Euell Gibbons
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Euell Theophilus Gibbons | |
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Born | Clarksville, Texas, U.S. | September 8, 1911
Died | December 29, 1975 | (aged 64)
Other names | Ewell Gibbons[1] |
Spouse | Freda Fryer |
Euell Theophilus Gibbons (September 8, 1911 – December 29, 1975) was an
Early career
Gibbons was born in Clarksville, Texas, on September 8, 1911, and spent much of his youth in the hilly terrain of northwestern New Mexico. His father drifted from job to job, usually taking his family (a wife and four children) with him.[2]
During one difficult interval of homesteading, Gibbons began foraging for local plants and berries to supplement the family diet. After leaving home at 15, he drifted throughout the Southwest, finding work as a dairyman, carpenter, trapper, gold panner, and cowboy. The early years of the Dust Bowl era found Gibbons in California, where he lived as a self-described “bindle stiff”[2]: 98 (hobo) and, in sympathy with labor causes, began writing Communist Party leaflets. Later in the 1930s he settled in Seattle, served a stint in the Army, married, and worked as a carpenter, surveyor, and boatbuilder.[citation needed]
During the late 1930s, Gibbons was still giving "more time to his political activity than to his work, and more time to wild food than to politics."[2]: 100 After the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939, however, he renounced Communism and spent most of World War II in Hawaii, building and repairing boats for the Navy. His first marriage, Gibbons recalled, became a "casualty of the war,"[2]: 103 and in the postwar years he chose the life of a beachcomber on the Hawaiian Islands.
After entering the University of Hawaii as a 36-year-old freshman, Gibbons majored in anthropology and won the university's creative-writing prize. In 1948, he married Freda Fryer, a teacher, and both decided to join the
They relocated to the mainland in 1953, where, after a failed attempt to found a cooperative agricultural community in Indiana, Gibbons became a staff member at Pendle Hill Quaker Study Center near Philadelphia, cooking breakfast for everyone every day. Around 1960, through his wife's urging and support, he followed through on his earlier aspirations and turned to writing.[citation needed]
Literary career and celebrity
At the request of a New York literary agent, Gibbons agreed to rework the draft of his novel (about a schoolteacher who wowed café society with opulent meals of foraged foodstuffs) into a straightforward book on wild food.[2]: 68 Capitalizing on the growing return-to-nature movement in 1962, the resulting work, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, was an instant success. Gibbons followed it up with the cookbooks Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop in 1964 and Stalking the Healthful Herbs in 1966. He was widely published in various magazines, including two pieces in National Geographic.
The first article, in the July 1972 issue, described a two-week stay on an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine where Gibbons, with his wife Freda and a few family friends, relied solely on local resources for sustenance.[3] The second, in the August 1973 issue, featured Gibbons, along with granddaughter Colleen, grandson Mike, and daughter-in-law Patricia, stalking wild foods in four western states.[4]
His publishing success brought him fame. He made guest appearances on The Tonight Show and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, and received an honorary doctorate from Susquehanna University. A 1974 television commercial for Post Grape-Nuts cereal featured him asking viewers, "Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible." While he recommended Grape Nuts over pine trees (including the oft-repeated quote that Grape Nuts' taste reminded him "of wild hickory nuts"), the commercials gained attention and fueled Gibbons' celebrity status.
In Larry Groce's 1976 novelty hit "Junk Food Junkie", the singer extols his healthy lifestyle, claiming to be "a friend of old Euell Gibbons". (The record was released after Gibbons' death.)
Often mistaken for a
Gibbons is considered a saint by the God's Gardeners, a fictional religious sect that is the focus of Margaret Atwood's 2009 novel The Year of the Flood.[5][6]
Death
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (February 2019) |
Gibbons died on December 29, 1975, aged 64, at Sunbury Community Hospital in Sunbury, Pennsylvania,[7] of a ruptured aortic aneurysm, a common complication from Marfan syndrome.[8]
Bibliography
- Stalking the Wild Asparagus (1962)
- Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop (1964)
- Stalking the Healthful Herbs (1966)
- Stalking the Good Life (1966)
- Beachcomber's Handbook (1967)
- A Wild Way to Eat (1967) for the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School
- Stalking the Faraway Places (1973)
- (collected in) American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes, ed. Molly O'Neill (ISBN 1-59853-005-4
- Feast on a Diabetic Diet (1973)
- Euell Gibbons' Handbook of Edible Wild Plants (1979)
References
- ISBN 9781461746775.
- ^ a b c d e f McPhee, John. "A Forager." In A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968, pp. 65-118. Originally published in The New Yorker, April 6, 1968, pp. 45-104.
Informative profile of Gibbons recounts the two men's week-long November camping trip, made without aid of fishing rod or shotgun, subsisting on foodstuffs gathered along their route in central Pennsylvania. - ^ Gibbons, Euell (July 1972). "Stalking Wild Foods on a Desert Isle". National Geographic. 142 (1): 46.
- ^ Gibbons, Euell (August 1973). "Stalking the West's Wild Foods". National Geographic. 144 (2): 186.
- ^ "Saints". The Year of The Flood. Retrieved 2022-09-07.[permanent dead link]
- OCLC 290470097, retrieved 2022-09-07
- ^ "Euell Gibbons Dies at 64; Wrote Books About Natural Foods". The New York Times. December 30, 1975. Retrieved 2008-03-23.
- ^ The Secret to a Longer Life? Don't Ask These Dead Longevity Researchers. "The wild-foods enthusiast Euell Gibbons was far ahead of his time in his advocacy of a diverse plant diet — but he died at age 64 of an aortic aneurysm. (He had been born with a genetic disorder that predisposed him to heart problems.)," The New York Times, March 9, 2018
External links
- The Plowboy Interview: Euell Gibbons, Mother Earth News, May–June 1972.
- Euell Gibbons Biography by John Kallas, Ph.D., Institute for the Study of Edible Wild Plants and Other Foragables. Article with Photograph
- Euell Gibbons Biography by John Sunder. The Handbook of Texas Online
- New York Times appreciation of Euell Gibbons by John McPhee Wild Man
- Euell Gibbons Post Grape Nuts television commercial on YouTube, 1974.