STUNTS, GAGS and SHENANIGANS --
Lizard menace – Before Frenchtown High School was built in 1925, the Star reported that Bert Trimmer and a couple of his middle-aged cronies, sitting around the warm stove in his store (now the Frenchtown Cafe), discussed the uptown site picked for the new school.
Auctioneer William Carver said the swamp south of Tenth Street was so full of lizards “that they would be a menace to the new school,” reported the Star. So Carver, Trimmer and Irving McClain appointed themselves to a committee to kill the lizards. They went so far as to acquire a weapon, namely a flail – an agricultural implement consisting of a wooden handle attached to another piece of wood by a short bit of rope. It was displayed in Trimmer's store.
Apart from a nudge from the Star a couple months later, reminding the committee of its task, history does not tell us whether any lizards were actually killed, or whether there ever were any lizards to begin with.
Is this history, or just a few aging bros being silly? I think both.
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
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