'It’s that intersection between history and folklore that I love exploring, and there is plenty of folklore to delve into right here in suburbia,' Paul Eisenberg writes in this week's Landmarks.
That was the message I was trying to relate to a group of local history enthusiasts last month at a meeting of the Homewood Historical Society. My skill set is more suited for a keyboard than a podium, but I was finally convinced to do the talk by my friend Elaine Egdorf, a historian who has provided lots of valuable ideas and input for this column and who organizes programming for the society.
I opened with a story that ostensibly had nothing to do with Homewood or even the south suburbs. It wasn’t even my own story, but rather one of the interesting experiences amassed by my wife, Tonya. When she was a youngster in the 1980s, her church choir took a trip to Niagra Falls, where they visited the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum.
Walking with a friend through a section filled with wax figures depicting superlative people — the world’s smallest man, hairiest woman and others — they turned a corner to find an exhibit featuring the World’s Tallest Woman. The very tall woman promptly turned toward them and lit up a cigarette, causing Tonya and her friend to scream; they weren’t expecting a live person to be on display.
It’s a story that’s achieved legendary status in my family and we retell it often, and it’s the kind of story that if continued to be told over generations that could morph into a sort of fairy tale about a harrowing encounter with an angry giant.
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