COLUMN: Giant perspective on digging
Enthralled with an attitude of discovery, students all over campus have finally placed their inquisitive attention on the meaning of the numerous holes in the ground.
I am reminded of my time living in Singapore, a country that grew so fast in the ’80s that construction performed by the Public Works Department was seemingly endless. Almost every day we passed by PWD guys digging up something. The Singapore workers were very unlike their American counterparts whom many of us regularly see just standing there, while their “work” is blocking four lanes of a major metropolitan highway. For some reason, it takes four overweight slobs to watch the skinny guy do all the work, unless you count the fella holding the sign directing the speed of traffic through the construction zone. Normally, I just assume the four-letter word printed on the sign is a public display of the current mental capacity of the holder.
The Singapore workers were so industrious that whenever we saw one crew laboring, upon first inspection, they would always be digging a hole. During the next passing we always saw the initial hole almost filled up again. Unsure that anything productive was actually being accomplished, we routinely named those PWD guys, People Who Dig.
The people who dig here on campus are actually doing a service to folks like me. Taking the focus off the abnormally tall, students now prefer to look into the abnormally deep. As many times as I’ve gotten the question, “Gee you’re tall, do you play basketball?” I am wholly unprepared for the circus act that follows. From friends putting on my large shoes, getting pictures of my feet, comparing hand size, and trying on my jacket, I feel like I should be put on display with the bearded woman and the fire-eating, two-headed clown. I’m not mad or annoyed, just amused at the fact that normal people find sheer merriment observing unusually large phenomenon.
If I could give direction to the world’s perpetual amazement with big stuff, I would send them to www.roadsideamerica.com to find something else at which to gawk. Within the pages of this Web site you can find strange and extraordinary entities all over the country around which you can dance and take as many pictures as you want. Inanimate objects usually don’t care.
Take the giant fork for example. Thirty-one feet of steel was fabricated into the shape of a fork and built as a pun on its location at the fork of a road in Milan, N.Y. I guess after the dish and the spoon ran away, the fork went on to fame and fortune.
If you prefer to amuse your grandpa, take him to Penrose, Colo. to see the world’s largest rocking chair. At 21 feet high and 14 feet wide, no, he can’t take it home with him, but just maybe he can bring a blanket and curl up for his much-needed nap. Upon finding out about this chair, I also discovered a large dispute among more than a dozen contenders for the largest chair in the world. I’m just scared to see what happens when the giant chair owners return after a hard day of work with their evening paper to relax. If unhappy, someone must call the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for assistance from these potentially disgruntled mega dudes.
If for some reason you cannot traverse the continent looking for odd and gigantic objects, you may be able to appease your insatiable appetite by looking for local attractions. Since I don’t have a car, I took my own advice and discovered the legend of Old Ephraim, the last known grizzly bear to inhabit Utah. Standing nearly 10 feet tall, this mammoth of a bear terrorized sheepherders in Cache Valley for more than 10 years. Lacking the widespread usage of automatic weapons to eliminate “problems” in 1923, Frank Clark from Malad, Idaho, simply used his trusty rifle to take out the menace. I doubt the last bear in Utah was Old Ephraim, the others just got scared; “Wow, they actually got Big E, we better get out of here!” Now you can relive history by visiting the monument in Logan canyon or seeing Old Ephraim’s skull on display in the Merrill Library.
Instead of spending countless hours watching reruns of “Blind Date” or postulating why SlamBall isn’t yet an Olympic sport, get out and see something cool, so the next time I visit, you won’t stare anymore.
Garrett Wheeler is a graduate student studying electrical engineering. Comments can be sent to wheel@cc.usu.edu