Wonderful! - Wonderful! 114: A Strong Boogercat

Episode Date: January 1, 2020

Happy New Year! We're out of pocket this week, but never fear! We've got our recent Live Candlenights performance ready to go! Join us as we dive into the best things about Huntington history, and prepare to confront the most powerful cryptic ever discovered. Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Yeah. There is no way I'm not cussing during this show. I'll be fine. This was the gesture of, say the thing. Oh. Hi, I'm Rachel McElroy. I'm Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Yeah, this is wonderful thank you all thank you

this is a show we do together who here has never heard wonderful before do not be okay that was a trap now we know where not to aim the jokes This is a show where we talk about things that we're really into

Things that we really love And folks, this is a special episode This is the second live show we've ever done Yes, that's true Our first live show was in Austin, Texas, where Rachel and I currently reside, where we talked about Austin stuff. Can't think of anything in particular.

I don't remember, but probably we have lots of bats there. Yeah. But we're not in Austin, are we? No! Where are we, Rachel? Huntington, West Virginia. Woo-woo! where are we Rachel? Huntington, West Virginia the best city on earth Huntington, West Virginia

Rachel and I are going to be talking about Huntington based exciting things on this episode of Wonderful, which I am stoked about because I get to share with you some of the things that I love about Huntington. And you're going to try and stump me. So Griffin spent 20-plus years here, and I have visited five times? Yeah, it only takes the one, though, to fall in love, doesn't it? And so we're both going to speak knowledgeably

about the great city of Huntington, West Virginia. I'm going to begin because I have more topics. My first thing is Jim's Steak and Spaghetti House. God, this is going to be the easiest show ever. I can just say whatever. Jim's Steak and Spaghetti House. We have not eaten there together as a married couple.

Or an unmarried couple. Or an unmarried couple. Jim's Steak and Spaghetti House is a dining institution here in Huntington, West Virginia. Can't miss it. Right on fifth. It's just right there. They got the big awning and everything

that says Jim's Steak and Spaghetti House on it. And in our family... Wait, wait, wait. What do they serve there? Well, I'll get to that. Okay. In our family, it was not uncommon to come home and find just a tub of Jim's spaghetti sauce on the stove,

pour that over some noodles. That's dinner, baby. Quick, easy, delicious, hearty, beef forward spaghetti sauce is, I think, a fair way to describe the sauce is that it's beef forward. How big was this tub? Like, how much can you get in one go? There were two sizes,

and I think they did it by the pint or something. They still do. I don't know why I'm talking about Jim's Steak and Spaghetti House in the past tense. Y'all could probably hit that up for dinner tonight if you wanted. Here's the thing about Jim's Steak and Spaghetti House and it's probably going to blow the minds

of some of my local friends here tonight because it's the kind of thing that you need a little bit of distance from Jim's Steak and Spaghetti House to really ascertain and that is that it is a completely buck wild concept for a restaurant.

Steak and spaghetti, not traditional bedfellows. Surf and turf, man. Surf and turf. No. Surf this spaghetti wave with me, baby. You look at the name of the restaurant,

and if you read slowly, it says Jim's Steak, and you're like, I know what this restaurant is bringing to the and spaghetti house. Steak and spaghetti, those two go together. No.

When you say spaghetti, you mean Italian food, right? Nope. Spaghetti. Do you have any other you mean Italian food, right? Nope. Spaghetti. Do you have any other pasta? We have ravioli, but if you eat that, you go to jail. It's a trap. Let's talk about your steaks. What do you got?

Rib eye and chopped steak. It's not Jim's Steaks and Pasta House. This is Jim's Steaks and Pasta House. This is Jim's Steak and Spaghetti House. They do have other things on the menu. They have delicious sandwiches and salads. But they really do just kind of focus on the steak and spaghetti.

And that's very good to me. It is. That's nice. You show up there, you know what you're getting. You know exactly what to order. And I don't, you have to spend a long time pouring through the menu.

I will have one of these two things that it says on the big awning outside. Now you mentioned the spaghetti. Have you had the steak? No. I may have forgotten it was called Jim's Steak and Spaghetti House because in our household, this is not a joke, we've only called it Jim's Spaghetti,

which is way better a name for a restaurant. I just love it. I love it. I love Jim's Steak and Spaghetti House. A lot of people don't know this, but the Jim's in there is possessive. So if you've ever eaten Jim's Steak or Spaghetti,. A lot of people don't know this, but the Jim's in there is possessive. So if you've ever eaten Jim's steak or spaghetti, that's theft. You did not have permission to do that. It is name, menu, and credits in one sleek. Rocco's downtown is great too, right? Great Italian food. They catered my cotillion. Do they have spaghetti? I don't know if they have spaghetti because it

doesn't say it on the outside of the business. I know where I can get spaghetti and I know whose it is. Mm-hmm. What's your first thing? It's good, actually, because my first thing is Jim Steak, so we'll... Oh, good. We'll round out. All right. My first thing is a Huntington artist by the name of Diamond Teeth Mary.

Diamond Teeth Mary? Yeah. Are you familiar? No, you win. Diamond Teeth Mary was born Mary Smith in 1902 in Huntington, West Virginia. Oh, so it's not an active... I can't hit up Diamond Teeth Mary's SoundCloud page. No.

Okay. No. I heard the new Diamond Teeth Mary mixtape is just fire. She was an American blues and gospel singer and vaudeville entertainer whose career extended 80 years. Yes. So you did have a lot of time to really dip in there. Yeah, I really have no excuse.

She left home at 13 and literally joined a circus. I guess people actually did that back in the days. She traveled all over the country, performed as a chorus girl in Memphis and in various minstrel shows during the 1920s and 30s. At the time, she was known as Walking Mary. Not as good a name as Diamond Teeth Mary.

That's a glow up right there. In the 1940s, she had diamonds removed from a bracelet and set into her front teeth. And that is where the name came from. Oh, that's where the name came from? Okay. I was going to ask if there was a later event.

No. That is where the name came from. But it was that when she got the diamonds in her teeth? It is, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And she stopped walking, too, so they, no. Oh, okay.

Okay. No. Oh, OK. Approximately 20 minutes ago, I had Paul identify some music of hers to play. And so if he could play a little bit right now. Yes, keep your hands off of me, we sure don't love the youth. He's mine, almighty, I don't care what he do. You can really hear the diamonds.

That is the song Keep Your Hands Off of Him. That's a good title for a song. It's actually not from her album. So she didn't release an album until 1993 at the age of 91. Wow. And that's actually not from that album. So when I went to iTunes, that was literally the only song I could find by hers. And it is on another artist's album. by hers and it is on another artist's album.

But she has performed with Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, and Duke Ellington. Not to mention John Lee Hooker and Big Mama Thornton credit her with giving them their start in the music business. That's wild. She lived till age 97 and her ashes are sprinkled on the railroad

tracks here in Huntington where she hopped her first train. Nice. Rad. It was very difficult to find out much about her. There's a few YouTube videos but that's about the extent of it. But what an incredible lady. Yeah, no kidding. Thank you for enlightening me.

Yeah, you're welcome. I would like to talk about Marshall University's powerful mascot, Marco. Now, does he have any jewels in his teeth? Maybe, who knows? Usually keeps those chompers closed. Okay. Except for one fateful revision that I'm going to talk a lot about. Marco is the

mascot for Marshall University's Thundering Herd, which is the name of our official athletics program. Here's a fun fact. Lived here for 22 years. Matriculated at Marshall University. Never put together that Marco is a portmanteau for Marshall College.

Oh. Found that out researching this bit. Felt like a real grade A boob. The original costume for Marco, please Google Marco's original costume and then Google some other stuff that's actually going to get you to this image, is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Marco came about in like the 20s or so and the people who put on the Marco cowl at that time decided that the best way to go out on the field

would be to put it on two gentlemen, almost like a Chinese dragon dancer costume, just a sort of buffalo husk with two human being legs sticking out of the bottom of it, just running around. Oh my God. So they wore his skin. That was...

No, it was hard. It was a hard husk, a shell, a sort of buffalo chiton with two pairs of adult slacks coming out of the bottom of it. Just running around. That's very good. They changed it shortly

thereafter. Other fun Marco facts. There was a Lady Marco for like one season named Marsha. She's gone now and they didn't really write any fiction as to where she went. What year was that? Do you know?

This was in the early 80s that they had. Well, that's when women peaked, so. Okay. For a while, in I believe the 70s, they tried to get a real-life Buffalo on the field as Marco, but my man was a little bit too rowdy. So instead of being sort of the responsibility of the Marshall University Athletics Program or some sort of subsidiary therein,

he lived over at Camden Park. Because the owners of Camden Park was like, yes, we want a live buffalo to live here. And he just kind of came to visit during games. The Marco costume. Did he sit in the stands?

Yes, he sat in the stands incognito. A little pennant? Just a little pennant and some popcorn. The Marco costume has gone through a lot of revamps since the weird two-man dragon dancer costume. Marco got smaller and somewhat more acrobatic. And then, during my tenure at Marshall University in 2008, Marco got jacked.

The Marshall University Athletics Program rolled out a new revision of Marco, the costume that was unrepentantly swole. Hugely swole. And he was wearing track pants, and he had long nails on his fingers and he looked like a buff demon

and his teeth were gritted and everyone hated him. Herald Dispatch, our local paper, did a poll asking people how they felt about New Marco. 81% of respondents said no. Was he scary? Was he actually scary? By design, he was a scary, extremely strong,

bipedal buffalo man. In 2013, they reverted back to the classic friendlier Marco, but for five beautiful years, we had the strong, powerful Marco. I love the idea of saying, I know what's going to take our team over the top and make them more competitive and intimidating, is if our mascot is strong. This is our strong mascot. Aren't you afraid of our powerful mascot? The logical conclusion...

Everybody close your eyes. I'm going to say two words, and I'm going to put an image in your head that you're not going to be able to get out of there for the rest of your lives. But this takes me to buff gritty. It's like gritty, but strong. Yeah.

Marco's okay, but what if Marco was strong? Yes, yes. What's your second thing? My second thing is a very recent end to the Huntington baseball curse. Is there a Huntington baseball curse? I think so, and this is a theory of my own. Okay. You've been here five times, but that's all the evidence you need to say there's a curse on our baseball.

So, recent in the news, Marshall University is finally getting their own baseball facility. They are going to open a 3,500-seat facility in March 2021. This is a Division I team that dates back to 1910. They have never had their own baseball field. Really? Yeah. They have always had to travel or use other fields to play their games at home. Let me outline everything I know about Marshall University's baseball

program. Billy Crystal played for it. End of list. So really, where is that Billy Crystal money setting up list. So really, where is that Billy Crystal money setting up the stadium? Hey, Billy!

He didn't need City Slickers 2. He could have just thrown that this way. Yeah, that would have been nice if he had generously donated all the City Slicker 2 proceeds. Okay, so Marshall has played conference games in Charleston, which is 50 miles away.

They've also had to play games in Beckley, which is 110 miles away. And it was just recently that they were able to get their own stadium, and that made me look into the history of baseball in Huntington, which is even more complex. Okay. So far, a lack of funding for a sporting program,

I would not say a curse makes. Baseball has no place in Huntington, and that has been the experience for a long time, but I think it's lifted. Okay. We're turning it around. I read the bill that you proposed to the city council has been the experience for a long time, but I think it's lifted. Okay. We're turning it around. I read the bill that you proposed to the city council banning baseball

within the city limits. Okay, so I'm going to go back to 1911 with the Huntington Blue Sox. Huntington Blue Sox were present for five years. This was the first minor league baseball team in Huntington. Huntington withdrew from the league, and then the Blue Sox went to Martinsburg.

Oh, Martinsburg! I assume there's some kind of rivalry there, right? Ugh! I don't know what Martinsburg is. It's 400 miles east of Huntington. Okay. That's far enough away that I can't be motivated. You're taught when you live here to give all your hatred to Morgantown,

and then there's just not much left for anybody else. But even that, I don't care. So with the end of the Blue Sox, there was 15 years before there was another team in Huntington, and that was the Huntington Boosters, which were affiliated with the Detroit Tigers and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Hey, all right. Huntington Boosters, which then became the Huntington Redbirds, which was a Cleveland Cardinals farm team.

And they won the 1935 Mid-Atlantic Championship. Hey, that was a long time ago. And then in 1937, the Ohio River flooded, destroyed the park. That did happen. Yeah. A lot of things we researched hit 1937, and then they stopped being researchable. And then there was 48 years of downtime before there was another minor league baseball team. They had to teach a new generation baseball, and then that generation had to teach a second

generation baseball, and then that generation had to teach a second generation baseball. In between there, there was the Huntington Bees, the Huntington Aces, and the Huntington Jewels. None of the minor league baseball teams, just, you know. The Huntington Bees? The Huntington Bees. I love that. How come there's not, I guess there was the Hornets for a while, but there's not a Bees team out there. That's a scary... That's probably the animal that day-to-day I'm most scared of, either because it's in proximity to Sting Me or because they're apparently

all gone. Think about that as a mascot and swole. A strong bee? Nothing more terrifying than that. I think a small B is still scary. Huntington Cubs from 1990 to 1994 was the next minor league baseball team

and they were affiliated with the Chicago Cubs. Okay. They played at the st. Cloud Commons so when the Huntington Cubs were purchased and brought to Huntington there was the understanding that a ball field would be created but at the time they didn't have the facilities and so after four years they were of streetball yeah yeah yeah there were i mean there were trailers were serving as locker rooms and team offices um there was a ball field and a grandstand and that was it. Okay. What else do you need, man? And now we're going to have a ball stadium here. We are going to have a ball stadium.

The Griffin and Rachel McElroy. Memorial Baseball Stadium. That's right. We're both going to die before it opens up. But Field of Dreams are ghosts. So I think the curse is lifted. That's what I'm saying. Okay. I love how much shoe leather went into this investigation.

And I agree with you, but it's over now. I'm still confused as to when Billy Crystal did play baseball in Huntington. Because you make it sound like there was no baseball when Billy Crystal was here. So what was my man doing? I don't know what to tell you. I mean, working on When Harry Met Sally, I guess. Just all up here.

In his head? He had a scholarship. Anyway, I'm going to talk about a topic. It may be our last topic, just looking at the clock. And it's kind of about a former Huntington team name, and that's very exciting. I'll get to that in a minute. But it's also about my new favorite cryptid here

in the Huntington area, and that is the Wayne County Booger Cat. The Wayne County Booger Cat. It's perfect. It's the early 1930s. It's the Great Depression. It's not... They called it that. It wasn't that great.

It was pretty bad. Coal mines were shutting down. Banks were failing. Things were falling apart. And, according to the Wayne County History Portal website, in the midst of all this tragedy, a mysterious creature appeared that would terrorize the people of the county for a year. The unknown animal first appeared in southern Wayne County near Cabway

Lingo State Forest, which was then under construction. It is possible that beast had resided in the dense forest. We're now being explored and open to create the park. As construction workers built cabins and bridges, perhaps the animal was flushed out of its natural habitat. This demon... would haunt Cabwaylingo, killing all the chickens that they had in the coop, and, quote, threatening adults and children. Threatening?

How did the booger cat threaten adults and children? That is what I'm asking. I'm assuming just by kind of being there. Here's the thing about the Wayne County booger cat. Nobody ever got a good look at it. Nobody knew exactly what it was. There was no consensus on what kind of animal it was. So, quote, someone coined the name booger cat

and the name stuck. So there was never any confirmation that it was any kind of cat? We'll get to that. Okay. Before we get to that, there are dozens of stories of grown adults

chasing the booger cat throughout the town as it made clowns out of them by again eating every chicken that existed. The booger cat came to a tragic ending, and this is where it stops being funny just for a second, but then it'll pick back up again. As the sightings, this is from the Wayne County History Portal. They peered into the portal, and these dark truths were revealed. As the sightings continued, the young men of Southern Wayne County decided that enough was enough. A group of about 20 men who lived in the vicinity of Cabo Alingo State Forest

gathered their hunting dogs and went into the forest to find the animal. After tracking the animal for hours, they finally cornered the booger cat and shot it. After examining... Trust. After examining the animal up close, there was still no easy answer as to what it was. It was black in color with a bushy tail,

but its snout was like that of a dog, only shorter. With only more questions, the local people sent the body of the booger cat to the Department of Natural Resources in Charleston with the hope that they would identify it. Bang! Hey, we shot this! What is it? Hey, scientists?

We did shoot this. I'm going to put it on your science table. And now it's in your hands. It was a gray wolf. That's not great. Don't shoot that. Not ideal. But there hadn't

been wolves in Wayne County for nearly a century. So they thought that the booger cat had just kind of chilled out in the woods biting its time for 100 years. But the thing is,

people kept having booger cat sightings after the beast was killed, which is way less mysterious when you realize it's just wolves. I love the booger cat very much. And so did local sports writer Doug Frutell back in 1933. Back then, Marshall had just gotten the name Thundering Herd, which it had picked up from a movie that was also based on a book called The Thundering Herd.

Their name before that was Big Green, which people weren't wild about. And some folks were also kind of on the fence about Thundering Herd. Doug Frutal led a frenzied campaign to make booger cats happen. The logic being that the booger cat is courageous and agile. You can't that the booger cat is courageous and agile. You can't catch

the booger cat. Speaking about mascots, too, I love the idea that somebody would just put on a wolf costume and everyone would be like, Who are you? You're the wolves. Shoot him! Can you imagine a strong booger cat? In his columns, Doug Frutal would write

that Thundering Herd made one think of, quote, cows stampeding down a county road. And his contemporaries, I imagine, were like, but Booger Cat is without fault. That name is okay on every conceivable level, Doug. I'm glad you said wolf, because what I was picturing was just like a real snotty Sylvester. A very sick cat.

Which would be a bad team mascot. Yeah, right? But a wolf that everyone refused to call one, you cannot beat that. Marco is great, though, especially strong Marco. Bring back strong Marco. Hashtag bring back strong Marco. That's our time, everybody.

Thank you so much for coming. That's our time, everybody. Thank you so much for coming. There's a lot more show left. Up next, we have a very special guest who's going to come out and do some great skits that haven't been run by me. They're going to be great skits, though. And then Sawbones is going to be out here

with more special treats. Hey, this was so much fun. Thank you so much. We don't have an outro, unfortunately. No, we don't. So Rachel's going to say something great. Happy Candle Nights, y'all. Happy Candle Nights. happy candle nights y'all happy candle nights Money won't pay. Working on it. Money won't pay.