Growing up in the 70s reading Richie Rich and Archie comic books, I was constantly reminded that a weight of 98 pounds was a weakling. What happened once you reach 100 pounds? Instant manhood?
Kind of a cruel advertising message placed within the pages of children’s reading materials. At the time I probably weighed in at 70 pounds in a wet bathing suit.
I was a good eater, prone to asthma, allergic to cats and swam three times a week at swim practice. But there ahead in black and white was my future. I was to be embarrassed by a muscle-headed bully on the beach with a tendency to kick up sand like a cat in a litter box.
Well, things didn’t happen that way. I did pass the 98 pound mark eventually, got a job as a lifeguard at the local resort and even made the cover of the resort brochure posing as one of the guests gazing into the eyes of my “lover” – one of female guards also enlisted into this romantic moonlight scene by the pool.
The head lifeguard, a California surfer dude type with bleached blond Tarzan hair and Venice beach body, told me I needed more pizza and beer. It would fill me out he said. I don’t know, my grandfather was lanky, I expected I took after him.
The only encounter I had with a touch guy was at a Halloween party my friend through at his apartment. The guy upstairs came and got really drunk. For some reason he comes up to me and says “You want to fight?” I don’t what his deal was but I just when for some chips and he moved on to some other activity like keeping his head from drowning in the toilet bowl.
- The popular Queen song “We Are the Champions” includes a clear allusion to the Charles Atlas ad: “I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face…”
- The ad appeared regularly in comic books of the 1940s (starring muscle-bound heroes who fit the “Atlas” mold) (“Charles Atlas”).
- 98-Pound Weakling was originally the 97-Pound Weakling
The Story of a Real Life an Amazing 98-Pound Weakling
Florida has long attracted men of big dreams. Rich men whose ability to dream could look out over a swamp of wetlands, twisted mangroves, snakes, mosquitos and alligators and think – this is where I will build my dream.
People like Henry Morrison Flagler who was one of the founders of Standard Oil Company. After leaving that company, he became a hotel and railroad developer. Starting in St. Augustine in 1885, he began building hotels and extending his Florida East Coast Railway all the way down the east coast of Florida and beyond to Key West.
Or Walt Disney who spearheaded the purchase of the huge acreage that became Walt Disney World
But for every rich big dreamer, Florida is full of big dreamers with smaller budget. Maybe call them the 98-pound dreamers.
One of these smaller scale big dreamers was Howard Solomon the man who build a castle in a Florida swamp. Solomon’s Castle covers 12,000 square feet and stands (at the moment) three stories high. It’s impossible to photograph in the blinding Florida sun, as Solomon has covered every exterior surface with discarded aluminum printing plates.
Solomon began building his castle in 1972. He had moved back to the States from the Bahamas looking for a quiet place to work, and found it in a Central Florida swamp. But when he discovered that the land he’d bought didn’t have enough high ground to build the horizontal building he wanted, he decided to build vertical. “I never was a very good planner,” he admits. “I decided, ‘Well, if I’m gonna go up, I might as well pick a style’.
Which brings us to another castle builder and dreamer in Florida. Not Walt Disney and his Cinderella’s Castle, but Edward Leedskalnin and his castle made out of Florida coral rock.
As you follow the tour of this roadside attraction, one hears the story of the jilted lover, rejected by his sixteen-year-old sweetheart on their wedding day.
What does broken hearted man do after that? Build a castle of course. If Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan could build the Taj Hahal for his fallen favorite wife why couldn’t 98-pound weakling build a castle of rock all by himself?
The story even inspired rocker Billy Idol to write a song about it called “Sweet Sixteen”.
Over the decades, many stories and wild theories have emerged about Leedskalnin and his castle. Some say he levitated the blocks with his mind, or by singing to the stones. Others suggest Leedskalnin had arcane knowledge of magnetism and so-called “earth energies.” One author suggested that perhaps Leedskalnin found that “there’s no such thing as gravity.” Since science supposedly could not explain the feat, wild speculation took hold.
Even today the Coral Castle’s website encourages the speculation about this 98-pound weaklings ability to magically move around massive stone pieces.
…Because there are no records from witnesses his methods continue to baffle engineers and scientists, and Ed’s secrets of construction have often been compared to Stonehenge and the great pyramids…
https://coralcastle.com/whos-ed/
Supposedly 98 pound weakling Ed Leedsakalnin never owned a car, rode a bicycle and had no access back in the 1920s to modern machinery like cranes, forklifts and backhoes.
…mystery mongers arrogantly assume that those living in earlier times (such as Leedskalnin, or the ancient Egyptians) were not clever or resourceful enough to possibly have created impressive engineering feats without extraterrestrial aid or mysterious powers. This view betrays an ignorance of history and sadly underestimates human ingenuity.
https://www.livescience.com/680-mysterious-coral-castle-fanciful-myth.html
Ed wasn’t really 98-pounds – he reportedly 5 feet tall, 129 pounds, but was chronically sick with a respiratory illness, probably cause by all of that rock dust but legend says it was tuberculosis healed by the Florida sun.
The guides at Coral Castle are coy about Ed’s methods as the man was himself when he gave the guided tours when the castle first opened. On a recent tour a guide said, “Now, I know you all think Ed used magic to build this place, but he didn’t.”
Of course not. More likely Ed used the tried and true technologies of the day and the principals of physics – levers, pullies, “block and tackle” and hoists. Ed had worked his way through the Pacific Northwest to work in the lumber and foresting industry, Industries that used levers, pullies, “block and tackle” and hoists to move giant Redwoods out of the woods.
Coral Castle or the “castle of secrets” as Lenord Nemoy calls it in the above segment of “In Search Of”, is really hyped up in this segment where the various parts of the castle are given an extraordinary dose of mystery. Ed is described as a “frail little hermit”. Nemoy goes on to suggest the Ed might have harnessed the “ancient knowledge of anti-gravity”. Ed is described as a little man that weighed no more than 90 pounds.
If anything Coral Castle is the revenge of the 98-pound weakling using his brain over brawn to move heavy objects.
Edward Fielding is a fine art photographer based in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire.
Read more at this great blog post: https://bittersoutherner.com/coral-castle-a-haunting-monument-to-love-or-aliens-or-limestone-coral-castle