Veggie Tale

If today's tour is any indication, both failure and success can generate curious results.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

(00:36):
When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. It's
an English proverb that means the strong are able to
weather the most difficult of circumstances. But in one case
it took on a whole new meaning, one in which
a group of people looking for acceptance got much more
than they bargained for, and they got out of there
as quickly as they possibly could. Henry S. Club had

(00:57):
a problem in eighteen fifty five. He was part of
a collective facing a major societal hurdle. They were vegetarians.
The problem was that their dietary choices. It was because
Club and his people were alone in a world of
meat eaters, and they just wanted to find a place
where they felt like they belonged. Aside from their abstinence
from meat, they also refused to consume alcohol, tea, coffee, tobacco, fowl,

(01:21):
and dairy products, making them closer to vegans than vegetarians,
and they stuck out like a sore thumb among everyone else.
Around the same time, the Kansas Territory became hotly contested
between pro slavery and abolitionist groups. Gallons of blood were
shed on both sides, resulting in a nickname for both
the area and the time period, Bleeding Kansas. But the

(01:44):
new territory also spelled opportunity for Club and his fellow vegetarians,
so he and about fifty families formed a new coalition
called the Vegetarian Kansas Emigration Company, with one goal to
move to Kansas and establish a new community of their own.
The rules for joining their club were simple. New members

(02:04):
were required to pay ten dollars to help fund the project,
and they had to adhere to the established dietary restrictions
of vegetarians at the time. There were also moral obligations
toward abolition and a better society for everyone involved. Club
immediately got to work fundraising by soliciting local business owners
for capital. He wanted to raise enough money to build

(02:25):
homes and infrastructure so the community could be self sufficient.
He even took out ads in the newspapers, encouraging lovers
of carots to join him. As for the settlement itself,
Club turned to the work of eugenicist Orson Squire Fowler,
who has served as Vice President of the American Vegetarian
Society in eighteen fifty two. Fowler was a proponent of

(02:47):
octagonal living. He believed square and rectangular homes were old news,
and quite literally thought outside the box when designing his
own home. It was shaped like you guessed it, an octagon.
Fowler claimed that octagonal houses had more room and cost
less to build. The style of architecture piqued the interest
of Henry Club as he started planning his new vegetarian

(03:09):
town in Kansas. Club envisioned an octagonal town square, out
of which would spring eight roads that led to a mill,
a library, homes, and farms. He called it appropriately Octagon City.
The Vegetarian Kansas Emigration Company set out in eighteen fifty
six for their new eight sided utopia, a dream full
of promise and potential where animals could thrive without fear

(03:32):
of being slaughtered and eaten. Instead, what they saw was
nothing like what had been promised. The company had traveled
twelve hundred miles, only to find their octagonal paradise nothing
more than some shacks and a couple of ovens. None
of what Club had described had been built. Many of
the members of the company abandoned him immediately. They felt
that he had misappropriated the funds that he'd raised. The

(03:54):
group that stayed did their best to make a go
of things, but their efforts did not go far enough.
Everything their leader had promised was nowhere to be found.
The plows they needed to cultivate the land had not
been delivered. Swarms of mosquitoes brought disease, including chills and fever.
The freshwater springs that were thought to be endless dried up,
and crops died before they could even be harvested. According

(04:17):
to a historical marker near the site, four thousand O
Sage Indians who traded with them living in the area
could do little to help. A large number of children
and elderly people died. But the time winter arrived, most
of the colony had left town. Only four people remained.
Henry Clubs vegetarian utopia had all but withered away. All

(04:38):
he wanted was a safe place for he and his
vegetarian friends to live their lives in peace. Unfortunately, sometimes
the curveballs that life throws us are curious, and sometimes
they're tragic. In January of nineteen forty five, Smokey made

(05:07):
her way through a dark tunnel. It smelled like dirt, mildew,
and the sharp tang of metal. Barely able to see,
she felt along the edges of the passageway and followed
it as it twisted and curbed. Every now and then,
the tunnel would get tiny, and Smokey would have to
hold her breath as she squeezed through. She wanted to
turn back, but she couldn't. The mission was too important.

(05:28):
Smokey was a member of the US Air Force's twenty
six Reconnaissance Squadron, and she and her fellow servicemen were
on Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines. It was
the tail end of World War Two, but of course
Smokey and her comrades couldn't have known that they were
still in the thick of it, unsure when the war
would finally end, and they had a job to do

(05:48):
as bombs exploded in the distance. They were working to
build an air base for Allied warplanes, one of the
most crucial parts of the base was the installation of
telegraph wire. This was kind of like an early telephone line.
It would allow servicemen to communicate using electrical signals delivered
over the wire. Without it, they would be completely isolated,

(06:08):
which is how Smokey wound up in that dark, winding tunnel.
The passageway was seventy feet long, but it was too
small for any of the men in the squadron to
fit inside, so it became Smokey's job to pull the
telegraph wire all the way through. The fate of the
airbase rested on her back. Smokey took deep breaths. It
felt like at every turn the tunnel got smaller. The

(06:30):
sound of the telegraph wire rattling along behind her made
her jumpy. Finally, Smokey saw light beginning to filter into
the passageway. She heard her favorite comrade, Corporal William Wine,
calling her name. The tunnel got just big enough for
her to stand up straight, and she sprinted forward, the
wire flying behind her. The end of the tunnel came
into view. Smokey ran into the sunlight and jumped right

(06:53):
into William Wine's arms. Other air Force members crowded around
and cheered, They scratched behind her ears. Somebody fed her
a chunk of canned spam as a treat. Because you see,
Smokey was a dog, a tiny Yorkshire Terrier who weighed
just four pounds, and that telegraph pipe she had just
traveled through was a mere eight inches wide. But Smokey,

(07:15):
the canine hero of the day, was seven inches tall.
William Wine had adopted her about a year earlier after
a fellow serviceman found her hiding inside a foxhole in
New Guinea. At first, she was sort of like a
mascot and emotional support animal, but Smokey quickly became a
real veteran. She backpacked through the Pacific Islands right alongside Wine.

(07:36):
She participated in a dozen air and sea rescue missions.
She parachuted thirty feet down from the top of a
tree using a special teeny tiny parachute created just for her.
She survived over one hundred and fifty air raids on
New Guinea and then lived through a typhoon in Okinawa, Japan.
According to William Wine, Smokey once warned him about incoming

(07:57):
enemy fire, thereby saving his life. This telegraph wire, by
the way, was a small achievement compared to everything else
that Smokey had done, but it was a shining moment
for her. What would have taken days for the US
Air Force to complete on their own, Smokey had achieved
in a matter of minutes. When the war finally ended,
William Wine brought Smokey home to Cleveland, Ohio. He taught

(08:20):
her hundreds of tricks, including how to walk across a
tightrope while blindfolded. She and Wine went on to perform
shows in Hollywood, which were broadcast on television all over
the country, and on top of her career in showbiz,
Smokey also visited veterans' hospitals to comfort those who were
injured or suffering from PTSD. Smokey passed away in nineteen

(08:41):
fifty nine, but she left a legacy that is still
honored today. According to Animal Planet, she was history's most
recorded therapy dog, and in twenty twenty two, sixty five
years after her death, Smokey received the Animals in War
and Peace Distinguished Service Medal from the US government for
her role in World War Two. If you needed one

(09:01):
more achievement to add to the list, though Smokey is
also credited with renewing interest in Yorkies everywhere you see.
Before she made headlines for her heroism, Yorkshire Terriers were
a relatively obscure breed, but Smokey brought Yorkis to the mainstream.
These days, they consistently rank in the American Kennel Club's
top one hundred most popular breeds. So the next time

(09:21):
you see a Yorki running around, spare a thought for Smokey,
History's cutest and most curious Air Force veteran. I hope
you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show

(09:46):
was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
you can learn all about it over at the World
of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
M HM.