XI. The Urban Streets

be sure to see:  The Hottest 25 Urban Legends from Snopes

Caption:  Legend lore, The Cayman in Newport Beach, the $500 Rolls Royce

Many people see the hidden dreams and desires of a culture, and its secret fears, reflected in the Urban Legend.  A very interesting manifestation of the Urban Legend is occurring on the web, right now, with the circulation of jokes, riddles, and even virus warnings.

The Urban Legend King

Jan Harold Brunvand is the King of the Urban Legend.  He teaches at the University of Utah, alive and well, and is still collecting all the stories that you heard from a friend of a friend - that are REALLY TRUE!

In The Vanishing Hitchhiker, he states that urban legends are "realistic stories concerning recent
events (or alleged events) with an ironic or supernatural twist. They are an integral part of white Anglo-American culture and are told and believed by some of the most sophisticated 'folk' of modern society - young people, urbanites, and the well educated. The storytellers assume that the true facts of each case lie just one or two informants back down the line with a reliable witness, or in a news media report" (Brunvand xi-xii).

Urban Legend Comic Book Cover

E-mail: jan.brunvand@m.cc.utah.edu

Publications:
The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban
Legends & Their Meanings (1981)
The Choking Doberman & Other "New" Urban
Legends (1984)
The Mexican Pet: More "New" Urban Legends &
Some Old Favorites (1986)
Curses! Broiled Again!, the Hottest Urban Legends
Going (1989)
The Baby Train: And Other Lusty Urban Legends
(1993)
American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. 1996
The Study of American Folklore, 4th edition. 1998
Too Good to be True: The Colossal Book of Urban
Legends (1999)
The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good
Story (2000)

Awards/Recognitions:
1956-57: Fulbright Scholar in Norway
1970-71: Guggenheim Fellow
1973-74 and 1981: IREX Fellowships in Romania

Caption:  Cover from The Choking Doberman

I happen to have written a piece on Urban Legends that was published both in the print version and on-line in the very early editions of Orange Coast Magazine.   You can see it here:  The $5000 Rolls Royce.

A story told at a Tustin dinner party about a friend of a friend went like this: An Orange County couple had taken mother to Las Vegas. Mid-evening, the couple tired of gambling and decided to go up to their room. Mother, however, was winning and stayed at the slot machines.

She grew luckier yet as the night wore on, and, when she finally quit, she had two buckets of silver dollars. She didn't think to cash them in; she just hurried to the elevator. On the elevator were three black men. What with her buckets, and the fact that the two on the outside were huge, when the door slid shut, she became frightened. She stood trembling, praying for the door to open again.

Suddenly, the man in the middle yelled, "Hit the floor." And mother did just that, splaying both herself and her cash across the floor. The man laughed heartily, helped her gently to her feet, picked up her silver, pushed the button for her floor, and kindly escorted her to her room. Amid apologies, the man slipped twenty thousand dollars and a business card into the bucket. Mother was flustered, but let them go, intending to return the money the next morning.

At the check-out desk, the next morning, the clerk was expecting her. He said that their rooms had been paid in full by Eddie Murphy, who left a message saying that, while he was sorry for the inconvenience, he had been much entertained by his little practical joke.

Caption:  Cover from Brunvand's The Vanishing Hitchhiker


What we have here is an urban legend, updated to include the most likely celebrity, a nearby town, an amount of money sufficient to elicit a nod of attention in Orange County circles. In fact, all the hallmark features of the urban legend are present. It happened to a friend of a friend (FOAF), it has a rich oral tradition, it appeals to our unconscious hopes and fears, and it shimmers with enough truth around the edges to be almost believable--one more time.

When I ventured to mumble that this was a wonderful urban legend, my dinner companion looked hurt. Perhaps another classic characteristic of urban folklore is that the teller fervently believes it to be true. And perhaps it was. Maybe Eddie Murphy knew the story and enjoyed updating it, because a similar tale has been in circulation for some time, according to urban legend expert, Jan Harold Brunvand, a Professor of English at the University of Utah.

In The Baby Train, one of five books that chart the labyrinthine progress of familiar legends around the country--Brunvand cites a rich history for "The Elevator Incident."

The genesis of the story seems to be this stock version: a black man on the elevator is mistaken for a mugger but turns out to be Reggie Jackson. The man says "Sit" to his dog, but the three women believe he is ordering them to submit to robbery, so they sit on the floor. As the tale evolved, gathering embellishments, some maintained it was Jesse Jackson, others preferred Michael Jackson. Brunvand asserts, "Soon other storytellers were inserting different black personalities' names into the story, including Eddie Murphy and Lionel Ritchie....even Lionel Hampton, the octogenarian jazzman." In fact, the story is so ubiquitous that it rates its own category in Brunvand's Type-Index of Urban Legends: "Type--Celebrity Rumors and Legends; Sub category, `The Elevator Incident.'"

After listening to the Tustin variation, I set to wondering if Orange County has its own, identifiable versions of urban legends. Like all forms of folk material, over time, urban legends, (or asmuts, dead catters, and monkey sandwiches as they are also known), undergo constant change from region to region. 

The classic is the "alligator in the New York sewer system." For the myth to work its magic you need a likely source for the alligator (the child returning with a "pet" from Florida that is then flushed down the toilet) and an accessible sewer. Had the "alligator" story migrated west? Sure enough, it had. Several Irvine residents assured me that a FOAF had discovered an alligator in Woodbridge Lake. It seems that a child that went to Disney World in Florida and brought home a small amphibian that grew too large for the back yard pond.

The best variation, though, indicating that Southern Californians are inventive legend-shapers, was the reputed Caiman in Back Bay.

We can speculate that an ordinary alligator wouldn't please Newport Beach folks, who claimed an exotic, endangered species--from a trendy vacation spot like the Cayman Islands.

Urban legends are a quirky subdivision of folklore. They may not be strictly "urban" - they can take place anywhere - nor are they necessarily American. Broadly speaking, they are contemporary anecdotes or beliefs that are born in a particular era, are repeated, spread, change, and eventually disappear. Very broadly speaking, they may even be true.

If urban legends tell us about human nature in general, the way the story is configured reveals even more. The exemplary incidents we tell ourselves in Orange County bear this out. Some tales have disappeared altogether from Southern California lore. One popular fright of the `fifties concerned a beehive hairdo. We all knew the story of the girl who keeled over in English class. When she was taken to the school nurse, it turned out she had a "nest of black widows" in her ratted hair. Hair styles have changed, and personal hygiene is valued; the "spider in the hairdo" is no longer palatable or credible and so has fallen from circulation.

Other stories survive hereabouts through clever changes of venue and detail. Consider the thirty-year-old classic, the "hook on the door handle." It starts with a guy and his girl parked at "lover's lane." (You can specify the old Back Bay Road in Orange County, Mulholland Drive in L.A., Panoramic in Berkeley, etc.)

The radio is on. The announcer warns of an escaped maniac with a hook. Terrified, the boy starts the car and quickly speeds away. When he gets to the girl's house, he comes around to open the car door and finds--a bloody hook hanging from the door handle.

Caption:  Cartoon of The Hook on the Door Handle

Classic Legend: A couple's late night make-out session is cut short when they hear a report on the car radio about an escaped killer (who has a hook for a hand) in the vicinity. The girl insists on being driven home immediately; upon arrival at her house, the boy discovers a bloody hook hanging from the
passenger-side car door handle.

Baker, 1982]  variation

This young couple is out parked on a country road. The girl is real nervous and uneasy. It seems that there had been a report about an escaped criminal in the area. He was supposed to be dangerous, a mad killer. They called him "The Hook" because one of his hands was missing and he wore a hook in place of it. He was supposed to have used it on all of his victims. Anyway, the girl was real uneasy for some reason. Supposedly, they were not aware of the escaped killer. She kept saying she had an uneasy feeling but she did not know why. The guy finally got mad at her. He thought she was just making up excuses because she didn't want to park. Finally he lost his temper and stepped on the gas. He really tore out of there fast. He didn't say a word on the way home. When they get to the girl's house, he just got out and went around to open her door. When he got to the door, there was a hook hanging on the handle.

Origins: According to popular lore, bloody hooks have been left hanging on car doors since the mid-1950s. It's possible the roots of legends like The Hook and The Boyfriend's Death lie in distorted memories of real life Lover's Lane murders. There were actual cases of kids who'd gone necking coming back in pine boxes. The residue of news stories about those events would likely remain around for a while, mutating into cautionary tales with the addition of bloody hooks and scraping sounds on the roof of the car. (Click here for a fine writeup of a series of Lovers Lane murders that happened in
Texarkana in 1946.)

Real life roots or not, The Hook has been a legend for almost as long as anyone can remember.

Analysis: The key to this legend is the boyfriend's frustrated response to the girl's demand to end the date abruptly. Almost invariably, he is said to have gunned the engine and roared away. This behavior is essential to explain how the hook became ripped from the killer's arm, and to underscore the moral of the tale. The boyfriend's frustration stems from sexual denial. His girlfriend's insistence on getting home right away puts the kibosh to any randy thoughts he'd been hoping to turn into reality that night, and he's some pissed about it.

"The Hook" is a cautionary tale about teenage sexuality. Unspoken in the story is the realization that if the girl hadn't said no, hadn't insisted upon leaving right away, the couple would have been killed. Two close calls are averted that night: the fatal encounter with the killer, and "going all the way." Refusal to do one saves the pair from the other.

Urban legends are often little morality plays designed to instill an important lesson about societal mores. "The Hook" is clearly one such tale, and its message is clear: teens shouldn't have sex. Moreover, it's up to the girl to apply the brakes. Though her boyfriend might be upset at the time, not long after he'll understand the wisdom of her refusal and thank her for it. Or at least so says the legend.

Barbara "no nooky, no hooky" Mikkelson

Sightings: Look for this tale in the 1972 M.E. Keer novel Dinky Hocker Shoots
Smack! and in Stephen King's 1981 Danse Macabre. You'll also find mentions
of it in the 1979 comedy Meatballs, the 1992 film Candyman, the 1997 slasher
classic I Know What You Did Last Summer, and 1998's Urban Legend.

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Some problematic stuff in this version. First, they wouldn't be listening to the radio - CD's are the thing.  Second, hooks are rarer these days. Next, new doors don't have open handles - even if a young gentleman should choose to open the door. But we adapt.  I heard a FOAF tell of a Dana Hills High School couple on a camping trip to Joshua Tree.  They decided to take a moonlight hike.  When they returned to the Jeep Cherokee a few hours later, they found the windows smashed, their sleeping
bags slashed, and a grimy prison work shirt hanging over the tailgate. The boy's clothes were gone.

This story is updated in predictable ways, but it has a distinct O.C. fingerprint, as well. If you notice, the horror does not attach to the remains of the "maniac" so much as the destruction of valuable property.

A corollary feature of Orange County tales: the price escalates, especially in car stories. Brunvand lists five different legends under "Legends about Automobiles; Sub Category, Cheap Car Fantasies." A favorite is "`The $50 Porsche' - Husband's expensive car sold cheaply by abandoned wife."

In O.C. this story morphs quickly to include a real luxury car and other appropriate details. It goes like this: A couple in Newport Beach was enduring a bitter divorce. The husband was attempting to undervalue his net worth to reduce the settlement. While on a "business" trip to Singapore (with his young paramour), he found he needed to cover some derivatives. He called his wife and asked her to sell the Rolls and wire the money to his broker.

Caption:  Cartoon of Cement truck dumping cement onto the Cadillac

a related story is "The Cement Cadillac"

She did.  She sold it for $500.00.  Not only is the car upgraded, but the narrative is embroidered with telling bits.  In other parts of the country, you might hear a callous disregard for the husband's destination, the reason for his request, but our tales set a high standard for tightness, critical details, overall verisimilitude.

Timeliness, too, can be important to the success of the legend. The Northridge earthquake gave rise to this one: A man in Huntington Harbor woke up on the morning of the earthquake to find his BMW missing.

He reported the car stolen. Police returned it a couple of days later, marred only by a bent fender and blood on the leather. It seemed the thief had crashed it on the Santa Monica Freeway when the tremor struck. We know this is an urban legend because it was born in the Oakland quake.

A man watching the World Series at Candlestick Park came out to find his car missing. Days later, the police brought him only a crumpled license plate--the car, with thief, had been crushed on the Bay Bridge when it collapsed.

That one turned up in slightly altered versions in San Francisco, Modesto, and Fresno. Doubtless, the "Car Theft During the Earthquake" is circulating in Japan now. Cars, celebs, terrors, and technology.

It was California that started the world wondering if coating the thin, outer edge of a CD with green marking pen  would enhance the sound. And, technology also assists the spread of stories.

Lately, the chat has drifted away from the "real story of the O.J. Simpson glove" and the "flesh-eating disease" to surgical mistakes, termite farts destroying the atmosphere, the family who discovered a porno flick at the end of a rented video of "Ace Ventura, Pet Detective", workers buried in the cement of bridge pilings (reminiscent of the Hoover Dam rumors), children whose intestines have been sucked out by pool drains, and the Nordstrom refund story. The strangest new tale is about the local
French teacher who was knocked senseless when a chunk of "blue ice" fell through the roof of the schoolroom. It seems the airlines freeze their sewage in flight and drop it out....

Well, some of them could be true. Meanwhile, back in the cyberspace that is home, we continue to improve the stories - more money, better brands, believable details.

Reliable FOAF's are telling of the second-tier County employee who left the U.S. for his villa in Antigua in his private Cessna, toting his Cayman Islands bank book (yes!).  All these, "gifts" of unsuspecting bankruptcy-pool participants. Supposedly, he had managed to place a small, private endowment with Citron's County Pool.  Then, in the confusion of early November, with a few false documents, he withdrew $40 million in cash.

As this unique O.C. legend ripens, we can expect the villa to be furnished, the plane to transform into a Lear Jet, the millions to multiply, and the financial details to wax more arcane--perhaps they already have.

Here's another favorite:

Caption:  Cartoon of Couple wedged in the sports car, rescue truck, etc.

Legend: An adulterous couple trysting in a sports car becomes trapped inside
the automobile (and each other) and has to be cut out by the fire department.

LOVERS CUT FREE FROM EMBRACE

LONDON -- A tiny sports car leaves a lot to be desired as a midnight trysting spot, two secret lovers have learned.

Wedged into a two-seater, a near-naked man was suddenly immobilized by a slipped disc, trapping his woman companion beneath him, according to a doctor writing in a medical journal here.

The desperate woman tried to summon help by honking the horn with her foot. A doctor, ambulance driver, firemen, and a group of interested passersby quickly surrounded the car in Regent's Park. "The lady found herself trapped beneath 200 pounds of pain-racked, immobile man," said Dr. Brian Richards of Kent.

"To free the couple, fireman had to cut away the car frame," he said.

The distraught woman, helped out of the car and into a coat, sobbed: "How am I going to explain to my husband what has happened to his car?"

Variations:

The reason why the couple becomes stuck in the car varies: They simply become wedged into a space too small to free themselves. The man (who is on top) injures his back and is unable to move. Freezing weather immobilizes them. The effects of alcohol or carbon monoxide fumes render the lovers incapable of freeing themselves.  The woman is startled (generally by the approach of someone else),
resulting in a case of penis captivus.

Sometimes one (or both) of the participants is a well-known community member.

Origins: The story is told both as a joke and as a real occurrence, so this legend, like many others, may have originated as a piece of humor that was later run as a "true" news item by an unsuspecting newspaper. It is a typical adultery legend in which those who commit an infidelity are ultimately exposed by some accidental or freakish occurrence.  Some variations heighten the couple's humiliation (and possibly increase the implied moral censure, since we hold persons of privilege to higher standards than ourselves) by making one or both of them prominent people in their community. 

The punch line delivered by the woman in the final sentence has several possible interpretations:

The wife is so amoral that the "wrongness" of her infidelity (especially in light of her narrow escape) doesn't give her pause at all; she is solely concerned with trying to explain away the evidence of it.

The wife considers her unfaithfulness to her husband to be a wrong of far lesser magnitude than ruining his car.

The woman cares so little for her boyfriend that his well-being is much less important than covering up their affair.

The wife realizes that it is the destruction of his precious car (and not her affair) that will make her husband most angry; he values his automobile more than he values his spouse.

The example above was cited by Train as an actual [undated] Reuters article, with a footnote indicating that the story was supposedly also covered by the London Sunday Mirror.

Sightings: This legend was used as the plot of a 1985 British comedy film entitled Car Trouble.

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and, of course, the ill-fated Birthday Party

Legend: A young man stops by his fiancée's house while her parents are away; the couple takes advantage of the empty house to engage in sexual play, only to
be caught in when the parents spring a surprise birthday on their daughter.

Examples: [Collected by Jansen, 1959]

There was a young couple of well-to-do families who were engaged to be married. On the girl's birthday, the two of them went out, but returned home rather early. Upon returning to the girl's home it was discovered that the parents were away. The two of them decided to do something "different" and removed all their clothing. Soon thereafter, the telephone rang. When she answered it, the girl was asked by her mother to please go to the basement and turn off the automatic washer, which she had forgotten. When the conversation ended, one of the couple decided it would be fun if the boy carried the girl downstairs piggyback. This they proceeded to do, and when they reached the bottom of the stairs, the lights came on and a large group of friends and relatives yelled, "Surprise!" The girl, I was told, had a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized. The boy has neither been seen nor heard of since.

In most versions the young man and woman are engaged, but some versions describe them as a "recently married" couple.  The surprise party is usually arranged for the young woman's birthday, but versions involving a married couple mention a party to celebrate the recent marriage.

The reason the couple goes downstairs to the basement (or down to the living room from an upstairs bedroom) varies: a telephone call from the girl's mother asks her to perform some task (usually involving laundry) in the basement; the couple goes down to the basement to look at their wedding gifts, the couple (while upstairs in the bedroom) hears noises coming from the living room and goes down to investigate, or the couple walks downstairs to answer the phone. In some versions (such as the second
example above), the guests burst in on the couple through the front door.

The party is generally a complete surprise to the couple, but in early versions of the legend it is arranged by the boyfriend.

In most versions involving a descent to the basement, the boyfriend carries his fiancée downstairs in some manner: riding piggyback, carried in his arms, or perched on his shoulders

The legend always ends with the engagement being broken off. Additionally, the woman usually suffers a nervous breakdown (and is often institutionalized); in many versions the boyfriend disappears, never to be seen again.

Origins: This example is one of two common versions of the "Surprise Party" tale: a legend in which sexual misbehavior is accidentally discovered (and "punished") during the course of a well-intentioned surprise. This legend dates to at least the 1920s and in this form involves a couple whose engagement ends tragically when they are caught indulging (or about to indulge) in premarital sex. Sexual activity prior to marriage was still strongly taboo when this legend originated, and the offending youngsters are punished with permanent separation. Versions of this legend involving a married couple are mere
embarrassment tales with no moral point and may be corrupted versions of the original.

In a 1964 book of reminiscences, Hollywood publicist Art Moyer recounts an incident of being invited to a surprise birthday party for an unnamed actress "only a few years ago." According to Moyer, after the creme de la creme of Tinseltown was gathered in the girl's foyer, her boyfriend called her to come down from the second floor, promising a surprise. But it was the boyfriend (and the guests) who got the surprise when she came sliding down the banister in the nude.

Given the lack of details provided in the tale, it's impossible now to determine if the "sliding naked actress" story really did happen. It should be pointed out, however, that elsewhere in the autobiography, Moyer carefully distinguishes between events he was present for and bits of lore he heard told as true tales.

Analysis: The sexual activity is in this legend always described as being initiated by the woman or by mutual consent; there is never the implication that the boyfriend has coerced or pressured his girlfriend into having sex with him. Perhaps because the girl's willingness to "sin" is seen as being greater than her fiancé's (good girls should know better, after all), she suffers a far worse fate (mental breakdown) than her boyfriend. The presence of church leaders or members (as well as parents) at the denouement emphasizes the conflict between the religious values of the older generation and the looser morality of their children.

Sightings: A 1999 television commercial for Michelob Light featured a young woman who discovers a note from her husband instructing her to grab a few beers and join him in the living room. Figuring she knows what the invitation is for, she changes into sexy lingerie before fetching the beer. When the living room light snaps on to reveal family and friends, she's standing framed in the doorway in her sexy nightie.

In November 1982 television's Newhart featured Bob' wife clad in a filmy negligee descending the stairs to what she was going to be a romantic date by the fireplace with her husband and what turned out to be a surprise party.

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Continue with Lecture XI.