted of oxygen by the rusting of the anchor chains within. The first man entered to secure a chain that had been making noise. The next entered to try to rescue the first and the third to rescue both of them. Oxidizing steel slash iron is no joke. Here's a link to a more in-depth telling on the Marine Accident Casebook. I hope you find the Case of the Rusty Assassin interesting. I know it's rather dark, but it seemed up your alley. Thanks for the many hours of audio brain food. This incident is really similar to the puzzle that we did, though unfortunately it was even more fatal.

It occurred in 2007, and the Maritime Accident Casebook website says, More than one of the seafarers aboard Viking Isla was astonished that three men, their workmates, could simply collapse and die in an anchor locker. Many of the seafarers on the ship, including the master, didn't think of an anchor locker as a dangerous place. And that came down to the men not realizing how very depleted of oxygen the locker was and how very quickly they could be overcome by the effects. Yeah, that somehow compounds the tragedy that it just seems so innocuous that you don't even stop to think that it might be that dangerous. Right. And it's now been four whole episodes since we last had any discussion about bears, so obviously we are due. After episode 190, Sam Dick sent us an email with the subject line, Bears in Jail.

Sam said, Hi, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha. The discussion of bears and jailing donkeys in the most recent episode brought to mind the town of Churchill, Manitoba, which is the self-proclaimed polar bear capital of the world. They use round doorknobs there, but also keep cars unlocked so you have an easy place to hide should you need it. Because the town is on a polar bear migration route, they often get them wandering into town, and provincial wildlife officers will arrive to scare them out of town. But if they keep coming back, they have a holding facility, informally called the Polar Bear Jail, located near the airport where they hold them before airlifting them far from town once ice conditions allow. The hope is that eventually the bears will begin teaching their cubs to stay out of town,

so the jail will eventually run itself out of business. And Sam sent a link to an article with a photo of the polar bear holding facility in front of which are three, I'm assuming drugged polar bears lying in nets and being attached to a helicopter with ropes to be airlifted out. The article says that over two thirds of all polar bears live in Canada, and that climate change is causing them to spend more time on land rather than on the sea ice. This is bringing them into inhabited areas in search of food, leading to increasing numbers of polar bear encounters in places like Churchill. And Churchill's polar bear situation might take some of the heat off of Colorado,

which we have apparently been bear bashing quite a bit, as Megan Bergstrom wrote in about. Hello, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha. I've been listening my way backwards through your podcast, which is probably the wrong way to go about it, but nevertheless, I persist. I couldn't help but notice all the mentions of bears and my adopted home state of Colorado. Granted, I've lived here since I was four, but Coloradans can be picky about you calling yourself a native if you weren't born here. I kept thinking, come now, there aren't that many bears here, which made me really think about how many times bears have come up in my own life. And I realized that yes, yes, there are many bears. Just last year, I found myself picking bike routes based on my odds of encountering a bear because a mother bear and her cubs had been

reported along one of my favorite trails. I don't even live in the mountains. I live in the city of Loveland. The year before, my husband and I were up in Estes Park walking along the lake, and some teenagers told us, hey, there's a bear coming this way, and I thought they were pulling my leg. But no, there was a bear coming down the trail, seeming perplexed by all of the walkers and bikers that were choosing to follow it.

My husband and I chose a different route and headed off, not wanting to crowd or distress the poor thing more than it already was. Perhaps the most amusing of all, my favorite chocolate shop, the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory of Estes Park, has a glowing advertisement plastered on their window declaring that they are the bear's choice, due to a break-in a couple of years ago in which a bear let himself into the shop during the night and sampled some of the chocolates before heading on his way. There's even a video on their website. And really, I can't blame the bear. They do make the best caramel apples this side of the Great Divide. These aren't even all of my bear stories, but I don't want to talk your ear off. I really enjoy listening to

your podcast. Thanks very much for all your hard work. I watched the video of the local news story about the bear breaking into the Colorado candy shop. The store's security cameras got a recording of the bear easily opening the front door and wandering through the shop, jumping up on and over counters in search of treats. Surprisingly, the bear didn't damage anything at all in the store, just ate a bunch of the sweets. The bear would go in, grab something yummy, and then leave to eat it outside and then come back for some more. It entered the store a total of seven times in about 20 minutes, so it clearly didn't find the door to be any kind of impediment. The store's owner found a faulty latch on the door, which was repaired, and the security cameras caught the bear returning the next night, but unable to get

back in. In the news story, the shop owner said that she's been getting at least five customers a day coming in and ordering all the things that the bear was reported to have eaten. Apparently, one of its favorites was the chocolate-covered Rice Krispie treats. How did the bear know the first time that there was food in there? Can they smell? Maybe they can. I guess they must. They must be able to because there were those incidents of the bears breaking into cars that had food in there. Can they smell? Maybe they can. I guess they must. They must be able to because there were those incidents of the bears breaking into cars that had food in them. I mean, they must have a very good sense of smell. Either that or they can read. So that's the bear update for this week. Thanks so much to everyone who writes into us. We really enjoy your updates and comments. So if you have any you'd

like to send in, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. And I do still really appreciate tips for correctly pronouncing your name. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd sounding situation. And I have to figure out what's going on asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Scott Miller. You're driving down the highway late at night and you look in the rearview mirror and see flashing blue lights. You pull over quickly, turn on the interior light, roll down the window and put your hands on the steering wheel like a good citizen. You look in the mirror and see a police officer walking up to the car and he or

she touches the tail light and then comes to the window. You receive a minor traffic ticket and you're on your way. The next day you see another vehicle stop near the same spot and you notice the police officer touch their taillight as they approach the car. Why does the police officer touch the taillight? That's a very good question. Okay. Does it matter where this happened? No no anything about the where of it no no doesn't matter what kind of a road you were driving on no doesn't matter what kind of a vehicle you were driving no okay the police officer touches the taillight does the police officer touch the taillight would you, in a particular kind of way that I should try to suss out? I think I'd say no to that. Okay. Does it matter which taillight

the police officer touches? No. Does the police officer touch the taillight for the two different vehicles for the same reason? Yes. Is it the same police officer? Not necessarily. Oh, I came up with maybe the police officer had like some kind of OCD and was like, I'll have to touch the taillight before giving a ticket. Okay. So it could have been different police officers. Yeah. Was it probably that the police officers were from the same police department though? Not necessarily.

Not necessarily. Hmm. Does it matter what the drivers were pulled over for? No. It doesn't even matter what they were pulled over for. Does this happen on earth? Yes. It may happen elsewhere, but it does happen on earth. Wow. And it doesn't matter what kind of vehicles they were or what they were pulled over for or does it matter about anything about the police officers? Is there anything about the police officers that I need to figure out?

No. Nothing at all. Nothing at all. Does it matter what time of day it is? No. Does it matter whether the taillights were on or not? No. Does anything at all matter in this puzzle? Hopefully something does.

But I can't find it yet. Okay, let's start again. Read me the situation again. All right. You're driving down the highway late at night. Does it matter that it's late at night? No. Okay. Does it matter that it's a highway? No. Does it matter that it's me driving? No. Okay. Doesn't matter that it's a highway. Doesn't matter that it's me driving. No. Okay. And you look in the rear view mirror and see flashing blue lights. Are the flashing blue lights a police officer? Yes. A real police officer, not somebody pretending to be a police officer. Yes. I'm looking for what I'm missing here. You pull over quickly, turn on the interior light, roll down the window and put your hands on the steering wheel like a good citizen. Is any of that important? No. Okay. You look in the mirror and see a police officer walking up to the car and he or she

touches the taillight and then comes to the window. Is anything in that sentence particularly important? Only the touching of the taillight. Okay. I'm still trying to find anything here. You receive a minor traffic ticket and you're on your way. And it doesn't matter what the ticket was for? That's right. Does it matter that you received a ticket? No. Okay. The next day you see another vehicle stop near the same spot and you notice the police officer... Near the same spot? Is there something about this spot? No.

No. It could have been somewhere completely different. Yes. Okay. And you notice the police officer touch their taillight as they approach the car. Are you mistaken in thinking that the police officer is touching taillights? Is this police officer actually doing something different? Uh, no.

The police officer is actually, when you say touching the taillight, the police officer is putting his or her hand physically on a taillight. Yes. Okay, still can't find anything here. Keep going. That's it. Why does the police officer touch the taillight? That's all I got for you.

I'm going with OCD. It's like an infliction, an epidemic of OCD in a whole area for police officers. I am trying to think. Okay. Do you think that the police officer were given instructions to touch taillights or touch some part of the car? Yes. It's my understanding they're trained to do this. At least some of them are. To touch the taillights or touch some part of the car. Yes. It's my understanding they're trained to do this, at least some of them are.

To touch the taillight. And it doesn't matter who they think they've stopped or for what reason. Right. Or what kind of vehicle. That's right. Is there anything about the conditions, weather conditions or? No. And some police officers are trained to touch the taillight.

I'll say it's a precaution. Against, for the police officers, safety? Yes. Well, yes, potentially. But the taillight specifically, could they touch some other part of the car and achieve the same thing? Yes.

They could? Yeah. They're trying to ascertain something. No. They touch the taillight by convention. They could touch some other part of the car, but that's just sort of the agreed thing they're going to touch. Does it have something to do with that they're videotaping the encounter?

No. They want to touch some part of the car and it's for the police officer's safety. Two things that might go wrong. But they're not trying to ascertain something. When they pull over a car for a traffic stop, they don't know what's going to happen. Correct.

Something could go wrong. I agree. Something could happen to the police officer or the driver could flee. Yeah. And this is a measure... To make sure the car is turned off? No. To fully off? No.

To fully stop? No. Make sure it's a real car. They're touching it with their hand? Yes. Like a naked hand, not in a glove? Yes. Is that important?

That's important. To see if it's hot? No. Cold? No. It feels a certain way? No. Then it doesn't feel a certain way. I mean, they're touching it with their hand

and that's important. Suppose one of these things happened. Suppose for example that the driver shot the police officer or just took off, just fled. Oh, the police officer gets their fingerprints on the car? Yes, that's it. Oh, is that it? Seriously? At least some police officers are trained to touch the taillight as they approach the car to leave a fingerprint. Before dashboard cameras

became common, this was a simple safety measure. If something happened to the officer during the stop or the driver fled, the fingerprint would serve as proof of the traffic stop and could help investigators to identify the car and its owner. Wow, that's really interesting. And apparently, I never would have thought of that. So thank you, Scott, for sending it. Thank you, Scott. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us. While we do sometimes have some advertising on the show,

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