Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for a
Speaker 1: one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams. They called
Speaker 1: me ben No, No, it's the end of the nub
Speaker 1: as we know it. Wait, it's the nub of the
Speaker 1: year as we know it. Nubbings, what's a nub? I
Speaker 1: like a nub? I like the I like the expression
Speaker 1: whittled down to a nub in referring to someone just
Speaker 1: like being insufferable and just like beating you down and
Speaker 1: your resolve until there's nothing left of you. Um, that's
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it's kind of heavy actually if we think
Speaker 1: about it. But also Nubbins that that's that sounds like
Speaker 1: a cute little like a gummy of some sort, like
Speaker 1: a gum drop maybe because like a Pixar squirrel that
Speaker 1: gives you good advice and has a weird thing about
Speaker 1: acorns from a tree. I don't know. Yeah, I always
Speaker 1: thought for some reason, some some words just hit us
Speaker 1: on these levels that are difficult to articulate, Like everybody
Speaker 1: hates the word moist. I used to ask people what
Speaker 1: their least favorite word is and a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't like the word moist. For me, nub is kind
Speaker 1: of like a boundary crossing word when it shows up
Speaker 1: in conversation, even even correctly applied, I'm just like, whoa,
Speaker 1: this is a there's a nub conversation. Now we're at work, dude,
Speaker 1: kind of like, how you know you've seen it before, nol.
Speaker 1: I have a hard time not giggling when we're in
Speaker 1: conversations and someone references dongle, and I'm like, Okay, get
Speaker 1: the dongle. We've got to make sure we're ready to record.
Speaker 1: That's just that's a me problem. But I think that's
Speaker 1: a societal problem then, because I'm just I don't know
Speaker 1: who came up with the word dongle if they did,
Speaker 1: because they thought it was inherently funny and they were
Speaker 1: hoping to evoke giggles from across the land. Um for that,
Speaker 1: we thank you, kind sir or madam whomever came up
Speaker 1: with this term, but it is inherently absurd. Nub by
Speaker 1: the way is defined by Webster's Oxford English Dictionary as
Speaker 1: the crux or central point of a matter. The nub
Speaker 1: of the problem lies elsewhere that use of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two means what's the what's the second meaning? I think
Speaker 1: this is what most people in the US mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the second one. And this is the one
Speaker 1: that is uh apropos for today's episode. A small lump
Speaker 1: or protuberance he pressed down on the two nubs on
Speaker 1: top of the phone. Okay, but also it can refer
Speaker 1: to the stump of a severed body part, which also
Speaker 1: could be seen as a small lump or protuberance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where we're going today. Well on, my friends, So
Speaker 1: we have heard this story. We don't know about your
Speaker 1: neck of the Global Woods, folks, but every every region
Speaker 1: of the US has some kind of bizarre small town story.
Speaker 1: And today's story is about a place called nub City,
Speaker 1: which is gonna be familiar to fans of documentaries. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be familiar to people who have gone on Southeastern
Speaker 1: road trips, and it's gonna be infamous to people living
Speaker 1: near a town called Vernon, Florida, because Vernon, Florida has
Speaker 1: the street name nub City. Why is it called nub City.
Speaker 1: That's what today's episode is about. Warning folks, there is
Speaker 1: there is possibly some graphic descriptions of bodily injury here. Yes,
Speaker 1: and also um uh, let's say abhorrant human behavior. What's
Speaker 1: another word for that? Uh, that's the word. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: you mentioned been that every region of the country, of
Speaker 1: the world perhaps has its own strange and bizarre stories,
Speaker 1: none more so than the region what we call Florida,
Speaker 1: specifically the Panhandle. It feels like that is just rife
Speaker 1: with odd behavior and tales of debauchery and just just
Speaker 1: general strangeness. In the nineteen fifties and sixties, Vernon was
Speaker 1: what you call a company town, you know, or or
Speaker 1: a mono industry town, right. We talked about that recently
Speaker 1: on stuff they don't want you to know. In terms
Speaker 1: of the manufacture of asbestos, a lot of towns in
Speaker 1: Russia and around the United States were entirely tied to
Speaker 1: the industry, the one industry that that town was built around.
Speaker 1: In this case, in Vernon, it was a sawmill. Uh.
Speaker 1: And like many places that rely so much on one industry,
Speaker 1: and more specifically one you know, physical mill or factory,
Speaker 1: Vernon became depressed, not like got the sads, but like
Speaker 1: you know, financially depressed in terms of its economy because
Speaker 1: the sawmill closed. Uh. In that town only had a
Speaker 1: population between five hundred and eight hundred people who were
Speaker 1: all out of the job. And you know a lot
Speaker 1: of times when things like this happened, people just move on.
Speaker 1: But the folks of Vernon, Florida had a little bit
Speaker 1: more pluck to them than the average Oh yes they did.
Speaker 1: And I suggest we hold just one moment on on
Speaker 1: the big reveal here, but keep this name in your head, folks,
Speaker 1: nub City. Uh. And you guys might if I jump
Speaker 1: in here is this is reminded me of an episode
Speaker 1: we did earlier this year. I cannot remember the name
Speaker 1: of the town, but we did that episode about the
Speaker 1: Bowl Weevil, Yes, saving a town in Alabama, because it's similar.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, a town it was built on
Speaker 1: one industry was caught in that case and their industry
Speaker 1: got depressed. And it was actually a good thing enterprise
Speaker 1: because yeah, enterprise Alabama, that's what it was. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: um because it helped them expand their industry. And let's
Speaker 1: just say Vernon took a very different direction. You gotta
Speaker 1: do what you gotta do. And we also, as awkward
Speaker 1: is is to shout out our other show that we do.
Speaker 1: We do want to shout out stuff they want you
Speaker 1: to knows Florida Man episode which solves the mystery about
Speaker 1: why Florida Man became a thing, and it's actually it's
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's pretty sad story. Actually. But but even
Speaker 1: if Florida Man laws did not apply and do check
Speaker 1: out that episode, eventually people would have to learn about
Speaker 1: the tragic and unusual events of Nub City. It's, like
Speaker 1: you described notes on the panhandles, very small. If you
Speaker 1: are reading through different parts of the town's history, you'll
Speaker 1: see that it's in a very rural area. It's about
Speaker 1: a hundred miles east of Pensacola, west of Tallahassee. It
Speaker 1: used to be it had a sold mill like we're saying.
Speaker 1: It also was once upon a time a shipping route
Speaker 1: for gopher tortoises. Uh, this is you know, spoiler it is.
Speaker 1: It is not a booming industry and hasn't been for
Speaker 1: a long time. And these folks had it rough man.
Speaker 1: Their industries were closing down. They were no longer on
Speaker 1: a major shipping routes for steamboats, and the railroads passed
Speaker 1: the town by. Voters moved the county seat somewhere else,
Speaker 1: and people are leaving for college. They're never coming back.
Speaker 1: There's a big brain drain. You can read all about
Speaker 1: this an article on Tampa Bay dot Com. Not going
Speaker 1: to give you the title just yet. Things were getting desperate.
Speaker 1: We're right where you were describing. No. Mid nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: into the nineteen sixties. Really when Vernon's residents said something
Speaker 1: has to be done and they picked I would say
Speaker 1: one of the most famous systemic bad guys in modern America.
Speaker 1: They picked insurance companies as their victims, and they started
Speaker 1: doing a scam, a scam that calls them in arm
Speaker 1: in a leg heyo. Okay, first of all, I have
Speaker 1: to say, there is a gentleman mowing my lawn. Um
Speaker 1: it's I've let it, let it go too long. It's
Speaker 1: the season when the leaves drop and you don't really
Speaker 1: have to worry about keeping your lawn nice. But I'm
Speaker 1: having some family over for Christmas and so having someone
Speaker 1: blow off all the leaves and kind of make things nice.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately we don't have the luxury to stop and
Speaker 1: hold for the leafman. Um. So he's gonna he's gonna
Speaker 1: be part of this episode two. But he has appears
Speaker 1: to be moving away from my studio window. Can we
Speaker 1: name the Leafman? I'm just gonna call him the leaf
Speaker 1: the leafman. Come. Maybe it's like sir Leefman, earl of Blow.
Speaker 1: I don't know. That could go a couple of different directions,
Speaker 1: but but you know, no, we have had the same
Speaker 1: situation on my end before. So we're just gonna welcome
Speaker 1: him to the show the way we ware cats and
Speaker 1: the various other side characters that that dropped by. Uh,
Speaker 1: I had chainsaws last week. Chainsaw, Yeah, the chainsawman. So
Speaker 1: so they will join us on this journey. Okay. By
Speaker 1: the end of the fifties, people notice something weird. Nineties
Speaker 1: insurance like policy walks and underwriters and analysts and everybody
Speaker 1: was looking around. They said, hey, the Florida Panhandle is
Speaker 1: responsible for not half, but two thirds of all of
Speaker 1: these particular accident claims. This particular kind of accident claim
Speaker 1: in the entirety of the U s. What was this
Speaker 1: very particular accident, Uh, dismemberment. I guess for that, I mean,
Speaker 1: what's the word. Yeah, that's the right word, right, or
Speaker 1: is it more specific than that dismemberment? Loss of limb?
Speaker 1: You nailed it. Loss of limb. Yeah. When I think
Speaker 1: of this rememberment, I think of, like I guess, because
Speaker 1: I have a six six sad mind, I think of
Speaker 1: a full taking a part of a human person piece
Speaker 1: by piece. Right, But it can just be a single
Speaker 1: dismemberment of of of our arm or a hand or
Speaker 1: a foot, right, and that's the deal, right. The people,
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly how it happened. One person came
Speaker 1: up with this idea and realized that it paid to ching.
Speaker 1: The insurance company paid out for the loss of limb,
Speaker 1: and then others appeared to follow suit. At this point,
Speaker 1: we're not sure, at least by we, I mean the
Speaker 1: insurance company, whether or not this is a scam, because
Speaker 1: you know, Florida even then probably already had a bit
Speaker 1: of a reputation as being a little bit wild and
Speaker 1: wooly and rugged. You know, a lot of potentials for
Speaker 1: hunting accidents and things like that. So you would get
Speaker 1: reports of people having hands shot off, for example, people
Speaker 1: getting in farming accidents perhaps what else, Whether kind of
Speaker 1: reports were we seeing, Yeah, there were. There were a
Speaker 1: number of ways this would happen. Their official reasons became
Speaker 1: it became difficult to pars whether these were truly accidents
Speaker 1: or where they or whether it was calculated acts of
Speaker 1: self injury. Um, maybe there was an accident in a factory,
Speaker 1: like you said, maybe someone did it on purpose. In
Speaker 1: a In a mental Pluss article by Brooks Hayes called
Speaker 1: Nub City, Vernon, Florida's decade long insurance scam, we learned
Speaker 1: the phrase nub club, which is the unofficial name for
Speaker 1: people who started receiving these injuries and started receiving checks
Speaker 1: for it. We also see that a few Vernon residents
Speaker 1: actually sawed off their own limbs, but it seemed most
Speaker 1: most of the people were point blank firing at their
Speaker 1: limbs with a shotgun. And insurance agents in the region
Speaker 1: we're going wild. Dad's stories about a guy who said
Speaker 1: he was aiming to shoot a hawk and he took
Speaker 1: off his own hands somehow with his gun farmer who
Speaker 1: saw his foot and thought it was a squirrel. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I know, I feel bad for laughing, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like that one's not true, right, he gotta have the
Speaker 1: cover story, right, And I mean, who are we, as
Speaker 1: meager insurance adjusters to question the veracity of this tale?
Speaker 1: Confirm It's like, I gotta ask about the guy shooting
Speaker 1: the hawk though, because we're talking about a shotgun, not
Speaker 1: a small gun. Is he firing with one hand? How
Speaker 1: does he shoot his own a hand off? Like it
Speaker 1: wasn't a misfire on his hand to frame the shot right,
Speaker 1: It was like doing it like a director where he
Speaker 1: kind of had it out the teacher of the little
Speaker 1: l shape, you know, and he was using it as
Speaker 1: sort of a makeshift site, and then he put it
Speaker 1: right in front of the barrel and blasted is probably
Speaker 1: thumb and four finger off. First of all, you know
Speaker 1: shoot hawks with a shotgun? Do you that's a bit
Speaker 1: more of a precision tool. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I
Speaker 1: would think you would. That would require a longer range weapon.
Speaker 1: I think of a shotgun is more of a close
Speaker 1: range weapon. It stuff. It depends on what kind of
Speaker 1: shot you're putting in it, you know. But also also, yeah,
Speaker 1: this here's the other factor that makes these stories sketchy
Speaker 1: and suss to insurance agents. It turns out that many
Speaker 1: of the people who are reporting these things had also
Speaker 1: taken out multiple specific types of insurance policies, sometimes just
Speaker 1: days or get this, hours before the injury occurred. So
Speaker 1: I have had a long day filing my insurance claims
Speaker 1: and I was tired, and I thought my foot was
Speaker 1: a squirrel. So well, I mean that that's like, that's
Speaker 1: the biggest red flag in the insurance industry. And this
Speaker 1: is me complete insurance, you know, outsider. But you know,
Speaker 1: if someone takes out a policy on their wife and
Speaker 1: then the wife turns up dead, that is going to
Speaker 1: be the suspect, the first person that is looked at
Speaker 1: for committing this crime. If someone takes out kind of policy,
Speaker 1: you know, like a like a particular I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you you we We just recently had to re up
Speaker 1: our work insurance plan and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: pages in those e documents that talk about things like
Speaker 1: limb and like very specifics that a lot of us
Speaker 1: just kind of gloss over. But the fine people of
Speaker 1: Vernon would not have glossed over those pages. They would
Speaker 1: have zeroed in on those pages and taken out as
Speaker 1: much as they could. Because if you pay in US
Speaker 1: or you check that box, you can ensure your if
Speaker 1: they're like your livelihood right, you can ensure your limbs
Speaker 1: for more than just a standard policy. Isn't that right, guys,
Speaker 1: It is absolutely right. You can also, I mean there's
Speaker 1: any number of like long term disability things you can do,
Speaker 1: unintentional death or accidental like injuries that make you unable
Speaker 1: to work. Uh, it's a business for sure, you know.
Speaker 1: And they you're right, they did read these things carefully.
Speaker 1: The way that privatized insurance works. For anybody who lives
Speaker 1: in a in a first world country with first world healthcare,
Speaker 1: you might need to understand how US healthcare works. It's
Speaker 1: it's a business that has calculated for profit, not for
Speaker 1: the health of the customers. It's a product that becomes
Speaker 1: more expensive when you use it. So the first thing
Speaker 1: that happens. We see this everywhere in the US for
Speaker 1: other kinds of insurance, like your zip code will affect
Speaker 1: how much your car insurance is, for example, because they'll
Speaker 1: look at how many accidents occur in that zip code.
Speaker 1: And these folks were facing mounting insurance premiums, which is
Speaker 1: the money you have to pay for insurance. Because they
Speaker 1: were like, hey, thanks for you know, working with United
Speaker 1: Blue of Florida or whatever your monthly cost for this
Speaker 1: long term disability, dismemberment insurance or whatever. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: a little higher because a lot of people in your
Speaker 1: neck in the woods are losing stuff. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: same reason that, like, if you moved to a big
Speaker 1: city from like a more rural area or a smaller town,
Speaker 1: your car insurance will go up. Why because you're in
Speaker 1: a situation where you're much more likely to get into
Speaker 1: a car accident or be hits, you know, because there's
Speaker 1: just the odds go up when there's more cars in play,
Speaker 1: and when you know you're driving in narrower streets and
Speaker 1: like more kind of tricky conditions. Right, it's the same
Speaker 1: exact deal. Your insurance premium goes up by virtue of
Speaker 1: where you are, based on the likelihood of a particular
Speaker 1: event to happen there. And since Vernon at this point
Speaker 1: I believe was reporting what has it been, something insane
Speaker 1: like two thirds of the dismemberment reports or insurance claims
Speaker 1: in the whole United States. Yeah, I do have. That
Speaker 1: was the Panhandle, Hanhandle. That's that's even that's even crazier.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just one little sliver of Florida, which
Speaker 1: is quite a large state that makes up a big
Speaker 1: chunk of the of the East Coast. So yeah, these
Speaker 1: insurance companies were understandably losing their ship and starting to
Speaker 1: be like, you know what, I don't think we're gonna
Speaker 1: start inste I don't think we're gonna ensure people that
Speaker 1: live in this part of the country anymore. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: there were there were other things that were kind of
Speaker 1: messing with that average. One guy, a guy named Murray
Speaker 1: Armstrong who was working for Liberty National. He said that
Speaker 1: he found a customer who took out insurance with twenty
Speaker 1: eight to thirty eight different companies before he lost his
Speaker 1: left foot. Yeah. There was a point made in a
Speaker 1: fabulous article from our pals at Mental Flaw Snub City Vernon,
Speaker 1: Florida's decade long insurance scam by Brooks Hayes that said,
Speaker 1: at the height of this, uh, this grift, it was
Speaker 1: making some people millionaires. Yeah. Yeah, at least we know
Speaker 1: that by the nineteen sixties, at least fifty residents had
Speaker 1: gotten in on this strategy and they were getting payments
Speaker 1: of anything from five thousand to three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: And even though five thousand was a lot more back
Speaker 1: then and purchasing power, that still seems like not enough
Speaker 1: my me to lose a body part permanently, because you
Speaker 1: think about what would you how you would handle the
Speaker 1: rest of your life, prosthetics, walking, manipulating tools. These people
Speaker 1: were desperate, and we're talking about it with some levity
Speaker 1: just because the stories, the cover stories in particular, sounds
Speaker 1: so hilarious. But these were very serious times, and you know,
Speaker 1: like you said no, The insurance companies quickly rocked the trend,
Speaker 1: and before long they started being much more skeptical. I
Speaker 1: believe they they took some of these folks to court
Speaker 1: for their claims. They would say, Okay, we don't believe you, right,
Speaker 1: we saw a picture of a squirrel next to a
Speaker 1: picture of a foot shoe on and shoe off, and
Speaker 1: they look different, So we'll see you in court. But
Speaker 1: the problem was, now, if you're going to a jury trial,
Speaker 1: you have to convince a jury, not that the cover
Speaker 1: story is ridiculous, but you have to convince the jury
Speaker 1: that some one would knowingly take a firearm true themselves
Speaker 1: for a couple grands. Yeah, I mean, what what naive
Speaker 1: summer children we were back in those days, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think now this would not be hard
Speaker 1: to convince just about anybody of you know, we know
Speaker 1: people are capable of really insane, depraved acts, you know,
Speaker 1: but even as as recently as the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: we were like, oh no, you couldn't convince the jury
Speaker 1: of of their peers. And this was you know, in
Speaker 1: presumably in the same region that anyone would would do
Speaker 1: this on purpose. No one could be that desperate, uh, people,
Speaker 1: I mean, we know that like a rabbit or like
Speaker 1: like an animal in a trap will gnaw off its
Speaker 1: own leg to get out of the trap. What more
Speaker 1: of a trap is there than financial destitution. That's a
Speaker 1: very good point. Yeah, And this is like, unless you
Speaker 1: are experiencing that kind of hardship, it can be difficult
Speaker 1: for people to put themselves emotionally mentally in that situation.
Speaker 1: Of all the people who went to court, not one,
Speaker 1: not one amputee in Vernon, Florida or the surrounding area
Speaker 1: ever got convicted of fraud. Like every time they went
Speaker 1: to a jury trial. The insurance companies lost, and so
Speaker 1: they changed their strategy as well. They got together and
Speaker 1: they hired a guy named John Joseph Jingles kidding. His
Speaker 1: name is John Joseph Heally, and he goes to Vernon,
Speaker 1: I love this kind insurance Colombo type figures, he's like
Speaker 1: our hero coming into kind of like crack the case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Edward Norton's character in a Fight Club. Right, he
Speaker 1: was an insurance investigator. That's right. So here's our fight
Speaker 1: club guy Colombo in Fight Club. That's John Joseph Healely.
Speaker 1: He goes to town, he's their man on the ground
Speaker 1: and he says, yeah, I am Well, we'll give you
Speaker 1: the actual quote. It was the way he reports back
Speaker 1: to the companies. He says, to sit in your car
Speaker 1: on a sweltering summer evening on the main street of
Speaker 1: nub City. He called it this in the official report,
Speaker 1: watching anywhere from eight to a dozen. This is his word,
Speaker 1: not ours. Cripples walking along the street gives the place
Speaker 1: a ghoulish, eerie atmosphere. Yeah, it sure does. And this
Speaker 1: investigation is laid out pretty extensively and accidentally on purpose,
Speaker 1: making of a personal injury. Underworld in America, Uh Mouthful
Speaker 1: of a title booked by Ken Dornstein, came out in
Speaker 1: nine and Dornstein says that Healy did not appear to
Speaker 1: think very highly of the town of Vernon. First of all,
Speaker 1: he's coming in there being pretty much convinced that there's
Speaker 1: a scam going on. He just has to find proof.
Speaker 1: He refers to these people pretty derisively in that quote
Speaker 1: that you just did for us Ben with the term
Speaker 1: now that would be considered pretty off. Uh. And he
Speaker 1: remarked um that he he believed that one of the
Speaker 1: and this could well be true, but he's saying it
Speaker 1: obviously with a bit of a there's an inherent sneer
Speaker 1: in this. To me that one of the most popular
Speaker 1: pastimes in Vernon was for folks to gather in the
Speaker 1: town square to quote watch the local stray Mutt's mate. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's there's a prejudice here, right, and let's not
Speaker 1: forget what he said was the number one That's right,
Speaker 1: that would have been the second most popular pastime, the
Speaker 1: number one being quote self mutilation for cash. So maybe
Speaker 1: not our hero of the story, No, No, he's definitely.
Speaker 1: He's definitely like a hard nosed antagonist right at best,
Speaker 1: and anti hero. But there's a story with very few heroes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel for the plight of the people
Speaker 1: of Vernon, but also like, wow, this is Cormac McCarthy production.
Speaker 1: Almost you know what I mean like the guy who
Speaker 1: wrote the road would write this kind of story. So
Speaker 1: he he says furthermore, you can also tell that these
Speaker 1: injuries are premeditated because Healy and his opinion, believes that
Speaker 1: people are removing the limb they need least, so he
Speaker 1: doesn't see a lot of cases of right handed people
Speaker 1: removing their right hand. A lot of left hands go missing,
Speaker 1: and there are more left hands and right hands because
Speaker 1: more people are going to be right handed in a
Speaker 1: random population. And you can certainly argue that again, I'm
Speaker 1: no limb lawyer here with that's circumstantial, right like that
Speaker 1: there's no inherent calculus involved in that would be hard
Speaker 1: to prove that intense on a one on one case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly could prove it as a trend, but again
Speaker 1: it's not a huge population, so it might be hard
Speaker 1: to to do or maybe not. Anyway, point is, they
Speaker 1: would oftentimes remove a left limb up top and a
Speaker 1: right limb down low, because people would be doing multiple amputations,
Speaker 1: taking out multiple policies. That way, the person could walk
Speaker 1: with a crutch, you know, because they would be like
Speaker 1: they would have the opposite. They would put the crutch
Speaker 1: under the one arm that wasn't amputated and then have
Speaker 1: the good leg on the opposite side yep. Yeah. Or
Speaker 1: as he also found, you could maybe learn about someone's
Speaker 1: injury in relation to their livelihood. He said, if someone
Speaker 1: had like an office job, they'll be more likely to
Speaker 1: take off a leg or a foot because they'll sit
Speaker 1: down for work. And he pointed out that a lot
Speaker 1: of white collar folks were doing this as well. A
Speaker 1: guy who owned a car dealership, so a pretty successful
Speaker 1: guy was found to have taken out one of his
Speaker 1: own eyes because he could use the four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollar insurance payment to buy a ranch. Now, all of
Speaker 1: this stuff is super grizzly. Obviously, sawing off your own
Speaker 1: limb is gnarly. But to me, I stuff, especially self
Speaker 1: inflicted I stuff, is one of the gnarliest things in
Speaker 1: light horror movies, like I remember the scene and uh,
Speaker 1: then those spoilers. You can't really spoil a twenty year
Speaker 1: old movie. But in Event Horizon, you know, remember the
Speaker 1: part I'm talking about the spaceship and as the spaceship
Speaker 1: goes into goes to hell, and you see these videos
Speaker 1: that are like blurry, crazy good videos of like the
Speaker 1: previous crew like clawing their own eyes out. That always
Speaker 1: gives me the heebie g. I love it. It is
Speaker 1: a slept on film because also I remember not to
Speaker 1: get too far off the rail here, But when that
Speaker 1: movie came out, the way it was promoted just made
Speaker 1: it seem like a run of the mill kind of
Speaker 1: sci fi adventure thriller maybe, And it was pure hell raiser. Man.
Speaker 1: It was like way above my pay grade at the
Speaker 1: age that I was when I saw that in the theater.
Speaker 1: It's got surgery stuff, it's gotten nasty stuff. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite, like my favorite unofficial HP Lovecraft movies.
Speaker 1: This is around the same era that actor was it,
Speaker 1: Sam Neil says, Sam Neil did some weird madness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did those around the same era. Yes, so event
Speaker 1: Horizon great. I stuff weird. I actually I can't remember
Speaker 1: if I told you this. I um, I went through
Speaker 1: a period where I was trying to see if I
Speaker 1: could just voluntarily donate one of my eyes. Uh oh,
Speaker 1: well it's a weird ben. Well, it's a thing that
Speaker 1: it's a thing that I is like thought experiment kind
Speaker 1: of like people you were really wanting to do this,
Speaker 1: you just wanted to find out if it was possible. Conceptually,
Speaker 1: I was on the fence. I would I think that
Speaker 1: like giving somebody the gift of site would be really cool. Also,
Speaker 1: I think I would look cool with an eyepatch. So
Speaker 1: it's not entirely well thinks I've seen you with an
Speaker 1: eyepatch before. Ben, there was a time where you were
Speaker 1: just going out with an eyepatch for fun. I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about it and just seeing if people would bring
Speaker 1: it up. But also, Ben, they've made leaps and bounds
Speaker 1: and glass eye technology. I'm sure you could get a
Speaker 1: convincing you know, prosthetics. Also, Ben, didn't you just have
Speaker 1: surgery on your eyes? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I don't want
Speaker 1: a premium dude. That was I mean, they can have
Speaker 1: my eyes, they can't take your. No, No, just one
Speaker 1: you know and you it's like how you cleaned up
Speaker 1: a car yourself. That's the point. Um, I totally forget folks.
Speaker 1: That is a true story, Noel, blast from the past.
Speaker 1: That was one of the one of my social experiments.
Speaker 1: I remember, that's the reason you good friends. Nolan is
Speaker 1: one of the only people who asked me about it. No,
Speaker 1: No was like, well, I think I think people mostly
Speaker 1: would assume that you'd had some sort of procedure or
Speaker 1: maybe the shingles or something like that, and they didn't
Speaker 1: want to be rude. But I knew you well enough
Speaker 1: to be like, what's up, man, I was so excited
Speaker 1: I leaned in, Max, you would have enjoyed this. I
Speaker 1: was so excited because I leaned in, and I remember, like,
Speaker 1: I don't think I messed with it quite at that
Speaker 1: point where I leaned in and told Noel. Uh, I
Speaker 1: was like, dude, you can just start wearing these. No
Speaker 1: one will ask you about it. It's amazing. And uh no,
Speaker 1: if I recalled correctly, your spots was okay, but why yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just envisioned Ben turns and his bumps into
Speaker 1: a wall if he has no depth reception, that's all
Speaker 1: part of the bit, that's all part of the all
Speaker 1: part of the thing. But in that case, that social
Speaker 1: experiment aside. And this is, by the way, uh, this
Speaker 1: was an exercise in persona changes or disguises. This was
Speaker 1: not meant in any way to mock site or lack
Speaker 1: of sightedness. And I think we need to we need
Speaker 1: to say that. But I was interested in, um seeing
Speaker 1: if I can voluntarily donate a cornea. Uh, it is
Speaker 1: I think a gray area unless you know somebody, right,
Speaker 1: unless it's like you're doing this for your sibling or something.
Speaker 1: You're just randomly giving away an eye. People look at
Speaker 1: you a scans the same way that insurance agents, oh
Speaker 1: we got there, looked askance at these people in the city,
Speaker 1: because this is if you're purposely injuring yourself. It turns
Speaker 1: out that is a fairly common type of insurance fraud.
Speaker 1: And heally in in the book you had mentioned earlier, No,
Speaker 1: he is saying that rings of these people can occur,
Speaker 1: like people will collaborate. Sometimes it's a close knit family
Speaker 1: or community, and then other times there is just a
Speaker 1: region where people catch on to this idea, and that
Speaker 1: seemed to be the case with nub City. And he
Speaker 1: was like, look, there are a lot of accidents occurring
Speaker 1: in the same place in a short period of time.
Speaker 1: He says, here's what happens. One guy gets away with it,
Speaker 1: meaning self injury fraud. He tells a friend about it
Speaker 1: after he collects and his friend says, that's a cool idea,
Speaker 1: But his friend tries to kind of one up it
Speaker 1: and takes out even even bigger insurance policy right up there, Annie,
Speaker 1: as as they say, and let's not forget there's only
Speaker 1: about five residents of this town at the time, and
Speaker 1: only about a dozen or so were involved in this,
Speaker 1: but many of them did it multiple times again, causing
Speaker 1: these insurance premiums just go through the roof. And as
Speaker 1: Heale say, I solved it pretty quickly this quote. Everyone
Speaker 1: already knew about the town, and the witness to the
Speaker 1: injury was a guy who had witnessed another phony accident.
Speaker 1: There were lots of holes in his story, so essentially
Speaker 1: this came crashing to a halt. Nothing lasts forever, even
Speaker 1: something is incredible as what The New York Times described
Speaker 1: a three year orgy of self maiming. Yes, I love Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the event Horizon right there of self maiming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have to watch of the Horizon. Uh. Yes, great
Speaker 1: Christmas movie, Yeah, which is insane, Sam Neil, If you're okay,
Speaker 1: I think and it's got a cult status for sure,
Speaker 1: but I think it even did okay in the theater.
Speaker 1: It's got a cliffhanger, it's got it's got everything I
Speaker 1: want in his story, weird power, super Okay. I'm not
Speaker 1: turning this into it and it is round tomatoes right, absurd,
Speaker 1: absolutely blasphemy. That doesn't make any sense. People just didn't
Speaker 1: get it. You know's got Hulu Premium. We can watch
Speaker 1: it right now. I've got Hulu Premium and the episode
Speaker 1: right now. Max. We don't have time. We've got to
Speaker 1: get to the stunning conclusion of this, because, like we said,
Speaker 1: nothing lasts forever. This, uh, the proverbial Aquimini curtain was
Speaker 1: closed on this chapter in Vernon's history, but not before
Speaker 1: it became so notorious because to to the the investigator's point,
Speaker 1: this is like an open secret. At this point right
Speaker 1: in the region everybody knew was called nub City. You
Speaker 1: don't get a nickname like that for nothing. Um and
Speaker 1: words spread to one of my favorite I think, probably
Speaker 1: one of the most famous documentary filmmakers in the world,
Speaker 1: a guy named Errol Morris, who at this point was
Speaker 1: early in his career, in his twenties. I think he
Speaker 1: was really just getting started as a documentary filmmaker. He's
Speaker 1: known for films like The Thin Blue Line, Um The
Speaker 1: Fog of War. Also, his son Hamilton Morris, has that show,
Speaker 1: Hamilton's Pharmacopeia. Yeah, iceory. He like takes all the weird
Speaker 1: drugs and stuff. He's a He's an odd character, but
Speaker 1: anyway comes from a neat line of creative of folks
Speaker 1: and um. Errol Morris caught wind of what was going
Speaker 1: on down in Vernon, down in nub City. He saw
Speaker 1: a little blurb in a newspaper about a place called
Speaker 1: nub City and it it made him raise his eyebrows.
Speaker 1: Want to check it out? Yeah? Yeah. He was about
Speaker 1: twenty years old. Sorry, he was in his twenties at
Speaker 1: the time. And he had heard about this in the
Speaker 1: fall of nineteen seventy six when he came across a
Speaker 1: newspaper clipping that caught his interests just like you said,
Speaker 1: so he said, you know what, I'm gonna go down.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a film about what's happening in nub City.
Speaker 1: He's read this piece in the New York Times Sunday
Speaker 1: magazine and it's the Heally piece where Heally is talking
Speaker 1: about the worst cases in his career and he says, Wow,
Speaker 1: there's this self mutilation in this small town in northwest Florida.
Speaker 1: And he says, I've got to find out more. He
Speaker 1: visits and speaks with John J. Healy, who doesn't, by
Speaker 1: the way, say the specific name of the town in
Speaker 1: the article. He uses the nickname nub City. And eventually
Speaker 1: this guy heally tells Errol Morris, all right, the real
Speaker 1: name of this place, if you must know, is Vernon, Florida.
Speaker 1: But you can't go don't go there. It's not the
Speaker 1: kind of place you want to be snooping around. It's
Speaker 1: it's got a bad vibe. And so the director promptly
Speaker 1: ignores everything heally says and travels down to Vernon. He lives,
Speaker 1: He lives in the area, and he spends a year
Speaker 1: making this film. Um well, the focus of his film
Speaker 1: shifted right, like he was initially going to make a
Speaker 1: film specifically about this town where folks blow or saw
Speaker 1: or hack or maame their limbs off to collect insurance money.
Speaker 1: So this would have been in the late seventies, early eighties,
Speaker 1: So this would have been, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: generations removed from like the peak of this practice, you know,
Speaker 1: which was taking place in the fifties and sixties. So
Speaker 1: we would have had anyone that was still around who
Speaker 1: was one of the nub clubbers would have been quite
Speaker 1: old at this time, or it would have been like
Speaker 1: their descendants, you know. And obviously this is not a
Speaker 1: cam that was running anymore. This is a part of
Speaker 1: the history of the town that probably some folks you know,
Speaker 1: who were part of that history wouldn't really want out there,
Speaker 1: especially by some outside or New York City socialized intellectual
Speaker 1: filmmaker documentarian. What you're doing with that camera. We can
Speaker 1: say that because we're from the South, but can but
Speaker 1: we live or we live here at least, But so Yeah,
Speaker 1: he maintains that he loved, loved, loved the people of Verdon,
Speaker 1: But then he also points out these strange quotes. Uh.
Speaker 1: One sheriff told him. This is from Errol himself, when
Speaker 1: sheriff said, down here, we don't have motors, we have
Speaker 1: disappearances and these people this is great. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: like I said, um he uh, he initially pursued that angle. Um,
Speaker 1: And he tells it himself that you can read in
Speaker 1: this mental Flass article that we cited earlier. He knocks
Speaker 1: on the door of a double amputeam man who was
Speaker 1: missing an arm and a lay on opposite sides of
Speaker 1: the body minds you, which he refers to as the
Speaker 1: preferred technique so that you could use a crutch like
Speaker 1: we were saying. And then he goes quote his buff
Speaker 1: son in law, a marine beat me up. I decided
Speaker 1: whatever I was doing was really really stupid and dangerous.
Speaker 1: He wasn't sent to the hospital, thankfully, but he did
Speaker 1: change the folks of the film. And you can now
Speaker 1: check this out. It's a documentary from ninety any one
Speaker 1: called Vernon, Florida, and it focuses more because you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to imagine a town where people are compelled
Speaker 1: to like blow their limbs off or hack their limbs off.
Speaker 1: A gotta be some characters in there. And what Errol
Speaker 1: Morris does in the film Vernon Florida's highlights some of
Speaker 1: those characters, uh, including like uh one guy who's like
Speaker 1: a really avid turkey hunter to doing all these like
Speaker 1: turkey calls and stuff. And there's like another guy who's
Speaker 1: like a weird kind of tap dancer or something that
Speaker 1: they're they're all it's very gummo, kind of like the
Speaker 1: Harmony Kouran movie Gummo, but like a real documentary. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And this refocus is move of self preservation, right, and
Speaker 1: it's still is a very strong film. It premiers at
Speaker 1: the New York Film Festival, and people are over the
Speaker 1: moon for it, and Morris himself, well, I think was
Speaker 1: was very affected by the poverty he saw and very
Speaker 1: inspired by this self reliance he saw, and he is
Speaker 1: still like as we record now, he's still apparently is
Speaker 1: thinking about returning to the original story, the story of
Speaker 1: what Healy called nub City. And with this we we
Speaker 1: kind of we kind of leave it there. The question
Speaker 1: becomes something for everybody listening in the audience today. Obviously
Speaker 1: we mean no disrespect to the people of Florida, but
Speaker 1: this is like an ethical question of quandary, what would
Speaker 1: you do? And we can't assume, you know that every
Speaker 1: person who did this committed this kind of fraud, was
Speaker 1: doing it because they wanted extra fun money. Some people
Speaker 1: may have been doing it entirely because they couldn't get
Speaker 1: a job and they had to feed their family. You know.
Speaker 1: I mean we talked, I made the analogy of an
Speaker 1: animal caught in a trap knowing it's you know, limb off.
Speaker 1: I mean, these these these towns, when they're economically depressed
Speaker 1: in that way, and your your choices to uproot your
Speaker 1: whole family maybe been living there for generations or to
Speaker 1: get clever, you know, or do something desperate. Um. There
Speaker 1: is a really interesting coda to this story. There is
Speaker 1: a an incident that happened in Vernon that actually made
Speaker 1: the national news way way separated from this whole nub
Speaker 1: city business. In ninety four, there was a bloody, really
Speaker 1: gnarly brawl that broke out at a very run of
Speaker 1: the Mills City council meeting where they were discussing the
Speaker 1: possibility of firing the town's only policeman. And it's caught
Speaker 1: on film. You can see this reporter from Panama City
Speaker 1: from the network w m b B was there and
Speaker 1: like there's screaming and punching and bloody noses and like
Speaker 1: men beating up women and like it's it's a real melee.
Speaker 1: But there's a very interesting detail that is almost like
Speaker 1: the creepy closing of a movie where you see this
Speaker 1: detail and like it's like kind of the like cherry
Speaker 1: on top. Yeah, this is a dust up, it's an altercation.
Speaker 1: It was filmed by a reporter out of Panama City.
Speaker 1: In the video, you see a city councilwoman Marvel Armstrong
Speaker 1: and her son Coleman fighting and you see a man
Speaker 1: who is missing one hand. That is uh Marvelle's husband J. C. Armstrong.
Speaker 1: And there's there's a thing where a reporter asked councilwoman
Speaker 1: Armstrong how her husband lost his hand, and she says,
Speaker 1: I think you know, so that's that is. That's not
Speaker 1: the end of the movie, pad role credits because we
Speaker 1: are extremely positive people, and we we always try to
Speaker 1: end on like a less heavy note. So we can
Speaker 1: at least no, in a positive note, we can say
Speaker 1: that Vernon, Florida, does have a specialty hamburger as an
Speaker 1: official town burger. There's that Maybe that's what we had
Speaker 1: it good? What's what's special? You like spicy? Do you? Okay?
Speaker 1: It is covered in Cajun seasoning and fried halapenos, and
Speaker 1: it's apparently it's very very hot, and it has its
Speaker 1: own theme song, slash, rhyme or jingle. This is according
Speaker 1: to Tampa Bay dot Com. Oh they should know if
Speaker 1: anyone burn and Vernon, Oh what a treat with its
Speaker 1: onions and peppers stacked up so neat Okay, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know kinking. No better way to end an episode of
Speaker 1: ridiculous history than with a ridiculous rhyme about a burd
Speaker 1: that's true. I know, I feel like we could freestyle
Speaker 1: off that one. Stacked up so neat Max dropped the beat, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: don't saw off your hands and feet? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or do yeah, It's entirely up to you. Even though
Speaker 1: the money feels so sweet, don't saw off your hands
Speaker 1: and feet. Wait beep? The beep is part of the rhyme. Okay,
Speaker 1: And you gotta wonder too, has it been enough time?
Speaker 1: Has enough time passed that in this kind of grift
Speaker 1: could pop up in some other rural pocket of the
Speaker 1: United States? Let us know? Yeah, yeah, I think. Let
Speaker 1: us know. You can find us on our community page,
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. We love it. We love the questions, We
Speaker 1: love the conversations that we see there. You can also
Speaker 1: find us on social media, not just as a show
Speaker 1: but as individuals. If you wish, you may find me.
Speaker 1: I am on Instagram pretty much exclusively at how now
Speaker 1: Noel Brown. If you want to tweet at me, I
Speaker 1: don't really look at it very often, but I am
Speaker 1: at embryonical on the twitters. How bet you've been bowling? Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for asking, Mr Biel Brown. You can get
Speaker 1: a behind the scenes look at the research I'm doing
Speaker 1: my various misadventures at Ben Bolan on Instagram, bo w
Speaker 1: l I n or at Ben Bowland h s W
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and Word on the Street is our very
Speaker 1: own super producer. Mr. Max Williams is also to be
Speaker 1: found on the tubes of the Internet. Yes, I am
Speaker 1: hiding out on Twitter. I don't say much, but I
Speaker 1: am always around and I'm at at L underscore Max
Speaker 1: Williams about a hot sports takes on their huh yeah,
Speaker 1: and a couple of star trek ones. No, actually, Ben,
Speaker 1: I changed that handle. Oh in the World Series, Michigan's
Speaker 1: in the college football Playoff. Okay, I'm a passionate sports
Speaker 1: fan again. All right, Oh well that's awesome, man, I'm glad.
Speaker 1: Oh it's gonna break my heart to be miserable. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be terrible in the New year. Probably ah. Yes,
Speaker 1: speaking speaking of terrible, terrible things. You can also you
Speaker 1: can also find our good pal slash Nemessies the Quister
Speaker 1: a k. H. Jonathan Strickland on the Internet, and if
Speaker 1: you do find him, ask him when he's gonna be
Speaker 1: on Ridiculous History again. Is that too much or we
Speaker 1: like pranking? Him at this point. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think we just haven't really followed up. Yeah, it's totally
Speaker 1: it is. These things do actually go peak behind the curtain.
Speaker 1: These things do typically go to the proper channels. He
Speaker 1: doesn't just a zoom, mom, Sorry to demystify the whole
Speaker 1: quister bit. Wow, I mean I could, I could saw
Speaker 1: in him right now. I me to say it's the same. No, no, okay, yeah, no, thanks,
Speaker 1: thanks of course to him, the quister. Thanks also at
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, who composed our amazing soundtrack. Thanks to you,
Speaker 1: Max Williams, son of Alex, no, brother of Alex, blood
Speaker 1: of Alex. How about that? Um Eve's Jeff Code and
Speaker 1: Christophrastiot is here in spirit? Who else, my mom? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the people of Vernon, Florida. I hope they're doing okay
Speaker 1: gay bluesier. And I'll say it, the people who work
Speaker 1: in those levels of the insurance industry. It can be
Speaker 1: often a thankless job. So don't let your work to
Speaker 1: find you. Uh, probably really erodes your trust and humanity.
Speaker 1: But it's also a very despicable profession. So maybe I
Speaker 1: don't no, no, no, not despicable profession in industry it's
Speaker 1: got a certain amount of hick to it, and I
Speaker 1: think even people that work within it probably are aware
Speaker 1: of that. So no offense meant to anyone working in insurance,
Speaker 1: and stay tuned for our next episode on something called
Speaker 1: a Little Ice Age. We hope you're having a wonderful
Speaker 1: last week of the year from We'll see you next Stempbooks.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.