American Gothic: Ted Williams' Head On Ice

"Johnson writes that Alcor severed many of its members' heads and placed them in a deep freeze, balancing them on empty cans of BumbleBee tuna fish so that the heads didn't stick to their containers.

Upon moving Williams' head from one freezer to another, an employee of Alcor used a monkey wrench to dislodge the tuna can, according to the book.

"He grabbed a monkey wrench, heaved a mighty swing, missed the tuna can completely, and smacked the head dead center," Johnson writes. After several tries, Johnson said, the employee made contact with the can, which the author writes "took off like a line drive, peppering the walls, skittering across the floor, and sliding under the machinery."

 From "Frozen: My Journey Into the World of Cryonics, Deception and Death," by Alcor chief operating officer Larry Johnson. Excerpted in the New York Daily News.

What a long, strange trip its been for Ted Williams or, at least, his head.

Poor Ted and  his icy head.

Williams was a decorated marine aviator, a veteran of World War Two and Korea, and perhaps the greatest hitter in the history of baseball.

And he has ended up a side show in a money making freak show in Arizona.

Ted never liked the press hounding him.

Strangely though he has ended up like a dead Old West gunfighter, propped up at the town square while the ghouls and goblins snap pictures for tacky tourist albums.

"It was as if Ted Williams had at last lost his lifelong battle with the paparazzi," writes Johnson. "The nonessential bystanders spilled into the room, following the gurney, flashing more pictures and chatting merrily. Ted Williams' mutilation was standing room only."

Some extra sick ghouls, it is said, even watched as the non medically trained gleefully staffed hacked off Williams' head with a saw.

Did they pry the gold from his teeth like the Mad Trapper of Rat River Albert Johnson?

It sounds more like HP Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe then America's past time.

It sounds more like a cheap horror flick then the twilight of an American legend.

As Ambrose Bierce said "Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.”

Or in this case the head.

How does this company, Alcor, keep operating and abusing corpses? And why does it get piles of research money from the US government?

There has to be a kick back to keep the frozen corpse business intact.

Do they keep stack of frozen Senators and a cache of cryonically frozen Congressional cronies in a back freezer?

Is Huey Long's head on ice? Is Strom Thurmond frozen like Frankenstein at the North Pole propped in a cold corner waiting patiently, like the south, to rise again?

Is Nixon on ice? Does LBJ sleep with the frozen fishes?

Is that Bob Dole freeze dried in the corner? No, Dole just blinked he ain't dead just visiting.

Though I would like to see a revitalized Andrew Jackon crawling from an old ice box. It would be cool to see old cold eyed Andy, ice in his veins and grinning grimly, filled with a fiery determination to string a few Wall Street bankers from high oak trees.

But alas, old Hickory is gone and he ain't coming back.

And neither is Ted nor his frozen hacked head.

Most Congressmen are narcissists, and like many of their Baby Boomer ilk, fear the cold, coming eye of the reaper.

They forget that when violent Ponce De Leon searched for the Fountain of Youth in Florida all he got for his troubles was a poisoned arrow and a slow death, kicking his bloody Spanish boots in the hot Sunshine state sand.

Did some Congressmen cut a deal so they could, like greedy locusts, pop their craven heads up a century or two hence?

Congress, of course, is capable of anything

But Ted Williams wasn't a boomer and did not want preserved. He wanted cremated and his ashes scattered across his beloved Florida Keys fishing grounds.

His boy, now dead and going to dust, put the old man on ice.

The US government has a long history with decapitated heads.

Mangas Coloradas, the great Apache chief, was tortured and killed after being captured bu US troops. The old warrior, and his his head, were immense and eager US troops chopped off his head sent it east to be studied.

His head still sits somewhere on a shelf in the Smithsonian.

Legend says the well connected Skull and Bones boys of Yale have a body parts collecting fetish. Legend says the robbed the graves of Pancho Villa and Geronimo and have their heads stashed away.

Those spoiled frat boys, some privileged politicians, now stole the dead heads of men they would not have come within a hundred miles of when alive.

Perhaps a Skull and Bones boy will get excited over the idea of playing with Ted's dead head and get Daddy to drop a few dimes to bring it back.

They can steal a line from Sam Peckinpaugh's famous stolen head flick.

El Jefe :I will pay one million dollars. Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia!

Or Ted Williams!

If rich mad men want to give millions to a scam company promising eternal life that's there business.

Who really cares if some fat cat Alcor executive is using Howard Hughes head as an ashtray or if Walt Disney's head is a prized ice bucket.

But Ted Williams didn't ask for this.

And Teddy Ball Game's remains should be giving a proper military funeral and then his ashes should be scattered among his favorite Florida Keys fishing spots.

Its what we owe Williams. And not for baseball but for World War Two and Korea.

And maybe some Senator, maybe John McCain who is in Arizona and knew fellow aviator Williams, should check on Alcor.

Meanwhile as we search for the Fountain of Youth we should not only remember the mean old Conquistador, De Leon, dying with an arrow made from the poisoned sap of a manchineel tree in his shoulder but the words from another old marine, Lee Marvin, on the Fountain of Youth.

"I don't want any more than I've got coming to me, and I don't understand those who do. Like, why would anyone want to undergo a heart transplant? A person would have to have led a pretty empty life to be that frightened of dying. How would you like to be walking around with a 17-year-old broad's heart in your chest, just to live a few years longer? You wouldn't know whether to menstruate or ejaculate. Jesus, give me my span of years and knock me down when it's all over. You've got to make room for the other guy. I know that when my ashes are blown away or they stuff me in a sewer, it's not going to hurt. I've had the simple pleasure of being present when the sun was shining and the rain was falling. I've had mine, and nobody can take it away from me."

No one ever froze Lee Marvin's head.