Michigan Stadium aka "The Big House," Ann Arbor, Michigan

After the construction of Michigan's colossal new stadium in 1927, university authorities feared that they could have trouble filling it. So to drum up interest, they released a radio adventure serial set in and around the stadium filled with intrigue and plots against the beloved local team foiled weekly by the intrepid Conrad Mustangs. Today, here the script from an episode taken from the Michigan Radio Archive.

Note: None of the things I wrote about above are true. I made it all up. It is fiction. For entertainment purposes. Michigan fans, please do not email me about Historical Inaccuracies.

BIG MESS AT THE BIG HOUSE: EPISODE 14: A SINISTER UNIFORM CONUNDRUM

ANNOUNCER: Tonight’s broadcast of Big Mess at the Big House: A Conrad Mustangs Adventure is brought to you by Vance Crayfish’s Leaded Paints. No paint is more brilliant, more beautiful, and more bold than Vance Crayfish’s. Your neighbors and friends will be stunned by the bright colors of your walls. Other paints are dull and faded because they do not provide the American consumer with the lead he deserves. Vance Crayfish’s patented formula has nearly 40% more lead than all other paints available. Write to Vance Crayfish, 432 Rinsdow Ave., Moth, Ohio. Today’s program is also sponsored by hogs. Next time you have pork, insist on hogs.

And now, here he is, the man of a dozen faces, the fearless fighter for freedom and football, your hero Conrad Mustangs in another thrilling adventure. Last week, Mustangs outwitted the hoodlums and punch-merchants of the dangerous Maroon Syndicate by replacing their cigars with ones tainted with undetectable gut-tonics. These blighted belvederes put these toughs in such a gastric distress that they were forced to flee the Big House for an outhouse, and Mustangs was given the Key to the City while his enemies groaned out a stomach symphony. But there are sinister forces afoot in the shadow of the old stadium who have it out for the Wolverines.

We start our story with two mysterious figures having a clandestine meeting outside Michigan Stadium.

(sound effect: the sound of someone getting a sap to the bean attained using a baseball thrown into a pile of burlap sacks and person yelling HURGH and the sound of someone getting dragged away by putting a cantaloupe in one of the burlap sacks and dragging it across a table)
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE(whispering): Hurry up you nitwit! Change into this sap’s clothes while he’s out of it.
SHADOWY FIGURE TWO: The hat doesn’t fit.
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: Well, we didn’t have time to wait and find someone coming who had a noggin as gigantic as yours. It would take us all day. You must be a world record holder with that cranium. Just jam it on. Here. (sound effect: a hat being pulled over a large head using a paper sack being pulled over a basketball).
SHADOWY FIGURE TWO: Ow!
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: Just shut your kisser or I’ll wax you in the brainpan. Hurry up, grab those football uniforms and bring the ones we brought in. But don’t manhandle them with those mitts. I was told not to touch them without gloves. We need everything to go perfect for the big game Saturday. Then those Wolverines are in for the surprise of their lives. Ha ha ha ha.
SHADOWY FIGURE TWO: Haw haw haw haw haw
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: You don’t even know what you’re laughing at you ox.

ANNOUNCER: Meanwhile inside the bowels of the stadium, Conrad Mustangs meets with Coach Van Roast in his office.

COACH VAN ROAST: I say, Mustangs, that Maroon Gang really had us in the soup there. Good thing we had you around to give them the what for with those stogies.
MUSTANGS: Well, it is all in a day’s work. We have to remain vigilant. As you know, the enemies of Michigan football are everywhere and they will stop at nothing to foil our exploits on the field.
COACH VAN ROAST: That’s right. There are plots from crackpots and eggheads constantly popping up against our lads to prevent them from winning fair and square, the Michigan way. Mustangs, tell me, with a big game coming up this week, have you seen anything hinky?
MUSTANGS: My network of street urchins informants have been telling me that something strange might be going on at Cooley Technical High School so I disguised myself as a rough-back named Quig Pomona and infiltrated their game.
COACH VAN ROAST: Did you find out anything?
MUSTANGS: Well, we were down 4-2 in the final quarter so I told the lads to dig deep and execute the headbutt dive. Coach, we pummeled those kids into fields behind the school and got the winning score and afterwards we went out to celebrate at the meat stand. But then Moose Frangella and his Red Street Boys came by looking for a fracas. Things got heated very quickly and I had to give Little Jake Mastodan the old one-two right in the breadbasket and then I beat my feet right out of there.
COACH VAN ROAST: Troubling. But did you find anything out about the game?
MUSTANGS: Yes, we’re going to thrash Johnson High on the field next week after we slapped them into next Sunday at that meat stand donnybrook.
COACH VAN ROAST: No, did you find any plots against Michigan before the big game?
MUSTANGS: Oh yes. Michigan football. No. Not yet. But I know as we speak an unknown enemy is moving among us, Coach.

ANNOUNCER: And Mustangs is right. For even as we speak, there are evil forces afoot that are threatening your beloved Wolverines. 

(Sound effect: thunder and lightning, rain steadily rattling off a rooftop)
SINISTER MAN: Did you switch the uniforms?
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: Yes, no thanks to this lunkhead here.
SHADOWY FIGURE TWO: Hey! I did my job, I socked him good.
SINISTER MAN: You know what they say about a bad workman and his tools. But excellent. Years of research and finally, a way for toad venom to soak into a garment, putting the victims into a stupor, and those Wolverines will finally be exposed for the bilious worms they are.
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: And a job well done by us. Which brings us to our arrangement. Ingots, as we discussed.
SINISTER MAN: This is a delicate manner. I have had to move with great caution because I am not just an ordinary criminal mastermind. No, you have been hired by Dr. Jacopo Manbanner, the Chairman of the Big Ten Conference. My goal is to destroy the Michigan Wolverines whom I don’t like because their university president once snubbed me viciously at the All Universities Toasting Fête.
(sound effect: organ playing a diminished chord)
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: That is a tremendous story, Professor. But we want our money.
(sound effect: cocking of a revolver)
(sound effect: the BLATT BLATT of a heavy liquid hitting someone in the face achieved by dropping marmalade from great height onto an old casserole.)
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: Argh! My face!
DR. JACOPO MANBANNER: That’s a double dose of my toad venom. By my calculations, you have about thirty seconds before your mind starts to take you on a journey to realms of insanity from which you’ll never return.
SHADOWY FIGURE TWO: Boss, did he just say he’s turning us into toads?
SHADOWY FIGURE ONE: No, you lugnut. We’re going to fall into a reverie of madness. Say, why do you now have two enormous heads?

ANNOUNCER: Our hero Mustangs has not yet uncovered the sinister plot against Michigan football. But he is undaunted and trying. We now find him in a nest of iniquity, a speakeasy where Mustangs is wearing a false nose and large, bushy mustaches while he tries to get a whiff of a plot while mingling with the dregs of the Ann Arbor criminal underground
(sound effect: hot jazz music blaring)
(sound effect: a boisterous crowd buzzing and shouting and clinking glasses and occasionally shouts of HUZZAH or “Boatman’s Uncle”

MUSTANGS (as his alter ego Trent Ghent): Haha the festivities are ripping. Sir please give me an alcohol, and make it extra illegal. Hey fella. As you can tell by this alcohol, I love breaking the law. Do you know of any criminal plots against Michigan football?
MAN AT SPEAKEASY: Get away from me!
MUSTANGS: A tough nut. Maybe one of these dames can tell me something. It’s time to cut a rug. Ladies, may I? No? You’re waiting for Moose? Oh I understand. Tell me, is he involved in any illegal plans to cost Michigan the Big Game? Ok, I’ll scram. I’m scramming.
(sound effect: shoes running away gotten by playing a coconut with drum sticks)
MUSTANGS: You, mister. You look like a strapping young fellow. In fact, you’re someone I have in mind for my criminal operation targeting Michigan football. Would you like to help? Or maybe you’re already in some sort of anti-Wolverine scheme that I can join.
ANOTHER MAN AT SPEAKEASY: Mustangs.
MUSTANGS: I have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m the tool and die magnate Trent Ghent.
ANOTHER MAN AT SPEAKEASY: Mustangs,, cut the malarkey. I’m working for you! I’ve been working this room for weeks. You don’t recognize me? You called me your brightest bean!
MUSTANGS: Of course. Jimmy The Neck. This, eh, was a test. And you passed most admirably. Do you have any leads?
JIMMY THE NECK: No. But I keep hearing something about toads.
MUSTANGS: Preposterous!
JIMMY THE NECK: I thought so. But it keeps coming up. Every underground football criminal has been saying all sorts of nutty things but they all somehow involve toads.

ANNOUNCER: And so our hero Conrad Mustangs goes to his famous Disguise Closet this time for a false beard, a bright green suit, and some alligator shoes. His investigations have taken him to Ann Arbor’s reptile district, a bazaar of boa constrictors, a plethora of pythons, a variety of vipers.
(Sounds effects: lizard noises that come from the hissing from air being let out of a bicycle tire, voices periodically shouting “Turtles! Iguañas!” in the distance.

MUSTANGS: Toads?
VENDOR: Snakes only. Move along.
MUSTANGS: Toads?
ANOTHER VENDOR: Get out of here before I call in the police.
MUSTANGS: Toads?
A THIRD VENDOR: (loudly) I’ve never sold a toad here in my life. Those are illegal. (softly) You shouldn’t be that brazen. There are eyes everywhere. Come in, and be quick. (sound effect: opening and closing a door)
THIRD VENDOR: What makes a man like you in the market for a toad?
MUSTANGS (affecting a terrible and unplaceable foreign accent): Pleased to meet you. My name is J. Konstantin Kroboshkin, toad fancier, enthusiast, scholar.
VENDOR: You certainly do not appear acquainted with the toad market here.
MUSTANGS: (still doing the accent but it’s wobbling like a prizefighter who has been battered about the head for thirteen rounds) Sir, you must forgive. I am normally very active in the market overseas. Baku, Tashkent. Bratislava. These American restrictions are troubling. Land of the free, you say. Not in terms of toad.
VENDOR: You can call me Mr. Glenavery Hiss. What sorts of toads are you looking for Mr. Kroboshkin?
MUSTANGS: Exotic. Dangerous. What sorts of toads typically move through this market?
MR. HISS: Funny you should ask that. We’ve had a large uptick in venomous toads from South America. Big buyers.
MUSTANGS: Interesting. What can I do to get my hands on one of them? Do you have another shipment coming in soon?
MR. HISS: Let me check my ledger. (sound effect, rustling around in drawer recorded from rustling around in a drawer.)
(sound effect: a revolver cocking)
MR. HISS: Mr. Kroboshkin, your inquiries are a bit bold. You hardly seem to be a toad man at all. What are you, police? Customs? Out with it.
MUSTANGS: I am afraid you are mistaken. Perhaps my manners here are… uncouth. I am simply a toad fancier from a foreign land seeking to understand how you do business. There’s no need for guns.
MR. HISS: Very well. But if you’re as experienced of a toad man as you say, then you should have no trouble with this serum of toad-derived insanity poison. I am assuming the exposure should make you mildly odd. Of course a man who had never been exposed to toads would become completely deranged within seconds. But that’s not a problem with an experienced toad man like you.
MUSTANGS: Ridiculous. I am leaving. Someone else here surely wants my ingots. (sound effect: rattling a locked doorknob)
MR. HISS: I’m afraid I cannot allow you to leave, Mr. Kroboshkin. You will take the toad insanity serum right now and we will see about your toad tolerance.

ANNOUNCER: And so Conrad Mustagns finds himself in another pickle with a sinister toad merchant. Will Mustangs lose his mind? Will the tainted uniforms turn the Michigan Wolverines from a fearsome football squadron to a bunch of uncoordinated oafs in the Big Game? Will Jacopo Manbanner’s sinister plot against the Wolverines succeed? Tune in next week for Big Mess at the Big House: A Conrad Mustangs Adventure.

Ohio Stadium aka "The Horseshoe," Columbus, Ohio

In 1922, Ohio State began construction of its stadium, known as The Horseshoe. Here is a letter protesting this construction from Dr. Augustus Morgan "Pepper" Matschafter, professor of Physical Education, who was upset at the university's misplaced prioritization of football.

To the Robust and Vigorous Board at The Ohio State University,

Every year we are subjected to the same sights of battered, broken young men sacrificing themselves in the sport of Football for the entertainment of the dullard masses. And now, the University seeks to build an enormous stadium of poured concrete just for this sad spectacle so we can cram more students and yokelous onlookers into it to watch these youths smash and bash each other for their base amusement. Well I, and other high-minded faculty at this supposed Institution of Higher Learning have had enough. I demand that the University cease allocating resources to Football and immediately redistribute it to more important, educational ends. It is time for the University to immediately transfer all funding to the superior sport of Brains Wrangling.

I am frankly embarrassed that our esteemed school is hosting a sport where these young men sprint into each other while trying to gain possession of an oblong pig’s bladder. Ridiculous! These lads should be crashing into each other in tests of strength and brains-power by which I mean they should be trying to injure each other by bludgeoning each other with their own skulls. What sort of dullard is interested in “touch downs” or “half-backs” or those endless procedural meetings mediated by a referee who stops them for infractions for moving the wrong way or being too rough with each other? I cannot imagine thousands of people wanting to see this sort of dainty rules-mongering instead of scores of thick-necked oafs lining up on opposite sides of a field, taking a running start, and trying to headbutt each other in the torso.

The slack-jawed masses currently enamored with football will soon grow tired of its elaborate rules  regime, especially when confronted with a more daring and vigorous sport where young people are spun around by the ankles and thrown into a crowd of opponents who must try to withstand a bludgeoning from the skulls of these human projectiles. Instead of fussy referees constantly trying to penalize the players, the officials will join in the fray, unleashing their own heads upon lollygagging competitors whose bashing of their opponents is feeble and underwhelming.

I urge the university board to reconsider building this palace to a sad, passing fad, a sport that will go the way of bear-baiting and train-punching. University funds simply cannot be allowed to be tied to a dying pageant of tedium where players are not thrown at each other via trebuchet nor allow biting of opponents when the referee has given the signal for legal mouth-combat. Every week, I receive a report from the top scientific minds at the Brains Wrangling Society (the most recent of which I have submitted with this letter) warning of a precipitous decline in football interest in newspaper columns and people shouting about it on the street and (while it may offend the delicate sensibilities of the Board to know that their game has been sullied in this way) I have certain intelligences that suggest that football has seen a significant downturn in underground betting parlors. The men who frequent such dens and shake their money in order to place bets have expressed what I have come to understand as an overwhelming interest instead in a sport where the competitors are dropped on each other head first from great height.

What, may I ask, will the Ohio State University do with an empty concrete behemoth once the greater Columbus dunce population grows tired of this boring, wearying sport? What happens when people, craving robust tackling action instead see a bunch of pointy-headed collegians carefully plotting out their so-called “plays” with protractors and slide rules and bump into each other while swaddled in helmets, like soft-headed children? What will fill the stadium? Chess matches? Competitive examinations? Petting zoos for local children? As you can see, a stadium for football would be another grave mistake and black mark for this University, an even larger error than the one this very board made funding my colleague Professor Brun Punda’s nonsensical paper proposing a sport called “Top Speed Bludgeoning” that made him the laughingstock of the entire field for how brazenly it copied the existing rules for Brains Wrangling that I published years ago.

Instead of spending untold sums of university money for a sport that may not even exist by the end of the decade, it would be far wiser to invest the money in an activity with staying power. With a mere fraction of the funds being spent on this concrete monstrosity, the Brains Wrangling Society could demonstrate a superior sport that would capture the imagination of sporting fans all over the country. For mere pennies compared to the stadium fund, my Brains Wrangling team could instantly attract the attentions of any town in the state by using an old-fashioned railroad pump cart to launch team members head first into someone’s torso, an arresting and daring feat that would instantly conjure up great interest in the sport.

According to the Brains Wrangling Societies’ projections from the esteemed professor Abel Bruus, a conservative campaign of literature distribution, newspaper advertisement, and a modest tour featuring demonstrations of pump cart headbutts would have Brains Wrangling eclipsing football in popularity in the state of Ohio by 1932. I know it sounds astonishing and I personally shook Professor Bruus violently when he presented the figures to me because they sounded so outlandish, but we both painstakingly checked the mathematics. According to our calculations, the University would require a significant stadium built to Brains Wrangling specifications just to handle the demand from crowds who would travel for hundreds of miles just to see Migal Yerop, the Iron Forehead of Bucyrus, put his entire cranium through a concrete block and then swing it wildly at competitors until the referees catch him in a giant net and subdue him with Sporting Grade Laudanum.

Please do not make the same mistake after you built the ridiculous arena for the short-lived Horseless Polo craze of 1893. You will soon make another horse mistake with this ill conceived boondoggle of a stadium for a sport no one will believe that anyone had ever watched.

Yours,

Professor Augustus Morgan "Pepper" Matschafter, PhD, President and First Secretary of the Brains Wrangling Society of the United States

Ross-Ade Stadium, West Lafeyette, Indiana

Speech from Menley Quackow, transcribed from the West Lafeyette Crackpot Archives from 1922 during a municipal election:

 

Well folks, you can tell me a pig’s a pig, but I'll be checking to see if it makes bacon. Now I’m not a fancy big city Lafayette man like Mr. Ross or Mr. Ade, with their spats and their hats and their monocles and their handpicked candidate. But you know what? I think they’ve got some good ideas. That’s right. Now I know you’ve read my pamphlets showing a picture of me kicking them in their behinds until their top hats fall into the Wabash River and you’ve heard my campaign slogan “The Time For Kicking Has Begun” which I’ve also made into a song that my nephew performed on the washboard. But they are right about one thing: Our beloved Purdue University needs a new stadium.

 

Friends, Stuart Field where we gather to watch our Boilermakers play against Notre Dame, Depauw, and the hated Little Giants of Wabash whose tiny beanstalks we’ve seen Purdue cut time and time again, is no longer suitable for so-called “Big Ten Football.” And I have no problem with these fatcats shelling out for a new stadium, which they’re going to name after themselves.

 

But these men and the university are on the wrong track. In fact, they’re not on any track at all. Now, you can tell me a pig’s a pig, but I don’t need to wash the mud off if it’s mooing at me. These, well I can’t politely say what I would call these gentlemen here, but these fine folks want to build a stadium on a piece of land and make us come to it. Imagine that. Putting on your suit, your tie, and pipes you use to defend yourself in case the Rose-Hulman Tech Fighting Engineers gangs come here and menace us with their t-squares and protractors and going to a football game. I say that we in West Lafeyette deserve better. The people deserve better. We deserve a stadium that comes to us.

 

That’s why I’m proposing an easy solution to the stadium problem. Not a fancy new stadium like my opponent supports with gilded spittoons for the Rosses and Ades of the world but an honest stadium for honest hard-working people: I’m saying we put the entire stadium on a train. That’s right. The stadium that travels with the team. You want to play the Boilermarkers? Well, I say let our boys roll up on the rails with their own stadium, with stands and grass and goal posts and thousands of screaming Purdue fans and a band wailing the March of the Purduemen right in their municipal train station while the opposing teams all look at us with their mouths open in disbelief and get upset enough to lose 48-3. The first mobile, locomotive stadium. Right here at Purdue.

 

With a mobile locomotive stadium (I call it “The Train”), Purdue can take on all comers, even cowards that won’t come to play in West Lafeyette. The mobile stadium could even travel between campuses during the game with each team switching off whatever side the wind is blowing from the train's speed and with stops between quarters for fans to get on or off the train. Imagine the excitement when a player gets tackled out of the stadium completely and into a tree or a barn or even onto another passing train as the player who thought he was on the way to the end zone is now on the way to Tucumcari. The novelty will inspire other teams to build their own train stadiums and could fill the rail lines with wholesome football instead of with the swindlers and hoboes the currently clog our cars.

 

Folks, I’m sorry to say that my opponent Mr. Orville Pawpus does not support a train stadium at all. Maybe it’s because he’s attached at the hip to Mr. Ross and Mr. Ade. You can tell me a pig’s a pig when it’s suckling at a trough. No, he wants to build the same stadium that you can see all over the country that can’t transport an entire field and bleacher complex to Columbus Ohio with only 72 hours notice. Now, I’m a gentleman and I believe in a clean campaign so I would never insult my opponent. But I would make a general observation that people who cannot see the advantages of a stadium mounted entirely on rails as pretty light in the brain meat.

 

I’ll confess that I have been reading Mr. Pawpus’s pamphlets and listening to his speeches (I know, someone has to), and I don’t think that he cares much about Purdue’s stadium at all. No, when it comes to this critical part of infrastructure for our state and our country my opponent is strangely silent.Instead, what Mr. Pawpus seems interested in talking about is that Purdue football needs to be represented by a grotesque mannequin that he has invented.

 

Frankly, Mr. Pawpus’s creature is disgusting. People don’t want to look at it. He says it should look like a person but have a giant bulbous head and vacant eyes. He calls it Football Jack and wants it at the games, at the schools, and in your community. While you and I and the other great hardworking people of Tippecanoe County are wondering about putting food on the table for our families or figuring out how Purdue University can have the first operating train stadium that whisks it from Greencastle to South Bend, time and time again my opponent insists his most pressing concern is that Football Jack should be “wielding an implement.”

 

And when it comes to the stadium, my opponent wants his horrible Football Jack all over the place. He wants to have students dressed as this odious cretin wandering around the stadium and accosting children. He wants it capering around the field for amusement, to amuse him and his perverse friends in the legislature. Friends, I have been told that Mr. Pawpus has drawings of a large mechanical version of Football Jack’s head so the Boilermakers can run out of it at the beginning of games like it is vomiting them all over the field. That is an insult to me and you and the entire game of American football.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to search inside of yourselves and really think. Do you want our boilermakers, our lads playing football in a palace devoted to a balloon-headed specter? Or do you want our boys traveling in comfort in their own stadium on their way to thrash Milikin? I promise you I will fight hard for train stadiums for football, basketball, track and field, and even swimming. That is my promise to you. God bless you and the great state of Indiana.

 

Menley Quackow and Orville Pawpus received a combined 3% of the vote. Pawpus lived to see Purdue unleash Purdue Pete onto the world in 1940 and when he saw him he instantly died.

Kinnick Stadium, Iowa City, Iowa

 Excerpt from the novel "The Demon's Punt House" about the construction of Kinnick Stadium in 1929 as relayed by a stadium worker.

March 6, 1929.
We have finally begun construction by digging an enormous pit. Mr. Phipp [the head of the project] has told us to expect a grueling schedule. Me and the other most robust lads on the team are taking shifts with the mules to haul earth away.

March 9
Construction has been a difficult slog. Every time we believe we have gotten to the correct depth, a part of the pit fills in. Every day is a new setback. Today, that vigorous ass Inus grew frustrated with his mule and began to upbraid it with cruel words and a few sharp blows to the hindquarters. The beast waited for him to walk behind it and then kicked Inus in the solar plexus, a glancing blow, but one that sent him stumbling headfirst into a bucket which got stuck on his head and as he struggled, he managed to stumble into several mules, agitating all of them and they dropped their loads and began kicking out at all comers, a vicious can-can line of animal rage. It took a large supply of mule-grade laudanum to get them to calm down, but we lost a whole day and we are not sure that after managing to grease the bucket to pry it off of Inus’s head we did not permanently disfigure him with upturned nostrils that have given him an uncanny porcine expression.

March 20
The dig came to a halt as crews hit a large piece of metal with their shovels. After several hours of furious digging, they appear to have unearthed a large metal case. It took dozens of men and livestock to drag it out of the pit. I have taken some time to examine it and it appears to be a box with several moving parts and symbols that line up in some way. The men have been taking some time moving things around to try to open it before being sent back down to continue digging and transporting beams. Dabby Dubbert tried to bash it open with a mallet but the mallet bounced off it easily and hit him in the face and he spun around and fell into a bucket that some of us had been using as a spittoon and that night he vanished from the site without a word.

March 22
The box remains propped up on a table in the office. I have been spending all of my spare time (of which there is little as we had a large shipment of pink paints that I have been told will be used to paint the opposing locker room in order to psychologically diminish them according to top Brains Scientists) pondering the symbols. In my dreams I am arranging them on the case. I see it even when I am supposed to be taking inventory of individual nails or reporting the number of men who have fallen to cases of Stadium Bowels, a plague of which has run rampant through the site. Mr. Phipp personally reprimanded me after one of my reports on the latrine crisis consisted of nothing but doodles of the symbols, something that I do not even remember doing and must have written down as if in a trance. We have gotten little sleep, and Mr. Phipp recommended I take two hours for sleeping followed by a course of medical slapping across the face.

March 24
The large man. The small man. The hunchback. The cornstalk. The hawk. The cow. The eyeball. They spin around the box in some combination. They call to me in my dreams. The others don’t understand. I will arrange them.

March 25
I have been reprimanded for muttering. They said I am also negligent in my duties. My ledgers are filled with the symbols. I have also been banned from the tent where they are keeping the case and all managers on site have been authorized to bludgeon me if I come near it. I had been spending all of my time there, sleeping there, writing and writing trying to find the pattern. I am close, I am very close but they shut me out.

March 30
Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo. Bumppo.

April 3
I have the case. I do not know how. I can only recall it in flashes, me wielding a pistol, a desperate cart chase, escaping the clutches of the doctor and his hardest medicinal slaps, yelling “NO” when Mr. Phipp said “come back here you ass.” It is pouring and I am huddling with the case under a tarp in an abandoned barn. I know they’re looking for me but they can’t look too hard. They have a stadium to build and they don’t value the case, they don’t understand it. Not like I do. I consult my notebook and look at the combinations. I will look at the combinations.

April 7
The Combinations.

April 19
The fever has broken. This case was not meant to be opened. It is impossible to break the seal even with a series of powerful kicks, as I have learned and now believe I may have a broken bone in my kicking foot. It is, I believe, perhaps sealed to prevent the unleashing of a great evil. Maybe I should bring it to a university where it can be studied in great detail. Maybe I should bury it far away from the prying of human hands.  

April 20
I believe I have had a revelation about the combinations. It is not about the figures themselves, it is about a narrative message within the symbols. The father and the son. The eye. I see it now.

April 23
I am sore and wounded.  A group of geese also decided to make this barn their temporary home and we were happy sharing the space until they grew aggressive and I had to take out the largest goose, the leader, and in the tussle I sustained several serious pecks before I was able to subdue it with some scientific pugilism and some threatening honks summoned from the deepest recesses of my lungs. The horde flew away leaving behind only feathers and offal. But now I can at last return to the task of opening the case.

May 12
It is open. Forgive me if these writings are blurred with the celebratory tears. I could not believe the happiness I felt when I finally heard that click. I don’t know what I was expecting. Light, music, some sort of revelation. But what was in the case will require further study. They appear to be some sort of tablets and even some papers. This will require further study in the morning.

May 13
I have studied the objects. They are some clay tablets with more symbols similar to the ones outside the case. There are also newer engravings and some paper. It appears that this case has been opened repeatedly and added to. All of the symbols show a common element: a small figure, a larger figure and various other symbols but always those two in that configuration. I call them the Father, the Son (larger and somewhat oafish in appearance). There is also a canister containing a canvass with a large painting of the father at the head of a great host of helmeted men in a field gesturing as if making commands and the son lost in a bog making the same gestures. There is a carving of people looking at a man kicking what appears to be some sort of animal.

May 15
I have been going through a sheaf of papers. One appears to be a journal written in a language I cannot understand but illustrated with pictures of a man kicking. But, in the very back of this case, faded and crumbling but still legible, there is something in an older version of English. It appears to be a part of a log from a ship’s manifest and someone has circled Mr Foghens and Mr Foghens (son, oaf’s passage) bringing with them a Quantyty of Swynne’s Skinness.”

May 31
I have made my way back to the City. Though my beard has made me largely unrecognizable to anyone working on the stadium, I have taken great pains to avoid the site. I have used some money I had saved and bought myself nice clothing, bathed, and restored my appearance as I had grown my fingernails out into what I called “goose claws.” I have spent time at the library researching ancient languages and have sought out an expert at the university in Professor Clegborne, esteemed expert on Sinister Archaeology. I forged a letter of introduction from a colleague of his whom I took from the footnotes of one his publications “I Said Go Ahead and Smash the Laughing Demon Idol” from the pages of Traps and Blowdarts: A Compendium of Modern Graverobbing and presented myself as ancient objects dealer A. Vont Montgontage.

I showed him the objects telling them I have acquired them from the ancient artifacts underground and touched my nose, a gesture meant to show him I knew about where he got things from but one that seemed to leave him baffled. He was very interested in my objects though and said he had never seen anything like it. At first he seemed skeptical like I had made it up (archaeological hoaxes were in fashion on college campuses, as I had read in some publications, and many faculty had been taken in by embarrassing undergraduate mummy scams).  He was able to decipher that one of the writings, one of the most detailed ones, seemed to be written in Old Church Slavonic and he wanted to keep it for further study since he had a book to translate it.

June 4
Midnight. Someone pounding on the door. I would like to say I had been sleeping but I had been troubled by nightmares of the man and his terrible son since I had opened the case and I was up doodling figures. It was Cleghorne. He was distressed. He told me he had translated the document or at least some of it and it was one of the most sinister objects he had ever seen in his long career. Something he saw that disturbed him were repeated references to “the field of maize,” and “the great maize palace” even though there was no reason for anyone writing at the time to know about the existence of corn. There was a reason why this was buried here, he told me. Something terrible was going to happen if they built that stadium.

June 5
We ran to the stadium site and demanded to see Mr. Phipp. The stadium had crude outlines for grandstands and the beginnings of dressing areas for the team. The site was no longer a tent city, and Mr. Phipp had lodging in town. Prof. Cleghorne told him about objects found under the stadium, but Phipp told us they had been hauled away by a madman who had worked here. I grabbed him by the lapels and told him I was that man and in fact I was not mad but the sanest person he had ever met, in fact the most sane person on the site. I told him that the objects in the case portended great calamity if the stadium had ever been built, something that would potentially destroy the sport of football itself. He laughed and asked Cleghorne why he was listening to me and that I had been administered mule-grade laudanum for my many muttering fits. The professor said “I agree, this man must be insane” and then he whispered apologies but he had his position here at the university to worry about and then the cudgeling crews swarmed and threw me out of the stadium site.  By the time I got back to my lodgings, the case was gone.

Camp Randall Stadium, Madison, Wisconsin

Gentlemen,

I have recently learned that the State plans to use the former site of Camp Randall as a grounds for the University Foot-Ball team. I expect that the Grounds will attract much attention and excitement from the way the great public embrace of this new exhibition of vigorous Man-Sport as these youths smash and bash each other into smithered-reens on the muddy fields and pits of this former Wartime Trainings Ground.

I would like to propose a Lucrative and Satisfactory business arrangement that would both bring prosperity to the good State of Wisconsin and University. I am offering a large Sum that you could consider a donation and symbol of my Investment in the state of Wisconsin and in the boys you have trying to vigorously ram their Limbs and Skulls into each other’s spinal-columns. This can be used to spruce up the field and clear it of the thorns and animal droppings that often cover it and cause Injury and Pestilence to befall the athletes and spectators. Or it could be used to furnish equipments that would allow the lads to train their neck muscles against the Twistings and Wobblings inflicted by the most bludgeonous Opponents of the middle-west.

All I ask in return is some acknowledgement of the monies I have donated by allowing me to inform the intelligent and discerning Public who attend these spectacles of Health and Vigor of some Products that I offer. It would be a rather simple matter to change the name of the Field from Camp Randall to Dr. Manoxko’s Re-Vitalizing Elixir for the Conditions of Stupor, Lethargy, Reduction of Hair, Dyspepsia, Repepsia, Snoring, Excess of Mucous, Paucity of Mucuous, Bile, Mange, and Re-Invigoriation of Manful Activities, an Elixir suppressed by the Medical Authorities in order to continue to subject the Public to their various Surgeries and Medicines for their own Profit Field.

This is a winning Deal for all involved: the State and University, which receives a healthy sum to replace money that would be otherwise taken by from hard-working Tax-Payers of Wisconsin to carry the burden of the expense for the Foot-Ball squad’s bludgeoning sleds and bone-saws and surgical laudanum, and the people of Wisconsin who will have an opportunity to learn about an important and healthful Product that will ease their Ailments.

I am prepared to-day to ignore my complex business transaction appointments and travel to Madison at a moment’s notice to deliver a large and cumbersome display-sized Cheque that requires two or three strong men to hold it aloft and deliver it directly to the Bursar to deposit into the University’s coffers. I would also pay for the Signs and Banners informing people about my products and even be willing to stand upon an Apple Box or other sturdy platform and shout about the many benefits and improvements offered by my world-famous Elixir which I have given by the way as a gift to numerous Princes, Sheiks, Nizams, and other Royalty around the Globe who have sought out my aid with their medical problems as their quotations in my Pamphlets will attest. I expect I will be granted a warmer welcome than when I was a humbler peddler of Blood Serums and Wolf Urines and was man-handled and thrown from the Capitol steps by a gang of toughs hired no doubt by the Medical Doctors scheming with Legislators to prevent the public from getting my miraculous cure-alls.

I look forward to the grand opening of Dr. Manoxko’s Re-Vitalizing Elixir for the Conditions of Stupor, Lethargy, Reduction of Hair, Dyspepsia, Repepsia, Snoring, Excess of Mucous, Paucity of Mucuous, Bile, Mange, and Re-Invigoriation of Manful Activities, an Elixir suppressed by  the Medical Authorities in order to continue to subject the Public to their various Surgeries and Medicines for their own Profit Field.

Sincerely,

Dr. L.P.X. Manoxko, Surgeon, Esq.

-----------------------

To the Gentlemen of the University and the State Legislature.

It has come to my attention that you have received a most provocative communiqué from the so-called Dr. Minoxko offering a large payment in exchange for renaming the historic and hallowed university ball fields after his useless elixir. I urge you to reconsider this deal as I and anyone who has done business with this Minoxko fellow knows that his medical expertise is in fact the lowest form of quackery.

I have had many encounters with this ruffian, and I assure you he is no more a doctor than I am a cudgel-back for the university foot-ball team (I have enclosed an accurate portrait showing my feeble frame and hunched posture that would allow even the weakest foot-ball player to rearrange my skeleton on a basic scrimmage-brawl in order to illustrate my point). Instead he is a shameless scoundrel, an invidious swindler of the meanest type whose elixirs are actually concoctions of whatever substances he encounters in the wild including poisonous herbs, mill water, skunk spray, and even the various dungs of the animal kingdom that he and his assistants whom he recruits from the darkest realms of the criminal underworld mash up into a paste and stir into his swill.

Normally, one would offer a person who allows himself to be persuaded to buy and drink a concoction of axle grease and possum’s offal a hearty “caveat emptor,” but Minoxko is causing grievous injury to his gullible customers. In my travels, I have seen persons who have consumed his slop suffering from Draughtsman’s Bowels, Railroad Vision, the Spills, the Wobbles, Cattle Polyps, Reverse Gouts, and too many varieties of Diarrheas to mention in a letter that is being sent to the government. Mr. Minoxko represents a singular menace to the state of Wisconsin whose only business at the foot-ball field should be as a dummy for the players’ thrashing exercises.

I have reason to suspect that the man who claims to be “Dr. Minoxko” is actually the notorious swindler who has also gone by the names Ralph October, the Rev. Laurence Mint, Zubuz The Formidable, and many other aliases as he has traveled from territory to territory always one step ahead of the law with his various schemes including as a dealer of occult artifacts, a peddler of the most obscene types of pornographies, and as the proprietor as a bear circus whose cavalier restraint of the beasts nearly led to numerous maulings if the brave citizens did not possess a ceremonial cannon used for the purpose of solemn memorials. I assure you that the University of Wisconsin does not want to do business with this type of slippery reptile.

It is absurd to allow this man now going as “Dr. Minoxko” to purchase any right to name the stadium after his fraudulent skunk-mixtures. If anything, the stadium should be named for something wholesome. This is why I propose that the University should accept a large sum from me in order to name it Dr Jaed Jerenchki’s Full Body Health Serum: one sip of this Invigorating Serum will clear you of Vicious Bowels, eliminate pain from Joints, Muscles, and Organs, and give you the energy of a Bull Elephant in his Uncontrollable Musth Rage Stadium at Camp Randall.

Gentlemen, unlike Dr. Minoxko’s poisonous and foul-smelling concoction, my health serum has been proven by rigorous scientific experimentation on rodents and simians, with satisfied customers willing to trumpet its benefits to all who will listen. Many have written me personally to tell me they have been thrown out of dinners, pancake breakfasts, and other social events by people tired of hearing them once again expound upon the wonders of my health-ful serum. Moreover, my proposal, unlike the grotesque one made by Dr. Minoxko, preserves the historic and popular name of Camp Randall; the minor detail of my generous sponsorship would be noticed only by particularly sharp-eyed and discerning foot-ball patrons.

Dr. Minoxko says he will present the University with an enormous decorative cheque, but I would suggest researching the price of card-board beforehand as that will be the sum total of monies that you would ever be able to wring out of this slimy charlatan. I, on the other hand, am willing to make a payment purely in specie in coins or in ingots that could be delivered to the University accompanied by guards trained in the arts of horse, town, and train-combat.

Consider this a warning that any attempt to do business with the larcenous Dr. Minoxko who is a known criminal who has left a trail of ruined lives everywhere he travels will do nothing other than drag this august university into scandal and ill repute. That is why I consider my own suggested deal not only a sound investment for the future of foot-ball at this university but a demonstration that the underhanded tactics and disgusting thievesman-ship of the type practiced by this reptile Minoxko are unwelcome in the state of Wisconsin.

Gentlemen let us promote two important aspects of health and vigor together as we combine my whole-some serums with the brave and delightful displays of manful skull crushings that are synonymous with foot-ball in this great state.

Yours,

Dr. Jaed Jerenchki

Secu Stadium, College Park, Maryland

MEMORANDUM:

Nov. 9, 1947

ASST. DEP. UND. SEC. Bython

The University of Maryland will soon begin construction on a new football stadium approximately twelve miles from the District of Columbia code named Site Acropolis. The Department of Special Projects has formed a COMMITTEE chaired by General L. Moth Pathock to explore the use of this site for a defensive project aimed at potential foreign military action against the District.

MINUTES 

SITE ACROPOLIS COMMITTEE
November, 14 1946.

Gen. Pathock, Chair
Asst. Dep. Und. Sec. Bython
Lt. Meusse
Lt. Feest
Gen. Van Mant

The CHAIRMAN introduced Site Acropolis and proposed construction for a football stadium. The stadium construction presents an opportunity for clandestine construction of a major defense project to cover the District of Columbia. The CHAIRMAN emphasized that the Committee must act quickly within the time provided before construction begins to use the stadium as cover to build a project facility.

The ASST. DEP. UND. SEC. noted that preliminary discussions with the University personnel indicated they will cooperate with installation of government equipment at site Acropolis. The university personnel have no understanding of what the military will put at site, but the  liaison on the university board (codename CUYAHOGA) told the ASST. DEP. UND. SEC. that “if you’re putting missiles down there, leave one for slowing down Bama.”

GEN. VAN MANT stated that preliminary surveillance reveals Soviet plans to use soccer stadiums to hide advanced military technological projects. He said that his CIA sources have informed him that these projects could threaten key positions in the Near East. The CIA also described the nature of these projects as “extremely communist.”

The CHAIRMAN asked GEN. VAN MANT to elaborate on these Soviet projects. GEN. VAN MANT showed the COMMITTEE plans for what the CIA believes to be a “Man-Boulder” program which would allow soldiers to be hidden in a large and powerful artificial boulder and rolled at enemies “to devastating effect.” The CHAIRMAN described these plans as “troubling.”

LT. MEUSSE proposes using site Acropolis for a program that could cover College Park, surrounding areas, and up to 65% of the District in a dense mist within four hours, depending on current wind patterns (project MANITOBA). LT. FEEST asked LT. MEUSSE about the utility of this program by comparing it to normal foggy weather conditions. LT. MEUSSE replied that he does not think he needs to explain to an officer the military value of a mist as this has been part of military tactics dating back to antiquity.

LT. FEEST said that the United States should not be trying to win the Peloponnesian War but be attempting to stop armies armed with tanks, jets, and missiles. LT. MEUSSE recommended that LT. FEEST read the book Mist Battles: The Fogs of War by Prof. G.M.K. “Gimka” Bearrolt. The CHAIRMAN noted the recommendation and suggested it as further reading by the COMMITTEE.

The ASST. DEP. UND. SEC. asked about the use of site Acropolis in LT. MEUSSE’S proposed project. LT. MEUSSE stated that the vats of misting agents could be stored in a chamber beneath the site and the bowl shape of the stadium would be effective for deploying the mist on the surrounding area. LT. FEEST questioned whether RADAR systems would not easily penetrate the mist effect, making its masking irrelevant in modern warfare. LT. MEUSSE suggested that LT. FEEST was trying to discredit MANITOBA in order to procure site Acropolis for his team’s own robotic soldier project.

LT. FESST said that the robotic soldier program focusing on using robotics technology to build an army of tactical military robots had been abandoned for more than a year and his team was working on a Robo-Soldier program (project BAKER”S DOZEN) that would augment soldiers with robotic exoskeletons. He noted that the difference in the robotic soldier program and robo-soldier program were self-evident to anyone with a basic understanding of military technology.

The CHAIR asked if LT. FEEST could use site Acropolis for his program. LT. FEEST said the site could support an underground exoskeleton manufacturing and repair facility and the field could be used to disguise a mechanism to launch robo-soldiers to any battlefield within three kilometers by using pneumatic tubes. LT. FEEST stated that the Soviets were experimenting with similar technology and would have a fully operational robo-soldier division active by 1957 at the latest and that they would easily be able to see through any level of military-grade fog by using robotic exo-goggles. LT. MEUSSE said that LT. FEEST had no evidence for the goggles and was speculating. 

THE CHAIRMAN thanked the COMMITTEE and dismissed the meeting, recommending further study.

MEMORANDUM

SITE ACROPOLIS COMMITTEE

ASST. DEP. UND. SEC. Bython
Jan. 7, 1947

Met with University contact CUYAHOGA. The University has concerns about United States military activity at Site Acropolis. University is concerned with potential exposure to radioactive materials. University is also concerned with any activity that would make Site Acropolis and the University itself targets for enemy attack or intrigue. University is also worried about clandestine work at Site Acropolis that would affect SoCon play as the Terrapins had a strong team returning with eyes on the Gator Bowl.

MINUTES

SITE ACROPOLIS COMMITTEE

Jan 16, 1947

Gen. Pathock, Chair
Asst. Dep. Und. Sec. Bython
Lt. Meusse
Lt. Feest
Gen. Van Mant

The CHAIRMAN asked the COMMITTEE to address concerns brought to the COMMITTEE from the University.

The ASST. DEP. UND. SEC. summarized the University concerns from the enclosed MEMORANDUM.

LT. MEUSSE said that the misting agents in his program (project MANITOBA) had no chemicals that could cause medical injury when stored in a vat underneath a stadium. Studies on subjects enveloped in the mist largely seemed confused or disoriented on account of not being able to see very well.

LT. FEEST asked what would happen if a dense mist was unleashed without warning on a dense civilian population, citing the possibilities of traffic accidents, persons falling into open manholes, persons bumping into each other and getting into shoving matches, etc.

LT. MEUSSE said his team had developed several strategies such as issuing a warning to relevant government agencies, using a klaxon or warning signal when the mist was deployed, or even training a brigade of civilian “Mist Wardens” that were very good at squinting in order to keep calm and order.

LT. FEEST questioned the viability of site Acropolis as a secret facility if everyone in the area would know the government had a misting weapon. He suggested that LT. MEUSSE broadcast an informative radio program about it in both English and Russian.

LT. MEUSSE asked LT. FEEST what safeguards existed to prevent his robotic soldiers from freeing themselves of human command and attacking a civilian population. LT. FEEST said that this was a situation that arose with his robotic soldiers program that he had discontinued and that he was very clear that his new project involved robo-soldiers in exoskeletons which was obviously different (project BAKER’S DOZEN). LT. FEEST urged LT. MEUSSE to stop wasting time repeatedly bringing up the robotic soldiers as everyone could see what he was doing. GEN. VAN MANT cautioned that exosuits could have a detrimental psychological effect on robo-soldiers, citing a study the CIA recovered from a German “Man-Wolf” project that led to “an orgy of unrestrained biting.”

The CHAIRMAN dismissed the COMMITTEE for further study of the questions raised by this meeting.

MEMORANDUM
ACROPOLIS SITE COMMITTEE
PROJECT BAKER’S DOZEN
LT. FEEST
Feb. 22, 1947

Summary of preliminary investigations of the psychological effects of a robo-solider program (project BAKER’S DOZEN). Subjects were administered a questionnaire designed to screen potential participants in the study. Study designed and administered by Dr. Otto Pomermatto. Subjects were asked to gauge willingness to engage with heavy machinery and openness to attaching it to their Person. Subjects removed from program after preliminary questionnaire for obvious signs of psychosis, squeamishness, and laughing. Those chosen to move forward were those with propensity for working with machinery and one subject who stated a desire to be fused with his beloved hot rod “Katy” and honk at people who cut him in the mess line. Some subjects were given a fake test about the viability of the tactical military hairpiece (“combat toup”) in order to throw off potential Communist Double Agents.

Subjects chosen for Phase II of the testing protocol were fitted with cardboard exoskeleton mockups. Subjects were tested for fatigue, range of motion, battle effectiveness, and attitudes towards exo-equipment. Of thirteen total subjects, nine of them participated in simulated exo-suit activities with what Dr. Pomeratto described as “psychologically normal” reactions. One subject broke down and screamed “get this offa me” while throwing off his cardboard exo-implements and running about the facility in undergarments before the subject was able to be calmed with the offer of an extra large cigarette. This reaction was categorized as “mostly normal.” One subject refused to participate after describing simulated exo-suit activity as “stupid.” Only two subjects fell into what Dr. Pomeratto has called “exo-madness” where they immediately saw themselves as no longer human and began attacking field staff with cardboard implements. Both have been subdued and are under further evaluation. Dr. Pomeratto suggests a larger study to develop a baseline Madness Rate, but the BAKER”S DOZEN team has concerns the potential for wider study to weaken the project’s secrecy posture.

MINUTES
SITE ACROPOLIS COMMITTEE MEETING
March 19, 1947

Gen. Pathock, Chair
Asst. Dpt. Und. Sec. Bython
Lt. Meusse
Lt. Feest
Gen. Van Mant

The CHAIRMAN requested updates on progress on projects for site Acropolis.

The ASST. DEP. UND. SEC. noted that the COMMITTEE was running out of time because the University (liaison CUYAHOGA) was eager to break ground on the new stadium so it can be finished for the 1950 season.

The CHAIRMAN asked what kind of equipment would need to be smuggled discreetly into site Acropolis during assumed stadium construction.

LT. MEUSSE said his project (MANITOBA) would require several enormous vats for storing misting chemicals that had not yet been built. They would also require several miles of underground tubing and large computer terminals that would serve as a fail safe mechanism to prevent the accidental discharge of any mist for non-military purposes. The mist could only be deployed with a complex combination of switches, buttons, and levers on two separate terminals that changed daily and could be ordered only by the Joint Chiefs.

LT. FEEST asked what would happen if someone reported it was extremely foggy in Moscow and hastily ordered a misting as a panicked countermeasure.

LT. MEUSSE said that was preposterous as everyone knows the Soviets were still decades away from misting large-scale technology which is why the United States needed to pursue its edge in the Mist Race.

The CHAIRMAN asked GEN. VAN MANT to brief the COMMITTEE on Soviet misting operations. GEN. VAN MANT would ask his CIA contacts about this, but they are currently occupied with attempting to infiltrate a suspected “Man-Seed” project where the Soviets had designed a suit based on the spinning maple “helicopter” seed pods that would spin a soldier hundreds of time per second and allow him to cover more ground and land more quickly and less detectably than current parachute technology. GEN. VAN MANT said the CIA believes the Soviets are testing this by hurling soldiers off the Ural Mountains.

LT. FEEST handed out schematics requiring multiple underground chambers for building, maintaining, and fitting exo-skeletons as well as a large Containment Chamber for any robo-soldier who had succumbed to exo-madness (project BAKER’S DOZEN). LT. FEEST said his team was still studying the feasibility of the pneumatic launching tubes since they had not yet determined whether the robo-soldiers could effectively land in a fighting posture without instantly fracturing their femurs. LT. FEEST said that the tubes should at least be placed in the facility because it would be difficult to install them after construction is finished at site Acropolis.

LT. MEUSSE asked if the soldiers would be told to “break a leg” before being fired out of a tube in the manner of thespians on the stage.

Both LT. MEUSSE and LT. FEEST agreed that both of their projects required big heavy doors that make a hissing noise when they are opened, flashing red lights and klaxons, enormous tape machines the size of a small room, and both emphasized the importance of metal catwalks that go kack kack kack when they are walked on by someone with military grade dress loafers.

The CHAIRMAN agreed to start the procurement process for these crucial items. The CHAIRMAN indicated that both proposals would be sent for further review as it was crucial to begin construction immediately.

MEMORANDUM
SITE ACROPOLIS COMMITTEE
ASST. DEP. UND. SEC. Bython
June 13, 1947

SPECIAL PROJECTS orders immediate termination of plans to build a facility at site Acropolis. SPECIAL PROJECTS reports its review of both potential uses of the site in projects MANITOBA and BAKER’S DOZEN had increased both projects’ rating from Level 4 (Mildly Preposterous) to Level 5 (Preposterous). ASST. DEP. UND. SEC. has contacted the (liaison CUYAHOGA) to inform the University and State Government that plan has been canceled and that construction on site Acropolis can begin immediately for football purposes. LT. MEUSSE has been transferred to the Humidity Generation Project (Project MELROSE). LT. FEEST has reactivated his Robot Soldiers Program (Project SOUSAPHONE).

GEN VAN MANT has confirmed that CIA sources have told him that the Soviets have expended significant resources in an attempt to decipher activities surrounding site Acropolis. GEN. PATHOCK (former site Acropolis Committee Chairman) has been commended for exceptional work.

GEN. VAN MANT has been assigned to coordinate activities to monitor a suspected Soviet “Man-Cannon” project where the Soviets are using trained circus performers to fire soldiers from cannons over enemy machine gun nests “to devastating effect.”

NIXON WHITE HOUSE TAPES
October 3, 1972

President Richard Nixon

John Erlichman, Chief Domestic Council

H.R. Haldeman, W.H. Chief of Staff

NIXON: Now Red China. You don’t have to like it, but you have to respect it.

HALDEMAN: Did you see about the [inaudible]?

NIXON: The whole thing to me is a fog. Like that project Manitoba. BAck in the 1940s.

ERLICHMAN: What the hell was that?

NIXON: The damndest thing. They wanted the whole Atlantic seaboard covered in fog. [Inaudible] at the Navy told me about it. They had a whole site picked out with those things that spray… those goddamned…

HALDEMAN: Nozzles?

NIXON: Yes. They called it Acropolis. Acropolis…what the hell did they end up putting there

[inaudible crosstalk for 48 seconds]

HALDEMAN: Looks like it’s Maryland football

Memorial Stadium, Bloomington, Indiana

 

To the Regents of the University of Indiana and The Government,

I am disappointed although admittedly not surprised that the university is preparing to erect a new, larger Memorial stadium without the consent or participation of my family, from whom the Stadium takes its name.  And yet, instead of taking this opportunity to once again revive the thick packet of grievances, insults, rude telegrams, slaps in the face both metaphorical and literal, and times that my father and I have been physically thrown out of meetings by the Board of Regents and their vanguard of square-headed Hench Men, I would like to offer the construction of a new stadium as an opportunity to make things right.  I am extending the proverbial Olive Branch.  All I ask for is that in commemorating the war dead, whose sacrifices I and my family deeply respect and also wish to honor, you also consider the stadium, in a small way, a memorial to the victims of Indiana's various Horror Creatures and Monsters that have been ravaging the good people of this State and for whom my father Vincent Memorial had asked to be included in this name for decades dating back to its original construction.  I have included my father's original letter for your the record:

Gentlemen,

I have seen in the papers that you are going to build a new football stadium called Memorial Stadium to honor the soldiers of the War. But if you are going to be commemorating people, you should also consider the many men and women and children who have been carried off and devoured by the Monsters and Ghouls haunting this particular State.  You probably know some of them like the floating eyeball out in Crawfordsville but there are dozens of known Creatures that go around lurking and haunting in the forests and the lakes and every year more citizens than you think are attacking people and putting them under the control of their Dark Magicks.  I humbly ask that these victims also be included in your your stadium as a Memorial to the brave War Dead and Victims of Indiana Monsters.

Several years ago, I had the misfortune of encountering one of these Creatures outside of Bruceville.  I had taken the cart out to gather some firewood and hunt for rare mushrooms. It was me and the horses and the old hound Spark and I guess we had lost track of the time looking around the creek because it had started to get dark pretty quick. Well we were on our way back because I knew my wife Patunia (it is a nickname I gave her, her real name is Patricia, to be honest she did not care for it) would be mad at me for dawdling again but at this point it was pitch black in the forest and Spark started howling and pointing and his fur was spiking up around his neck. I told him to quiet down but soon I heard some rustling through the leaves. Now I'm not a person who scares easily and I've heard every type of rustling there is in the woods, a deer or a coyote or even a every noisy squirrel so I immediately knew that was a different type of rustling.  We kept moving and the noise kept with us, like it was following us.  Then I heard a chomping noise, it was a loud wet noise, like nothing I've ever heard, a chomping and a slurping noise which was not of the Natural World, so I lit up a torch and then a few hundred feet behind us I saw the Monster. It was big and sort of looked like a person but it had gangly legs and a gigantic head and the largest mouth I've ever seen, the mouth took up most of the head and it was stumbling towards us and chomping and gnashing and drooling as it shambled forward. We high-tailed it out of there real fast and I told everyone about the Monster, I called it the Bruceville Biter, I thought that was a good name for it on account of the mouth.

A few days later my wife Patunia said she was going to go into the woods to get some firewood because she was sick of watching me sit on my behind (she did not understand the various Projects I had undertaken, you might be aware of the letters I had been writing to rename Terry Haute to Pterry Haute in honor of the flying prehistoric beast Pteranodon) and I begged her not to go into the woods because the Biter was in there but she ignored me. Well I waited and waited but she didn't come back so I headed out into those woods with the biggest rifle I had and I went back over to the creek. I heard the rustling and now I was following it and I listened for the chomping and I whipped the lantern around and nothing. It was gone. I even yelled out, come on out Biter. Bring my wife back you tooth monster. I was scared to death but I wandered those woods until sun up and I saw nothing.  I knew Biter had gotten my wife. The sheriff was help at all but I will not waste your time as I have written several letters about this already and it is not university business.

So as you can see there are hundreds of us suffering in silence on account of the government doesn't want to hear about monsters, but this is real. And even worse since these people vanish and the monsters do all sorts of Daemonic tricks for example I keep hearing from people that there's a woman who looks exactly like my Patunia named Patty Schulz married to a man named Frank Schulz up in Indianapolis and I urge you to explain that other than the machinations of a Beast operating with forces that we cannot understand.

Please consider the people lost to Indiana's monsters of the Forests and the Lakes when you are naming a memorial, for their loss hurts as much to us as the brave men who lost their lives in the War and weren't even dealing with mysterious Tooth Creatures who harm innocent people.

Sincerely,

Vincent Kubbnilk

As you know, the university regents have consistently ignored my father's requests.  They never responded to his letters and repeatedly removed the plaques he made and installed at great effort and expense to remember the victims of Crypto-Zooligical Creatures within the Stadium. My father even received no response from the regents when he legally changed the family name to Memorial in order to claim that the stadium was now named after his late wife.  But now, as you seek to build a new stadium bearing the Memorial name, you can undo the harm you have caused to not only my family but the hundreds of persons suffering from effects of attacks from Indiana's various Monsters. 

I look forward to appearing at the ceremonial Ground-Breaking as a representative of the Memorial Family.  As a gesture of good will I have purchased my own Golden Shovel in order to spare the taxpayers of Indiana any further expense. I also ask to be able to discreetly spread a portion of my father's ashes under the stadium, although I will of course carry most of them in a small pouch on my belt, as per his final request, so I can use them to blind any Monstrous Creatures that I may encounter and then make my escape or perform an opportunistic attack to the Monster's weak points including eye-balls, eye stalks, exposed brains or visible reproductive organs.  All we ask for is a small gesture to make up for the decades of insult and ridicule to our family name and to come together with the University to collectively mourn and celebrate our people lost to the horrors of War and Supernatural Monsters that terrorize the countryside.  The people of Indiana deserve that much.

Terrence Memorial

Husky Stadium, Seattle, Washington

 

Husky Stadium holds more than 70,000 screaming Washington football fans every week, but has its origins in a bitter dispute over football.  It was, according to my meticulous research, never meant for the sport at all.  Husky Stadium was built to support "Husky" Zeb Middyons's bear-fighting promotion.  Middyons, who claimed to be a mentalist who could control bears with his mind, barnstormed across the Pacific Northwest throughout the the early 1900s.  He set up a stable of bears calmed by salmon doused in vats of laudanum and, along with his accomplice Mars McMaster,* advertised the bear fighting as a demonstration of what he called "Brains-Combat."

*According to H.U.J. Holman's "Woods Men: The Pacific Northwest's Greatest Hucksters, Gamblers, and Shamanic Grafters 1880-1925, McMcaster was also known as "El Picador" and claimed to be from Spain, but was actually born Stan Oldlocz in Lodz.  He spent years using the name Bradley Morton that he stole from an army buddy who was killed in what official Army records described as a "moose taunting incident."  McMcaster was also known to use the names Brode Hohny, Horus Mangaarten, The Rev. Red Rogers, Stan Van Stan, and Hohnus Gravy, which he assumed while selling a canned gravy with "restorative properties for the man's Vigorous Area."

By 1918, Middyons, who had also profited from a wartime black market zinc operation, had enough money to being construction on what he named Husky Stadium, which he had sold as the "Paradise of Brains-Combat."  But, in the middle of construction, disaster struck.  Middyons was in a small town where he had a planned performance but the day before, a group of locals caught a wild grizzly that was rampaging through town and locked it in the courthouse.  The mayor and other town dignitaries begged Middyons to use his mental powers to convince the bear to leave.  For three hours, Middyons stood outside the courthouse touching his head and squinting (this is my interpretation. Other accounts, such as from Tred Millcox in Bear Court, suggest that he was also mumbling and possibly crying.  I have some serious concerns with Millcox's methodology and I want to just state on the record that his last article on bear attacks was held up in peer review because he kept insisting that the Port McNeil Maniac Grizzly had somehow fashioned what he kept referring as a "salmon nunchuk.")  When some angry residents began to question whether Middyons had the ability to manipulate bears with his own mind, Middyons told them that he the shape of the roof created a "mental curtain" that prevented him from achieving full control of the "ursine cortex."

That is when "Two Strap" Knagston, the leader of a strongman outfit coincidentally barnstorming through the same town who was known for his then-unorthodox two strap unitard, picked up Middyons and flung him into the courthouse.  No one knows what happens next, although his hideous screams echoed through the town within minutes.

Middyons's grisly bear death left his financial backers and the city of Seattle in a serious dilemma; they had no major attraction for their expensive new stadium.  Investors brought in all sorts of acts.  They first tried to recruit men from the lumberjack camps for a series of violent games including "trunk jousts," but the authorities shut them down after deciding that a "beard to beard" fighting event was "obscene on a level The Court has never thought possible."

Football fans demanded that they move the team into the new stadium, which abutted the university, but they made a powerful enemy.  Vice Provost E. Emmett Brudge had wormed his way into a powerful position at the right hand of the university president by mesmerizing him with elaborate conspiracies about plots forming against him among the faculty.  For example, the president's private papers contain an elaborate secret memo that Brudge had written suggesting that a geographer popular among the faculty been attempting to control the university president by putting psychedelic powders in his tea that Brudge described as "the dragon's tendrils."  Brudge, for reasons no one ever has confirmed, despised football, referring to it exclusively as "an Oaf's Holiday" or "the Devil's Pork Wrestling" and calling football players "Bovinous Beefs."

Brudge began planting letters and editorials in local papers, but everyone could tell they were by him because they had headlines like "Beware! Bovine Brawls in your Backyard" and "Ban this Farcical Pork Circus from our Beloved Bears-Wrestling Stadium AT ONCE."

Eventually football gained too much popularity for Brudge to hold it off.  The final straw came when Brudge's automobile, a model T that he painted himself a color called "accounting visor green" and called "Mrs. Plimstin" broke down in front of a field where Washington players were practicing.  They lifted the car with Brudge inside screaming "unhand me, you unseemly hippopotami" and carried him to the main administration building while a crowd of thousands gathered before dispersing into a massive riot.

Brudge had long suspected that his arch-rival Quill Quall had arranged the stunt in a series of "invidious machinations" to humiliate him.*  It worked.  Brudge lost the support of the university president and left Seattle.  He formed the anti-football organization "Manful Society Against Oafery" and toured the country convincing towns to ban football and instead engage youths in what he claimed were more wholesome sports such as "brain pushing" where youths stand forehead to forehead and recite useful facts at each other until exhaustion. Often he was chased from town on a railroad pushcart, scattering his pamphlets as a distraction and to deflect pitchfork blows. G.A. Rimsford's "Lumber Laughs: Touring Vaudeville in the Pacific Northwest 1918-1932" suggests that the popular Rolph and Dolph's Head Sport act was essentially a sarcastic performance of brain pushing, but I am sorry to say that his entire article is also based on Jean-Robert Mitaine's philosophy of "word construction" where it presents as instructions to fold a thin sheet of cardboard into various configurations in order to decipher the words in order as part of the School of Touch Scholarship and it is nearly impossible to determine the citation because my cardboard got too bent up.

*It is difficult to take Brudge's accusations seriously, but some university historians, most notably Katthy Cregg, have noted that Quall was an early automobile enthusiast who could have disabled Brudge's car easily.  Quall also benefited from the ascent of Washington football as he was often selected to tackle the opposing team's bursar before the game, which was a popular tradition at the time until a professor of medieval studies showed up in full armor and had to be subdued with a weighted net.

Within a few years, the stadium became the unquestioned home of Washington Huskies football.  Every few years, a small group of Brudge sympathizers emerges to denounce it a series of leaflets as a "Odorous Pig Sport" and prophesying that one day a mentalist will bring a horde of rampaging bears back to the stadium to reclaim it for its rightful purpose, but it has not happened yet.