{"id":453,"date":"2007-10-25T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-25T07:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.wordpress.com\/2007\/10\/25\/how-i-killed-howard-hughes"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:35:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:35:53","slug":"how-i-killed-howard-hughes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/how-i-killed-howard-hughes\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Killed Howard Hughes"},"content":{"rendered":"

My blogging may be a bit more inconsistent over the next few days, as we\u2019re traveling as a family. The young\u2019uns have no school next Monday and Tuesday, so we\u2019re yanking \u2018em out early to get in a mini-vacation. If you haven\u2019t spent twelve hours in a car with five young children, then you haven\u2019t lived!<\/p>\n

Right now, we’re mid-journey. I’m writing this from the belly of the beast – the fifth floor of the Annie Oakley tower in the Buffalo Bill Hotel \u2013 Primm, Nevada. Classy joint. It’s only $37 a night, and, believe me, it\u2019s worth every penny, almost.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re driving down to Los Angeles to visit family and spend a couple of days at Disneyland. (I also have some secret meetings at the Black Tower – don’t tell Languatron!) We\u2019d promised our children we\u2019d do this long before the wildfires broke out \u2013 so far, no one in our family is at risk, and the blaze may actually keep the Disney crowds small. (That\u2019s probably too heartless to mention, but I\u2019d be lying if I said we hadn\u2019t thought of that.)<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know that there\u2019s much to say about the wildfires that hasn\u2019t been said, except that those who blame these on global warming or whatnot ought to go soak their heads. I grew up with Santa Ana wind-fueled wildfires every year, and some were pretty nasty. Nature has been burning that spot of earth for millennia, regardless of property values. To think this is some kind of new or remarkable phenomenon is to be willfully ignorant.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I’ve made the journey from SLC to LA more times than I can count. The summer of ’87, Foodleking and I made the 700+ mile drive about every other weekend. As a kid, the family used to trek up to the Wasatch Front to visit both sets of grandparents. We\u2019d always stop over either in Vegas or St. George. I was passing this info along to my kids as we ate dinner at the Cedar City IHop.<\/p>\n

I told them how their grandfather, like many Mormons of his era, used to work for Howard Hughes, and that meant he\u2019d spent some time seeing the casino business up close and personal. I reminisced about how, as a teenager, he walked me through the Desert Inn and pointed out all the one-way mirrors above the Blackjack tables where thugs spied on all the players to catch card counters. He demonstrated in exquisite detail why the house always wins, and that all the bright lights of Vegas weren\u2019t paid for by casinos that lose money.<\/p>\n

Then my wife reminded me of another Howard Hughes story, which made the kids laugh out loud. It\u2019s one of my earliest memories. It\u2019s certainly the earliest of my memories that involves poop.<\/p>\n

The year was 1972. I was about three and a half years old. My father, for reasons I couldn\u2019t possibly fathom, brought the whole family to Florida and, since he was working for Howard Hughes at the time, he was able to finagle the use of Howard Hughes\u2019 private Florida residence for the duration of our stay.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I don\u2019t remember much about the house except that I wasn\u2019t allowed to touch anything. (Hughes had never touched anything in it, either \u2013 word was, he\u2019d never even been there. And after my visit, I made sure he never would be.) The one thing I do remember, however, was the large, elegant indoor swimming pool.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t yet able to swim, so my brother and I just waded into the water from the shallow end. We played quite cheerfully, and my brother, three years my senior, was a treasure trove of information. He told me of many things that day, but the lesson that made the biggest difference was his explanation of the wonders of chlorine, and how you could pee in a pool all day long if you wanted to, because the chlorine in pool water made the pee magically disappear.<\/p>\n

Well, I was only three, but I was a prodigy when it came to the rules of logic. And in my mind, everything that happened in a bathroom was all part of the same miracle of life. And if chlorine could work wonders on #1, just imagine what it could do on #2?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I took a dump in Howard Hughes\u2019 pool.<\/p>\n

The log I dropped floated aimlessly out into the water, and I seem to recall wondering why I could still see it. Shouldn\u2019t the chlorine have vaporized it by now? I asked myself. Oh, well. I can\u2019t be bothered. Who wants to play Marco Polo?<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until a few hours later that the turd was discovered, and the whole world turned upside down. I remember seeing a man with a net fishing the thing out of the water. I remember hushed voices and a general sense of panic. Nobody was wearing a nuclear fallout suit a la Bill Murray in Caddyshack<\/span>, but the pool was drained and the whole place scrubbed. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if the house was summarily burned to the ground the day after we left.<\/p>\n

And that is how my life began.<\/p>\n

Is it a coincidence that Howard Hughes died just a few years later, pathologically obsessed with microscopic germs? Could it have been my bowels that brought down the billionaire?<\/p>\n

Make of it what you will. As for me, I don\u2019t believe in coincidences.<\/p>\n

I believe in poop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Myblogging may be a bit more inconsistent over the next few days, as we\u2019re traveling as a family. The young\u2019uns have no school next Monday and Tuesday, so we\u2019re yanking \u2018em out early to get in a mini-vacation. If you haven\u2019t spent twelve hours in a car with five young children, then you haven\u2019t lived! ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4944,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions\/4944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}