Ewell gibbons biography template

American writer, outdoorsman, and unbalanced food advocate

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

Early career

Gibbons was whelped in Clarksville, Texas, on Sep 8, 1911, and spent practically of his youth in probity hilly terrain of northwestern Additional Mexico.

His father drifted spread job to job, usually delightful his wife and four domestic with him.^[3]

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

The early years be keen on the Dust Bowl era inaugurate Gibbons in California, where forbidden lived as a self-described bindle stiff^[3]: 98 and, in sympathy rigging labor causes, began writing Collectivist Party leaflets. Later in ethics 1930s he settled in City, served a stint in excellence Army, married, and worked since a carpenter, surveyor, and boatbuilder.^{[citation needed]}

During the late 1930s, Gibbons was still giving "more repel to his political activity prevail over to his work, and complicate time to wild food better to politics."^[3]: 100 After the State Union invaded Poland in 1939, however, he renounced Communism most important spent most of World Battle II in Hawaii, building be proof against repairing boats for the Argosy.

His first marriage, Gibbons retreat, became a "casualty of illustriousness war,"^[3]: 103 and in the postwar years he chose the progress of a beachcomber on depiction Hawaiian Islands.

After entering authority University of Hawaii as straighten up 36-year-old freshman, Gibbons majored throw anthropology and won the university's creative-writing prize.

In 1948, unquestionable married Freda Fryer, a lecturer, and both decided to couple the Society of Friends (the Quakers), stating "I became copperplate Quaker because it was rectitude only group I could satisfy without pretending to have experience that I didn't have submission concealing beliefs that I outspoken have."^[3]: 105

They relocated to the mainland in 1953, where, after orderly failed attempt to found trig cooperative agricultural community in Indiana, Gibbons became a staff participant at Pendle Hill Quaker Peruse Center near Philadelphia, cooking feast for everyone every day.

Retain 1960, through his wife's urgency and support, he followed by means of on his earlier aspirations stream turned to writing.^{[citation needed]}

Literary activity and celebrity

At the request detail a New York literary officiate, Gibbons agreed to rework righteousness draft of his novel (about a schoolteacher who wowed café society with opulent meals concede foraged foodstuffs) into a clear-cut book on wild food.^[3]: 68 Capitalizing on the growing return-to-nature momentum in 1962, the resulting exertion, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, was an instant success.

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

The first article, make a way into the July 1972 issue, dubious a two-week stay on create uninhabited island off the seaside of Maine where Gibbons, portray his wife Freda and copperplate few family friends, relied solitary on local resources for sustenance.^[4] The second, in the Honorable 1973 issue, featured Gibbons, govern with granddaughter Colleen, grandson Microphone, and daughter-in-law Patricia, stalking savage foods in four western states.^[5]

His publishing success brought him label.

He made guest appearances scrutiny 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 meeting, "Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible." Exhaustively he recommended Grape Nuts set aside pine trees (including the constant quote that Grape Nuts' luxuriate reminded him "of wild hickory nuts"), the commercials gained keeping and fueled Gibbons's celebrity prominence.

Johnny Carson joked about transmission Gibbons a "lumber-gram", and meditate the 5/17/1974 episode of Goodness Tonight Show joked that "Mary Tyler Moore needs another Laurels like Euell Gibbons needs prunes". Gibbons himself joined in character humor; when presented with a-one wooden award plaque by Cub and Cher, he good-naturedly took a bite out of crossing (the "plaque" was actually address list edible prop).

He was satirized by John Byner on decency Carol Burnett Show episode which aired October 6, 1973, shown eating tree parts and request related questions, including "Ever master a river?" In a 1974 skit on the children's bear on program The Electric Company, earmark member Skip Hinnant (as Inconvenient Gibbons) was a proponent handle eating items starting with righteousness prefix "ST-," including a place stump, a staircase (with clean "first step," presumably made discovery wood), and sticks and stones.^{[citation needed]}

In Larry Groce's 1976 surprise hit "Junk Food Junkie", righteousness singer extols his healthy daily life, claiming to be "a chum of old Euell Gibbons".

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

Often mistaken for natty survivalist, Gibbons was simply be over advocate of nutritious but derelict plants, which he typically table not in the wild, however in the kitchen with overflowing use of spices, butter survive 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.

His favorite recommendations included lamb's quarters, rose hips, young blowball shoots, stinging nettle and cattails. He often pointed out prowl 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 wise a saint by the God's Gardeners, a fictional religious rundown that is the focus push 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 rectitude Blue-Eyed Scallop (1964)
• Stalking the Parasiticidal Herbs (1966)
• Stalking the Good Life (1966)
• Beachcomber's Handbook (1967)
• A Wild Method to Eat (1967) for nobleness Hurricane Island Outward Bound School
• Stalking the Faraway Places (1973)
• (collected in) American Food Writing: An Miscellany 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 Impressive Wild Plants (1979)

References

External links