Why indeed?
Voiceover Update
Before we start, I wanted to let you all know that I have added voiceovers -- in my real actual 100% human voice -- to the first 15 Episodes. All the way through K. Venomous -- It’s All About the Hannibals.
A Myron Here and a Myron There . . .
So, why do I call my brother(?) Myron, “Myron”?
There are two reason. One longer and one shorter.
I will start with the longer one.
This story starts out in the early 1900s with a man named Joseph Boyer. Joseph was born in the mid 1800s on a farm in Pickering, Ontario. He later moved to the US and became and inventor and what they used to call an industrialist. He was bold, smart and wily, acquired the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, and became very wealthy. He was also very frugal. Despite his wealth, he was living in an apartment near his daughters when he died. Joseph died of pneumonia in October 1930 at the age of 82.
His death was reported in both the New York Times and Time Magazine.
The New York Times said
J.A. Boyer Dead; A Noted Inventor; Chairman of the Board [and largest shareholder] of Burroughs Adding Machine Company Succumbs to Pneumonia. He Started as Machinist. To His Financial Ability Was Ascribed Rise of His Firm -- Devised Pneumatic Hammer
Whatever that means. It sounds like a Haiku. Like this:
Boyerism
Started As Machinist
Devised Pneumatic Hammer
Pneumonia Killed Him
However, I do quite like the reference to the pneumatic hammer, because I think of the Handbook as one. You know, relentlessly hammering psychopaths far and wide until they crumble.
My Two Sons
Joseph Boyer had five kids -- two sons and three daughters. His daughters married well and went on to live pretty good lives from what I can tell.
His sons are a different story. His eldest son, Joseph Jr., was a swashbuckling man about town. He died in 1925 while competing at the Indianapolis 500. Autosports back then were life-threating. Some might have called him a hero.
Nobody would call Joseph’s youngest son, Myron, a hero.
Joseph had set up a trust for his children. All would share equally in the assets, except for Myron. He was given what’s known as a spendthrift trust -- basically the bare minimum required to avoid the whole thing being thrown out.
There was one exception to Myron’s spendthrift trust -- if Myron had an offspring. Myron did not have an offspring when he died in 1928. His wife -- Laura -- also Canadian and seeing a big fat chunk of change she would be missing out on -- went over to Windsor, Canada, bought a baby, and insisted it was Myron’s. This led to years of litigation, where Laura claimed she was entitled to Myron’s share of the trust. She sued Joseph Boyer’s estate for $1.2 million. By the way, $1.2 million was a lot of money back then. P robably around $60 - $100 million today.
Here is a picture of Laura Boyer. Not a looker, is all I can say.
She has the darkness there, in her eyes.
The Heir is not My Son
The case went on for more than 10 years through trial courts and appeals courts. The trial court ruled in Laura Boyer’s favor, though the appeals court reversed that. It finally ended in 1939 when the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal.
Joseph Boyer was lucky in that he had a son-in-law who was a brilliant lawyer. His name was Standish Backus. Standish probably set up the whole trust structure and then argued the entire case.
The appeals court opinion is a hoot. Here are some choice quotes:
· “Myron L. Boyer was a person of bad habits and of but very limited intelligence.”
· “According to the testimony of [Laura Boyer], he had always been addicted to drinking to excess and his habits did not change at any time while she knew him except for a period of six months when, with the exception of one interval, he remained sober.” It turns out, Myron was in Texas for that one interval. More on that later.
· “[Laura Boyer] testified that she went with Myron when he attended the third grade of the night school for a short time after their marriage;”
· [Myron] later began an electrical course, but gave it up very shortly.
· “Myron’s father hired a tutor for him at $125 a month.” By the way, $125 a month back then was a lot of money. I would say around $6,000 today or even more.
· From 1916 to 1928, Myron earned a total of $966.21 in income, which works out to about $80 bucks a year.
· “Moneys for the support of Myron and his wife were paid direct to the wife, or to those who furnished Myron with merchandise, professional services, or maintenance.”
The rest of the opinion is arcane arguments about trusts, secondary trusts, and constructive trusts.
Myron denied the purchased infant was his. According to the opinion, Myron signed a Bill (i.e., an affidavit”) saying:
“ Laura Boyer devised and acted out a pretended pregnancy with the connivance of a physician and nurse, and pretended to give birth to a child . . . . The bill states how Mrs. Boyer tricked Myron by securing a newly-born infant from the Hotel Dieu in Windsor, Ontario, and led Myron to believe that said child had been born in lawful wedlock with the said Laura Boyer.”
Given Myron was a drug addled drunkard, he probably did not actually sign the affidavit himself. Someone else did, I bet.
Here is Myron’s obit.
By the way, the Hotel Dieu still exists. It was originally built in the late 1800s as a hospital for black people who had migrated out of the South to find better lives, and later for indigent people and unwed mothers.
I Would Like to Return this Story
This is not the one I ordered.
OK. I know what you are thinking. What does this long -- yet wildly enticing -- story have to do with my own Myron?
Why indeed?
There are, as it turns out, also two answers to that question.
Will the Real Myron Please Stand-up
Myron -- is a person of bad habits and of but very limited intelligence. The other Myron died in 1928.
My Myron doesn’t do a lick of work, has no detectable intelligence, no discernable skills -- other than working out and taking steroids, but those aren’t skills.
Yet, somehow thinks he is the greatest human that ever existed. He is actually pretty good at getting my dad, Fredo, to pay for everything -- even buying him a house with my money.
Myron seems to believe that ordinary people should be lining up to shovel money and free work at him. Just because being in Myron’s presence is payment enough. Most narcissists think the same way. They don’t just think it. They totally believe it.
El Clon | El Payaso
(The Clone | The Clown)
The two Myrons are one and the same.
Insane Clown Picture
Like in this picture.
Image Courtesy of PFFK#7
Clowns sit around all day, in their big clown shoes, doing their small clown things, and somehow think they deserve everything.
Like this.
Image Courtesy of PFFK#7
When Myron was young I ordered a clown for his birthday. The clown showed up. Did his act. And Myron was pissed. I think he thought I was calling him a clown. To this day, if you refer to him as a clown -- even in a joking way -- he gets angry. And then my dad, Fredo, will call me and berate me for calling Myron a clown. It’s not an insult if it’s true. In my totally First Amendment protected opinion, Myron is down on the narcissist side of the psychopath spectrum. Narcissists have extremely thin skins. Anything that threatens to break down their wall of pretend greatness usually results in anger. I reckon that, buried way down deep, they know they are failures.
Oh yeah, according to an ex-girlfriend of his, he has a tattoo of a “ball-sack” (her words) on his stomach or something.
I want to tell some of her stories here, if she is OK with that. They will paint a much fuller picture of what Myron is.
Texas Told ‘Em
Here is the other reason I am using Myron Boyer as a guide. Because of the Texas connection. There usually is one. To everything.
Nowadays, Marfa, TX is an internationally celebrated art and design destination, located in Southwest TX and not far from the Mexican border.
Back in the 1920s, Marfa and surrounding towns were just more dirt, and were more famous for smuggling Mexican contraband, like cattle and liquor.
Joseph Boyer owned a share in a giant ranch down there which snuggled up against the Mexican border. The part-owner and rancher was a man named Owen Curtis Dowe -- known simply as “O. C.” O.C. Dowe was a lawman, a Customs officer, a rancher and . . . not surpisingly . . . an occasional smuggler. For example, he was known to keep confiscated contraband -- especially liquor.
The following is taken from a history of the Circle Dug Ranch, in Candelaria TX. For Texas history buffs, it is a good read. Here is the link. Circle Dug Ranch History
“Spoiled and rebellious, Myron had been kicked out of several private schools by the time he turned eighteen. His father thought it might be a good idea to send the boy to Texas in an attempt to dry him out or at least get him out of the elder Boyer’s hair.
In a 1925 letter Dowe wrote, ‘I have Myron Boyer of Detroit here and have been running around with him. His father is . . . paying me big wages to try
and do something with this boy. He has been drinking very hard for several years and I am trying to get him on his feet. I get $600.00 per month and want to try to get this boy straightened out if I can.’ [$600 big ones was a lot of money back then. Probably $30,000 in today’s small ones.]
“At first Dowe tried to keep Myron on the ranch and teach the young man how to be a cowboy. . . .[Ha Ha] . . . Myron hated the ranch and ran away several times.
Dowe corresponded with Joseph Boyer about Myron’s progress saying at one point in 1926 he thought Myron had not taken a drink in three weeks and seemed to be doing better. [I think this was the one time Laura Boyer was referring to when Myron was ever sober.]
“Then Myron ran off again and demanded his father buy him a new Lincoln automobile.
Dowe wrote [Joseph] about the demand and received the following reply.
‘I note what you say about Myron’s wanting a Lincoln, which is very characteristic of him. He would want a Rolls Royce if he happened to think of it. I have done a great many things to give Myron a start. For instance, I bought him a small farm at Flint one time and he lived there only a short time when he became tired of it because there was no running water. I have frequently bought him cars. The last one, I think, cost $2,500 or more. It seems to me he sold it for about $500 after making use of it for less than a year. I want him to be in Texas for a longer time before there is anything of that kind done.’” “A month later Joseph bought Myron another new car. After he got the car, Myron threatened to run off to Mexico but instead went to Marfa where he got drunk and caroused for several days with some soldiers from the army camp. Venting his frustration Dowe again wrote Joseph Boyer asking the monthly allowance be increased so that Myron could take a hotel room in Marfa.
O. C. got the following reply from Myron’s father in May 1925.
‘I realize that it is not an easy job to handle Myron, but I also know that there has always been more trouble with him whenever I increased or raised his allowance. It seems as though the more money he has, the worse off he is. . . .
I think you had better turn him loose and let him shift for himself. If he comes up here and does the same kind of business that he did before I will have him confined in some institution where he will not have any liberty.’
“Joseph Boyer went on to say that he had already made arrangements with a Detroit judge to have Myron confined, ‘in an institution’ if he returned to Michigan.
Myron Boyer died five years later . . . .”
[End of Story]
My Myron is totally like the original Myron. Always entitled to the best things, paid for by someone else. Sometimes without their knowledge.
There is another quite funny part to this Texas story, though:
“Dowe and eight other Texas lawmen journeyed to Michigan in May 1919. An article in the Detroit News headlined “Lounge Lizzards Pop-Eyed When Cowboys Stroll In”. . . .
[For some unexplained reason], [t]he Texans had been summoned to Detroit to testify about border conditions in Henry Ford’s Libel Suite against the Chicago Tribune.
O. C. Dowe and his fellows packed their pistols to Detroit and
made quite an impression on several city dwellers. The article recounted an observation by a hotel bellboy who saw the Texans.
According to the bellhop ‘them gents are 100% sure enough [cow] punchers. They got guns as big as cannons strewed all over the bed and the dresser and everywhere else. And believe me, they is loaded. The guns I mean.’”
If that ain’t Texan, I don’t know what is.
OK, I know what you are thinking at this point of the narrative. “Is there a Fonzie in this story anywhere?” Why, yes, there is.
Saved by the Fonze
The other reason we call Myron, “Myron” is from this scene in Happy Days where The Fonze is making fun of some kid named Myron. He keeps pronouncing the name with a high pitch and stretching out the first syllable. “Myyy-ron.”
Here’s the clip.
Speaking of The Fonze. I was sitting in Bice in Palm Beach -- maybe 2018 or 2019 -- in the outdoor dining section. And there is The Fonze. Except, he’s wearing a pin-stripped shirt, like from Brooks Brothers, with the arms of a pink sweater tied around his neck, and the body hanging down behind his back as a seat cushion.
Ayyyyyy!
