On April 9, 2010, Mienhardt Raabe, one of the last surviving
Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz died at the age of 94 after his heart stopped
as “averred by a local coroner”, according to a clever Wikipedia writer.
Why clever? Because Raabe who played a Munchkin coroner in
the classic film’s fantasy Emerald City, had one uncredited 13-second line
concerning the death of the Wicked Witch of the East:
“As a coroner I
must aver
I
thoroughly examined her
And
she’s not only merely dead
She’s
really, most sincerely dead.”
My bet is that the irony would not have been lost on
Raabe. As a youth, he did not believe
there were other small people until he visited the Midget Village at Chicago’s Century
of Progress in 1933. Raabe, who was
about 42 inches tall, worked for many years as a spokesman for the giant meat
products (read hot dogs) company Oscar Mayer where he was known as “Little
Oscar, the World’s Smallest Chef.” Raabe
drove the first Wienermobile, an idea attributed to Carl Mayer, the company
founder’s nephew.
But Raabe was bigger than just using his size for
entertainment and to make a living. He
had an accounting degree and an MBA. He
served as a pilot in the Civil Air Patrol during World War II, and was married
for 50 years to a woman his height who died in a car accident in 1997.
Raabe’s version of the Oz Yellow Brick Road ended at Penney
Farms, a North Florida retirement community dating back to 1926 when J.C.
Penney for department store fame planned to develop a village for experimental
farming. The town was incorporated in
1927 and the stock market crash of 1929 caused Penney to scale back his
plans. Plan B for the magnate was
retirement community for retired ministers.
Today the 192- acre retirement community houses Christian laypeople as
well as clergy.
It’s an old Florida story—built during the boom just before
the crash—and it’s an old Florida scene driving along state road 16 south of
Jacksonville and heading west from ST. Augustine. The dark green shade from the trees lining the
road sets off the oranges and earth tones of the one-story concrete block
homes. The white glare reflected from
piles of limestone gravel on the north side of 16 makes the country road look
dark, cool and ancient. It is a palette
that colored 1950s Florida: green trees
surrounding jalousied porches. The
orange colors of the old buildings offer a warm counterpoint to the cool
shade. The scene might fit nicely into a
gray scale rendering for the black-and-white Kansas scene in the Wizard of Oz although
the leafy North Florida setting is its own version of an Emerald City.
One Florida obituary, sadly, led to another and I found one
for another Munchkin Karl Slover, who played a trumpeter in The Wizard of
Oz. He was born in what is now the Czech
Republic. At eight years old, he was
about two feet tall eventually growing to four feet five inches. His six and a half foot father buried Karl in
the backyard up to his neck, subjected him to limb stretching exercises to
promote growth and eventually sold him to a group called the Singing Midgets. After
Oz, Slover spent later years training dogs to play the piano and toured a
Children’s birthday party circuit with his musical dogs, according to an online
Tampa Bay Time obituary. Slover, who
lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, died November 15, 2011.
Raabe, Slover and Penney Farms are just three
back roads stories that connect to larger worlds and different times. Most of my facts are from Wikipedia and the
Tampa Bay Times online newspaper. Quick
looks—and even small stories—are a little like the first viewing of The Wizard
of Oz, the film that focused a generation’s dreams. These glimpses can pave the way (like the
Yellow Brick Road?) to closer looks and deeper perceptions of unusual lives.
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