Elmer Bitgood

STORIES ABOUT MEN who possessed extraordinary physical strength have been a staple of oral folk tradition since the days when Hercules worked as a stable hand, Atlas carried the weight of the world on his shoulders and blind Samson toppled tall buildings with a single tug. In Europe, legend cycles attached to strongmen frequently circulated so widely and over such long periods of time that natural features ultimately blended with supernatural elements to create truly national culture heroes, demigods who could dispatch a fire-breathing dragon, rid a nation of snakes or pull an embedded sword from a rock, as the need arose.
Such Old World epic heroes as Beowulf, St. Patrick and King Arthur, however, have few counterparts in native American folklore. Most of the "heroic" strongmen who have stirred the popular imagination of Americans across the land have been inventions of professional writers, ad men or cartoonists. Their exploits have seldom, if ever, passed into folk tradition. Foremost among such "fakelore" musclemen, is, of course, the giant logger, Paul Bunyan. Originally promoted as authentic "tall tales" told by lumbermen in the Minnesota woods, the stories of Bunyan and Babe, his blue-eyed ox, were actually the creations of one W. B. Laughead, an advertising man who worked for the Red River Lumber Company in Minneapolis. Written as advertising copy, the Bunyan tales bore very little resemblance to the oral legends of the men who worked the lumber woods from Maine to Minnesota, and were, apparently, unknown in nineteenth-century logging camps.
Despite the fact that Paul Bunyan bears about the same relation to living folk tradition as a character in a television commercial, there is no denying the lasting hold that strongmen figures like him have retained on the popular imagination. Thus, literary creations like Washington Irving's Bram Bones, cartoon characters like Li'l Abner, Popeye and Superman and sports figures like Babe Ruth -- all of whom may be seen to demonstrate the superiority of brawn over brain -- continue to muscle their way into America's popular symbolism.
While truly national strongman-heroes are rare in the United States, many regions of the country have spawned anecdotal legends -- short, oral tales -- about individuals who have performed remarkable feats of strength and who have gained, because of their prowess, a lasting place in the folk legendry of their own group and locale. New England, in particular, has generated a rich collection of anecdotes about such local characters. Their exploits have found their way into numerous town histories and, in some cases, have been kept alive in oral tradition by generations of admiring local storytellers. Characteristically, however, the fame of such strongmen-heroes has seldom spread beyond the confines of their native stomping grounds.
One example of the local strongman-hero about whom an impressive number of anecdotal legends has clustered is "Tall Barney" Beal, the huge lobsterman of Beals Island, Maine. Although "Tall Barney" died in 1899, several professional folklorists, notably Richard M. Dorson, have collected and published ample evidence of the continuing vitality of Barney Beal stories in the oral tradition of the Jonesport-Beals Island area of the Maine coast. Another local character who possessed extraordinary strength was Barney Beal's contemporary and fellow State-of-Mainer, Jonas Lord, a machine shop worker in Wayne, Kennebec County. As late as the 1930s, anecdotes about Lord's feats of strength (he was so strong he would never wind his own watch lest he'd wind the stem right off) were still circulating in oral tradition in the Wayne area. Yet another typical New England strongman whose feats were preserved in the folk legendry of a limited area was Geoffrey Hazard, known as "Stout Jeffrey" among his family and neighbors in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. "Stout Jeffrey" even had a muscular sister who figured in some of his exploits. It is said, for example, that brother and sister would occasionally astound the local folk by alternately lifting -- "in playful sport" -- a full barrel of cider (31 gallons) by the chimes and holding it up to drink at the bung. Drinking from a full cider barrel lifted to the lips was apparently an achievement much admired by New England villagers. At least one account of such a feat can frequently be found among the region's strongman anecdotes.
While samples of local strongman legends have been collected and recorded from all over Connecticut, the number and variety of such anecdotes told about Elmer ("Li'l Elmer") Bitgood in the Voluntown-Plainfield area of eastern Connecticut put Elmer in a class by himself. One of three brothers, Elmer was born in Voluntown around 1870, grew up on the family's Crooked Hill Road farm and then moved away, sometime around the turn of the century, to follow an itinerant life as a logger, sawmill hand and jack-of-all-trades, from Plainfield into western Rhode Island. Although his brothers, Paul and Doane, are usually dismissed by local storytellers as "not strong at all," Doane also earned some reputation as a strongman and figures in a number of the tales about Elmer. Paul gets very little respect from local legend-swappers; he became a physician. If he is recalled at all by keepers of the Bitgood flame, he is referred to, stiffly, as "the doctor."
Although Elmer Bitgood died in 1938, his deeds have been kept alive in the Voluntown-Plainfield area by several generations of storytellers. As recently as 1971, a folklore student collected almost twenty different anecdotal legends about Elmer's exploits and personal habits from a few living informants in Plainfield. If the occasional published scraps of Bitgood lore were combined with the "Li'l Elmer" stories still told by such old-timers as the ever-changing "gas house gang" at Cliff's Gas Station in Plainfield, the Bitgood legendry might approach in richness, if not in range of dissemination, the "Tall Barney" Beal repertory.
It seems that the Voluntown strongman earned at least a regional reputation for extraordinary strength at quite an early age. They tell the story, for instance, about a stranger who rode up to the Bitgood farm one day, looking for Elmer. When the visitor spied an obviously strong young fellow pushing a plow through a field by main force, he called out, "You must be Elmer Bitgood, the strongman." "Oh, no," came the reply. "I'm Doane, his brother." Then, lifting the plow from the furrow and holding it out with one hand like a pointer, he said, "That's Elmer over by the barn."
If that stranger thought Doane was big and strong, he was probably awed when he finally met his brother. Even at an early age, everyone said, Elmer was very large and very strong. A retired Voluntown farmer, whose father had been Elmer's friend and co-worker around the turn of the century, recalled the strongman's impressive physical appearance for the student folklorist in 1971:
God, he was a big man! His arms reached past his knees. Or down to his knees. When he was walking, his arms were long enough to bend down to his knees. I'm gonna tell you, he was a big man.
The same informant estimated that Elmer in his heyday weighed "350-something pounds," and several others confirmed that estimate. His arms, they agreed, were like "legs of mutton."
Another Plainfield resident, a teacher in his thirties, told the folklore student how he first heard about the giant woodsman:
Oh, I was just in grammar school then, maybe ten, eleven or twelve years old. In those days we used to go to school in a taxi and the taxi driver was a great big fellow. He was six-foot-four or better and weighed 250 pounds or more, maybe 275. He was huge. He was so huge that when he sat behind the taxi wheel, he used to have a big wide leather belt around his waist so that the steering wheel, when it rubbed there, wouldn't wear a hole in his clothes. Now that's a pretty good size boy... He was a huge fellow. And I don't know how the conversation came about, but one day we must have been talking about tug-of-wars or something, and he said, 'Did you know we used to have a tug-of-war championship here in Plainfield?' And we were joking and we said, 'No. I suppose you were the anchorman, you're so big?' And he said, 'No, not me. I was the small man on the team.' We said, 'You, the small man on the team, as big as you are?' And as I said, he was six-foot-four or better and 250 or better. And he said, 'Yeah, old Elmer Bitgood, he was the anchorman.' And he weighed 350 or better and I didn't measure as to any height, but kind of lean towards a figure of six-foot-eight, because he said that he [Elmer] used to tower over Herman [the taxi driver]. Herman was six-four or six-five, or somewhere around there. And he said that he [Elmer] was the anchorman. So that's the first I heard about the Bitgood boys.
Given his enormous size, it is not surprising that anecdotes about Elmer Bitgood's capacity for food and drink are local favorites. The retired Voluntown farmer interviewed in 1971 spoke on several occasions about the Bitgood boys' traditional Sunday dinner. Every Sunday, he said, Mother Bitgood used to cook forty-five pounds of beef for her sons, but by the time Elmer had helped himself to the meat, there was hardly enough for anyone else in the family. The Sunday dinner always ended in a fight between the Bitgood brothers "because only one of them was going to have any meat to eat." "They were supposed to have forty-five pounds of beef cooked," the storyteller marveled, but "I still don't believe that, either." If there's any truth at all to the story about Elmer's original "Big Beef" dinner, there may also be some truth to the traditional story that Mrs. Bitgood had to prepare her boys' meals in a washtub.
Another popular story about the Bitgood eating habits has been collected from several different sources. As the Plainfield teacher recalled it:
Well, in those days, well it's still about sixteen miles from Plainfield to Norwich, but once a month the boys [Elmer and Doane] would hook up the horse and do their monthly shopping -- and they'd get a barrel of crackers. Well, in those days I guess they came in bulk, and the cracker barrel was, I guess, about a 55-gallon barrel. I guess that's what they were, and they were full of crackers. And on the way back, they opened the barrel and by the time they got half way back, maybe a little further, the barrel would be empty. So it's a pretty good indication that they ate well.
Then, there's the legend about Elmer's consuming passion for Connecticut fresh milk. A retired farmer, whose father had gone to school with the Bitgoods in Voluntown, reported that his father told him often about how Elmer "was supposed to drink a ten-quart can of milk, up by the schoolhouse, when I was going to school." But he added skeptically, "I didn't see him do it." However, the ten-quarts-of-milk-at-a-gulp anecdote has been collected from others. According to one version, Elmer went one day to a local farmer, said he was a mite thirsty and asked for a drink of milk. The farmer pointed to a full ten-quart milk can and told Elmer to help himself. Much to the dairyman's astonishment, the huge man lifted the can to his lips, drained the contents without taking a breath and asked the farmer if there might be more available.
Such was the Bitgood boys' reputation for eating, they say, that during the years when Elmer and Doane worked in the area, none of the churches around Plainfield dared publicly advertise their fund-raising suppers. The churches had learned from sad experience that a visit from the Bitgoods to one of their "all-you-can- eat-for-fifteen-cents" ham-and-bean suppers spelled financial disaster for the event. Whispered invitations always ended with the warning, "Don't tell the Bitgoods." Nevertheless, word-of-mouth news occasionally reached the Bitgood ears. Once, according to legend, Elmer and Doane showed up at a baked bean supper, and each paid for five meals. After polishing off the huge helpings they had paid for, the lads emptied every platter in sight and topped off their meals by consuming the contents of a six-quart bean pot. The Bitgoods gave poignant meaning to the term "eating up the profits."
They also tell the story about the time Elmer was working with a logging crew over in the woods around Rice City, Rhode Island. Since he was going to be in the area for a spell, he rented a room in town at a boarding house operated by a Mrs. Love. Elmer warned his hostess that he had a hearty appetite and insisted on paying her board for two people. The one thing he asked in return was that there be no house restrictions at the dinner table.
Since Elmer Bitgood lived in the days before the advent of specialty clothing stores catering to oversized men, his outfits had to be specially tailored to fit his mountainous frame. But because he never wore anything but "a blue shirt and a pair of overalls," only the overalls required major modification. According to one informant, Elmer used to buy the biggest bib-overalls he could get, at a country store in Oneco. Then he'd get his mother to split them at the seams and sew in a big, V-shaped gusset in the rear. Last, he'd take a second pair of suspenders and put them on the back, to hold the whole ensemble together. Even so, since the bib in front "would just about reach his belly-button," Elmer took to wearing the overalls backward, for comfort rather than modesty, probably. Elmer also preferred to go barefoot most of the time, never wearing shoes except when the winter snow was deep. He always "worked in the woods barefooted, right in the briars, anywhere," until the snows came. But as soon as early spring arrived, off came his boots -- until the snow piled up the next season.
From the days of his youth until he passed middle age, "Li'l Elmer" Bitgood was known the region 'round for the extraordinary weights he could lift or throw and the heavy loads he could pull. One of the favorite anecdotes about the former activity has to do with Elmer's exhibition of rock-lifting and tossing. It seems that after Elmer and Doane had moved to Plainfield and gone to work in the woods, a large number of spectators would gather at the sawmill site every Sunday to watch the strongest men around try to compete with Elmer in a kind of primitive weight-throwing contest. The weights: 375-pound stones, in which stout iron rings had been secured. According to tradition, Elmer always prepared for the stone-toss by hefting a smaller, 300-pound rock in one hand and pumping it up and down to "warm up" for the major event, much as an on-deck hitter in baseball swings a weighted bat before going up to the plate to hit. Finally, Elmer would grab onto the ring, lift the 375-pound boulder off the ground with one hand, slowly swing it back and forth to gain momentum, and then let it fly. Needless to say, Elmer's ten to twelve-foot heaves were never really challenged; so the rock-throws were more exhibition than contest. Except for brother Doane, none of the other men even managed to lift the 300-pound "warm-up" stone off the ground!
Although the legendary stone-tossing seemed to dominate the Sunday gatherings in the woods clearings, there are many traditional anecdotes about other weight-lifting feats performed by Elmer (and sometimes Doane) during those recreational outings. These exploits frequently took place in a barn located near one of the mill sites. One such marvel was reported by an eyewitness, who used to join the crowd of spectators when he was a child of ten or so:
They [Elmer] had a big bag of sand made out of a big heavy canvas and both ends were sewed right in it so there wasn't no place to get out of it. Must have weighed 175 pounds, or something like that. [Then] they used to lay down and set it up on end, and lay down on the floor, and tip it over on their back and get up with it. That bag of sand was, oh, gosh, I guess it was about that big around. It was all sand. And a big canvas bag so you couldn't get a finger in it nowhere. And they'd lay down on the.floor, lay down on the side of it, and tip it over on their back, and roll it up on their shoulder, then get up with that bag. He did. After he rolled it on himself, he'd get up with it! That was in that barn, too, when I went there.
Still another extraordinary feat of weight-lifting which took place in the barn at the sawmill was recalled by the same eyewitness: Well, then, they [Elmer] had a -- I don't know what you call it -- a trapeze, or what it was, in the barn. And all kinds of belts up there and everything, you know, where they used to go. And they had a calf picked up by the teeth, or something [i.e. Elmer would hang from the "trapeze" and lift the calf with his teeth by means of a belt attached to a strap girdling the animal.] Brought it on the.floor and they picked that [calf] up! Then he [the calf] got bigger, and he had to lift that! They [Elmer] had to lift that cow up when she got to be -- I don't know how much she weighed. [i.e., Elmer continued to lift the animal with his teeth until the calf had become a full-grown cow.]
Apparently both Elmer and Doane Bitgood were proud of their reputations as strongmen and delighted in their exhibitions of strength from the time they were boys in Voluntown until they were nearly middle-aged men. This meant, of course, that in order to perform up to expectation at the regular public exhibitions in the woods, both had to keep in shape and stay "in training" between performances. Since they lived, of course, before the days of "fitness centers" or YMCA exercise rooms, that meant constructing and using their own apparatus.
One such rig -- probably good for improving leg and shoulder tone -- was developed, according to one informant, before the boys moved to Plainfield. It consisted of a platform, raised just high enough off the ground so the Bitgoods could crawl under it on their hands and knees, upon which they loaded 2400 pounds of fieldstone. Then Elmer and Doane would scramble underneath and slowly rise up. "They just lifted the legs off the ground, that's all they did," said one storyteller.
Once the Bitgoods had moved to Plainfield, Elmer regularly worked out on some makeshift barbells which he constructed out of 55-gallon barrels of sand attached to each end of some shafts discarded from the sawmill. Depending upon the amount of sand in the barrels, each "barbarrel" might weigh anywhere from 1000 to 1800 pounds, according to an eyewitness to the Bitgoods' work-out sessions. It is said that Elmer used to warm up with a 1275 pound "barbarrel," "lift it right over his head," before moving to the more challenging 1700-1800 pound apparatus. However, they say it didn't take Elmer much more exertion to press the heavier weights than it did the lighter ones. In addition to his lifting huge rocks, sand bags, "barbarrels" and cows, they say Elmer Bitgood also hoisted a host of other impressive weights. In fact, if the hangers-on at Cliff's Gas Station in Plainfield are to be believed, there was scarcely a heavy object for miles around that Elmer didn't have his way with at one time or another. Take the time he picked up the steam boiler out at the sawmill, for instance. In those days, the steam-run sawmills were set up wherever the logging crews worked in the woods. One day they needed to lift the mill's huge boiler, to hitch it to a wagon. After several tries failed to move the tank, Elmer was called in. He stuck a railroad tie right into the fire-box, put his shoulder under it, lifted the whole boiler right off the ground and held it until it was secured to the wagon.
Another time, at Danielson, so the story goes, he lifted a railroad freight car off the tracks and refused to put it back down again until he got his price for the performance (Elmer was not above taking money for his feats). Then, of course, there was the business with the flour barrels. It seems that one day on the return trip from Norwich with a load of supplies, the Bitgoods' wagon got so bogged down in the mud that the horses couldn't pull it up the steepest hills. So, every time they came to a grade, Elmer would lighten the horses' load by pulling two full flour barrels off the wagon, tucking one under each arm and climbing up the hill with them. When Doane and the wagon reached the top of the hill, he'd hoist the barrels back onto the wagon -- until they reached the next incline.
Only one of Elmer Bitgood's reputed weight-lifting accomplishments -- picking up a Model T Ford -- seemed unimpressive to a principal source of Bitgood anecdotes: That's nothing. I've done that myself. I took a Model T once by the front end and set it on its back and tipped it up like this. They weren't that heavy. That's when I was strong. I used to be able to pick a Model T up by the crank [the starter-crank in front of the car's hood] when I was a young fellow. Take the crank, pick it up and set it right on its back. Turn car. You know how a turn car was made? Set it on the end. Set it right straight up and down. Since Elmer Bitgood's ability to play "turn car" (or even to pick up a Model T and carry it around) was one of the few weight-lifting deeds which apparently could be matched by other reasonably strong young men in the Plainfield area, his Model T exploit never seemed much worth passing along.
What was worth telling others about, however, besides the remarkable weight-lifting stories, were descriptions of Elmer's weight-pulling feats. While there may not be as many of the latter as the former in current oral tradition, the ones that are often make up in quality what they may lack in quantity.
Probably the most frequently-heard anecdote concerns the Bitgood boys' unorthodox plowing activity. One member of Cliff's "gas house gang" recalled it this way:
God, them fellas [Elmer and Doane] had some kind of harness. They used to plow the garden with a harness. One [Elmer] would pull the plow and one [Doane] held the plow. Sure, they used to do that.
Frequently the anecdote about Doane plowing the field hitched up to his brother Elmer in harness is completed with a variant on Doane's plow-pointing episode: Somebody went by one time and they [Elmer and Doane] were plowing and they asked them where Beach Point was. And [Elmer would] pick up the plow right by the handles and [point it] towards Beach Point and [say]: 'That's where Beach Point is.'
Another informant, somewhat younger than the one just quoted, tended to play down the plow-pointing accomplishment, but finally admitted to some admiration for the feat: Those [stories] were kind of hard to believe, like, you know, picking up the plow [when someone] asks, 'How do you get to Norwich?' and he [Elmer] picks it up and says, 'That way.' Well, this is probably so because in those days they were small, relatively small, wooden plows with the iron sheer. So, actually, the weight of those things weren't too much. The problem there would be the balancing at the end of the wrist, you know? That's a lot of weight, once you string it up there about six feet.
One day Elmer's experience with pulling a plow came in handy, when a Model T Ford full of out-of-towners got mired down in mud at the foot of a steep hill, right in front of his house. They say he never hesitated a moment. He just pulled down his plowing harness from its peg on the wall, hitched himself up to the sunken car and pulled it to the top of the hill, astonished passengers and all. He wouldn't take a cent for his troubles, either.,p> Another story about Elmer's weight-pulling prowess and his pleasure in performing before crowds of admiring friends and neighbors is associated with the horse-pulling events at the local country fairs in eastern Connecticut. Back in the early part of the century, everyone used to go to the agricultural fairs, where the horse-pulling contests were among the most popular attractions. Farmers for miles around would enter their best teams of draft horses in a competition to see whose team could haul the heaviest load a given distance in the shortest time. A sled piled high with rocks served as the traditional "pull." The old-timers around Plainfield swear that it became the "in" thing to do at these events to wait until the sled was so heavy that no team of horses in the contest could even move it. Then "Li'l Elmer" would appear with his harness, they'd hitch him up in front of the draught-team and he'd wow the crowd by pulling the horses and the sled full of rocks over the approved distance.
Perhaps the greatest number of anecdotes recalling Elmer Bitgood's weight-pulling activities was generated by his participation in the local rope-pulls or tug-of-wars. As noted already, Elmer was always in demand as anchorman on the Plainfield teams that challenged all comers, in town and out, in what was probably the favorite kind of athletic contest in the rural Connecticut towns of the early 1900s. One informant whose memory goes back to those halcyon days said that two men, sometimes the Bitgood brothers, sometimes Elmer and another strongman, like Herman, the taxi-driver, always challenged five men on the other side -- and were never known to lose. It is said that before a five-man team was scheduled to pull against a two-man team anchored by Elmer Bitgood, they practiced by tugging on a rope tied firmly to a large oak tree. This way, they said, they gained a "feel" for what it was like to pull against the huge woodsman. Elmer's opponents always believed that if they could uproot the tree, they might have a chance to win the tug-of-war. Tradition has it that neither the oak nor Elmer ever swayed an inch. As one old-timer put it, "Elmer got that rope around his back, and they never set him up, never. He got that rope around him and got his feet around that rag [a wet rag used to mark the middle of the rope] -- and that was it."
For all of his size, strength and pleasure in showing off his prowess as a strongman, Elmer Bitgood had the reputation of being a taciturn, not overly-ambitious person. Legend has it that an embarrassing speech impediment rendered him unusually quiet, while his casual approach to hard work caused his mother no end of annoyance. If his mother sent him out to the woodpile for wood to stoke the fire, so one story goes, Elmer would always return to the house with "one or two [sticks], no more." And, they say, the neighbors found it unwise to hire him to do more than one day's work. Not only was he inclined to take his time with the chores, but he ate so much that they couldn't afford to keep him on the job any longer than that.
Like most very large, very strong men, Elmer was also rather easy-going and slow to anger, according to tradition. He probably realized instinctively that he could easily kill or maim someone in a fight, so he generally kept his temper under control. However, there were limits to the giant's patience, as illustrated by one anecdote still treasured by the gang at Cliff's Gas Station in Plainfield: Then another one that tickled my fancy was way back in those days, Plainfield was a pretty good-size town, and they used to have these traveling shows [carnivals] come in. And, naturally, the whole town would go see these shows because, you know, actually it was the center of amusement at the time. One time they had this wrestler there, and offered $50 for anybody that would get in the ring with him for three minutes, you know? And, naturally, everybody was afraid to get in there with this big wrestler. He was about six-foot-two, according to the old-timers. And they finally coached [coaxed?] old Elmer to get up there, and he didn't want to go in there. They finally got him up there and the promoter says to Elmer, 'Don't worry, he won't hurt you.' Elmer says, 'Okay, I won't hurt him.' But anyway, something went wrong. I guess the guy tried to throw Elmer down, you know, because he had to pin him in three minutes, or lose $50. And in those days $50 was quite a bit of money. I guess he tries to throw Elmer down and maybe hurt Elmer a little bit, or something. Because what I heard from the old-timers, Elmer just got a little p.o.'d and picked this old guy up and bounced him off the floor and sat on him for the rest of the time, which was about two-and-a-half minutes. Just sat there, 350 pounds or better, sitting on the guy and the guy couldn't move. So the promoter was a little perturbed because he lost $50, and Elmer was $50 richer, I guess.
Folklorists who specialize in the collection and study of personal legends have noted that the longer anecdotes about local strongmen circulate in oral tradition, the greater the chance that supernatural elements will creep into the descriptions of their exploits. And now that some seventy or eighty years have passed since the heyday of Elmer Bitgood, such appears to be the case with his legendry. How else can the following anecdote be explained?
As the story goes, Elmer found himself in his middle years working in a woolen mill. One of his main jobs was hoisting huge bales of wool from the floor of the storage shed into a loft three stories above the floor. This was kind of a tricky business, because it not only required great strength, but a nice sense of balance as well. Then, one day Elmer got a little too close to the edge of the gallery, lost his footing and plunged toward the floor, fifty feet below. On the way down, however, realizing that this would be his last fall if he hit the floor, he saw a way to save himself. As he passed the second story level, he glimpsed out of the corner of his eye an open door on the first floor. Behind the door he could see great mounds of soft wool lying around on the floor, awaiting the loom. Quick as a wink, Elmer made what might be called a "mid-course correction," flew right through that open door and landed safely in the pile of wool. No question, he was some strong man!
An interviewer once asked one of Elmer's relatives who remembered him well if the anecdotes about her kinsman were true. "Why, you know how stories grow," replied Miss Annie Bitgood of Oneco. "You start with a feather in the mornin', and by night it's a feather bed." And as long as the Elmer Bitgood feathers fly, there will probably continue to be feather beds at night. But at least those feathers have been plucked from a real creature. In Connecticut, anyway, who needs Paul Bunyan?

from Legendary Connecticut by David E. Philips / ISBN 1-880684-05-5 / $17.95

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