THE GIANT KILLER Chapter Five

 

I believe that George Hull's reputation was so low even before the Cardiff Giant, it was his cousin William Newell who signed the bill of sale for the majority share of his stone fraud to the Syracuse syndicate. But as December was approached George got nervous and instructed his cousin to sell his remaining quarter share of the giant.

This buyer was three-term alderman and Syracuse agent for American Express,  Alfred Higgins (above).  It is unclear how much Higgins paid for his share in the unwieldy trinket, but with this final fraud George Hull was clear of all legal responsibility for the great lump of humbug.

The giant now belonged solely various citizens from Syracuse. Up to then the fame of the town of 40,000 rested on the brine springs on the south side. But now “Salt City”, which supplied preservative to the entire country, could also be known for the entrepreneurship of its most illustrious citizens, David Hannen, Dr. Amos Westcoff, Amos Gilbert, William Spencer, Benjamin A. Son, and now Alfred Higgins. Even the services of Ohio showman Colonel J.W. Wood, were dispensed with.  The Syracuse Six then proceeded to transport the Cardiff Giant  to the Yates Ballroom of the Geological Hall, at State and Lodge streets, in Albany, New York. But Barnum was not to be outdone..

Using the advertisements of the Syracuse Six as a guide, the King of Hokum had a plaster giant of his own made and painted it to resemble the heavier stone behemoth. And then, because his own museum was still in ashes, Barnum offered his giant for public perusal in Mr. George Wood's (no relation) Museum and Metropolitan Theater, at 1221 Broadway. Barnum's newspaper ads did not, of course, admit to displaying a copy. Barnum asserted the “Albany Giant” was the copy, while Barnum's plaster man was the original.

Readers of the Buffalo Express on Saturday, 15 January, 1870, found an article under the title, “A Ghost Story, by a Witness ”. The author claimed to be living in Manhattan and so short of funds that he had moved into an abandoned hotel on Broadway. There he was nightly terrorized by groans and apparitions, until one night the ghost finally appeared and explained, “I am the spirit of the Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the Museum. I am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they have given that poor body burial again” To this sad tale the writer responded, “Why you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing -- you have been haunting a PLASTER CAST of yourself -- the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany!”  The author was, of course, Mark Twain.

The original inventor of all this, George Hull, must have been gob smacked. How could this reprobate have ever imagined that his fraud, so carefully crafted and executed could be turned inside out - a humbug made of his humbug.  It was unbelievable, incredible, absolutely amazing. It was a lesson from the old master himself.  You think you know the “con?” game, Barnum seemed to be saying "You ain't seen nothing yet." Most of the crowds that now jammed both Manhattan's Wood's Theater and Albany's  Geological Hall,  knew their legs were being pulled, and were loving it.

And then a little purple pamphlet appeared for sale in Albany.  The title page read, “THE CARDIFF GIANT HUMBUG—THE GREATEST DECEPTION OF THE AGE”  The author was Benjamin Gue, editor of the Fort Dodge, Iowa, “North West”.   Between the covers were names, dates, bills of lading, interviews and witness statements documenting the creation of the Cardiff Giant, from the 1867 appearance of Mr. Martin in Fort Dodge, through the July 1868 shipment of the stone from Boone, Iowa, to Chicago, to the studio of Eduard Burkhardt, to the giant's arrival in Union, New York.  There were eyewitness memorials of the journey to within three miles of the Newell farm in Cardiff.  Gue had even uncovered records of the fund transfers between Stub Newell and the evil genius, George Hull.  The diligent Mr. Gue had even investigated Mr. Hull's career from marking cards, to insurance fraud, to selling cigars, to inquiring into Wisconsin Indian burial mounds, to the Cardiff Giant.  Most of what we can now confirm about George Hull, we know because of editor Gue. It was a hull of a story.

The pamphlet was on sale for a few hours before someone bought out the entire edition. However, because Mr. Gue had contracted with a printer in Albany, the next day the newsstand was again fully stocked with “The Cardiff Giant Humbug...” The printer and the author didn't care if the pamphlets were being read or being burned. They were just interested in selling them. The Syracuse syndicate issued a statement denouncing the pamphlet as its own fraud.  But the truth was, the truth didn't matter. The public took to calling the giant, “Old Hoaxy”, and they still paid to look at it.  As Barnum said, “Every crowd has a silver lining”.

The numbers of visitors in Albany did drop a little after the pamphlet appeared, but unless the giant expanded his repertoire by juggling or doing a soft shoe, once you had seen the Cardiff Giant, there was little interest in seeing it again. So the pamphlet revealing the fraud was just another revenue stream, like Mark Twain's ghost story in the Buffalo paper.  Barnum knew the real craft in advertising, or humbug as Barnum called it, is what I call the “Pet Rock” paradigm.  People will buy a “pet rock” as long as they know you know that they know its actually just a rock.

It appears the only person who failed to figure out that rule was the horse trader David Hannum (above), who demanded an injunction to stop P.T. Barnum from claiming that "The Albany Giant" here after referred to as the  "Fake Giant“ was the fraud, and not Barnum's "Fake, fake giant". 

 The court hearing on 2 February, 1870, was held before York City Judge George G. Barnard (above), a Tammany Hall jurist so corrupt that in two years he would be impeached and bared from ever holding public office in again.   Judge Barnard heard the case presented by Hannum and then from Barnum's lawyers, and even from George Hull, who admitted for the first and only time under oath that he had created the Cardiff/Albany Giant. 

Judge Barnard told Mr. Hannum (above),  “Bring your giant here, and if he swears to his own genuineness as a bona fide petrifaction, you shall have the injunction you ask for.”  Baring that event, he said, he was out of the “injunction business”.

Leaving the courtroom, David Hannum was asked why he thought his original fake giant, which had moved to New York City in December, was drawing smaller crowds than Barnum's fake fake giant. He shrugged and then uttered the immortal words, “There's a sucker born every minute.”  Barnum was later blamed for the quote, but he never called his customers suckers. Hull and Hannum both did.  and maybe that was why, the day after Judge Barnard's decision, Barnum's fake fake drew a huge crowd, while Hannum's original fake drew almost nobody. But on the second day, even Barnum's fake drew only 50 customers. It seemed, with the high drama and courtroom farce, the Cardiff Giant had run out of humbug.

The two giants then went their separate ways, never having met.  And over time they were both reduced to appearing in county fairs, and side shows and finally in museums of fakes and frauds.  But, it must be said, they both continue to produce an income stream for their owners, however small.

Not long after the lost injunction, David Hannum was on board a train when a man asked him to move over a seat. Hannum refused. Sharply the man demanded, “Do you know who I am? I am P. Elmendorf Sloan, the superintendent for this railroad., and my father is Sam Sloan, president of this railroad.” To which Hannum replied, “ "Do you know who I am? I am David Hannum and I'm the father of the Cardiff Giant."  Well, adoptive father, maybe.

Like the other investors in the “Cardiff Giant”,  Doctor Amos Westcoff made money. But for whatever reason he rose from the breakfast table on 6 July, 1873 , went upstairs to his bedroom, and shot himself in the neck. He died quickly of blood loss. His partner, Alfred Higgins, never lost faith in the giant, and until his dying day remained convinced it was a petrified man, straight out of the pages of the Holy Bible. The Reverend Turk, blamed for inspiring the Cardiff Giant, died in 1895, in Iowa.  He accepted no guilt whatsoever.  And that I think is the primary advantage of blind faith.

George Hull made a small fortune from his fraud, and invested it in a commercial block in downtown Binghamton, New York. But his profligate lifestyle quickly ran through his profits, and within five years he was almost broke again.  So....he conceived of an even bigger stone giant - this one with a tail. 

The “Solid Muldoon” was “discovered” outside Pueblo, Colorado on 16 September, 1877, and attracted crowds in Denver, Colorado and Cheyenne, Wyoming.  But by the time the Colorado Giant reached New York City,  the scheme had gone bust . Gloated a Binghamton newspaper, “This would seem to stop the Giant Man...getting rich without working.”  Little did the editorial writers realize how much work George had put into his frauds. 

Shortly thereafter, the long suffering Hellen Hull died of consumption at 42 years old.  The atheist George allowed her to be buried in a Methodist service. The evil genus himself went broke again and was reduced to living with his daughter in Bimghampton, He died on 21 October, 1902. Perhaps the most accurate thing he ever said was “I ought to have made myself rich, but I didn't.” Still, recorded another paper's obituary, "Hull was very proud of the (Cardiff Giant) affair, and he never tired of talking about it."  Fifteen days after George's death, in Chicago, the man who had carved the Cardiff Giant, sculptor John Sampson also died.

Barnum's Giant, the fake, fake fraud,  currently resides in Farmington Hills, Michigan, inside “Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum”. 

Since 1947, George Hull's original fake has been in Cooperstown, New York, reclining behind a white picket fence inside the “Farmers Museum”. 

And every fall, the folks at the LaFayette Apple Festival, in tiny Cardiff, New York,  provide a walking tour to the Newell farm, the site of the temporary grave for the original fake Cardiff Giant.  

They recreate his discovery and exhumation, around a plaster giant, and I urge you to visit this and the other sites, just to remind yourself to never pass up a chance to laugh at yourself. . It's very healthy.  I believe P.T. Barnum himself endorsed it.

                                - 30 -

GIANT KILLER Chapter One

 

I find it odd that such a minor player as the Methodist minister, the Reverend Henry Benjamin Turk,. is the villain of the story of the Cardiff Giant. Turk's pompous ignorance is what motivates and justifies the heroic sins of George Hull. See, in Christian theology, ignorance is not one of the seven deadly sins. Greed, yes, lies, yes, lust and envy, surely, gluttony, and wrath: these are all the "forgiven" the sins of George Hull. 

Meanwhile, a fervent evangelical blind faith in the dyslexic translation of  Old English, via Latin and Hebrew, was the Reverend Turk's chosen path to piety.  And for obtusely following that path ad nauseam, the Reverend generally gets all the blame. Maybe the problem is that hypocrisy is not considered a deadly sin.  

George Hull came close to being a giant himself. At six feet three inches tall, he towered half a foot above the average man of his day, and intimidated them with his broad muscular shoulders, and round face behind a slick black mustache all beneath his black, slicked back hair. But other than his size and villainous appearance, what most people remembered were George's small sharp intelligent blue eyes always darting about. His chief delight, recalled the post master in the Wisconsin Dells town of Baraboo, was expounding on the advantages of infidelity and betting on everything from pool games to local elections. 

In August of 1867 the tobacco warehouse George had opened just four months earlier, and which he had insured to the amount of $12,000, burned to the ground, under circumstances which the insurance company thought highly suspicious. Despite George's declarations of innocence and threats of legal action, he accepted a $1,000 settlement and moved on.

According to George, he moved on to the tiny Iowa hamlet of Ackley -   because of his brother-in-law who lived there,  had taken a consignment of 10,000 cigars, and was having trouble selling them. This could not have been surprising since Ackley had barely 300 residents. Even if every man woman and child smoked a dozen cheap cigars a day, it is difficult to envision how they could ever smoke 10,000 cigars before hacking up a lung and dropping dead.

George Hull had gotten into the business through his uncle, the front half of the Hull and Grummand Company, which had recently opened a cigar factory at Water and Henry streets in Bimginham, New York, on the Pennsylvania border.  The young George needed work after a short stint in jail for selling marked cards, and the cut throat cigar business seemed a natural for him.

The 8,000 citizens of Bimingham had strict anti-union laws, encouraging  local sweat shops to employ unskilled workers at starvation wages - 40 cents for a day spent rolling stale tobacco scraps and assorted agricultural detritus, dust and rodent droppings,  into 100 cigars that sold from three to five cents each. It inspired a business model long on salesmanship, and short on morality.

But it was while residing with his sister and brother-in-law that George Hull briefly crossed paths with the fulcrum of his giant morality tale. According to George, “At that time a Methodist revivalist was in Ackley, and prayed all over the settlement....One night he was at my sister’s house, and after supper we had a long discussion and a hot one.” Specifically, according to George, the hot discussion centered around a quote from the King James Biblical book of Genesis, chapter six, verse four, “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”.

Besides sounding like a “Christianized” version of ancient Greek theology, the King James edition of the bible which the Reverend Turk quoted, was an English translation of a compilation written in Latin, of stories originally composed in Aramaic and Greek . And as any skilled translator will tell you, and any reader of a Google translation will confirm, conveying the meaning from one language to another is as much social art as lexicography. Translating a translation only increases the inevitable misunderstandings. And in this particular text, the scholars compromised on the word “giants”, when a more precise word was “Nephilim”. But that word requires an uncomfortable explanation.

The mysterious Nephilim are mentioned only twice in the bible, this once in Genesis, and once in Numbers, chapter 13, verses 32 and 33 . “And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.'” But they also appear in the Book of Enoch, which is not part of the conical bible, but a conservative Judaic variation of the Torah.  

In that book the Nephilim were the products of male angles mating with human woman. This was far too close to the pagan religions Yawah was so critical of.  Later Christian scholars chose to mention them only twice, hoping to avoid the theological torture required to explain them, by using the word “giants” instead of Nephilim.  And it was on the foundation of this compromised pebble that the Reverend Turk built his temple of biblical literalism.

But to return to the theology of George Hull, he wrote, “At midnight we went to bed, and I lay wide awake wondering why people would believe those remarkable stories in the Bible about giants, when suddenly I thought of making a stone giant and passing it off as a petrified man.” But, of course, there is nothing in George Hull's past which would have give any reason to believe that is what George thought. As one recent biographer put it, “ "Once Hull had an idea, he had no qualms about breaking partnerships, or laws, to get what he wanted.” And George Hull's obsession was not logic, or heaven, but money.

Five years earlier, Mark Twain had written his first humorous article for the Virginia City, Nevada “Territorial Enterprise”, which began, “A petrified man was found some time ago in the mountains south of Gravelly Ford. Every limb and feature of the stony mummy was perfect, not even excepting the left leg, which has evidently been a wooden one during the lifetime of the owner...”  In Twain's story the locals want to bury the defunct stone man, but cannot separate him from the rock which has engulfed him. So, “Everybody goes to see the stone man, as many as three hundred having visited the hardened creature during the past five or six weeks.”

Twain (above) later explained his inspiration. “One could scarcely pick up a paper without finding...one or two glorified discoveries of this kind....and I felt called upon to destroy this growing...petrifaction mania with a delicate, a very delicate satire.” Except the joke did not kill the idea of a petrified man. Twain was “stunned to see the creature I had begotten to pull down the wonder-business with, and bring derision upon it, calmly exalted to the grand chief place in the list of the genuine marvels our Nevada had produced.” Over the next year, Twain's joke was reprinted as fact in newspapers across America, and even England, where it was published in “The Lancet”, the premiere scientific medical journal of the day.

It seems unlikely that George Hull realized that Twain's story, if he ever read it, was intended as a joke. In the history we have of him, George Hull does not display a sense of humor about anything that does not entail some degree of humiliation for somebody other than George Hull.  In fact, a witness said in the summer of 1867 George had considered “salting” an “Indian burial mound” outside of Barboo, Wisconsin. And that was long before he ever met the Reverend Turk. 

 It did not even matter to Hull that there were no dead Indians in most of  the Wisconsin mounds. They were in truth drumlins,  formed by moving rivers of ice more than 10,000 years earlier, proving again that the truth is more complex and fascinating than the theology of angels dancing on the head of a pin, or giants mating with human women.

I don't know if the native peoples got the idea for their burial mounds from the moraines, but I do know that George Hull did not get the idea for the Cardiff Giant from the maligned Reverend Turk. And we should stop blaming him for it. Everything that now followed could be laid at the foot of George Hull.

- 30 -

THE GIANT KILLER Chapter Five

 

I believe that George Hull's reputation was so low even before the Cardiff Giant, it was his cousin William Newell who signed the bill of sale for the majority share of his stone fraud to the Syracuse syndicate. But as December was approached George got nervous and instructed his cousin to sell his remaining quarter share of the giant.

This buyer was three-term alderman and Syracuse agent for American Express,  Alfred Higgins (above).  It is unclear how much Higgins paid for his share in the unwieldy trinket, but with this final fraud George Hull was clear of all legal responsibility for the great lump of humbug.

The giant now belonged solely various citizens from Syracuse. Up to then the fame of the town of 40,000 rested on the brine springs on the south side. But now “Salt City”, which supplied preservative to the entire country, could also be known for the entrepreneurship of its most illustrious citizens, David Hannen, Dr. Amos Westcoff, Amos Gilbert, William Spencer, Benjamin A. Son, and now Alfred Higgins. Even the services of Ohio showman Colonel J.W. Wood, were dispensed with.  The Syracuse Six then proceeded to transport the Cardiff Giant  to the Yates Ballroom of the Geological Hall, at State and Lodge streets, in Albany, New York. But Barnum was not to be outdone..

Using the advertisements of the Syracuse Six as a guide, the King of Hokum had a plaster giant of his own made and painted it to resemble the heavier stone behemoth. And then, because his own museum was still in ashes, Barnum offered his giant for public perusal in Mr. George Wood's (no relation) Museum and Metropolitan Theater, at 1221 Broadway. Barnum's newspaper ads did not, of course, admit to displaying a copy. Barnum asserted the “Albany Giant” was the copy, while Barnum's plaster man was the original.

Readers of the Buffalo Express on Saturday, 15 January, 1870, found an article under the title, “A Ghost Story, by a Witness ”. The author claimed to be living in Manhattan and so short of funds that he had moved into an abandoned hotel on Broadway. There he was nightly terrorized by groans and apparitions, until one night the ghost finally appeared and explained, “I am the spirit of the Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the Museum. I am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they have given that poor body burial again” To this sad tale the writer responded, “Why you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing -- you have been haunting a PLASTER CAST of yourself -- the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany!”  The author was, of course, Mark Twain.

The original inventor of all this, George Hull, must have been gob smacked. How could this reprobate have ever imagined that his fraud, so carefully crafted and executed could be turned inside out - a humbug made of his humbug.  It was unbelievable, incredible, absolutely amazing. It was a lesson from the old master himself.  You think you know the “con?” game, Barnum seemed to be saying "You ain't seen nothing yet." Most of the crowds that now jammed both Manhattan's Wood's Theater and Albany's  Geological Hall,  knew their legs were being pulled, and were loving it.

And then a little purple pamphlet appeared for sale in Albany.  The title page read, “THE CARDIFF GIANT HUMBUG—THE GREATEST DECEPTION OF THE AGE”  The author was Benjamin Gue, editor of the Fort Dodge, Iowa, “North West”.   Between the covers were names, dates, bills of lading, interviews and witness statements documenting the creation of the Cardiff Giant, from the 1867 appearance of Mr. Martin in Fort Dodge, through the July 1868 shipment of the stone from Boone, Iowa, to Chicago, to the studio of Eduard Burkhardt, to the giant's arrival in Union, New York.  There were eyewitness memorials of the journey to within three miles of the Newell farm in Cardiff.  Gue had even uncovered records of the fund transfers between Stub Newell and the evil genius, George Hull.  The diligent Mr. Gue had even investigated Mr. Hull's career from marking cards, to insurance fraud, to selling cigars, to inquiring into Wisconsin Indian burial mounds, to the Cardiff Giant.  Most of what we can now confirm about George Hull, we know because of editor Gue. It was a hull of a story.

The pamphlet was on sale for a few hours before someone bought out the entire edition. However, because Mr. Gue had contracted with a printer in Albany, the next day the newsstand was again fully stocked with “The Cardiff Giant Humbug...” The printer and the author didn't care if the pamphlets were being read or being burned. They were just interested in selling them. The Syracuse syndicate issued a statement denouncing the pamphlet as its own fraud.  But the truth was, the truth didn't matter. The public took to calling the giant, “Old Hoaxy”, and they still paid to look at it.  As Barnum said, “Every crowd has a silver lining”.

The numbers of visitors in Albany did drop a little after the pamphlet appeared, but unless the giant expanded his repertoire by juggling or doing a soft shoe, once you had seen the Cardiff Giant, there was little interest in seeing it again. So the pamphlet revealing the fraud was just another revenue stream, like Mark Twain's ghost story in the Buffalo paper.  Barnum knew the real craft in advertising, or humbug as Barnum called it, is what I call the “Pet Rock” paradigm.  People will buy a “pet rock” as long as they know you know that they know its actually just a rock.

It appears the only person who failed to figure out that rule was the horse trader David Hannum (above), who demanded an injunction to stop P.T. Barnum from claiming that "The Albany Giant" here after referred to as the  "Fake Giant“ was the fraud, and not Barnum's "Fake, fake giant". 

 The court hearing on 2 February, 1870, was held before York City Judge George G. Barnard (above), a Tammany Hall jurist so corrupt that in two years he would be impeached and bared from ever holding public office in again.   Judge Barnard heard the case presented by Hannum and then from Barnum's lawyers, and even from George Hull, who admitted for the first and only time under oath that he had created the Cardiff/Albany Giant. 

Judge Barnard told Mr. Hannum (above),  “Bring your giant here, and if he swears to his own genuineness as a bona fide petrifaction, you shall have the injunction you ask for.”  Baring that event, he said, he was out of the “injunction business”.

Leaving the courtroom, David Hannum was asked why he thought his original fake giant, which had moved to New York City in December, was drawing smaller crowds than Barnum's fake fake giant. He shrugged and then uttered the immortal words, “There's a sucker born every minute.”  Barnum was later blamed for the quote, but he never called his customers suckers. Hull and Hannum both did.  and maybe that was why, the day after Judge Barnard's decision, Barnum's fake fake drew a huge crowd, while Hannum's original fake drew almost nobody. But on the second day, even Barnum's fake drew only 50 customers. It seemed, with the high drama and courtroom farce, the Cardiff Giant had run out of humbug.

The two giants then went their separate ways, never having met.  And over time they were both reduced to appearing in county fairs, and side shows and finally in museums of fakes and frauds.  But, it must be said, they both continue to produce an income stream for their owners, however small.

Not long after the lost injunction, David Hannum was on board a train when a man asked him to move over a seat. Hannum refused. Sharply the man demanded, “Do you know who I am? I am P. Elmendorf Sloan, the superintendent for this railroad., and my father is Sam Sloan, president of this railroad.” To which Hannum replied, “ "Do you know who I am? I am David Hannum and I'm the father of the Cardiff Giant."  Well, adoptive father, maybe.

Like the other investors in the “Cardiff Giant”,  Doctor Amos Westcoff made money. But for whatever reason he rose from the breakfast table on 6 July, 1873 , went upstairs to his bedroom, and shot himself in the neck. He died quickly of blood loss. His partner, Alfred Higgins, never lost faith in the giant, and until his dying day remained convinced it was a petrified man, straight out of the pages of the Holy Bible. The Reverend Turk, blamed for inspiring the Cardiff Giant, died in 1895, in Iowa.  He accepted no guilt whatsoever.  And that I think is the primary advantage of blind faith.

George Hull made a small fortune from his fraud, and invested it in a commercial block in downtown Binghamton, New York. But his profligate lifestyle quickly ran through his profits, and within five years he was almost broke again.  So....he conceived of an even bigger stone giant - this one with a tail. 

The “Solid Muldoon” was “discovered” outside Pueblo, Colorado on 16 September, 1877, and attracted crowds in Denver, Colorado and Cheyenne, Wyoming.  But by the time the Colorado Giant reached New York City,  the scheme had gone bust . Gloated a Binghamton newspaper, “This would seem to stop the Giant Man...getting rich without working.”  Little did the editorial writers realize how much work George had put into his frauds. 

Shortly thereafter, the long suffering Hellen Hull died of consumption at 42 years old.  The atheist George allowed her to be buried in a Methodist service. The evil genus himself went broke again and was reduced to living with his daughter in Bimghampton, He died on 21 October, 1902. Perhaps the most accurate thing he ever said was “I ought to have made myself rich, but I didn't.” Still, recorded another paper's obituary, "Hull was very proud of the (Cardiff Giant) affair, and he never tired of talking about it."  Fifteen days after George's death, in Chicago, the man who had carved the Cardiff Giant, sculptor John Sampson also died.

Barnum's Giant, the fake, fake fraud,  currently resides in Farmington Hills, Michigan, inside “Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum”. 

Since 1947, George Hull's original fake has been in Cooperstown, New York, reclining behind a white picket fence inside the “Farmers Museum”. 

And every fall, the folks at the LaFayette Apple Festival, in tiny Cardiff, New York,  provide a walking tour to the Newell farm, the site of the temporary grave for the original fake Cardiff Giant.  

They recreate his discovery and exhumation, around a plaster giant, and I urge you to visit this and the other sites, just to remind yourself to never pass up a chance to laugh at yourself. . It's very healthy.  I believe P.T. Barnum himself endorsed it.

                                - 30 -