Exploding Whale Story
Michelle Ketcham
I didn't want any of you Dave Barry fans to miss the posting from August 15
on alt.folklore.urban titled "The Day It Rained Moby Dick", so I decided to
post it here :-)
I just pasted the attribution stuff in so blame the original poster
if anything is incorrect.
This is supposedly the a real newspaper article about the event,
although I doubt that it is the the one Dave used for his column.
Enjoy!
-Michelle
(imagine all of this with '>'s in front)
In <93225.11...@psuvm.psu.edu> AX...@psuvm.psu.edu writes:
Would someone please refresh my memory regarding the exploding whale story? As
I recall, the blubberous event took place in Oregon and was the subject of a
Dave Barry column. The reason I'm wondering is because an entertaining
newspaper clipping I've been saving since last year has finally surfaced on my
desk. Clark DeLeon's article, "Thar She (UGH! EEEooooo!) Blows!" Philadelphia
Inquirer (23 June 1992):B2, tells about a whale of an explosion in New Jersey,
vintage 1957. Here's the entire text:
{WARNING: Contains graphic blubber descriptions. Parental discretion
advised.}
"I've been down here 32 years and I can assure you I've never had one
like *that*," said Mayor James Mancini of Long Beach Township, N.J.,
recalling the dead whale that exploded on the beach three years before his
election in 1960.
"I was there when it went off," recalled Herman Joorman, owner of
Polly's Dock fishing pier in Beach Haven, who was a young man watching
from the street that winter's day when a 70-ton whale was stuffed with
dynamite and blown to smithereens on Long Beach Island.
Therein lies a tale. Or a fluke.
As you might imagine, there were whale parts all over the place.
"It went way, way up there and everyone watching just sort of stood
there shocked, looking up," Joorman said. "Then it started coming down,
everyone started running and screaming."
"The Day It Rained Moby Dick" was recalled on the island earlier this
month when a 52-foot dead whale washed up on shore in Beach Haven Crest.
The whale was cut up and buried at a cost to the township of $5,000, to
which the story in the Beach Haven Times commented, "Whale disposal has
progressed over the years."
In 1957 a 70-ton whale washed up in Brant Beach and a contractor
named George Damon was hired to remove it. "He was pretty infamous,"
Joorman recalled yesterday. "A real do-it-all kind of guy who always had
some scheme working."
Mayor Mancini was more diplomatic. "He was a little extraordinary,"
he said of Damon. "Kind of colorful, you might say."
When the big whale washed ashore, it proved too much for the
township's roads department to remove. "George, he was that type, he came
forward and told the [then] mayor that he could put a metal mesh net over
the whale and then stuff dynamite down its throat," Mancini said.
"The idea was that an explosion would break the whale up into pieces
and the net would hold the pieces."
That was the idea, and the mayor approved it. We in Philadelphia
know what can happen when the major allows high explosives to be used for
unconvential purposes. {This refers to the police bombing of MOVE, a
fringe religious group that didn't get along with it's neighbors, a few
years back. The resulting conflagration killed some people and destroyed
a few city blocks.}
"Apparently, the dynamite wasn't placed properly," Mancini said. It
went up like a geyser straight up the middle."
The net didn't work.
"I saw the lady in a fur coat start scrambling up the dunes and a big
piece of blubber wrapped around her neck and almost knocked her down,"
Joorman said.
"I lived a couple of blocks away and I had blubber red marks on my
house," Mancini said. "There was blubber on rooftops, blubber in the
yards."
Didn't anyone file a lawsuit? {Ted Frank, take note.}
"In those days people weren't as litigious," Mancini said. Besides,
"you could hose it right off."
And whatever became of George Damon?
"Last I heard, he was up in Alaska," said Mancini. "Panning for
gold," added Joorman.
Now that raises an interesting question. Did George Damon stop in Seattle on
his way to Alaska? How does this account compare with Dave Barry's?