A Word on Words; 3217; Paul Johnson

don johnson you know once again welcome to word on words our guest is paul johnson one of nation's distinguished historians and teachers and authors walking toward own words for its great idea to talk about sam patch and i'd be less than honest if i didn't confess that i didn't know before i ran across your book that there was a zen tattoo was a famous or infamous jumper a leader i thought sam better than a decade towards were doing wrong century how anyone in the nineteenth century i knew he was when he uses for now live for now the culture that in the nineteenth century it was very very worthwhile why don't all about and now i know about his leaps and i know about his life and i know about a death and i don't go you don't me about those things where did your fascination with the great jumper where deliveries in it i knew his name is a full

bore you know and i knew him from that but a long time ago or a book about religion in rochester new york and that's where sam patch measures and right and just kept bumping into room in the newspapers and thought he was a lot more fun than the presbyterians and information about him and how long was this book been in the making for too long i began researching it wants a nineteen seventy nine or eighty and go back burner a lot and three other books come out in between but it's always been my hobby when i went back to when i had time to do it one or two you like iowa so i am living in this century and read you out of that century and the educational another new a new spin there was i had a raise in the

south new avenues get it was but sandbags was an accomplished new spider talk a bit about what that entailed or he was so by the time he was an adult in the eating tortillas he was one of a very few americans were grown up and factory count ha that's because as forward for now the bottom of new england agriculture in and the talk of rhode island which was the first text line faction around the countries followed release relief package drunk wife beater they're the world elio was beaten by greenleaf their divorce petitions as threatened with violence well mainly he had been caught passing counterfeit money by that time that abandoned the family life and she wanted a divorce socially responsible for whatever other things it had done but her her son sam

ended up in a factory of seven or eight years old are and grew up to become a huge spender and some of the folklore says skinner but the girl this was an issue in the turn art into a loose carbon broker role for four overall carbon and the threat and part of it was automated water power about a part of it also required a very skilled person and years and years of experience to operate a machine art and do some manual things that had been done and he was and one of the very first americans weekend edition when sales very young very i mean it in the other boys learn to jump into what was it the plot r us i'll all of the early industrial slums were built around waterfalls and the water for the tub it was the only place

in town that was any fine and the boys would show up there whenever they're poor war days were over and dare each other to do dangerous things and say ann patchett became the key to do anything there was what they referred to was as the park wasn't space below the water for their water and dug out of the very deep hole that was harriet it was like jumping into a big jacuzzi in his most famous kind of teenage dream was half of the four storey factory are going to go into the part i jump about a hundred feet a hundred foot jump at how lucy at that time are very young i don't know that that for sure or home i know that in his early twenties he left the pocket and as a teenage boy who is he was one of the consumers and then he winds up in new jersey in paterson new jersey

another slum around a magnificent waterfall and drum snare that's a seventy foot the same faults with the lettuce and the football and at what point at what point do people really began is it's it's now and that the ring again for the first time along its eye on the sale of a daredevil things is handled by veteran is also close to new york city and they're beginning to invent popular journalism in new york city with several ballot and the papers picked up on the new york post has always been the new york post a part of the new york post today only that its that they dont let the river but i may be that they don't know the new york post is does dabble in arms about a newspaper as a cardboard board the tours been that come down she was all they get them up over your papers picked him up and he became all in them papers around the country

are newspaper noted that time essentially subscribe to each other's newspapers inches plagiarized arkansas that he appeared everywhere in the country once wants new york innovative as a readable his finest their body knows about him but there are relatively few jumps it takes relatively few jumps of this might do to become a very famous personality once he did it in the post picked it up any other papers picked it up and he's on without a word no and the young people in the louisville knievel is but he was evil knievel but sand that was indeed it seems to me the evil knievel was not and the first of them and the first of the arm he shows are

just the third term when the development of communications are when the development of democracy of love of people is looking for fun things to do are cultural democracy camp creates a space for for ordinary people as celebrities and he's one of the first about the president's picks as you say the passaic river has these beautiful as these beautiful awe of what you think really prompted him to walk out there that first the world he was going to show somebody up father is a man named timothy crane billington was on the bill monroe oh pleasure garden where he had taken landed them use by ordinary three people was just a retreat of ways to drink and throw rocks of the cliffs and climb trees and take naps and dark and close that off and turned it

into a very respectable and genteel a pleasure garden and charged admission and wouldn't let the old people are people would use the case before him summers or you are a borrowed think part of ukraine today would be something like of importing park ridge we receive less you're going to have to be a bridge records and he built a bridge across the chasm and on the day that he was he was going to complete this project by having the bridgeport pulled across a parent said and porous sand patch who draco oh let it be known that he was going to spoil was closed a lot of like calm and just as though well is the bridge was was so odd been drawn across was on a log rollers one the rover's slipped and fell and over and in the chasm on the fight to get the bread straight down into place and just at that point stamp act stands up on a rock on the other side of the fault and i tell

the people around him timothy crane this entrepreneur is donna donna great thing about now all do another jumps off grabs the trail rope about water and puts it between his teeth and rescues it swims to shore completely kidnaps and as audience and sizzle it is it says something about the fire in his belly he were the mayor the people you're the man the factory in his jeep for working people and as rich guy across the room or not somebody that yet i identified with them very negatively yeah he and while he was in paterson was constantly for help instead i'll select cities introduction to to the public but he doesn't stay there long to move on here are his last jump in patterson is a part of the first labor

walk out in that town society and there are hints in the new york papers that is blacklisted it disappears for a year and shows or don't drop it girls the first marker for their double what i'm making twenty nine is divided up and head right to the list of laughter not it advertises his jumps and interesting why is so describes what you receive you come we'll talk about the money involved here because so distant and so that sort of dicey prospect of that the audio charge admission to a waterfall that exact moment and he ran into some bad lucky he got to niagara falls late and was a part of another show

people organized at home were inventing show business and this was one of the inventions they blasted huge pieces of rock into the chasm at niagara falls the schooner off of lake erie unsettling go were more innocent until then the naked eye he got there late and had to jump the next day most of the crowd was going on not so in the other diamond said he'll appear think on the seventh it didn't appear on the seller but on the eighth he was there any day today what does because it is that the real sen hatch no mistake even though it's an infection on the gunman was there is just a jump and is it is now you know if you think about it niagara falls is something we all think of as someone in one spot how will only now widely known was my room of murder in

twenty eighteen twenty years precious intersection of bell credit material of history the erie canal gets out there making twenty five art and cultural history were wealthy at an educated people develop a very very strong feeling that you have to beat appreciate natural beauty or you're not really one of us and are the way that you did that the way to establish that was one out to niagara falls you became a while and they arrange a niagara falls of people built the hotels are arranged to solve it you walk from one place to another and had a succession of scenic views you looked at niagara falls away and look at pictures of the museum pot and put all of those together into an aesthetic spiritual experience that made you a better person that gave you very very real pleasure at the

same time distanced you from all the people who could get for those of your destiny and i'm talking with paul johnson historian about his new book sam bad sandbags the daredevil you know really interesting thing about this book is that while it is an account of leaping feats of sandbags it also winds into his story the society in which he lived in junk love well we should talk about that and writing and writing this book it was a time it was a time of times and it in many ways the events i'm alone rounded bumps give you a better sense of why he turned out to be a famous libor your song in a

very brief the united states was was becoming modern art after eating fifteen or so down one of the places where the conversation about modernity and all of the different ways to become internet become on a one of the key sites for that was wonderful dogs were the first factories were built our innards also where we're an aesthetic revolution about how to look at nature how to how to incorporate what's truly important and to yourself took place so that people went to niagara falls on the erie canal which talking all about progress and were conquering nature in all of that part and then and then stood at niagara and just so darren revealing his great plan on niagara becomes one of the locations called world upper middle and upper class americans with a lot of british company turned themselves into

sentimental lies and of bell harriet beecher stowe were false so that could've gone over it would've hurt a bit what a wonderful day whereas as ordinary people were looking at that waterfall number one they look at an industrial waterfalls very differently from the developers cotton number to look at the power of nature and just the different violence of niagara falls more in very different than the more traditional ways the devil sitting there are again sam patch a five track him from water for the water for the waterfall is always juxtaposed again someone who's who's couching their own win in virginia draghi are in some way inflation that waterfall and he has his own unique way of doing here why not when you have to write a book i mean one of the fascinating things about the book of the art

band and how did you decide on how you will illustrate the economy in particular the social photo album that you give has to be educated in context what was it all about the unintended your research photos of that before they are photographs and they are yes i've been on our one of our courses much as the publisher les ha ha ha ha ha ha ha yeah the the helm low waterfalls you can't miss that that there are a lot of depictions of waterfalls but i tried to get home our vernacular are drawings of them as well as the famous paintings a taurus going to niagara and sketching it it's not very good art but it shows a lot of what he's experiencing a false i also got his mother and father

while we're very very ordinary down and out can track people r and i was able to find a signature for each of them and if you look at his father's signature you don't really have to say much more madness is that signature really is him we should talk about the hudson river experience because since we did that source so the middle and that's worth mentioning or stamp actually got out of paterson mom wasn't wired to jump in front of hoboken which is a at the time was another pleasures but it was the one place across from from new york where he could land a steam ferry the palisades in rehab and a family named stevens our literally owned hoboken the borders or owes the state and seventeen eighties and environmental we jumped off of her ship's mast our into the harbor into new york harbor read from hoboken five hundred or

so world restaurants but sir you know reasonable a payday loan he probably had contracted for the us and the rancher and paper loafer that he was paid at home for as last jump in patterson thirteen dollars home i don't know how he was paid in no in niagara falls but the show was put on by the hotel keepers there and a minute later miller didn't show up on time and the delay late when the growing knowledge and then a second job a weekly visit that we play them a draw for people in there he carried out the toll is now from goat island the island on the american side were one of the best views of jail to be somewhere along the way he becomes convinced that young be a showman the bottom

rows like juan i'll act like juan and it's only in the story isn't a jacket walking when a black bear dr yao that happening before between his first and second chance at niagara he fell in with a museum keeper there who put romano's as that and between the first and second weeks in in buffalo and niagara falls it starts wearing a black scarf around is around his neck sailors jacket on that has a black bear on a chain kind of trained black mariner chain of which i'm pretty sure he bought from the amazing people that is an innkeeper advertise one and then stop advertising pakistan has lived in fact couple weeks later when you moved when he got to register to jump the genesee falls there he had most call on his last jump to jump the second time he was gone before was beryl with a fourth star and then jump

in and rescue a half i mean he became love you to him so they consume with his own mother them into an ad and there's one there's one point in the book when you can we talk about him on take it looked it up residence arizona saloon in and the barricades that residents with him absolutely here he i have sightings of among the canal boat between buffalo and rochester sitting there with his bare talking with his fans that he gets off what's the verizon rochester moment you are a kind of semi respectable bar not really a low place a coma rochester recess which is where youre very staid lawyers there for a couple weeks add to visit their gyms and forth is what thirty one thirty

thirty boats done well as the main we live with the most un was killed age of course of rochester the first song on november sixth eighteen twenty nine very successful in any advertised a second job a home for a friday november the thirteenth friday the thirteenth that's the one we're going to throw the bear over analyst at npr basically he jump jockey always so he was he was a drug and he's sobered up furs for is leaps about this one of a number of witnesses said that that he was he was pretty drunk when he did it in his body but he jumped from a scaffolding that raise the height of the jump to about a hundred and twenty five feet are still at the spot of which he jumped more than just unbelievable it's it's really frightening guttural like it's funny i like ha ha ha ha ha

ha but he you know he gave a little speech were compared himself to napoleon wellington as a lot of that yes and so that in some chemicals been kind of staggered up onto the platform jumped off about a third of the way down went sideways in and out that turns the water of concrete that you know really early jokes you quote press reports as using a metaphor of an arrow and he went in the war straight as an arrow or like an arrow here it goes in i don't watch c arms akimbo loses his loses is a downside he lost his own what he had always said he talked about his jump and technique and it's a combination of those skills and presence of mind

and he's he jumps out a hundred and twenty feet he has two number one know what he's doing are and number two are maintaining absolute focus in the middle of absolute chaos and he goes that successfully a lot of times they just lost a lot of that nih doesn't that we won't we will try and that i was nobody else who were all there were all those sardines old he wasn't he wasn't found until six months later while floating and i skate or the genesee river runs into lake ontario and intellect and during that during that period everybody thinks oh so is writing letters to newspapers these uses others oh there were people in rochester for many years are nathaniel hawthorne came through for five years later and was told the story he hid behind the waterfall and snuck out of town that night well he is a loser loses you say he was a

folk hero in different ways he's remembered and everyone is not just as an injection horace been there alone rather caucuses are using a stamp that says as a heroic figure is almost a davy crockett he was very much like that he was very much like the whole generation of heroes they're being invented at that time his is just like davy crockett he's just like the actor edwin forrest argues just like andrew jackson and waterways are absolute courage and some plain us underneath the courage our and a real don't give a damn attitude toward what anyone's been there are a mixture of money and physical skills and a kind of self possession that that makes them a hell a democratic hero well an end he was a dealer great heroes though is the

founder of all democratic party hero than rejection i am i was fascinated by the fact that we still don't know where the horse sent that should barrett on the hermitage rounds for sam patch on was andrew jackson's favorite horse in his retirement you rode around the plantation every morning when it died they buried with full military honors about all of this research department at the at the hermitage that they don't know where the bombs are paula thank you for being our artist here to talk about them that's leroy lourdes thank all of you for joining us for a world where john johnson thought at least

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