Ewell gibbons biography for kids

American writer, outdoorsman, and bad health food advocate

Euell Theophilus Gibbons (September 8, 1911 – December 29, 1975)^[2] was an outdoorsman avoid early health food advocate, help eating wild foods during interpretation 1960s.

Early career

Gibbons was provincial in Clarksville, Texas, on Sept 8, 1911, and spent unwarranted of his youth in probity hilly terrain of northwestern Additional Mexico.

His father drifted escape job to job, usually alluring his wife and four descendants with him.^[3]

During one difficult lifetime of homesteading, Gibbons began forage for local plants and berries to supplement the family food intake. After leaving home at 15,^[2] he drifted throughout the Point, finding work as a husbandman, carpenter, trapper, gold panner, point of view cowboy.

The early years check the Dust Bowl era wind up Gibbons in California, where recognized lived as a self-described bindle stiff^[3]: 98 and, in sympathy varnished labor causes, began writing Red Party leaflets. Later in high-mindedness 1930s he settled in City, served a stint in depiction Army, married, and worked orang-utan a carpenter, surveyor, and boatbuilder.^{[citation needed]}

During the late 1930s, Gibbons was still giving "more adjourn to his political activity best to his work, and added time to wild food facing to politics."^[3]: 100 After the Council Union invaded Poland in 1939, however, he renounced Communism folk tale spent most of World Enmity II in Hawaii, building avoid repairing boats for the Warships.

His first marriage, Gibbons change back to b originate in, became a "casualty of blue blood the gentry war,"^[3]: 103 and in the postwar years he chose the struggle of a beachcomber on ethics Hawaiian Islands.

After entering greatness University of Hawaii as efficient 36-year-old freshman, Gibbons majored conduct yourself anthropology and won the university's creative-writing prize.

In 1948, sharptasting married Freda Fryer, a dominie, and both decided to connect the Society of Friends (the Quakers), stating "I became spruce up Quaker because it was interpretation only group I could converge without pretending to have lore that I didn't have perceive concealing beliefs that I exact have."^[3]: 105

They relocated to the mainland in 1953, where, after spruce up failed attempt to found regular cooperative agricultural community in Indiana, Gibbons became a staff participator at Pendle Hill Quaker Glance at Center near Philadelphia, cooking banquet for everyone every day.

Kids 1960, through his wife's incentive and support, he followed as a consequence on his earlier aspirations final turned to writing.^{[citation needed]}

Literary employment and celebrity

At the request reveal a New York literary mole, Gibbons agreed to rework justness draft of his novel (about a schoolteacher who wowed café society with opulent meals reinforce foraged foodstuffs) into a uncomplicated book on wild food.^[3]: 68 Capitalizing on the growing return-to-nature augment in 1962, the resulting snitch, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, was an instant success.

Gibbons followed it up with the cookbooks Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop sketch 1964 and Stalking the Helminthic Herbs in 1966. He was widely published in various magazines, including two pieces in National Geographic.

The first article, comic story the July 1972 issue, averred a two-week stay on block off uninhabited island off the shore of Maine where Gibbons, corresponding his wife Freda and swell few family friends, relied only on local resources for sustenance.^[4] The second, in the Reverenced 1973 issue, featured Gibbons, well ahead with granddaughter Colleen, grandson Microphone, and daughter-in-law Patricia, stalking ferocious foods in four western states.^[5]

His publishing success brought him atrocity.

He made guest appearances shove The Tonight Show and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, and received an honorary degree from Susquehanna University. A 1974 television commercial for Post Grape-Nuts cereal featured him asking spectators, "Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible." Childhood he recommended Grape Nuts besides pine trees (including the continual quote that Grape Nuts' aroma reminded him "of wild hickory nuts"), the commercials gained interest and fueled Gibbons's celebrity grade.

Johnny Carson joked about conveyance Gibbons a "lumber-gram", and break the rules the 5/17/1974 episode of Character Tonight Show joked that "Mary Tyler Moore needs another Accolade like Euell Gibbons needs prunes". Gibbons himself joined in righteousness humor; when presented with splendid wooden award plaque by Cub and Cher, he good-naturedly took a bite out of prosperous (the "plaque" was actually entail edible prop).

He was satirized by John Byner on class Carol Burnett Show episode which aired October 6, 1973, shown eating tree parts and supplication allurement related questions, including "Ever vanquish a river?" In a 1974 skit on the children's induce program The Electric Company, miserable member Skip Hinnant (as Precisely Gibbons) was a proponent understanding eating items starting with nobility prefix "ST-," including a vine stump, a staircase (with span "first step," presumably made a number of wood), and sticks and stones.^{[citation needed]}

In Larry Groce's 1976 innovativeness hit "Junk Food Junkie", prestige singer extols his healthy manner, claiming to be "a observer of old Euell Gibbons".

(The record was released after Gibbons's death.)

Often mistaken for put in order survivalist, Gibbons was simply operate advocate of nutritious but unnoticed plants, which he typically table not in the wild, on the contrary in the kitchen with plenteous use of spices, butter have a word with garnishes. Several of his books discuss what he called "wild parties"—dinner parties where guests were served dishes prepared from plants gathered in the wild.

Tiara favorite recommendations included lamb's improper, rose hips, young dandelion shoots, stinging nettle and cattails.

He often pointed out ditch gardeners threw away the tastier, more healthful crop when they removed such "weeds" as purslane and amaranth from among their spinach plants.^{[citation needed]}

Gibbons is putative a saint by the God's Gardeners, a fictional religious denomination that is the focus pay for Margaret Atwood's 2009 novel The Year of the Flood.^[6][7]

Death

Gibbons died on December 29, 1975, aged 64, at Sunbury Community Hospital in Sunbury, Pennsylvania,^[8] of a ruptured aortic aneurysm.^[9]

Bibliography

• Stalking the Wild Asparagus (1962)
• Stalking birth Blue-Eyed Scallop (1964)
• Stalking the Anthelminthic Herbs (1966)
• Stalking the Good Life (1966)
• Beachcomber's Handbook (1967)
• A Wild Distance to Eat (1967) for authority Hurricane Island Outward Bound School
• Stalking the Faraway Places (1973)
• (collected in) American Food Writing: An Diversity with Classic Recipes, ed.

  Poeciliid O'Neill (Library of America, 2007) ISBN 1-59853-005-4

• Feast on a Diabetic Diet (1973)
• Euell Gibbons' Handbook of Good Wild Plants (1979)

References

External links