Shipwreck Kelly
June 7, 1927: New York City
Dear Damon,
Is Shipwreck Kelly one of your guys? Did you invent this character who sits atop flagpoles in order to distract us from more important matters and rob us typists of column inches? He must be from one of your stories because I refuse to believe he’s real and the rest of the world is so foolish.
Let me get this straight. His widowed mother died giving birth to him in Hell’s Kitchen. He was adopted and named Aloysius Kelly by the construction worker who had accidentally killed his father. He ran off to sea at 13, survived the sinking of the Titanic and five other shipwrecks, walked away from three car crashes, a train wreck and a ditched airplane, took up prizefighting but quit after losing 11 bouts in a row.
So it was only natural that he would market himself as “The Luckiest Fool on Earth” and make a life out of cheating death as a stunt pilot, human fly and pole sitter.
A pole sitter? Who would pay 25 cents to go out onto a rooftop and watch him nap, shave, brush his teeth, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and hold it in for days on end? Well, his wife did — that’s how the two fools met.
C’mon, Damon, you can do better than that.
Seriously, when it comes to heroes, Lindbergh is one thing, the Babe another. But Shipwreck Kelly?
Now the masses are abuzz as he’s trying to break the record of seven days, one hour he set last year in St. Louis. This time, perched upon a platform atop the 50-foot flagpole on the roof of the St. Francis Hotel in Newark.
On a clear day, I can look across the river and see this horse’s ass get a high colonic. And I can smell the horseshit.
In the meantime, we’re going to get another week of this breathless coverage to satisfy our witless readership. I’m not sure why I find this whole business so offensive. Maybe it’s generational — I am an old man of 32 — and this decade is being propelled by kids in their twenties. But I think there’s more to it than that.
Speaking as a man who once wore a green beanie with a red button on top at DePauw, I’m no stranger to foolish things — though I would pay to suppress any photographs taken of me back then.
As for you, my friend and mentor, I’m still chuckling over your 1920 spring training dispatches chronicling the adventures of Agnes, the alligator you took north from Miami, feeding and housing her in your hotel bathtubs along the way. I’m not the only one who shed a tear at the obit you wrote for her after she passed away in Washington the day before she was to make her first New York appearance on Opening Day.
But that was done in good fun. What this daredevil is doing isn’t daring as much as it is devilish. He’s proselytizing recklessness. The times are crazed enough as it is without some lunatic begetting and encouraging other lunatics.
Pole-sitting! Some kid is out there now, filled with the desire to make a name for himself. Shall I take up baseball? Aviation? Journalism? No, too much work. The best way to get above the fold on Page One is to strap myself to a platform tens of stories above the ground and pee in my pants for two weeks.
Please, Shipwreck, shimmy down to earth. The sooner we all descend from this manic high, the better.
See you at Lindy’s,
Ford
- BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE, June 11, 1927: “Kelly Is ‘Tip-Top’”
- BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE, June 19, 1927: “[Shipwreck Kelly] Shaves Self Atop Pole”
