Josef Bryant

From The Great Outdoor Fight

Josef Bryant (1832-1861) was the first American-born son of successful machinist and shovelmaker Gerhardt Bryant (of Bryant Tool & Shovel Company fame). Young Josef's dazzling good looks and rock-solid physique (the product of many long hours in his father's shovel factory) doubtless made him popular with the many eligible young ladies in his hometown of Portsmouth, Ohio, and he was reportedly placed under tremendous pressure to marry into the so-called "New American Gentry" by his father in order to increase his family's social standing, but young Josef would hear nothing of it. While it is beyond question that, in his teen-age years, Josef had many romantic dalliances (including one that resulted in the birth of an illegitimate child) Josef Bryant would be tied down to no woman. In his own words, taken from an impassioned letter he penned to his father in 1856, "I have but one lovve (sic), and she is The Fight."

When precisely Josef Bryant learned about the Great Outdoor Fight is a matter of question -- our records of the early Great Outdoor Fights, especially the ones at the Crandall farm, are necessarily a bit sketchy -- but it is clear that from the moment he first heard of the nascent competition, it seized hold of his imagination and would not let go. Like so many other troubled youths who west west in the 1850's, following the lure of California gold, Bryant had no shortage of Sturm und Drang, and the squalid condition of life in the prospector camps could only have honed this angst to a razor's edge. Obviously, by the time he penned his 1856 letter to his father, he was at the very least a seasoned spectator, and transcripts generated from interviews with Scotsman Samual Mcelroy shortly after his riotous Farm-clearing victory of 1855 give us further tantilizing clues. "An' then," reported the Mad Scot, "there was the German blaggart, body lik' iron, he did have, wi' hair of tow. Sunk hi' teeth inna vital part and wunna' let go for blood or thunder. Inna fullness o' time, I took off hi' left ear, an' he did loose his jaw enow for me to remove him from th' war wi' a shoulder to hi' spine." While we cannot incontrovertibly determine that this was, in fact, Bryant, the sparse physical description coupled with the fact that Bryant himself entered his final fight with ear injuries that corresponded with Mcelroy's account, allow us to make a fair case.

In 1861, four years after the fight first moved to The Acres in favor of the Crandall farm, Josef Bryant entered the Fight under the wing of Stueben "The Infernal Machine" Billingsley. Though his prowess was certainly considerable, he was largely considered to be a nothing more than a competent lieutenant and middleman, and good money suggested a second-day takedown for Bryant. This was, of course, not to be. After Billingsley's makeshift army was annihilated almost single-handedly on Day One by the talented (but ill-fated) Chipper Stumps, Bryant alone stood hale, hearty and ready to defend his mentor to the end. But for a rut in the churned soil of the Acres, this doubtless would have been Bryant's end. Instead, Bryant stumbled and was cleared out of the way like so much chaff by one of Stumps's wild haymaker swings. Stumps had bigger prey in mind.

Looking on in horror, Bryant saw Stumps dismantle his tutor with as much ease as he had the remainder of Billingsley's entire army. Stumps's unique combination of rage, constitution and furious speed overwhelmed the seasoned veteran and he fell to the earth, blood pouring from the gashes rent in his skin by his shattered bones.

This sight proved too much for Bryant, and he fell upon the unprepared Stumps as Stumps basked in his victory over the Infernal Machine, howling with rage and screaming obscenities in his native German. Bryant's takedown of Stumps lasted the better part of two hours, and at the end, it was said that no piece of Stumps larger than a graphite pencil remained attached to any other part. Fellow combatants were said to momentarily cease their own struggles at the sight of such unbridled ferocity and carnage, such was the spectacle of it all. (It has been speculated by a minority of Fight scholars that this was one of the early incidences of Dutch fugue, prior to its recognition as a phenomenon. However, most scholars deny this interpretation of the events, noting that Bryant's uncontrollable rage ceased with the avenging of his mentor, whereas the typical case of Dutch fugue knows no such reason.)

After Bryant's dramatic mauling of Chipper Stumps, he began to attract followers of his own, to such a degree that it was generally conceded by all present that he had earned a place at the now-legendary "snack table." Drunk with new-found glory and power, Bryant claimed his army's feast of turkey as his own, a move that unfortunately proved his undoing. For the three years following the Fight's move to The Acres, Temperance Crandall (second wife of Ken Crandall) had personally overseen the transporation of the traditional Fight turkeys from her ovens to the Fight's new location via the family's horse-drawn wagon, but late in 1860 she was stricken with the gout and entrusted this task to her layabout nephew, young James Pickerling. Though given strict instructions to bear the turkeys with all swiftness, lest they become chilled, James Pickerling elected to pause along the way for an opportunistic bit of grouse-hunting, which turned into a full two-hour delay after the lad accidentally cast his powder horn into Rum Creek and decided to spend whatever time was needed to locate it (in his own words: "It were my best one!") As a result, the turkeys were quite cold by the time they made it to the Acres, but by this point in time the generals were ravenous and they tore into the birds regardless.

Unfortunately, this dietary indiscretion would result in a fatal case of food poisoning for Bryant and seven of the other nine generals in attendance. His body wracked with toxins, Bryant staggered through Day Three, and it is a testament both to the esteem in which his army held him and, later, to the man's tremendous prowess, that even thus crippled, he was able to finish the Fight, earning the coveted "Last Man Standing" sobriquet after finishing off Iggy "The Tower" Sparks with a dramatic elbow-strike near sunset on Day Three.

Then, as the sun set slowly over the Acres, Josef Bryant sunk to his knees, pronounced the words "Ich habe ihn getan" ("I have done it"), vomited copiously and expired. An ignominious death for this capable young champion.

The 1861 Great Outdoor Fight sparked a popular movement in the new and exciting science of food safety, and recommendations were hastily made that the traditional Fight turkeys should not linger in the back of any wheeled conveyance for longer than a half hour, but -- somewhat ironically -- in the modern day, these recommendations are typically disregarded.