White Trash Art

American Heroes and Madmen #11: Annie Edson Taylor

acrylic on canvas paper 12x16"

Annie was an educated, well traveled Civil War widow who had spent the many years after her husband's death going from vocation to vocation. Nearing old age and wanting to secure a nice retirement income for herself, she agreed to go over Niagara Falls in a specially designed barrel. She took the plunge on her 63rd birthday (although she told the papers she was 43) and became the first person to live through the feat. Her retirement plan of living off of the publicity that followed was cut short by her manager absconding with the barrel, which she traveled and posed with all over the country. After an unfruitful attempt to get the barrel back with the use of private detectives, she drained most of her savings on their fees. Sher spent her golden years working, as she always did, where she found a niche - as a clairvoyant and giving therapeutic magnet treatments.

American Heroes and Madmen: The Salt King of Southern Illinois

One of the most shameful historical slave sites in Illinois is in a tiny village named "Equality".

In 1842, a wealthy salt mine owner named John Hart Crenshaw, along with his brother Abraham, built this Greek revival style mansion from the vast amounts of wealth they had accumulated operating two lucrative salt mines in southern Illinois. The Crenshaws were influential and ridiculously wealthy. At one point John Crenshaw's income equaled one seventh of the revenue of the entire state of Illinois. 3 A young state representative named Abraham Lincoln actually attended a gala at the home, dancing a waltz in the second floor ballroom, likely with kidnapped slaves stuffed into concentration camp style bunks in the third floor above him. In a town called Equality. Now that is some fucking irony.

The house in the 1960's, courtesy of this site

Part of the reason for the massive wealth was due to the fact the "Salt King of Southern Illinois" was allowed to use slave labor. Prior to emancipation, there was a law in place allowing businessmen to "import" slaves from slave states into free states like Illinois and use them for especially miserable tasks (like working in salt mines). Soon, this Illinois entrepreneur found that he could increase his profits by kidnapping free black men and women and selling them back into slavery in the south. The house is the last standing vestige of a once thriving "reverse underground railroad" system.

By many accounts Crenshaw also had a side hobby of siring the most virile and strong men with fertile women slaves to produce more slaves to sell. A man named "Uncle" Bob Wilson, who was known to have been one of the primary "breeders", was quoted by staff at Elgin State Hospital in 1941 (after he had been picked up in Chicago wandering 'ill and confused' ) as saying he had been forced to father over 200 children as a stud slave in the Hickory Hill house as well as others in the south. 2  He died at the Elgin facility in 1948 at age 112, and was Illinois' oldest living veteran at the time of his death.5, 6

Crenshaw kept his slaves in the third floor attic, shackled in tiny blood stained stalls ("The attic of this house has twelve small rooms, ranging in size from nine feet square to six feet by two and one-half feet. Some of the rooms contain shelves, which may have been used as bunks" 1). The open stalls were used for "breeding" as well as living quarters. The room itself was likely stifling, with only two windows and dozens of people crammed together.  I don't know if you've ever been in an attic room in the summer in Illinois, but I can tell you from my parent's farmhouse and their third story attic, it gets miserably hot and chokingly muggy. The room was rumored to have secret passages that lead to the main house and the river, to expedite his illicit dealings at night. He took to beating the slaves, sometimes to death.

Brought to trial in 1842, he wasn't convicted on the first count of illegally trading slaves. However, within a short amount of time he was on trial again, and in a tiny nugget of instant karma, a slave whacked his leg off with an axe. The slaves rioted and burned down his mill. He died years later and was buried alongside his wife.

After the slave house was opened up for tours in 1926, it soon became the infamous home to sightings of apparitions and the sounds of moaning and chains rattling. One turn of the century paranormalist named Hickman Whittington spent the night there and died the next day from a sudden unexplained illness. Others, including some Vietnam vets who thought they had the gonads to stay all night, tried and failed in the quest to stay all night in the "haunted" attic. Finally, in the 1970's a local TV station put a TV personality up for the night in the slave quarters, part of a Halloween publicity stunt. He succeeded, a sort of prequel to the Geraldo Rivera's opening of the Capone Vaults (another Illinois media event) in that the spirits were apparently camera shy and they ended up with a pretty boring show. The longtime owners and caretakers closed off the house to overnight guests after a knocked over lantern nearly burned the old wooden building down. It was finally closed to the public in 1996 when the owners retired.

One-legged and sour, Kidnapper John Hart Crenshaw sits with his super-hot old lady and his crutch

A number of John Hart Crenshaw's descendents deny any wrongdoing on the part of their long-dead relative, accusing historians and folklorists alike of a "cruel conspiracy" to "besmirch" their "good" name, citing a paucity of hard proof pointing to Crenshaw's illicit activity. On one internet post regarding the house, former owner George Sisk was accused by an anonymous ranter of "making the whole thing up" and adding the whipping posts and shackles as props to try and add a horror element to attract tourists. This is an unlikely scenario.

The Old Slave House is located near the junction of Highway 45 and Highway 13 in Southern Illinois. It is 14 miles east of Harrisburg. If you're heading east on 13, when you get to the junction of Route 1, you turn right onto Route 1 and head south for a little over a mile and it will be on your right, up on a small hill.
Update: The State of Illinois has purchased the mansion with plans to open it as a state historic site, and appropriated $150,000 for it's renovation in 2006 4. However as of Feb 2010, spending cuts and ongoing state financial woes have kept it from opening as of yet.

American Heroes and Madmen #10: Russell Burrows

*this article and more are from my freshly updated Illinois oddities page

In 1982 retired Army Ranger and prison guard Russell Burrows claimed to have, while hunting along the Little Wabash River, stumbled upon a cave that held priceless artifacts from ancient man, including large amounts of gold and burial chambers akin to the Egyptian Pharaohs. Any artifacts that were shown to the scientific community were initially dismissed as "obvious fakes", and the text on the inscribed tablets were said by experts to be a gibberish combination of various dead languages. Burrows' story itself is fishy on many levels. He claims after being humiliated and badgered by critics he grew weary of the hubbub and simply dynamited the entrance to the cave in 1989.

Ten years later Ancient American Magazine founder Wayne May says that he convinced Burrows to show him his cave, and claims that Burrows in fact led him to a cave entrance that had been dynamited. In attempts to circumvent the damage and go inside, May said the cave had since flooded and filled with debris to the point of uselessness while afoot. Soooooo, May raised money and collected various experts to open the cave. This took 3 1/2 years, and when he returned to do so, he was told by Burrows:   1. that this was not the original cave, that the REAL cave was 40 miles away (take that, dirty scientist!!)    2. Burrows didn't even own the land on which this (equally nifty American Indian artifact filled) cave is   3. This new cave was to be referred to as "Tombs of the Embarras" (insert laugh track here), not "Burrows' Cave"   4. that Burrows' Cave (not the Tomb of the Embarrassed, er Embarras) is in the process of being excavated by a super-smart, super-secret team of  archaeologists who wish to remain anonymous. Mmmm - K.

Amazingly, May found evidence to support the original descriptions/maps of Burrows' Cave with ground penetrating radar. Read about it here. There is little to be found online on what the findings were on subsequent expeditions by May. Whatever was found since was apparently not Earth-shattering.

Theories surrounding possible explanations of a real burial chamber as described by Burrows are mind-bending and too numerous to list without devoting weeks of research. That's what google is for, my friend. Go for it. Lets just say there are folks who are really, REEAALLY into this story (either backing up Burrow or lustfully discrediting him), including the Mormons.

Burrows' cave is still causing controversy: in 2009 a History Channel program entitled The Holy Grail In America featured the story and artifacts.  Burrows has been described as having a penchant for wearing military uniforms of various eras as his everyday clothing. He sounds like a total fucking hoot, regardless of what the archaeology scholars think. I want to have him come into my bar so I can pour him a drink and listen to his bullshit for hours.

You can buy his autographed book for $23 here:  Russ Burrows, 117 Chestnut Street, Windsor, Colorado 80550.

When White Trash Collides

Just think of the babies they could've had. Happy birthday Dolly!

American Heroes and Madmen #9: Little Edie Bouvier Beale

"The Great Dancer"

12x16 acrylic,ink on vellum

Born into a gilded fairy tale of high society royalty akin to what F. Scott Fitzgerald spun into "The Great Gatsby", pretty little Edie had a successful attorney father and a beautiful socialite mother who's dowry was plucked from the ample fortunes of the Bouvier empire. Edie chirped and charmed her way through childhood with dance and French lessons from the finest schools in NYC. Beautiful teenage fashion model Edie was a much sought after piece of ass among uber rich titans of industry: her dance card was cluttered with names like Joe Kennedy Jr., Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty, and later the married Secretary of the Interior Julius Albert Krug.

Back home, "Big" Edie Beale was having troubles. She pursued a singing career, and had a questionable relationship with her piano accompanist. Her wealthy husband hit the bricks, leaving Big Edie behind in the summer cottage for a new wife and a Mexican divorce. The Bouvier family money had been absconded with by Edie's brother, a dirty drunken and abusive bastard nicknamed "Black Jack". Black Jack Bouvier, notably, was the father of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - who, along with her sister Lee, ended up with the lion's share of the family trust. Big Edie's health began to fail. Little Edie moved into the Grey Gardens summer cottage in the Hamptons to be with her mother.

Little Edie suffered from alopecia and her hair began falling out in clumps at some point. When she left NYC at age 35 she was unmarried, a failed actress, bald, publicly screwing a married old man, and likely suffering from major psychiatric problems (a relative said that he witnessed her climb a tree and set her remaining hair ablaze). She would not be invited to many cotillions from now on.

The two Edies lived in near isolation among their former stinking rich peers. For thirty years the house crumbled around them as they sold off pieces of jewelry to stay alive. Legions of cats and raccoons joined the family and had the run of the house. Little Edie dreamed up choreographed routines and pieced together costumes for grand floor shows from her imagination by picking through old clothes in the attic. She pirouetted and tap danced around piles of cat shit and rotting garbage as her mother laid on a mattress upstairs - living on canned pate and pints of ice cream - singing along to her old records and dreaming of lovers past.

By the mid 1970's the neighbors had enough of the collapsing hovel up the block. Out of the kindness of her heart Jackie O swept in to have the home brought up to code and avoid having her aunt and cousin embarrass her any further by becoming homeless. Likely much to the former first lady's chagrin, the whole kerfuffle brought enough attention to the two Edies that a documentary crew saw the opportunity to film the train wreck that their life had become. The two aging beauties were paid a small amount of money to be filmed in their "cleaned up" home for a few months.  Raccoons picked up where they left off, deconstructing an entire wall during the course of filming. A cat was filmed taking a shit next to a huge commissioned oil portrait of Big Edie in her charmed youth. A camera swept past Big Edie's feet, highlighting a horror show of long yellow old person toenails set against a mattress blackened with filth and piles of animal diarrhea within inches of the old woman. The two argued and reminisced, planning birthday parties and impromptu recitals in these surroundings, oblivious to the squalor.

With the release of "Grey Gardens", Little Edie got the big break she had been after for 35 years. The film is mesmerizing. As Little Edie prances and coquettishly flirts with the film makers, one can draw direct correlations of her theatrical every day musings to both "Sunset Boulevard" and "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" Oddly enough, it's hard to decide if the Edies are truly absolutely fucking koo koo, or just denied any sort of tangible survival skills by their privileged upbringing.

Little Edie's signature 'do-rags, constructed of towels or old sweaters to cover her chrome dome, have become a favorite look for some of Hollywood's more famous wealthy ragamuffins (think the Olson twins, Nicole Richie, or any other anorexic pseudo-star you've seen donning a kerchief on her head in the last 3 years). She has become a rock-solid American cult icon.

Big Edie died not long after the film as released. She reportedly received none of her promised fee for participating. Little Edie died in 2002, still being cared for through the kindness of others - and with a few loyal "fans".

American Heroes and Madmen #8: Mike Tyson

Mike Tyson: Heavyweight Champion of the World, Convicted Rapist, Distraught Father, Lifelong Lover of Pigeons

"As a little boy I was fat and everybody picked on me."

 

watercolor, 12x16"

American Heroes and Madmen #7: Michael Alig

In the late 1980's Michael Alig was a very successful NYC club promoter from South Bend, Indiana. His theatrical persona and outlandish costumes were, in part, the aesthetic basis for a small pop-culture cult who were known as the "Club Kids". The club kids became an international phenomenon. I remember seeing a bunch of  them on "Maury" when I was about 18, and they were all about my age. I also remember thinking that they were kind of sad in their life's solitary quest for people to look at them and watch them prance around on ecstasy, being fabulous.

By 1996 Michael Alig was a junkie, addicted to heroin, cocaine, ketamine, rohypnol and more. After an argument with his drug dealer and roommate Angel Melendez, Melendez allegedly started to strangle Alig. Michael's friend Robert "Freeze" Riggs stepped in and bashed in Melendez's head with a hammer. At that point, both Alig and Riggs made a bad situation worse by trying to inject the dealer with intravenous doses of Draino, and by pouring Draino into his mouth and duct-taping it shut. Admittedly in a foggy drug haze, they kept the corpse around the apartment for a week, at one point stuffing it into a chest that people were using to sit drinks on at a house party. After the body started to reek, Riggs, who apparently had an disinclination for cutting up former friends, paid Alig ten baggies of heroin to dismember Melendez. They dumped him, in pieces, in the Hudson River. Alig told everyone, including a crew filming a documentary, that he had murdered Melendez, but everyone thought he was just full of shit and looking for attention. After Melendez' torso was fished out of the river several weeks later, police picked up the duo, who admitted guilt. Alig was sentenced to 20 years, which he is currently serving in Attica, NY. A movie was made about Alig, starring Macaulay Culkin, called "Party Monster", as was a documentary film of the same name.

Alig, these days, suffers from Cauda Equina Syndrome, a CNS disorder that causes incontinence and involuntary bowel movements in some cases. He has to wash his urine and shit soaked sheets in the prison toilet. He is terrified of not being able to find a decent boyfriend if he gets out of prison.

His cult still exists, long after the club scene has fizzled out in Manhattan. You can reach him at:

Coxsackie Correctional Facility
Michael Alig # 97A6595
Box 999
West Coxsackie, New York, 12051-0999

http://nymag.com/news/people/24365/
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/longhand/riggs1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Alig
http://www.michaelaligclubkids.com/
http://rickx.com/movies/Alig.htm

American Heroes and Madmen #6 : Pope Michael I

David Bawden, Pope Michael I. Birthday picture for Anton.

Little Crown of the Blessed Virgin (American Heroes and Madmen #5: Michael Jackson)

Acrylic on canvas, 5' x 5'
Part of group show, opening Saturday, August 29th - Galerie Chappe, Paris France
"I Pray Daily for Michael"
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gouache, marker on paper