It was while buying postcards in Scottsdale, Arizona that I learned the real story behind Joe Camel. If the slim tanned woman had talked me into buying her a drink I might not have trusted the story, but she seemed too classy to lie just for a cup of coffee. The Camelback Mountain part was definitely true and she seemed too leathery to be really imaginative, so I believed her. Anyway, it seems back in the 1880s one of the successful gold miners from the Bay Area had paid a young lady friend to teach him to read. Which led him to a text description of a camel in some book. He was thinking of moving back out to the desert to get away from the crowds and the camel seemed a perfect desert companion (the book hadn't mentioned the spitting). So he had sent money overseas to get one from Persia. This was before the Panama Canal. The camel caught malaria while being marched across Panama and died on the Pacific-side ship just before it reached San Diego harbour. There was a travelling show there at the time. The captain of the ship decided to mitigate his losses by selling the carcass as a sideshow attraction. Jones, who ran the show, wasn't convinced of the value of the carcass. He had bargained a low price and decided not to risk the extra money to have it stuffed. They were heading out for a run across the desert in any case. By the time the show got to the Arizona territories the carcass had mummified in the dry heat. This hadn't happened until the body had gone into and out of rigor mortis, so it seemed to be almost melting into the sand base of the display. It toured that way for the next 42 years, until the depression killed the last incarnation of the show. You can see evidence of this in Camelback Mountain, which doesn't look like any live camel ever did lying down (see http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu./~hixson/stanley/chan60.GIF ). And over this long run the patter story developed, how this was the natural defensive pose of the camel, burrowing into the sand for protection from the sun and to provide camouflage. That it could stay that way for weeks if necessary. It looked so relaxed that in the southwest US a camel became the symbol of peaceful contemplation. The ad man who came up with the Joe Camel character claimed in an interview that he had never actually seen the travelling camel himself, but he had heard about it at just the right age when running away to the circus had seemed like the coolest thing. Which is why he'd named him Joe. Because all the cool people had been named Joe that year. Anyway, that is what I heard. ["Just Call Me Joe" August 22, 2001] ------------------------------ YOUR DAILY STEAM ------------------------------ ISSN 1206-4130 http://2x4group.com/yds YOUR DAILY STEAM is a continuing series of fables written by James Spyker. If you like them feel free to forward them around. Send me your e-mail address to receive a free subscription. Subscription and editorial correspondence to yds@2x4group.com