The Exploding Whale

We must never forget.

A few days from now, on November 12, we will observe the 55th anniversary of what I think we can all agree, as a nation, is the most wonderful thing that ever happened in the history of the world, or at least of Lane County, Oregon.

I refer, of course, to the exploding whale.

This is the legendary 1970 incident in the Pacific coast town of Florence, where a 45-foot-long, eight-ton, extremely dead whale had washed up on the beach and was really stinking up the area. Obviously something had to be done, and the responsibility for doing it was assigned to the Oregon State Highway Division. Apparently the logic there was:

-- A whale is a big thing.

-- A highway is also a big thing.

-- Ergo, the Oregon State Highway Division is the right outfit for the job.

So a crew of highway engineers was dispatched to the scene of the whale. After considering various solutions, including not blowing up the whale with dynamite, they decided that their best course of action was to blow up the whale with dynamite. Why, you ask? Don’t be an idiot. Because they had dynamite, that’s why. It is a fundamental human truth that if human males have explosives, they will use them to blow things up.

The specifics of the Highway Division’s plan were as follows:

1. They would blow up the whale with the dynamite.

2. The whale would then consist of many tiny whale pieces.

3. These pieces would then be eaten by seagulls and other marine scavengers.

4. Mission accomplished! A textbook whale disposal.

One detail the Highway Division crew had to work out was exactly how much dynamite to use. This was tricky, because nobody involved had any experience in the specific field of whale detonation, which, inexplicably, is not a subject taught in Highway Engineering College. Although it definitely should be, as we will see.

Ultimately, after considering various factors such as overall whale size, wind direction, etc., the crew decided that the amount of dynamite they should use was: one thousand pounds. Perhaps your reaction is: “Whoa, that sounds like a LOT of dynamite!” Well that’s easy for you to say, Mr. or Mrs. Monday Morning Armchair General who has never personally experienced the heat of battle face-to-face in the combat arena versus a large dead marine mammal. Who are you to second-guess the engineers of the Oregon State Highway Division?

As it happens, there reportedly was a second-guesser on that beach 55 years ago. This was Walter Umenhofer, an executive with the Kingsford Charcoal Company, which manufactures charcoal briquets. Umenhofer had some experience with military explosives, and he felt that the highway engineers were using way too much dynamite for the situation. According to some reports, he tried to bring his concern to the attention of the engineers, but they were not receptive. We will return to Walter Umenhofer later.

A crowd of around 100 civilians had gathered that day to witness the whale detonation. Also present were members of the news media, including Paul Linnman, a 23-year-old reporter for KATU-TV in Portland, and his cameraman, Doug Brazil. Together these two men created a TV news report that I think we can all agree, as a nation, is the greatest single piece of film in the history of film, and I include Citizen Kane in that statement. Here it is, in its entirety, the legendary Oregon whale-detonation report:

This report is only a little more than three minutes long, but it contains so many truly wonderful elements:

-- There is the calm demeanor of the hard-hatted head engineer at the beginning, a man who clearly has no doubt in his mind whatsoever that blowing up a large dead whale with a thousand pounds of dynamite, with a crowd of civilian spectators in close proximity, is a completely sane thing to do.

-- There is the explosion itself, which, contrary to the plan, does not cause the whale to disintegrate into tiny seagull-friendly whale nuggets, but instead launches large chunks of putrefied whale flesh high into the sky; or, as Paul Linnman so eloquently expresses it: “The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.”

-- There is the audible reaction of the spectators: excited cheers at first, turning to cries of dismay as airborne whale chunks start raining down from the sky, with one woman heard shouting — just before the cameraman is forced to stop filming and flee — “Here comes pieces of... My GOD.”

-- There is the aftermath of the blast, with spectators wandering around, as Linnman puts it “covered with small particles of dead whale,” and fallen whale chunks everywhere, including a 300-pound piece that crushed the roof of a new Oldsmobile 98 parked a quarter of a mile from the blast site. Can you guess who the owner of that car turned out to be? That’s right: It was none other than skeptical charcoal executive Walter Umenhofer. If that is not conclusive proof that there is a God, and that He has a sense of humor, then I don’t know what is.

-- Finally, at the end of the report, there is the whale, or a large portion of it anyway, still right there on the beach where it started out, now being buried by a bulldozer, as it clearly is not going to be consumed by seagulls. In fact there are no seagulls at all on the beach. There may be some seagull molecules, but any intact seagulls have undoubtedly fled the state of Oregon altogether, never to return.

This event happened more than a half-century ago, but the memory of it is still very much alive, especially in the Pacific Northwest, where it is beloved local lore. In 2020 the city of Florence, by popular vote, created the Exploding Whale Memorial Park, which I’m sure is a lovely place to visit, now that the smell is probably mostly gone.

Paul Linnman, who went on to have a distinguished career in TV and radio and who is a good guy, wrote a book titled The Exploding Whale: And Other Remarkable Stories from the Evening News. He’s also featured in a new documentary about the exploding whale, Oh Whale. You can see the trailer here and read about it here.

I appear briefly in the documentary, as I’ve been a huge fan of the exploding whale story since 1990, when I first saw a video of Paul’s KATU report and wrote a column about it. I’ve told the whale story many times in public, and people always love it, because it’s funny, obviously, but also I think because it teaches us an important lesson — one that we can all apply in our personal lives — namely: never ask a highway engineer to dispose of a whale corpse. Those are words I live by, every single day.

And now let’s hear from you awesome paying subscribers.