ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 22, 1996 TAG: 9604230013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Monty S. Leitch
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
YOU REMEMBER elephant jokes, don't you?
Should you laugh when an elephant tells a joke? Unless you enjoy being thrown 50 feet in the air, you should.
You know about ice-breakers, too, don't you? Those conversation exercises that facilitators use to put groups of strangers at ease: "Tell us your name. Tell us your job. Tell us your favorite color." In this group, the facilitator - a mature and dignified priest - also said, "Tell us your wildest dream."
"Some day," one group member said, "I'd like to ride an elephant." To which the facilitator replied, fondly, "My grandmother was an elephant trainer."
You just never can tell about people, can you? Turns out this apparently patrician priest grew up in a traveling carnival family. For the rest of the weekend, he entertained us with tales, several involving elephants.
Why aren't elephants square? Some of the old fuddy-duddies are.
I have trouble remembering jokes. But I love to laugh, and I love a good story, too.
One of the stories told that weekend involved a young fellow - one not connected with carnivals - who'd somehow come to own an elephant. He kept it in the back yard.
But while he was away at school, his elephant got loose and wandered into the neighbors' swimming pool. Where she drowned.
"It's not funny, really," said our raconteur, even as the giggles began. "It cost hundreds of dollars to drain that pool. And hiring the crane and the bulldozer ... '' At which point, I practically fell out of my chair, I was laughing so hard. Of course, it's funny! In a situation like that, what else could you do but laugh? Remember poor ol' Frump- Frump, and all the earth removal she caused, somewhere up on Mill Mountain?
How do you keep an elephant from getting angry? You better find out.
The best elephant story you'll ever hear comes out of Erwin, Tenn. Sharyn McCrumb retells it in her 1994 novel, "She Walks These Hills."
In 1916, Mary the Elephant, part of the Sparks World Famous Shows, got one poke too many from her trainer during the opening parade, and flung him off her back. Fifty-feet, through the air, into the lemonade stand. Then, Mary walked over and stepped on her trainer's head.
Pandemonium ensued.
Then, publicity.
As McCrumb puts it, "the circus was in a pickle. ... the newspaper had fired folks up so that they were screaming for Mary's blood." Being a good American, and thus a good capitalist, the circus owner "decided that the only way to profit from the experience would be to reap some free publicity by staging a spectacular public execution." So, he arranged to have the citizens of Erwin, Tenn., hang poor Mary from a 100-ton railroad derrick there in town, owned by the Clinchfield Railroad.
It took two tries, but they did it. They hanged an elephant.
If you don't believe me, read McCrumb's book, pages 191-194. Or read the book from which she got the tale, "The Day They Hanged the Elephant," by Charles Edwin Price.
Sometimes, laughter's all that's left you.
Why don't a lot of elephants have masters degrees? There aren't a lot of elephants anymore.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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