The last in a three part series of stories told to me by my visiting parents, this one is short and sweet.
My dad is a little under 65 years old, and he was talking with a radiologist from work who was about the same age. The radiologist was telling my dad a story about the time he visited New York when he was only six years old. Back then, apparently, when people visited New York, one of the popular past-times was to visit the lobby of the New York Daily News building and look at the large globe located there. (As my dad explained it, there wasn't a whole lot of cool stuff going on back in the 50s.) So as a child, this man went to visit the lobby of the New York Daily News and was standing on the railing examining the globe.
Apparently at this time, the Barnum and Bailey Circus was in New York, and one of the stars was being interviewed at the newspaper. So at some point the elevator opens up to the lobby, and a man walks out with a tiger on one arm and a lion on the other. Well, apparently something spooked the tiger, because it starts freaking out all of a sudden. Finally, it breaks free and proceeds to mauls the man standing right next to my dad's colleague. People start screaming and running over to help the man or alternatively running in the opposite direction, and the whole time this child is just standing there. Finally someone pulls him out of the room, and he said he never found out what happen to the man that was being attacked.
But to this day, he says that this particular memory, which occured when he was just six years old, is the most vivid of his entire life.
I got divorced just before coming out to Pittsburgh. I had been living in Salt Lake with my husband of 5 years, things went bad and we were officially divorced about 7 days before I landed here. About 5 months after I got here he called me and told me that he had been wandering around the Salt lake zoo with his new girlfriend when an elephant had broken free and chased a bunch of people down a side walk. This group of people included James (the ex). When James veered off into some trees and away from the oncoming beast it actually turned and pursued him into the bushes and trees. It apparently felled a tree or something while pursuing him and hit him with a tree branch.
ReplyDeleteNow... I wasn't there or anything but I swear the images this story renders are some of my very favorite memories of him :)
Hey these were awesome stories. I especially liked the second one.
ReplyDeleteHehe,
ReplyDeleteThanks. Yeah my parents are full of interesting nuggets...
This story is wild.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, without even knowing what he looks like I was able to conjure up some pretty hilarious visualization.