Oddballs is wood engraver Jim Westergard's collection of forty portraits and brief biographical sketches of historical figures who gained fame—or notoriety—through curious behavior and circumstance. (The book was also inspiration for our wildly popular "Oddballs" Books List from last fall.) Today we're pleased to excerpt four of the illustrations and biographies from Westergard's work, whose subjects went over Niagara Falls in a barrel, declared one's self Emperor of America, flew up through the atmosphere in a lawn chair attached to balloons, and was the first and only female Pope. I know: pretty nuts, right? 

*****

ANNIE TAYLOR

On October 24, 1901, a sixty-three-year-old widow (who claimed it was her forty-third birthday that day) stood dressed in padded clothing next to a large pickle barrel. Annie Taylor was a former Michigan schoolteacher who had a plan to make some money on the lecture circuit ... if she survived going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. She climbed into the barrel, which was lined with a mattress, and her friends secured the end of the barrel tightly; then, using a bicycle pump, they added more air to the barrel and plugged the hole with a cork. They put the barrel in the water to follow the current to the Canadian side—and over the Horseshoe Falls it went. Annie climbed out with only a gash on her head and she became the first person to have gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survived! She announced to the reporters on the shore, ‘No one ought ever do that again!’

Even though Annie had done something remarkable, it seems her skills at public speaking did not match her survival skills and the plan to get rich failed. Then came worse news: Annie’s manager took off with her barrel. What little money she had was used in hiring a private detective to track down the barrel and the manager. They were found in Chicago (the barrel was eventually lost again). Annie died penniless at eighty-three and was buried in the Niagara Falls, New York, cemetery, in a section reserved for Niagara daredevils. 

EMPEROR NORTON 

Joshua A. Norton immigrated to the United States from South Africa with a fortune and began to build on that fortune in San Francisco real estate. He saw an opportunity to make more and took advantage of a shortage of rice by temporarily cornering the rice market, only to see that advantage disappear. A fleet of ships, full of rice, arrived from South America in 1858 and he was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Some say it was the shock of losing a fortune so quickly that drove him insane. Whatever it was, his odd behaviour began when he announced to a local paper that he was declaring himself Emperor of North America. San Franciscans embraced this oddball behaviour and encouraged his eccentricities. When the outlandish uniform he had created for himself wore out, various members of the community supplied replacement parts and one citizen gave him a permanent residence. Restaurants allowed him to eat at their establishments free, then declared on posted signs, ‘By Appointment to His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I of the United States’. Emperor Norton would make his rounds throughout the city, inspecting restaurants and businesses and was treated deferentially by all. He died penniless in 1880 and was buried with honours following an elaborate funeral attended by thousands.

LARRY WALTERS 

Larry Walters had always wanted to fly, but never could pass the eye exam. Then on a warm summer day in 1982 in San Pedro, California, Larry flew! He and his girlfriend purchased a bunch of weather balloons and several tanks of helium. Larry attached the balloons to a lawn chair and tethered the lawn chair to his vehicle. He figured he would float above the yard for a while and enjoy the view. He took a CB radio to talk to the audience in the neighbourhood and a pellet gun to burst the balloons when it came time to descend.

What Larry didn’t consider was the power of the great number of balloons he was sitting beneath. When someone cut the rope he shot up so fast he was at 16,000 feet before he could react. The wind eventually pushed him into the restricted airspace of the Long Beach airport where nervous pilots reported a guy with a gun hanging below some balloons. He popped enough balloons to get down where the air was warmer but was unable to complete his descent because he dropped his pellet gun.

Eventually he landed unharmed and was arrested. Larry quit his truck-driving job and took to the lecture circuit, as other stunt performers have done, but he wasn’t a good enough speaker to make a living wage. A little over ten years later, at age forty-four, Larry took his own life in a National Forest where he did volunteer work.

POPE JOAN

If anyone deserves the prize for pulling off the grandest hoax it is Pope Joan, whose story took place in the tenth century. She was born to English missionary parents in Germany, as Agnes or Gilvera or Jutta (depending on which monk is recording the story), and grew to be a very bright little girl. Later, a monk or priest who was her teacher and lover dressed her as a boy so she could receive an education worthy of her intelligence. Eventually she ended up studying in Rome and became a priest, then a bishop and later a cardinal. At the end of the reign of Pope Leo I V she was elected pope, and was named Pope John Anglicus.

A few years into her reign, when she was mounting a horse on a street in Rome dressed in her robes, she gave birth to a son while the faithful citizens looked on in shock. Accounts vary as to what happened next. Most records have her being stoned to death while tied to the tail of her horse and dragged through the streets of Rome. Other records indicate she was put away in a convent while her son went on to become a bishop. Whatever her ending, no pope since then will traverse the street where she is rumoured to have given birth. From the time of Pope Joan’s discovery to the sixteenth century, a chair with a hole in the seat was used to inspect papal candidates so their gender could be confirmed discreetly. This chair is in the Vatican collection.

Oddballs, by Jim Westergard. Porcupine's Quill, 2015. Appears by permission of the publisher. 

*****

Jim Westergard was born in Ogden, Utah in 1939. He was educated at a variety of colleges and universities in California, Arizona and Utah where he completed his BFA and MFA at Utah State. Westergard moved to Red Deer in 1975 and taught at Red Deer College until his retirement in 1999. He became a Canadian citizen in 1980.

Jim Westergard has been creating prints from wood engravings since university days in the late 60s, but had never completed a book-length collection until the original limited letterpress edition of Mother Goose Eggs. The first engraving for this project was finished in 1999. Then, after a four-year struggle which included an unexpected hernia operation and reprinting the press-sheets a second time with helpful hints from Crispin Elsted of the Barbarian Press (Mission, BC), Mother Goose Eggs was finally bound and released in a deluxe edition of eighty copies in 2003.

Westergard continues to create wood engravings on his cantankerous old VanderCook SP-15 proof press which he has affectionately named the 'Spanish Fly'.