Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1907-01-22
JOKE WAS TURNED
ON DIR. CLARK

MEMBER OF LEGISLATURE FROM
FAIRFIELD TRIED TO BE A
MODEL FOR CARDIFF GIANT
But He Forgot to Grease Himself and
the Plaster Stuck-When the Casing
Was Removed Some of His Flesh
Was Taken Off, Too.
The story has just leaked out of an
Iowa legislator who lost his dignity
and part Of his cuticle trying to be
model for the body of a prehistoric
giant, which was to be discovered and
presented to hoax loving populace.
DR.. ]. F. Clark of Fairfield, demo-
cratic representative from Jefferson
county, likes to play jokes on people,
not little jokes, but stupendous prac-
t1cal jokes that require an magma
ton in the planning.
But the biggest one he ever at
tempted proved a boomerang of near
ly fatal character.
1t was early last fall when the good
people of Jefferson were planning to
come together in an old fashioned Gel
ebration Of old settlers day. DR..
Clark had heard of the Cardiff giant
and he thought that there might as
we'll be one discovered in the Fair
field brick yards as any other place on
the face of the globe, and 1t would
create quite a sensation among the
holiday makers of the old settlers
crowd.
1t was planned to have somebody
discover the fossil of the giant in tho
clay pit and spread the news to the
crowd.
OF course a fossil can be made as
we'll in the twentieth century as at
any earlier date. All it takes is a
mould, lot of the right sort of plas-
ter and a little nerve to plant the
thing and give it The proper age tint,
by contact with the soil, from which
al. giants originally came.
DR.. Clark had the plaster all right
and he had the rest Of the scheme all
framed up. Somebody WAS TO serve
rs NJ odeH for sofaa12iy ,ls.. to build
UP tke~e.ehre of the giant nut of the
Plant plaster
When the whole thing was dried 1t
was to be surreptitiously taken to the
clay pit and deposited there
Who Would be the Model.
So far, SO good, but who was to be
the model? 1t was known that sever
al hours were required to dry the stuff
and 1t could not be removed before be-
coming hard enough to retain the form
of the body.
DR.. Clark tried to persuade his
friends that he was the only one who
knew how to mould the plaster and
that one of them should serve as the
model.
But they didn't see it that way.
They liked the joke and admired the
genius that had thought of the splen-
did way Of fooling the unsuspecting
old settlers, but they drew the line at
shutting themselves in the cast. So
they tried to mould a figure off hand
That didn't work, because there wasn't
a sculptor in the crowd.
| There was no other recourse; the
doctor must be the model himself;
besides he had a splendid figure and
would make fine foundation for a
giant.
The Doctor Was Game.
All it needed was the suggestion.
The doctor was game. He stripped
when the plaster was ready to mold.
They stretched him out in as COM
Portable position as possible and
began to lay on the material, one man,
who was nearer an artist than the
others experimenting the job to SEQ
that the mould was made of equal
thickness all over the body of the leg
islator and surgeon.
All was laughter and glee at the
thought of the bewildered people
who should awake to find that Jeffer-
son county was famous as the loca-
ton Of the fossil of prehistoric giant.
The doctor joined in the fun as long
as they left any room for his jaws,
but finally he was imprisoned COM
pletely, save for tiny vent through
which he drew minimum amount of
air.
1t Sounded Like Grease"
The last word he was heard to ut.
ter sounded like grease" to the busy
/ WI hSAo ,pul ILiCy IuCu6lL uc WIS lTy-
/ ing to tell them that they would have
to grease the figure after they had
1t completed in order to give it the
proper semblance of age and of hav.
ing at one time been human flesh.
Finally the body was thought to be
of statute sufficiently great to be a
copy of any imaginary giant that ever
lived. So the amateur plaster work.
ers stopped their labors and sat down
to wait for the psychological moment
to arrive when the cast should be re-
/ moved and the work of making the
4 giant finished
4 They knew that the moment would
be hours in arriving, but the doctor
was in no position to object to the
slow passage of time, and the rest OF
them had plentiful supply of tobacco
so they stretched themselves out on
the Doctors lounge and Morris chairs
and waited for the stuff to harden
The smoke adulterated the prisoner
already short supply of air, but he
II NJ Int frI1 4, L