AMERICA’S SILLY SEASON

Evening Star, Issue 20586, 11 September 1930, Page 16

AMERICA’S SILLY SEASON

ENDURANCE “STUNTS” EVEN GIRLS PARTICIPATE NEW YORK, August 27. “Endurance crazes” in the way of tree-sitting “ stunts,’ seesawing, ami kite flying, the revival of such an ancient sport as wood-chopping contests, oyster opening, barrel rolling, and pieeating. are spreading like wildhro amongst American youth. Such epidemics in the past, it is commented, have usually marked periods of_ economic slump, and divert the minds of people from more serious things. In New Jersey State forty-eight boys of school ago are spending their holidays sitting on trees in an effort to gain a national prize awarded by a patent food manufacturer, free sitting [s a favourite test of endurance tor the time being, as is proved by reports from all parts of the country, and to date it is confined to boys chiefly and a few adults, . . ~ , - At Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Calvin Neill, fourteen, to-day passed his eighty-eighth hour in a tree, and will earn a new bicycle if he completes the hundred. Teams of boys have enrolled themselves for “ refuelling ” purposes, climbing the trees at regular hours with supplies of food and drink. Changing from one tree to another is not permitted. . In one case an irate mother, angered by the refusal of her son to come down, sawed the tree through, amd the bov “came tumbling after. Cirls specialise chiefly in seesawing, and at Chicago two had been seesawing for seven consecutive hours when too police interfered. In the meantime “ Shipwreck Kelly, the greatest of stunt artists, has passed his twenty-seventh day atop of a flagpole suitably placed in front of a popular restaurant in Atlantic City. Off and on the indefatigable Kelly has spent the best part of the last live years on a flagpole.