Exploding Whales

Roughly the same time I was born, a whale died.  And while this sort of thing happens all the time, this particular whale is one that will be remembered for quite some time.  Unfortunately, the reason for this has nothing to do with how it lived its life.  That will remain enshrouded in mystery, largely.  We assume the whale had a decent life, doing whale things until the moment it died, and that's when it became the stuff of legend.  Its body washed ashore near Florence, Oregon, and sat there on the sand, posing a significant question to residents and visitors:  what to do with a dead whale?  This question grew more pressing as the smell had gotten more invasive, and so it was decided to call the Oregon State Highway Division, because (quoting Dave Barry here), "highways and whales are very similar in the sense of being large objects."  I'm not entirely sure who was in charge at the time, but the rest of us are very grateful.  The Oregon State Highway Division did what any red-blooded American would do:  devise a brilliant plan to blow it up.  If you've never looked up the story or watched the video, it's one I highly recommend.  It will immediately cheer you up.  You'll be right there, socially distant from this whale's corpse, watching as professionals place a "half ton" of dynamite right next to the whale.  The prevalent thinking here was that the whale would go from being one large piece to thousands and thousands of smaller pieces that seagulls and crabs would presumably haul off.  Another theory is that people just wanted to watch a whale explode.

Regardless, what follows is movie magic.  Nearly fifty years later, I'm surprised no movie has been made about this, actually.  The crowd of celebrating bystanders is pushed back to what was thought a safe distance, just far enough away that they can watch for themselves an exploding whale.  It was an atmosphere not unlike Times Square at New Year's Eve, where a countdown took place and the cheering crowd waited with anticipation for the detonation and complete disintegration of a 45-foot, 8 ton whale.

If you know the story, you know what happens next.  And this transcript of the words spoken by the reporter on the scene, Paul Linnman, says it best:

Our cameras stopped rolling immediately after the blast. The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere. Pieces of meat passed high over our heads, while others were falling at our feet. The dunes were rapidly evacuated as spectators escaped both the falling debris and the overwhelming smell.

A parked car over a quarter of a mile from the blast site was the target of one large chunk, the passenger compartment literally smashed. Fortunately, no human was hit as badly as the car. However, everyone on the scene was covered with small particles of dead whale.

As for the success of the effort… Well, the seagulls who were supposed to clean things up were no where in sight, either scared away by the explosion or kept away by the smell. That didn’t really matter. The remaining chunks were of such a size that no respectable seagull would attempt to tackle anyway. As darkness began to set in, the highway crews were back on the beach burying the remains, including a large piece of the carcass which never left the blast site.

It might be concluded that should a whale ever wash ashore in Lane County again, those in charge will not only remember what to do, they’ll certainly remember what not to do.

Occasionally I go back to this video, and I believe many others do, and we all do it just to laugh.  I just love that dynamite was the obvious answer to a problem.  And of course, not only was that wrong, but there's the imagery of people running from their lives as chunks of dead whale assaulted them from the heavens.

This all happened on November 12, 1970, and in honor of that great moment in history, the good people of Oregon made a great decision here to name that stretch of beach "Exploding Whale Memorial Park."

We just read that on the news, and of course we were thrilled to hear it.  It would seem as if this would be an obvious travel destination, should we be in the area.  We'll be sure to check in with the folks there as November of this year gets closer - it's the fiftieth anniversary of such a hallowed event.   No doubt we'll all be watching the video again.

Today was a calm day.  We watched "Artemis Fowl" this evening, and while it was a decent movie, it was quite a bit different from the first book.  Perhaps they were injecting a lot of other books into this movie, I don't know.  But we did like the book a bit better.

We did some grocery shopping today, heading out without masks on or anything.  I know that's crazy talk.  We had a lot to get, and it was great to all be doing it together.  Madison and I have been well-trained with groceries these past few months, so we zoomed about the store like worker bees, gathering up exactly what was needed and returning to the queen bee at the cart.  We managed to fill that cart bigger than ever before, mainly because it's been a long time.  We were approaching crisis mode at the house:  no more tea bags.  Yes, that's when you know it's bad!

Having finished our book, tonight we had to pick a new book, and because of the recent Gnome Town that was constructed just outside our house, I decided to read "Truckers," by Terry Pratchett.  That's the first book of the "Bromeliad Trilogy," although we'll have to wait and see with the girls if they like the first book before going on to the others.  These books feature "nomes," with are somewhat like "gnomes," except that there's no "g" in there.  Regardless of spelling, these smaller characters are living side-by-side with humanity, and I've read this story before but the girls have not heard it yet.  I loved it, as I do most of what Terry Pratchett wrote.  We'll see what the girls think, but this is the first thing they've probably ever read, outside of "Where's My Cow?"

It was a quiet day today, one much-needed after all the work with Summer Xtreme.  The response to that event has been very good.  We saw some folks having a party in their backyard, inviting neighbors over to watch SX20 on a big screen.  We had a viewing party the first night ourselves, but the second two nights were so close on editing time and release that we just had time to get home and collapse!  But overall, it was good.  It's obviously nothing like a Summer Xtreme in person.  That was greatly missed this year.  We were at the church, and Madison took a picture of the empty auditorium, and we were picturing all the noise and commotion and hundreds of children jumping and screaming.  Memories flood our hearts as we see that room that has been so dark these past three months.  For a while, it was like a time capsule, the chairs each had the printed guide on them for the very next message.  Parenting Matters were stacked up and ready to go.  Scripts for the actors were there too, ready for the next skit.  From what I understand, we may be back in August at KidPak, and that will be something to behold.  I can't even picture it now.

Here's a link to the entry I wrote on the last Sunday we had at KidPak.  You can see I had no idea that this was the last Sunday we'd be together at KidPak for months.  Who could have ever thought that?  It was unheard of, and insane.  We only missed church because of inclement weather, and there was that one time the power went out.  And that was for one weekend.  But this?  Three months?

Anyway, at least things are moving forward.  KidPak is August - perhaps - but the services with adults and families upstairs in our main sanctuary will be in July.  That will be a good.