Here's an ad campaign over the course of a decade or so that shows the Mad Men flailing around blindly. Whom do we appeal to? Kings, Indian Chiefs, housewives, nursery-rhyme characters, despotic sea captains, or cartoon animals? Or, in the end, the anti-hippie conservatives embodied by Andy Griffith and his fancy-neckwear disparagement?
June 9, 1966: After being buried alive for a week outside of a drive-in theater in Denison, Texas, Lottie Howard married "Country" Bill White. Both of them were "buried alive" practitioners. After she was disinterred, the two left on their honeymoon.
Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram - June 19, 1966
Update: Looks like the marriage didn't last long. Two years later Country Bill got served with divorce papers — while he was buried alive. The papers were dropped down the six-inch pipe he used for air and food.
Wilmington News Journal - Mar 28, 1968
But Bill rebounded pretty quickly from his divorce. Just a few months later he was buried alive with a "34-year-old grandmother" and a go-go dancer. However, they each had individual compartments in the coffin, evidently to prevent any buried-alive hanky panky.
The Indianapolis Star - June 21, 1968
And here's a picture of Bill from 1978, looking a bit rougher around the edges.
The Benton Harbor News-Palladium - May 19, 1978
As far as I can tell, Bill kept doing his buried alive stunt until the late 1980s. In 1981 he set an endurance record for the longest time buried alive (140 consecutive days in a plywood box, 6 feet long by 3 feet wide). This record seems to have been beaten in 1999 by Geoff Smith, who spent 147 days buried in a coffin under the beer garden of his local pub. Though it's hard to know for sure because Guinness doesn't maintain a record for longest time buried alive (because of their policy of not encouraging unhealthy or life-endangering acts).
In 2005, the New Bedford Standard-Times ran an article about Bill, but that's the last media reference to him I can find. If he's still alive, he'd be around 82.
In 1959, the Ohio State Highway Patrol produced a 27-minute film showing graphic scenes of fatal traffic accidents. The footage was accompanied by a soundtrack of the cries and moans of the victims. They called the film "Signal 30" — referring to the patrol's radio code for fatal accidents.
The film was shown at many high schools, in an attempt to scare kids into being good drivers. Some judges also made people with traffic violations watch it "to atone for their violations." It got some dramatic reactions from viewers. For instance:
One woman rushed from the room, nauseated. Firemen gave her a whiff of ammonia to prevent fainting and she said: "I don't think I'll ever drive again."
Another woman had to be carried from the courtroom and given oxygen after she watched a truck driver burning to death in the color-and-sound film.
The film is now on YouTube, so you can find out how you would react to it. (I actually haven't had the courage to watch it yet.)
On January 28, 1966, Erma Veith was driving along Highway 19 in Wisconsin when suddenly she veered out of her lane and sideswiped an oncoming truck driven by Phillip Breunig.
Breunig later sued for damages, but Mrs. Veith's insurance company offered an unusual defense. It said she wasn't negligent and therefore not liable because she had been overcome by a mental delusion moments before swerving out of her lane. She hadn't been operating her automobile "with her conscious mind."
The insurance company lost the initial case, but appealed, and eventually the dispute ended up before the Supreme Court of Wisconsin (Breunig v. American Family Insurance Co.). There, the court heard the nature of the mental delusion that had gripped Mrs. Veith:
The psychiatrist testified Mrs. Veith told him she was driving on a road when she believed that God was taking ahold of the steering wheel and was directing her car. She saw the truck coming and stepped on the gas in order to become airborne because she knew she could fly because Batman does it. To her surprise she was not airborne before striking the truck but after the impact she was flying.
Actually, Mrs. Veith's car continued west on Highway 19 for about a mile. The road was straight for this distance and then made a gradual turn to the right. At this turn her car left the road in a straight line, negotiated a deep ditch and came to rest in a cornfield. When a traffic officer came to the car to investigate the accident, he found Mrs. Veith sitting behind the wheel looking off into space. He could not get a statement of any kind from her.
The court ultimately agreed with the insurance company that a sudden mental incapacity might excuse a person from the normal standard of negligence. It noted that a Canadian court had once reached a similar conclusion: "There, the court found no negligence when a truck driver was overcome by a sudden insane delusion that his truck was being operated by remote control of his employer and as a result he was in fact helpless to avert a collision."
But the Wisconsin Supreme Court then ruled that this excuse didn't apply in Veith's case because she had had similar episodes before. Therefore, she should have reasonably concluded that she wasn't fit to drive.
This case has become an important precedent in tort law, establishing the principle that you can't use sudden mental illness as an excuse if you have forewarning of your susceptibility to the condition.
The case is such a classic that in an issue of the Georgia Law Review (Summer 2005) it was even described in verse:
A bright white light on the car ahead,
Entranced Erma Veith, so she later said.
Pursuing that light, a miracle did unfold:
Of Erma's steering wheel, God took control.
Under the influence of celestial propulsion,
Erma now operated by divine compulsion.
She met a truck, and responded in scorn:
She hit the gas, so she'd become airborne.
Why, Erma, would you seek elevation?
"Batman!" she replied, "my inspiration!"
Moreover, at trial, other evidence of panic:
She had previously invoked the Duo Dynamic.
Once to her daughter, she had commented:
"Batman is good; your father is demented."
The law held sympathy for Erma's plight:
After all, mankind has long yearned for flight.
Soaring above, slipping gravity's attraction,
Many have aspired to that satisfaction.
Still, the law cautioned, the limits were great:
"Was Erma forewarned of her delusional state?"
On this issue, the evidence appeared strong:
"She had known of her condition all along."
She experienced a vision, at a shrine in a park:
When the end came, she would be in the Ark.
Indeed, she would assist, in sorting them out:
Those to be saved, and those not devout.
Knowing all this, said the court in conclusion,
She might well expect, she'd suffer delusion.
In her condition, a state most bizarre,
Erma was negligent, to drive a car.
And to Erma, a lesson of universal appeal:
"Nothing can emulate the Batmobile!"
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.