NFPP 16 - It Was Sam Patch Who Started It



Sam Patch ready to jump at Niagara Falls
 


 


 


 

The Falling: Three Who Have Intentionally Plunged Over Niagara Falls With the Hope of Surviving by Aimee Nezhukumatathil


1. Annie Edson Taylor (1901)

Don't hate me because I sent the cat first.
Darling, desperate times require—
well, they require.
I told the little girl who owned the cat
I'd buy her a new one.
Days of waiting for a coin
of mention in the newspaper.
Days of waiting for wind—
for a sign, a purple swallow
circling the falls in a figure eight.
Draw me a line of three corks
and three holes so I can breathe in the barrel.
I thought I'd have all the floppy feathered hats
a gal could hope for.

No one seems to realize I am a star,
the original Queen of the Mist.
Tell me: What does a soul
look like after you dash
a plump cat to smithereens?
All I have are beat-down tap shoes
(someone even stole my barrel!),
a feather, a snip of string.

But look at the elegant line
of the arch of my foot, my boot,
how each hoop in my skirt
sings when I walk.
Isn't that a picture?
Surely that's worth a picture.

2. Charles G. Stevens, the Demon Barber of Bedminster (1920)

The right arm:
only thing
happy
to be found.
It even waved
a little.

3. Steve Trotter (1985,1995)

At age twenty-two, the youngest person to go over the falls successfully, and twice

In Tallahassee, you learn to make the drinks
real sweet. Sweet drinks equals sweet skirts
to wait for you long after the bar closes. At the base
there are boulders — smoothed by years of drumming
water. And somehow, you missed every single one.
You've got a charmed life, a deer-bone amulet,
and star-spangled shorts to cheer you on both trips,
But even you know your boundaries. There's a limit to
how much you are able to ridicule her. Venus flytraps
snap shut when the trigger hairs are touched not once, but
are tapped exactly twice. Look at your life: It can count.
Two is good, just enough, for you.

Source: Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 93(1) Winter 2017, p.68-69

See this poem on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website.


The first chronicled stunter / daredevil at Niagara Falls was a man named Sam Patch, who jumped into the pool below the Horseshoe Falls from a high ladder contraption at the base of Goat Island in the fall of 1829. Since that time, people have gone over the falls in barrels, a jet ski, a kayak, and four went over and survived with no protective gear at all. In the Niagara Falls area, stunters have gone through the Whirlpool Rapids (just downriver beyond the Rainbow Bridge) in barrels, in boats, on rafts, and swimming. Further on, they have swum across the Whirlpool itself. Funambulists have crossed the Niagara Gorge on tightropes, people have parachuted from the bridges, and flown under the bridges in aeroplanes. Not all have survived.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil's poem talks of three stunters who went over in a barrel. Annie Taylor will be discussed a bit more at point 18. Charles Stephens was a barber who went over the falls in a barrel. He'd tied an anvil to his feet for ballast so the barrel would remain upright, but it, and he, went through the bottom of the barrel, ripping his arm off in the process. Steve Trotter went over twice, although he had attempted to go over a year earlier but got caught on the rocks. He successfully went over once on August 18, 1985, and the second time, with girlfriend Lori Martin, on June 18, 1995. They were the second couple to go over in a barrel together - in 1989 Peter DeBernardi and Jeffrey Petkovich had gone over in the same barrel and survived. For more information on stunters and daredevils click on the link to visit the Niagara Falls Thunder Alley site.

The video below from finleyholiday chronicles 15 daredevils who have gone over Niagara Falls since 1901. Not all survived.

 
 


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