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"His father left in a
desperate search for work. The food supply diminished until
all that was left were a few pinto beans and a single egg,
which no one would eat. Euell, then teen-aged and one of
four children, took a knapsack one morning and left for the
Horizon mountains. He came back with puffball mushrooms,
piñon nuts, and fruits of yellow prickly pear. For
nearly a month, the family lived wholly on what he
provided"
 As an adult Euell Gibbons
lived in many states including California, Washington,
Hawaii, New Jersey, Indiana, and finally in Pennsylvania. On
his visit to Hawaii from 1947 to 1951, he met and married
Freda Fryer. Euell longed to be a fiction writer but
evidently could not get published.
During his lifelong travels
he was a cowboy, hobo, carpenter, surveyor, boat builder,
beachcomber, newspaperman, school teacher, farmer, and an
educator. All along, building on the wild food foundation he
got from his mother. My impression, from his writings, is
that he learned a lot from his hobo days. Those days where
he foraged both from society and nature to acquire his
sustenance.
He would visit libraries to
research wild foods. He would become acquainted with people
in small towns and ask them about their uses of wild foods.
He would seek out local experts and exchange information.
And finally, he would experiment and invent new ways to
process wild foods. His family, friends, and neighbors were
the taste-testing guinea pigs for new recipes he would
invent.
His first book in 1962,
"Stalking the Wild Asparagus", became an instant hit. The
content evidently touching a chord with a burgeoning
back-to-nature movement. This and his next two books
(See reviews of Euell's best three
books) were packed
with information on how to find, gather, and prepare wild
foods. Many magazine articles followed, either written by or
about Euell. He wrote for Organic Gardening and Farming,
National Geographic, and National Wildlife Magazines, among
others.
Euell Gibbons helped found,
and was a charter member of such groups as the National Wild
Food Association (West Virginia), Foraging Friends
(Chicago), and I'm sure many others. By 1971, Euell's books
became more philosophical and less about wild foods - all
still good reads. Even though he had only a sixth-grade
education, Euell was awarded an honorary doctorate from
Susquehanna University.
As he received more
literary notoriety, Euell became somewhat of a celebrity. He
made appearances on talk shows (The Johnny Carson Show),
variety shows (The Sonny & Cher show), and television
commercials for Post Grape Nuts cereal. Euell displayed a
great sense of humor. At one point, to everyone's surprise,
he began eating a wooden plaque awarded him on the Sonny and
Cher television show. The plaque was really a prop made out
of wafer cookies or some other edible substance.
This fame was a
double-edged sword. On the one hand it had the effect of
exposing more people to the topic of wild foods. On the
other, Euell became ridiculed by many of his
readers/followers who felt like he sold out to big business
and the commercial world. To many, he was reduced from a
respected naturalist icon to a laughable pitch-man for a
cereal company. To those in the know, however, he remained a
respected naturalist.
His last residence was in
Beavertown, Pennsylvania, where he lived with Freda until
his death on December 29, 1975. He was 64. Euell died of a
heart attack. It was probably a result of cardiovascular
disease complicating a pre-existing condition called Marfan
syndrome. Marfan syndrome would have made his aorta more
susceptible to a catastrophic bursting. Euell had a smoking
habit and regularly, as can be seen in his writings, added
saturated fats (bacon grease, butter, egg yolks) to his
vegetables. In Euell's day it was not unusual to smoke
cigarettes or to add high amounts of saturated fat to foods.
These risk factors combined with his hard life and lack of
exercise in his later years (arthritis pain limited his
movement) undoubtedly contributed to his death.
Euell's legacy is the
treasure of lifelong experiences and knowledge he left us
regarding foraging and unusual culinary delights. Boston
University is maintaining a collection of his personal
journal entries and notes, and Alan Hood has reprinted his
first three books.
Euell, more than anyone
else in North American history, got people thinking,
talking, and eating wild foods. Many wild food writers give
us the menu, Euell gave us the meal.
__________
Author's note #1 (March 7,
1999): The information in this article was compiled from
obituaries, John McPhee's remembrance, book-jacket
biographies, personal reports, and from my interpretation of
his fame and writings. I, unfortunately, never got to meet
Mr. Gibbons and hope that the information here is
representative and accurate.
Author's note #2 (July 17,
2008): Since writing this article, several of Euell's
surviving relatives have contacted me. All expressed
appreciation for its overall affectionate tone and accuracy.
None have contradicted any of the content.
Author's note #3 (July 17,
2008): Detail on cause of death is included here to squelch
rumors. Fabricated causes of death typically form for
deceased food, nutrition, or diet celebrities. Rumors I
personally heard ranged from eating a poisonous plant to
choking on a wild food. I felt that facts must be available
somewhere to counter the rumors. And while the information I
present may disappoint some (who wants to hear that a
naturalist was a smoker?), readers should not view the past
with today's sensibilities. Gibbons was born about one
hundred years ago. That was before there was radio,
television, talking films, commercially available sliced
bread, antibiotics, the Vietnamese war, the Korean war,
World war II, and even World war I. He died before the
personal computer was invented, before Walkmans, and before
Jimmy Carter was president. Euell's generation had different
perceptions than we do today.
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