With regal disregard for the twenty-below cold, "Stroller" White crunched into Dawson, Yukon Territory, October 1898, flat broke, dragging a crude sled on which sat his blanket-wrapped wife and child. Those with less fertile imaginations might have sought an expedient job, but this didn't occur to Stroller even though he lacked funds for the night's shelter.
Pushing through parka-clad miners, Stroller located the town's print shop and promptly invented a hotel! The understanding printer allowed Stroller to set type and run off a few hundred fake letterheads. Headed "Sour Dough Hotel, 1333 Icicle Avenue," the sheets included numerous advantages in smaller type: Private Entrance for Ladies by Ladder in Rear"; "Spiked Boots Must Be Removed Before Retiring;" and "Every Known Fluid - Except Water - For Sale At Bar."
Stroller's bald humor caught on immediately, and he found an active market for his letterheads at $2 a dozen. By afternoon, he had to hire a helper and the "Sour Dough Hotel" became an institution, with facsimiles still being sold to tourists.
"My crude wit may seem a bit moth-eaten now," White said later, "but it brought me enough money in one afternoon to last until I landed a job on the "Klondike Nugget."
With news being mailed from Seattle, forwarded by steamboat to Skagway, then relayed by telegraph when it was working, rapid transmission of the news was practically unknown. Any newsman who expected to draw his second paycheck had to depend heavily on his own imagination and have at hand a supply of ready-written stories descriptive of stamped, gold strikes, love-nest shootings, and marriages of fancy women to prominent citizens, all with spaces ready for insertion of proper names.
In the tradition of Mark Twain, Stroller started writing such news items as "Tom Harris is looking for the blankety-blank that's been shooting holes in his fry pan." Or "The guy that sold so-called fresh eggs yesterday is being actively sought." A little later he was assigned to write a daily column, which E. J. White puckishly titled "The Stroller," a term as incongruous as its content.
Even with these chores, when a delay in news left great gaping holes in the columns, Stroller was instructed to get out and find a story which would be talked about from the " . . . Aurora Borealis to the Southern Cross - or don't come back!"
Stroller treasured his fob and in company with Casey Moran pushed out into the sixty-below fog to find the story. Next morning, the Nugget headlined:
RUINS OF NOAH'S ARK FOUND ON MT. KOYUKUK.
Stroller's exclusive yarn was a detailed account of an interview with the chief of a nearby Indian village. The chief told of being lost the previous summer in the haunted country of Koyukuk. There he had come upon a "big house like white man's town built inside a big canoe." The ruins were so old, the red man added, they had turned to stone. Thoughtfully, Moran carried a picture of Noah's Ark which the chief rapidly agreed was just what he had see. As a sidebar story, a sworn affidavit from the chief attesting to the truth of the discovery was printed.
Though neither the chief nor the Ark was ever found, the story caused a stir in Dawson and was picked up by the press associations before the hoax was admitted.
The lag in the news from the States continued even after the Noah's Ark story, and once again Stroller rose to the occasion. His sensational story concerned the appearance of the Ice Worms.
Stroller's story detailed the prevailing cold spell when the thermometer plummeted to 70-below for two days, As a consequence of the frigid weather, White wrote, there had been a heavy fall of blue snow and ice worms were popping to the surface to enjoy this enjoyable frigidity. Their joyous chirping was keeping residents of Dawson awake.
Despite the fact everyone knew there were no glaciers near Dawson, and certainly no such thing as blue snow, Stroller was immediately overwhelmed with avid questioners as soon as his story appeared. Though White insisted from the first the story was nothing more than a gag, he was accused of withholding information and they angrily insisted on details of the northern miracle.
Hoisted on his own petard, Stroller followed with a second column describing the habits and appearance o the ice worms. To his dismay, Dawson saloons began to advertise "Ice Worms Cocktails."
Understandably curious, Stroller walked into a saloon and ordered one of the advertised concoctions. The bartender winked and lifted the lid from an elegant cut glass bowl which contained a block of ice encasing numerous fat, while, luscious-looking ice worms. With a small hatchet, the bartender chipped ice away from a choice specimen, about six inches long, then dropped it in Stroller's glass along with an alcoholic mix!
Stroller paled and softly cursed the day he'd ever invented ice worms, but he manfully seized the glass, gulped down its contents, worm and all slithered down with horrendous ease.
Still urping, Stroller returned to his office to answer inquiries about the now-hated Ice Worm, and to write a column which would settle the hoax once and for all.
On his desk were letters from the Society of Scientific Research in London, and even the U.S. Department of Agriculture requesting complete data on the ice worms. Stroller was composing answers when a timid knock sounded and the bartender who'd served him the cocktail entered.
"Say, Stroller," the bartender began, "you know that drink you had?"
Stroller admitted he certainly did remember.
"Well, we couldn't find any real ice worms, se we faked 'em by poking spaghetti in gimlet holes in the ice and let them swell. Don't tell any of the other boys, will you?"
Despite Stroller's puckish humor, he could no longer stomach the gag, and consistently denounced the hoax. But Ice Worm Cocktails were still provided for Dawson checakoes - newcomers. And for an equally small price, the more credulous con purchase a postcard which depicts a bearded, sombreroed miner earnestly extracting a fat, white, luscious-looking ice worm from a glacier.
SOURCE
Real West Magazine VOL.1, NO. 5, September
1961
By Bob Young