Gnome Sweet Gnome
Amelie's gnome
My wife mentioned that she wanted a garden gnome for Mother's Day this year. If I spoke Yiddish or ever used any Yiddish phrases, this is the point at which I would interject "Oy vey!"
When the subject of garden gnomes comes up, my mind instantly drifts toward the traveling garden gnomes. This was popularized in ::imdb("Amélie")::, but has been going on for at least a couple decades.
In the movie, Amélie steals her father's gnome, gives it to a stewardess friend, and has the gnome send pictures of himself from around the world.
Travelocity recently had a huge advertising campaign featuring a gnome that flies all around the world. They had set up a website whereismygnome.com and made it look like some guy named Bill was searching for his gnome. Good stuff.
I found an interesting paragraph in an online article at csmonitor.com regarding traveling gnomes:
David Emery, who covers urban legends for About.com, says that gnome-napping is an international phenomenon with at least a 20-year history.
"I don't know if it's possible to pinpoint the earliest instance of gnome-napping, but the first reported case of a 'roaming gnome' took place in the mid-1980s," says Mr. Emery. "It was documented by an Australian folklorist named Bill Scott, who wrote of a gnome disappearing from the front lawn of a Sydney family." Shortly thereafter, the family received a postcard from the gnome saying he was vacationing in Queensland. The gnome returned two weeks later, coated with brown shoe polish - a souvenir suntan.
You can also check out Nigel the Gnome and his travels. The site is so-so, but there are quite a few pictures there.
There's an organization I stumbled across a year or two ago called the Garden Gnome Liberation Front (a.k.a. Front de Libération des Nains de Jardin). Just as you might suspect, they are dedicated to liberating gnomes from the cruel slavery and bondage they are subjected to. They have liberated thousands of gnomes. One good site to read up on gnome liberation is freethegnomes.com.
While I was reading up on the subject, I discovered that three local college-age men in my area were arrested for having 14 stolen gnomes in their possession. I wonder how many man-hours were wasted tracking these kids down . . .
This entry was posted
on Sunday, February 13th, 2005 at 00:39 by Novac and is filed under All, Mindless.
You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.
Related posts:
February 26th, 2005 at 15:47
In the mid-1980s, an elderly woman from Clarence, NY (a suburb of Buffalo) had her lawn gnome, whom she'd named "Boss," stolen from her front lawn, and it appeared again a few weeks later in the very spot from which it had disappeared, wearing sunglasses and holding a parcel of photographs of the gnome taken with various national landmarks in the background. The woman contacted the local media in Buffalo, and she ended up being flown out to NYC to appear on David Letterman's show to tell her story. It's not clear if this would be the first instance of this particular prank being played, but the fact that it made it onto national TV soon after indicates to me that it might well have been.