Thursday, December 14, 2017

Lingo the Drifter

When ex-football player and bar owner Sam Sugarman re-christened his bar "Sugie's" as the Satire Lounge, Sugie put in a tiny stage and hired a guy called Lingo the Drifter to take over the club and play there. Lingo, an ex-businessman from Chicago who had dropped out, grown a beard and lived out of the back of a pickup truck, did a folksy Burl Ives/Pete Seeger type show that clicked with the local crowd.

Lingo died in 1993, and left a most amazing, Colfax worthy obituary:

Rocky Mountain News (CO) - May 26, 1993
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T.D. LINGO, BRAIN RESEARCHER, FOUND DEAD

T.D. Lingo, who was sure he knew the answers to all the questions of life and those by Groucho Marx, died of acute heart failure about May 13 on his mountain near Black Hawk, the Gilpin County coroner said Tuesday. He was 68.
Mr. Lingo spent 36 years at the Dormant Brain Research and Development Laboratory on Laughing Coyote Mountain trying to prove that people use only 10% of their brains, while he had discovered how to use 100%. He said his ability enabled him to communicate with other species, experience extrasensory perception and have four-hour multiple orgasms. Until his death, he still was waiting for the public to accept the book he had written, with chapters such as "Quick / Easy Neurology" and "Quick-Fix Nirvana."
"It's going to be a national best-seller," he said in an interview in 1991.
Mr. Lingo grew up as Paul Lezchuk in Chicago, fought in World War II and
went to the University of Chicago. He renamed himself Theocharis Docha Anthropotis Lingo, which he said means "the love of God and the spirit of mankind." He became Lingo the Drifter, a folk singer with three chords and nine songs.
In 1957, he appeared on Groucho Marx's television quiz show You Bet Your Life and won $16,000. He cashed the check into bills that filled two shopping bags. He gave one to the Internal Revenue Service. He bought Laughing Coyote Mountain with the other, and he said he discovered how to "click" the brain into 100% consciousness. Most of his theories are contradicted by generally accepted theories of science, which only proved his point, he said.
He kept the brain of his former professor at the University of Chicago in a glass specimen jar in a storage building. He lived on vegetables and vodka. He went to Black Hawk once a month to pick up groceries and his mail.
"Someday, people are going to look at my work, comprehend what it means to lick the cosmic lollipop instead of just living out their chow-mein brained lives," he said. "It might not happen in my time, but someday somebody is going to stumble across what I did here and say, 'That guy wasn't crazy after all.' "
A visitor found him May 15. He is survived by his brother, Bill Lezchuk of California.

1 comment:

  1. Didn't really know you well, but I miss you none the less...

    ReplyDelete