When riding blindfolded on a goat through the Order of Railroad Conductors' hallowed halls, you are suddenly flipped upside down (it's okay—you’re hand-cuffed to the goat) and the beast explodes. There is a thick smell of gunpowder, cigars, and the wispy ozone of a jump-spark battery gone haywire. Somewhere in the room, another initiate whistles from a hanging birdcage.
You have questions.
In The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions: The Curious World of the Demoulin Brothers and Their Fraternal Lodge Prank Machines from Human Centipedes and Revolving Goats to Electric Carpets and Smoking Camels, Julia Suits draws back the curtains of late 19th-Century secret societies to reveal the infernal devices of Ed, Erastus, and Ulysses DeMoulin. From the 1890s until the 1930s, the DeMoulins sent private catalogs to officers of fraternal orders offering “side degrees” for lodge meetings from their factory in Greenville, Ill. and Suits collects them neatly in her book, along with customer testimonials and the inevitable newspaper accounts of the trials. During their run, the DeMoulin Brothers manufactured at least 13 varieties of mechanical goats, though they were neither the first nor only company to sell them. They specialized in controlled explosions that they billed as perfectly safe (and yet the next year's catalog always offered an improved version that could not fail). Magneto batteries to flash lights, sound alarms, and to really just shock you. Collapsing chairs, squirting telephones and grotesque masks. When all else failed, they offered a .32 caliber revolver which, as far as I can tell, is the only thing in their catalogs that does what it looks like it’s supposed to.
On one hand, there isn't much you can write about a man who’s tricked into spanking himself with a wooden plank that improves the experience. Julia Suits, a St. Louis native, is a New Yorker cartoonist by trade and understands when to let the flywheels speak for themselves. The original illustrations, typically by Erastus “Ras” DeMoulin, are allowed free range on the page. The catalog explains the stunt, outlines the basic mechanics, and offers suggestions (“works best with Glad Hand”).
On the other hand, how did humanity reach the point that a man is tricked into spanking himself with a wooden plank? Here, Suits patiently explains the history of rural amusement, 19th-century fraternal organizations, and what they meant when they said, “where their mother used to apply her slipper." The book might be at its most fascinating here, as it traces an historical arc from papier-mâché masks depicting ethnic minorities to the era of prohibition, litigation and economic sobriety.
Similar to a large collection of O. Henry short stories, The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions will begin to present electric shocks and collapsing staircases with a slightly tedious regularity, and some of the facts are included a little randomly. But for sheer manic insanity, Julia Suits has her finger on the concealed button. The first big surprise is magician David Copperfield's foreword, which proclaims: “Screw ’em if they can't take a joke.”
It should be pointed out that DeMoulin Bros & Co. operates to this day in Greenville, Ill. They make marching band uniforms—their side degree catalogs disappeared a long time ago. Although when a fraternal lodge placed a special order for an electrified carpet in 1989, DeMoulin Bros & Co. suspiciously had the materials on hand to produce it.
Julia Suits visits Left Bank Books (399 Euclid), on Monday, November 21 at 7 p.m. For more information, call Left Bank at 314-367-6731. or visit left-bank.com.
