Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (34 page)

A MAN OF FEW WORDS

To cut down on the amount of vocabulary that Esperanto speakers have to memorize, words in Esperanto consist of “roots” that are modified by prefixes and suffixes. Take the word “father,” for example. It begins with the root
patr
.

• Nouns in Esperanto are formed by adding
-o
to the root. To form the noun “father,” add
-o
to
patr
to get
patro
.

• To make the noun plural, add
-j
to get
patroj,
for “fathers.”

• Adjectives are formed by adding
-a
to the root, so “fatherly” is spelled
patra
.

• Verbs (in the present tense) are formed by adding the suffix
-as
to the root. So if you want to say “I father a child,” you add the verb ending
-as
to the root to get the verb
patras
.

• The suffix -in denotes female. So the word for mother is
patrino: patr
+
-in
+
-o
(father root + feminine suffix + noun suffix.)

• There’s even a prefix, do-, that denotes a relative by marriage—so the word for “father-in-law” is
dopatro
.

Whenever an Esperanto speaker comes across a word they’ve never seen before, the prefixes and suffixes enable them to decode what it means, which makes learning the language that much easier. By learning the 550 most-used roots, it’s estimated that an Esperanto speaker learns the equivalent of more than 2,000 words of a natural language. In doing so they build a vocabulary large enough to understand more than 80% of the words they will encounter in everyday conversation with other speakers.

CHAIN LETTER

In
Unua Libro
Zamenhof provided a list of 900 word roots. And then—perhaps because he’d spent so much of his life with his nose buried in Russian, Polish, German, English, French, Latin, and Greek textbooks—Zamenhof proposed that his readers take a lighter approach: Write a letter in Esperanto, send it to a friend (he even provided sample text), and include a short note that instructs them how to translate it. Challenge them to decipher the letter and write back to you in Esperanto. Better yet, write a poem in Esperanto and send it to your girlfriend or boyfriend.

AS SIMPLE AS THAT

Encouraging people to write letters and poems was a surprisingly effective technique for spreading interest in Esperanto. Zamenhof claimed a person could master the grammar in an hour and learn to speak Esperanto in a few days; people who took him up on the challenge found that he was right. And every time a reader sent a letter off to a friend, a new person was introduced to the language. The letters and poems helped to give Esperanto an appeal similar to crossword puzzles or sudoku: It was a lot more fun than the usual drudgery associated with learning a new language, and Esperanto clubs soon began springing up all over Europe.

So why don’t we all speak Esperanto?
Part II is on
page 296
.

Study result: Multitaskers are less productive than people who do one thing at a time.

DUMB CROOKS

Attention all criminals! Need proof that crime doesn’t pay? Read these…and weep
.

N
OT VERY SHARPIE

In Carroll, Iowa, two friends—Matthew McNelly, 23, and Joey Miller, 20—decided to break into the apartment of a man who was allegedly involved with Miller’s girlfriend. Reason: They wanted to intimidate him and then rob him. They didn’t have masks, but they did have a permanent black marker. So they scribbled black ink all over each other’s faces, drove to the apartment, pulled up their sweatshirt hoods, and kicked the door several times…but couldn’t get in. So they left. A neighbor who heard the racket called 911, and within minutes, the police pulled the two men over and arrested them for attempted robbery. Quipped Carroll police chief Jeff Cayler: “We’re very skilled investigators and the black faces gave them right away.”

NOT ALL THAT SPARKLES IS DIAMONDS

In 2009 a would-be jewel thief entered the Black Diamond Company in Salt Lake City, Utah. Armed with an ice pick, he ordered two employees: “Give me your precious gems!” The employees explained that Black Diamond doesn’t sell diamonds or any other precious gems—they sell rock-climbing gear. The robber stole several computers instead.

NEXT TIME, READ THE SIGNS

In 2009 retired NYPD officer John Comparetto stepped out of a restroom stall at a Holiday Inn in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to find a man pointing a gun at him. “Give me your wallet and your cell phone!” said the thief. The ex-cop complied and the man ran away. Then Comparetto yelled, “Need some help!” The help came from the 300 other cops who were attending a police convention at the hotel (several signs read “Welcome Police Officers”). The cops easily apprehended the robber, 19-year-old Jerome Marquis Blanchett. Said Comparetto, “He’s probably the dumbest criminal in Pennsylvania.”

30% of India’s population is vegetarian. Only 2.8% of Americans are.

HOOP SNAKES AND
SPLINTER CATS

Were scary stories about Bigfoot part of camping trips when you were a kid? You’re not the only one—it turns out that telling stories about the mythical beasts that inhabit the forest is an American tradition
.

F
IRESIDE FIBBIN’

In the summer of 1908, a young man named Henry Tryon took a job in a logging camp in northern Maine. One night around a campfire, another young man, who was also new to the woods, mentioned that he’d heard a strange, screeching cry that afternoon and didn’t know what kind of animal had made it. “Reckon it was one o’ them tree-squeaks,” an older logger replied. “They’re common hereabouts in July.”

“What’s a tree-squeak?” the young man asked—stepping right into the trap—whereupon the older lumberjacks spent the rest of the evening spinning yarns about the legendary beast. One man claimed the tree-squeak looked kind of like a weasel and was every bit as ornery. Another said it could wrap itself around a tree trunk and blend in with the bark just like a chameleon. A third claimed it could squeak like a mouse, squeal like a pig, howl like a wildcat, or give off a staccato roar that sounded like firecrackers going off. And so it went, with one logger passing the story off to the next, until the men turned in for the night.

The two greenhorns ate up every word of it. It’s likely that only a day or two passed before they realized they’d been had—and by summer’s end they, too, were terrorizing gullible newcomers with wild tales about “fearsome critters” that supposedly inhabited the dark and spooky forest. The tradition has been around for as long as lumberjacks have roamed the woods of North America.

ENDANGERED SPECIES

By 1908 it was already clear that at the rate the forests were being logged, lumber camps wouldn’t be around forever. A handful of people, Tryon among them, began collecting the old loggers’ tales and writing them down, so that this form of American folklore wouldn’t vanish entirely.
Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods,
by William T. Cox, Minnesota’s first commissioner of conservation, was one of the first books on the subject; it was published in 1910. Tryon collected his stories for more than 25 years before writing his own book,
Fearsome Critters,
in 1939.

Chicago’s Iroquois Theater, the world’s first “fireproof” theater, burned to the ground less than a month after opening in 1903.

THE FEARSOME MENAGERIE

Here are some of the more fanciful critters that Tryon, Cox, and others collected over the years. (Keep your eyes peeled for them the next time you’re in the woods at night.)

•
The Will-am-alone.
A mischievous squirrel-like animal, the will-am-alone lives in the forests of Maine. It sniffs out poisonous fungus the way a pig sniffs out truffles, and when it finds a patch it rolls the stuff into tiny balls, then sneaks up on sleeping loggers and drops it into their eyes and ears. The fungus balls cause the loggers to have the most vivid and terrifying nightmares imaginable. “Parties well-foxed with alcohol,” writes Tryon, “seem to be his special prey.”

•
The Slide-Rock Bolter.
This giant, beady-eyed, drooling creature resembles a large-mouthed fish, but it doesn’t live in the water. The steep mountain slopes of Colorado are its home. The bolter has giant hooked fins at the end of its tail, and it uses these to anchor itself to a mountaintop. Then it lies perfectly still, often for days on end, drooling continuously as it waits for a logger to pass by in the valley below. As soon as it spots its prey, the creature releases its hooked fins and roars down the mountain slope like a kid on a waterslide, its path greased by great quantities of its slippery drool. When the bolter reaches the valley floor it devours the logger in a single gulp. The momentum of its slide sends it all the way to the top of the opposite slope, where it grabs hold with its hooked fins…and waits until it is ready to eat again.

•
The Hoop Snake.
The hoop snake has a stinger at the end of its tail that’s armed with venom so powerful it can kill anything it stings. But what really makes this snake dangerous is its ability to form a giant hoop by taking its tail in its mouth, and then roll along like a hula hoop at speeds of up to 60 mph. The hoop snake normally preys on jackrabbits, not loggers, but it will attack any creature if it feels threatened. The only way to get away from it is to find a fence and climb over it. When the hoop snake comes to a fence it has to un-hoop in order to climb over it, slowing it down and giving its prey a decent chance at escape. If there aren’t any fences around, you’re out of luck.

•
The Dungavenhooter.
This beast looks a little like a crocodile without a snout. The dungavenhooter has huge nostrils, but no mouth. It preys on loggers and is partial to drunks, especially those soused on rum. So how does it eat the loggers if it doesn’t have a mouth? Easy—it hides behind a bush until a logger comes along, then it knocks him down and beats him to death with its tail. It keeps pounding away until there’s nothing left of the logger except a bloody mist—which it snorts up with those huge nostrils.

•
The Hidebehind.
Another vicious man-eater, the hidebehind is a six-foot-tall creature with slender build, quick reflexes, and a thick black coat of fur. Its skinny build enables it to
hide behind
trees when sneaking up on loggers. Then, after it creeps up behind an unfortunate woodsman, it lets out a terrifying screech. If the logger doesn’t drop dead from fright right then and there, the hidebehind disembowels him with a single swipe of its razor-sharp, bearlike claws. The good news: The hidebehind cannot stand the smell of alcohol and will not prey on drunks. A single swig of whisky or bottle of beer is more than adequate protection from this teetotaling timberland terror.

•
The Splinter Cat.
Harmless to humans but very destructive, the splinter cat is found in forests all over North America. It’s a short, stocky feline with powerful legs and a hard, wedge-shaped head. The splinter cat feeds on honey and raccoons, both of which can be found in hollow trees. Sadly, it can’t tell solid trees from hollow ones, but it makes up for this with its astonishing strength. After climbing to the top of one tree, it hurls itself against a neighboring tree with enough force to snap the top clean off. If this wedge-headed wonder finds honey or a raccoon inside the tree, it stops there and eats. If not, it hurls itself at another tree, and then another, and another, until it finally finds its dinner.

For more tall tales about the “fearsome critters” of the
forest, ride your hoop snake over to
page 439
.

Number of sports-related eye injuries in the U.S.: 40,000 per year.

PEOPLE YOU THOUGHT
WERE AMERICANS

BRI reader Christine D. recently told us that she was surprised to learn that the actor Errol Flynn wasn’t from the United States. (Can you guess where he was from?) That made us wonder about other famous people that we assumed were born in America…but weren’t. We were surprised by how many we found
.

R
ICH LITTLE.
The comedian, who achieved fame on
The Tonight Show
and
The Ed Sullivan Show
in the 1960s and ’70s through his impersonations of Johnny Carson, George Burns, John Wayne, and Richard Nixon, among many others, started out doing impersonations of Canadian politicians. Little was born in Ottawa in 1938 and became an American citizen in 2008—at the age of 69.

ERROL FLYNN.
Flynn was born in Hobart, Australia, in 1909. He moved to England in his early twenties and to the U.S. when he was 26. He became a Hollywood star almost instantly—and didn’t become an American citizen until 1942, at age 33. Flynn didn’t die in the U.S., either: He had a heart attack while visiting friends in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was only 50 years old.

BOB HOPE.
He was born in London in 1903, emigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1908, and became a citizen in 1920.

EDDIE VAN HALEN.
The guitarist for the rock group Van Halen was born Edward Lodewijk Van Halen in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1955. His family moved to Pasadena, California, when he was seven. (His older brother, Alex, the drummer for the band, is also from Amsterdam.)