Futility Closet - 330-The Abernathy Boys

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from Calcutta's influence to John Trident's judgment. This is episode 330. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1909, Oklahoma brothers Bud and Temple Abernathy rode alone to New Mexico and back, though they were just nine and five years old. In the years that followed, they would become famous for cross-country trips totaling 10,000 miles. In today's show, we'll trace the journeys

Starting point is 00:00:43 of the Abernathy brothers across a rapidly evolving nation. We'll also try to figure out whether we're in Belgium or the Netherlands and puzzle over an outstretched hand. One evening in June 1909, a U.S. marshal named Jack Abernathy was lying on the grass at his home in Guthrie, Oklahoma, looking at the stars and smoking an after-dinner cigar when his two sons asked to talk to him. Nine-year-old Bud was holding a hand-drawn map, but it was five-year-old Temple who did the talking. School had just let out, he said, and they wanted to go somewhere rather than loaf around all summer. They wanted to take a long trip, in fact, a ride out west on their horses Sam Bass and Geronimo.

Starting point is 00:01:32 Jack asked where, and Bud showed him the map. They wanted to ride to Santa Fe, New Mexico. They had planned the whole route by night by the light of a kerosene lamp. Jack was stunned. The route they'd planned covered nearly a thousand miles, much of it through wild country. He told them it would be long and dangerous. He asked for time to think about it and sent them to bed. He hadn't vetoed the plan outright because he knew his own adventures had inspired it. He'd worked cattle since the age of seven, living on the plains and

Starting point is 00:02:00 sleeping in the open. When he was 15, he'd captured a wolf with his bare hands, earning the nickname Catch-Em-Alive Abernathy and winning a visit from Teddy Roosevelt, who had befriended him and given him the marshal's job. The boys had heard all about his adventures catching outlaws, and it was he who told them about Governor Curry's mansion in Santa Fe. They were only asking to visit it themselves. The boy's mother had died recently, so the decision was up to him. He wrote later, I never had refused these boys anything they asked for, and they, in turn, never had disobeyed me in any way. They were physically and mentally in advance of their age. In the end, he proposed a test. He asked them to ride from Guthrie to their

Starting point is 00:02:41 ranch in Frederick, a trip of 150 miles. They completed that trip in good time and without incident, so he agreed to let them ride to New Mexico. They spent two days preparing for the journey. Jack opened a $100 checking account for each of them and gave them their own checkbooks along with a note stating they were not runaways. He warned them not to push the horses, and they were off. In a memoir many years later, Temple recalled that he was so small that he could mount his pony, Geronimo, only by climbing onto him from the porch. To dismount, he had to slide down the pony's front leg. But the boys were seasoned riders, and as they crossed the Texas Panhandle, they found that the story of their trip had spread ahead of them. They were welcomed in each town they visited.

Starting point is 00:03:24 Their greatest adventure came one night in New Mexico, when their camp was surrounded by wolves, but they built up the fire and Bud kept them at bay with his rifle. In Roswell, the editor of the newspaper invited them to stay at his house, and when they reached Santa Fe safely after two weeks journey, the governor bought them new clothes, gave them a tour of the city, and let Temple slide down his stair rail. Jack came out to meet them and accompanied them on the return journey as far as Las Vegas, New Mexico. There he tried to get them to take the train with him, but they chose to ride home by a new route. The going that way was rough and mountainous, and the thin air slowed their progress from the normal 50 miles a day.

Starting point is 00:04:02 At the Canadian River, they came upon a camp where men were branding cattle, laughing and joking. The boys asked to spend the night with them, and they agreed. They fed them well, warned them to watch out for outlaws, and even followed them protectively some way out of camp. The boys returned to Oklahoma to find that they were famous. Jack met them north of Oklahoma City, and a marching band escorted them to the Lee Huckins Hotel, where Bud described their adventures for the crowd and thanked them for their welcome. Back home in Guthrie, their father showed them a letter he'd received. It had been written with a lead bullet on a brown paper sack and was addressed to the Marshal of Oklahoma.

Starting point is 00:04:38 It said, I don't like one hair on your head, but I do like the stuff that is in these kids. We shadowed them through the worst part of New Mexico to see that they were not harmed by sheep herders, mean men, or animals. It was signed A-Z-Y. The friendly men had been rustlers. In fact, the one who had written the letter had fought Jack in a shootout only months earlier. Jack told the boys, it just goes to show you there's some good in all men. He'd have killed me at the drop of a hat, but he was honorable to protect my innocent boys. I suppose a word ought to be said here about Jack Abernathy's willingness to allow these trips. Temple said later, many followers of our exploits complained that we were too young to

Starting point is 00:05:15 be making such dangerous trips. Some folks were aghast that two boys were allowed to ride anywhere near that far alone. When they returned from Santa Fe, one woman asked, where is your mother? Why did she let you go on such a dangerous trip? When Tepple told her his mother was dead, she screamed and clutched him. He said this was actually scarier than anything that had happened during the ride. Jack Abernathy said he was blue and lonesome without the boys, but he received letters and photos from the mayors of various towns along the route. So, he said, I knew that the boys were safe and were being well cared for. Temple said, Dad gave us confidence that we could do just about anything we set our minds to. It never occurred to us to be frightened on our trips.

Starting point is 00:05:54 We were always focused on the road ahead. In the end, their round trip to Santa Fe had covered 1,300 miles. Temple said, Bud and I learned a lot from that first trip. For one thing, most folks are willing to lend a hand when they can. Also, there is a lot of help people can give each other. And we found even though we were often tired, dirty, and discouraged, we could face tough situations and solve our own problems. So now they planned a new trip. It was now 1910. After finishing his second term as president, Teddy Roosevelt had gone abroad for 15 months, first on a safari in Africa and then on a speaking tour in Europe.

Starting point is 00:06:29 Jack Abernathy planned to be in New York to welcome him home and to ride in the homecoming parade. So the boys decided to ride from Oklahoma to New York and meet him there. This would be a more ambitious journey, spanning two months and 2,000 miles, but Jack agreed to the plan, and on April 5th, the brothers set out wearing new boots and hats and bearing bedrolls, bacon, and oats behind their new leather saddles. They hadn't made it out of Oklahoma when Geronimo took sick, and they had to send him back to the ranch. To replace him, they bought a red and white Indian paint and named him after Wiley Haynes, the deputy they were staying with in Hominy, who declared himself pleased with

Starting point is 00:07:05 the honor. The country was changing quickly, and the boys got a first-hand look at it. In St. Louis, Temple was dazzled by his first ride in an automobile. He said later, I luxuriated in seats that were as soft as any living room chair. I stuck my head out the window and watched the wheels turn at what seemed like blinding speed. I swore that I'd have one of these machines someday. In fact, I think if anyone would have offered me a swap right then, Wiley Haynes would have had a new owner. In Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a reporter asked Temple what he wanted to be when he grew up, and he gave his usual answer, I want to drive a train. The next thing he knew, he was driving a train, ringing the bell, pushing the levers, and thrilling to feel the locomotive lunge down the tracks. Their fame was so great that the reporter had set it up for them, and

Starting point is 00:07:49 Teppel said, for me it was a high point of the trip, even if folks did laugh at my enthusiasm. In Dayton, Ohio, the chief of police swore the brothers in as deputies, gave them badges and clubs, and introduced them to fingerprinting, itself a relatively new technology. They also visited the Wright Brothers airplane factory, where Wilbur himself showed them around. At the controls of an airplane, Temple thought, someday I'm going to have one of these, just as he thought in the car. In Wheeling, West Virginia, they arrived to find everyone looking at the sky. The brothers were tired and just went to bed,

Starting point is 00:08:19 but that night the hotel manager pounded on their door and told them to come quickly. They followed him onto a fire escape and saw what Teppel called a magnificent radiant light shooting across the heavens, followed by a long glowing tail. Bud asked, what is it? And the manager said, it's Halley's Comet. Some folks say it's going to hit the earth tonight. Others think the earth is going to pass through its tail and everything will be destroyed. He explained that the comet returned every 75 years and that they were young enough that they might hope to see it a second time. When they reached Washington, D.C. on May 27th, they'd been on the road for five weeks. They met William Taft and toured the White House, and the next day they visited both the Senate and the House of Representatives, where

Starting point is 00:08:58 they met all the members and were called on to make speeches. Temple declared that he liked the Washington Monument and thought that Washington was the finest city in the East and received a round of applause. Temple later described the ride from Washington to New York City as one big parade. Cheering people lined the streets, and many walked alongside to ask questions of the brothers. Their father met them in Trenton, and the next day they all crossed into the city, where it took 17 mounted policemen to escort them to the Breslin Hotel. When Roosevelt arrived, he told the boys, you made a long ride to come see me, bless you, and gave them a huge teddy bear. In the homecoming parade, the brothers rode in a place of honor behind the former president's carriage before a crowd of more than a million people.

Starting point is 00:09:39 If all of this sounds familiar, it may be because it closely echoes the story of Lenny Gwyther, the nine-year-old Australian boy who rode a thousand kilometers in 1932 to witness the opening of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, a story we covered in episode 293. I have looked for evidence that the one journey inspired the other, but I don't find any, just intrepid young boys making long solo journeys on opposite sides of the world. The Abernathys spent a few more days in New York and then put the horses on a train back to Oklahoma. Jack had intended that they would return by rail themselves, but the boys already had another plan. They wanted to drive home. They were still only 10 and 6 years old,

Starting point is 00:10:16 but there were no limits on driving age at the time, and both boys had fallen in love with automobiles. Jack was skeptical that they could find a car small and simple enough for them to handle, but they combed the city and found a brush runabout that either of them could drive, and by that afternoon, Bud was driving down Broadway. Jack was so impressed that he bought that car and another for himself for the trip home. They all set off on July 6th, going 30 miles an hour. In every small town, people came out to greet them. In Plainsville, Ohio, they were told that they attracted more spectators than the last fire in town. Bud gave his brother a chance to drive occasionally, but Temple was so short he had to sit on the edge

Starting point is 00:10:53 of the seat to reach the pedals, his body against the steering wheel. Still, he said he thought it was just about as much fun as anything he'd ever done. In Oklahoma City, they were greeted by a caravan of 20 cars, 12 of them brush runabouts like their own. They had driven 2,512 miles in 23 days, setting a cross-country record. Even after all these feats, the boys' longest journey still lay ahead of them. In 1911, two promoters offered them $10,000 if they could ride from Coney Island to San Francisco in 60 days. The boys leapt at the chance. Temple said they would have made the trip on a dare. Under the agreement, they would begin knee-deep in the

Starting point is 00:11:30 Atlantic and finish in the water of the Pacific at Golden Gate Park. They were not allowed to sleep or eat under a roof at any time, and they could change horses only once. So at one minute after midnight on August 11, 1911, they were standing in the ocean at Coney Island, watched by several thousand people. They gathered a flask of salt water from the Atlantic to empty into the Pacific and set off, making their way into New Jersey, through upstate New York, across the tip of Pennsylvania, and into northern Ohio. The route they followed looks extremely similar to the one that Alice Heiler Ramsey had used two years earlier in becoming the first woman to drive across the United States, a story we told in episode 273. That's interesting because the

Starting point is 00:12:10 boys were riding rather than driving, and because there was nothing like a proper highway system at the time. It had taken the boys two weeks to plan their route. This seems to have been an era for such adventures. In Iowa, they heard of runners, bicycle riders, and a right-by plane flyer who were all trying to cross the country at the same time. One man told them, As before, news of their trip traveled far ahead of them, and mayors and other residents often invited them to stop. They arrived in Toledo, Ohio, to find a table spread with cloth, silverware, and every kind of food they could ask for. Their father met up with them in western Nebraska and

Starting point is 00:12:45 again in Cheyenne, where he won a bet that they would sleep outside overnight, even in a Wyoming snowfall. He discovered they had dug holes in a haystack. They met their greatest crisis in northern Utah, where Bud was so tired that he failed to hobble the horses one night. When he awoke, they were gone. The brothers had little food and no water and faced a miserable end in the desert if they couldn't find the horses. They searched for three days and had resolved to start walking on the fourth when Bud found Wiley Haynes. They saddled him up and rode over a rise to the town of Kelton, where the other horse was waiting for them. They had lost so much time now that there was little chance they'd win the $10,000, but still they kept to the terms of the agreement.

Starting point is 00:13:24 When the crew of a passing train offered to carry them forward on the sly, they declined and rode on their own into Nevada, over the Donner Pass, and down to Sacramento. In San Francisco, they met their father, rode into the surf, and poured the flask of Coney Island water into the Pacific. They had covered 3,619 miles in 62 days, missing the deadline by two days but still setting a record for crossing the continent on horseback. They didn't travel again until 1913 when they took up an offer to ride a motorcycle from Oklahoma to New York City. This time they were accompanied by their stepbrother Anton, a good mechanic who rode his own motorcycle. It took some practice before Bud could handle the 500-pound machine, but he managed it,

Starting point is 00:14:05 and they made the journey without much incident, stopping to circle the Indianapolis Speedway as they passed through Indiana. The trip was a success, but it made less of a splash, as the boys were now 13 and 9, and long trips such as these were already more common. In New York, some of the roads were already macadamized. They stayed two weeks in the city, then took the train home. That was their last ride together. At the height of their fame, one newspaper had said that the Abernathy boys couldn't have become better known if they had got themselves kidnapped and ransomed. But they passed out of popular knowledge as they took up adult lives, Bud as a lawyer and Temple in the oil industry. A bronze sculpture of the two was dedicated in 2006 in Frederick, Oklahoma.

Starting point is 00:14:45 In the summer of 2008, two elementary school teachers from their home state retraced the boys' journeys by car, marveling at the distances they'd ridden alone. Fifth grade teacher Melody Offill said, I can't think of very many moms who would let their five-year-old do that. We don't let five-year-olds cross the street. After the story in episode 277 about the Mad Trapper of Rat River, which took place in the Northwest Territories in the early 1930s, one of our Canadian listeners, Daryl Murphy, had let us know that his grandfather and great-grandfather, who were living in the area at that time, had a personal connection to the story, which I covered in episode 283. After episode 320, about John Hornby's adventures

Starting point is 00:15:35 in northern Canada in the 1920s, Daryl again let us know that he had a family connection to the story. Dear Futilitarians, I won't be listening to the podcast about John Hornby until tomorrow. Got a writing deadline tonight, which as you can see by this letter, I am putting off. But of course, I had to write you immediately to offer you a link to a letter from Hornby to my great-grandfather, Matt Murphy. Matt, Gamp to our family, who died before I was born, was at the time running a store and a fur business in Peace River, Alberta, and a year later in 1926 went north to try his hand at trapping. He came back after the winter and then returned in 1929 with my then 18-year-old grandfather, Bud. Grandpa stayed for 10 years, only coming out a few times, and Gamp stayed until he died in the 1950s. His wife remained

Starting point is 00:16:22 in Peace River and they remained a family, Gamp coming back down south when he could, heading back north when he had to. I imagine the trips became easier and quicker over time as air travel became more common. In 1929, the canoe trip to their camp north of Artillery Lake in the Northwest Territories took roughly three months. I may at one time have written to you about my Twitter account, at Trapper Bud, in which I reproduce the diary entries, photos, objects, and ephemera from the time the two of them spent up there. The diaries, at least the ones I could find, are done now, but every once in a while something else comes up for me to tweet.

Starting point is 00:16:55 In the meantime, I work on a piece about a double murder-slash-suicide they both got caught up in as bit players. Off to work now, and looking forward to hearing the story tomorrow. And Daryl sent us a link to the letter, which is part of the John Hornby Historical Collection in the Northwest Territories Archive at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Center. The letter, which is labeled Two-Side Letter from John Hornby to Matt Murphy of Peace River, Alberta, 1925, reads, Artillery Lake, April 18, 1925. Dear Matt, be sure and look after them, meaning the furs, and see they don't go too strong and that the women take all the beautiful

Starting point is 00:17:33 pelts. I'm sorry I have not been able to come out with them. We spent a pleasant and successful winter hoping to see on my return. Yours very sincerely, Jack Hornby. And on the back he'd written, P.S. to M. Murphy, be sure to look after the boys when they strike Peace River. Yours very sincerely, Jack Hornby. And on the back he'd written, P.S. to M. Murphy, be sure to look after the boys when they strike Peace River. Yours sincerely, Jay Hornby. And I think it's always so interesting to hear when some of our listeners have this kind of personal connection to the stories we cover. Especially in a part of the world like that, that's so remote and so sparsely populated. It's even the more impressive that anyone's got a connection. Like the odds would be lower. Hornby was sort of famous for being remote and so sparsely populated, it's even the more impressive that anyone's got a connection.

Starting point is 00:18:05 Like the odds would be lower. Hornby was sort of famous for being remote and, you know, hard to connect with. Yeah. The John Hornby collection was the staff pick of an archival slash library technician named Robin Weber, who said of her pick, John Hornby has always interested me because I grew up hearing stories about how he was a no-good deadbeat. Hornby borrowed money from my grandfather and then died before paying him back. I can't imagine why anybody would do some of the things he did. He made some poor decisions with disastrous results, nearly dying on two earlier trips just for the sake of adventure.

Starting point is 00:18:39 I think that's true. From what I read about him, he had a really winning personality. Even people who were exasperated with him found that they liked him. But it's true, too, that he seemed to like the thrill of going up there into great danger without planning just to see if he could win his way through. And it's one thing to do that on your own and another to do it if other people are relying on you. Endanger other people like you did, yeah. lying. Endanger other people like you did. Yeah. The puzzle in episode 320, definitely a spoiler here, was about a bank suspected of illegal activity that stymied investigators because it was in Barla, an area in the Netherlands that is a confusing patchwork of Belgian and Dutch

Starting point is 00:19:17 territories. Although Barla is a few miles from the Belgian border, it contains 22 Belgian enclaves completely surrounded by Dutch territory, all part of the Belgian town of Barla Hertog. Even more complicatedly, within the two largest of those Belgian enclaves are seven Dutch enclaves, part of the Dutch town of Barla Nassau. And we won't even try getting into that there are actually three more parcels of Barla Hertog along the Dutch-Belgian border, as well as another section actually in Belgium that contains yet another Dutch enclave of Barla Nassau. The bank in the puzzle straddled the border of two of these territories so that the safe lay

Starting point is 00:19:55 in Belgium but behind Dutch counters, making a mess of a situation for the investigating authorities. After that episode, Steve Johnson, all the way across the country from us in California, wrote, Hi, Futilitarians. I lived in Breda, Netherlands for six months for a short-term work assignment and had the opportunity to drive through Barla Nassau on my occasional trips to Antwerp and Brussels for the weekend. The process of living in the Netherlands was, in itself, a very interesting experience, but driving was weird going through a landscape where Belgium was surrounded by the Netherlands, and enclaves of the Netherlands were surrounded by Belgium, which was in turn surrounded by the Netherlands. People construct houses and businesses straddling

Starting point is 00:20:34 borders there with one open door and one boarded up door, one in one country and one in the other country. Whichever country has the lowest real estate slash property tax, that's where the open door is located as the door determines the country of residency and taxation. And Steve sent a link to a graphic that depicts some of Barla's enclaves and counter-enclaves that we will, of course, have in the show notes. Alex Baumans, one of our Belgian listeners, wrote, If it makes you feel any better about the puzzle of the transnational bank, I didn't guess the answer, and I know of course about Barla. The basic root is that all the plots of land that were owned

Starting point is 00:21:09 personally by the Duke of Brabant had a different regime from the rest. With the establishment of the border between the Dutch Republic and the Habsburgs in 1648, these remained Catholic while the rest came under Protestant rule. The population has always been fiercely protective of their status, so that successive regimes have never found it worth the trouble to remove this anomaly. Now, Europe has many strange borders. There is, for instance, a stretch of a couple of miles where the French-Belgian border runs straight along the middle of the road. On one side of the road, all signage is Belgian, and on the other, it is French. What makes Barla special is not only the extremely fragmented nature of the enclaves, but also the individual plots, streets, and so on completely

Starting point is 00:21:50 ignore the border, so you can have buildings that straddle both countries. With the increasing European integration, the practical effect of this has become largely invisible. When I was young, in the 70s, Barla had a fairly racy reputation because the rules for pornography and sex shops were more relaxed in the Netherlands than in Belgium. So that was one of the places where you could easily get things that were forbidden in Belgium. Until recently, it was no more than a curiosity and a tourist attraction of sorts. However, with the coronavirus, things have gotten more complicated as the rules are different in both countries. For instance, right now, hairdressers are closed in

Starting point is 00:22:24 Belgium but not in the Netherlands. At one point, there was a reinforced lockdown with curfew in the province of Antwerp, to which Barla Hertogh belongs, but not in the Netherlands, so you had to be careful where you were at night. In fact, if ever they closed the borders again, there are some buildings where technically you can't go from one room to the next without quarantine. I include an English language article about the first lockdown. And I've gotten rather behind in my listener follow-up, so Alex had sent this email soon after episode 320 came out on November 23rd. And when I touched back with him recently about using the email in an upcoming show, he said, the basics still stand, except that the lockdown situation has altered a bit. Until recently, the corona measures were a

Starting point is 00:23:05 bit less restrictive in the Netherlands than in Belgium, but now that is reversed. As of next Saturday, for instance, the curfew goes in earlier in the Dutch part than in the Belgian part. So then again, it is important to know which part of town you are in at night. And the link that Alex sent was to an NBC News article from May 2020 titled Dutch, Belgian, How Lockdown Works in a Town with One of the World's Most Complex Borders. The article says that Barla's thousands of physical markers throughout the area letting you always know which country you're currently in suddenly became much more important than usual during the pandemic, as the two countries often had different lockdown rules. So for example, Dutch shops might be open while nearby Belgian shops

Starting point is 00:23:45 had to be closed. Some of the stores actually straddle a border, meaning that parts of the store could be open while other sections of it weren't. So depending on what exactly you wanted to buy, you might or might not be able to get to the item you needed. Another example cited in the article is that Belgium started requiring masks on public transportation before the Netherlands did. So you could have gotten on a bus without wearing a mask in one part of Barla, but then would have been required to put one on as the bus went just a little way down the road. A 2017 article from the BBC discusses some of the more everyday complexities of Barla. The town hall of the Belgian municipality, for example,

Starting point is 00:24:21 is bisected by the border, so the Belgian mayor had to seek Dutch permission to construct part of the building. The two mayors normally need to spend a fair amount of time sorting out things like infrastructure repair or improvements. For example, just trying to resurface a road can be a fairly complicated issue, as a road can travel back and forth between the two countries several times within a few hundred meters. Or there are questions like who pays for a streetlight that is technically in Belgium but will mostly illuminate the Netherlands. As Steve had mentioned, sometimes home or business owners can try to take advantage of their situation just by installing a new front door. The BBC reported on a case of an apartment building owner who wanted to redevelop

Starting point is 00:24:59 the building which straddled the border. The front door to the building was in the Netherlands, but when he couldn't get planning permission from the Dutch, he put in a new front door on the other side of the border and got the permission he needed from the Belgian town hall. And while the pandemic regulations are certainly adding many new complexities, there were already various other ones, such as the difference in drinking ages between the two countries, or what is legal or not, such as the buying or carrying of fireworks, which is usually not legal in the Netherlands, and thus makes the various firework shops in the Belgian areas quite a nuisance for the Dutch police, as the reporter of the BBC article found when he was scrutinized along with everyone else leaving the town to be sure that he wasn't

Starting point is 00:25:39 carrying any contraband. I wonder how many people break regulations there just inadvertently. It sounds like it'd be easy. Certainly visitors, you would think. And if it attracts a lot of tourists, that probably happens quite a lot, I should think. I would think so too. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate getting your comments, follow-ups, and feedback. So if you have any of those to send to us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd-sounding situation, and I'm going to try to figure out what's going on,

Starting point is 00:26:20 asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Uka Malmgren. After performing an activity for the first time, a man holds out his hand. Nobody asked him to do so, and he is not holding or expecting to grasp anything. Unbeknownst to him, many people in his situation have done the same thing. What is the activity? Unbeknownst to him, other people have done the same thing. Yes. Is he in any kind of danger, would you say? When?

Starting point is 00:26:52 I don't know. At any part of the puzzle. I'll say yes. Is he alive throughout the entire thing? Yes. Okay. But he's in danger at some point. Sorry, I'm still catching up on that last question.

Starting point is 00:27:05 I'm just making sure um but he you would say he's in danger at some point yeah did he deliberately put himself in danger yes okay so it's not like something accidentally befell him he is doing something that could be considered dangerous and he's deliberately doing it. That's right. Okay. Would you say he's performing some kind of a stunt? I suppose you could say that. Is he being judged while he's doing this? Like it's some kind of competition and he's receiving some kind of marks or scores or something? No.

Starting point is 00:27:40 Okay. Is he alone in doing this activity? For simplicity, I'm going to say yes. Okay. Is he alone in doing this activity? For simplicity, I'm going to say yes. Okay. So he's not doing it with other people or, again, like with a competition, there'd be other people who are going to be doing or have been doing the activity. Right. He's sort of alone in doing it other than maybe like people watching him? Are there people watching him? Yeah. Let's say yes. Let's say yes. Is he doing this outside?

Starting point is 00:28:10 Yes. Does it matter where he is other than outside? You mean geographically? Yeah, or geopolitically? No. He could do this almost anywhere? I'd say yes. Okay. Is he on the face of the earth? Yes. Okay. And on the face of it, not up in a tree or up in an airplane or up on a building. When? On the surface of the earth during the whole puzzle. No. No. Okay. So he leaves the surface of the earth at some point.

Starting point is 00:28:34 Yes. Does he climb something? No. Does he jump? Yes. Okay. So is he trying to jump over something? No.

Starting point is 00:28:45 And he's not doing some kind of competition, so he just jumps. Does he jump? Is it the jump that puts him in danger? Yes. So he's jumping in some kind of way that would be potentially dangerous. Yes. Does he end up in water? No. Okay. So a person is standing on the ground.

Starting point is 00:29:10 When? At some point. Yes. Before he jumps. Oh, does he jump out of something or off of something? Yes. He jumps out of or off of something. Out of a plane?

Starting point is 00:29:21 Yes. He jumps out of a plane with a parachute, one hopes? Yes. Okay. Jumps out of a plane with a parachute. Do I need to know why? No, I suppose you don't. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:34 I mean, there's nothing. A man, for some reason, jumps out of a plane with a parachute and then lands on the ground at some point. Yes. And at some point, he holds out his hand. Is that after he's landed on the ground at some point. Yes. And at some point he holds out his hand. Is that after he's landed on the ground? Yes. Is he standing on his feet when he holds out his hand? Yes.

Starting point is 00:29:54 Can he see? Yes. So does he have any complications or problems with the parachute jump or the landing? No. I mean, let's say no. Okay. So he jumps out of a plane. It's a perfectly routine jump. He lands beautifully on the ground on his feet. Let's say all that's true. He's uninjured. He's unharmed. He feels safe. Yes. And he holds out his hand. Yes. Okay. Does he hold it out like straight ahead of him, straight in front of him?

Starting point is 00:30:25 Let's say yes. Let's say yes. Is he holding it out? Is he pointing? No. Is it palm up or does it matter? I guess it doesn't matter. It could be palm up or palm down.

Starting point is 00:30:42 Is he trying to signal something to somebody else? No. He does this for his own benefit. I wouldn't say benefit, and I'll add that this is often done, I want to say this carefully, in front of friends and family who will have come. To show them he's okay? I mean, how would that show him he's okay? You're close.

Starting point is 00:31:04 You're closer than you think. He's on the ground. He's standing. So friends and family can see that he's standing and he's not waving at them. That's right. He's just holding his hand out, but not expecting to have something put in his hand. That's right. That's all right. In what circumstances would your friends and family come out to see you do this well like if you were going to be in a competition or you were trying to do some kind of a feat or uh it was your first time doing it yes it's his first time right oh you said that i think that in the puzzle and i'd forgotten that that it's his first time doing this and his his friends and family come out. He wants to show them he's okay,

Starting point is 00:31:45 that his hand isn't shaking. That's it. Seriously? Apparently this is true. The man had just performed his very first skydive. Many first-time jumpers, especially tandem jumpers with family and friends around, hold out their hand to see whether

Starting point is 00:31:58 and how much they're trembling after their jump. Oh. Thanks, Zuka. And nobody died. Yeah, that's true. If you'd like to send in a puzzle for us to try, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our amazing listeners. If you would like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious,

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 not only help support the show, but also get more information on some of the stories, extra lateral thinking puzzles, outtakes and peeks behind the scenes. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see our website for the link. At our website, you can graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 delightful distractions, browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was

Starting point is 00:33:06 all written and performed by my phenomenal brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 330-The Abernathy Boys

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