Sam Patch: Daredevil Jumper by Julie Cummins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Oh, Sam Patch, you old-timey anacronism!
Sam Patch was a “Daredevil Jumper,” as stated in the title, but after reading, I can’t say I totally understand the difference between a Daredevil Jumper and a Guy Who Falls Off Tall Shit.
Sam jumped from high stuff, then higher stuff. Then he went to Niagara Falls with his pet fox and pet bear, which is great, and then he threw his pet bear off Niagara Falls, which was kind of a dick move. I guess if you’ve got a pet bear, you want to do SOMETHING with it that you couldn’t do with a hamster, but maybe just take pictures of it with its hand in a bee hive or something. Also, are bears known for being able to fall really far? Is this another animal science thing I didn’t know? Supposedly the bear was fine, although that’s gotta be a terrible day for a bear. I’d be pretty confident that, for a bear, falling off Niagara Falls would be the worst day of your life, provided you don’t have some entitled little punk sleeping in your family’s beds and eating their food, critiquing every little thing along the way.
As the story is told, it turns out that watching a dude jump off tall shit was big entertainment back in the day. And I kind of feel like it still would be. I would watch a dude jump off…well, whatever! But not a guy who drinks Red Bull and stuff. It’s gotta be a normal guy, like Sam, who doesn’t even have a uniform or anything.
If you can believe it, Sam met his end when he jumped off a tall thing, pinwheeled down, and hit the water hard. Never to surface again…until a farmer found his corpse, I guess. It made me wonder, when you went to watch this kind of thing back in the day, how long did you hang out before you shrugged and walked off, assuming the dude was dead? What’s the polite interval there?