Huntinghouse's Non-sinkable Swim Suit --by
Marion Britz
R.G.
Huntinghouse and Marion, about 1924, Note His Dancing Shoes
I don't know
if any of you had grandfathers that were inventors or appeared in Ripley's Believe
It or Not column - but these are a few stories about my grandfather R. G. He
was born in 1861 in Milwaukee
at the time of the Civil War and was named Rudolph, but he liked to be called
R. G. because it had a nice ring to it. No one ever questioned what his second
name was until one time in filling out an application,
the full second name was required. He said he drew a complete blank and the
only name beginning with a G that he could think of was his sister's, so he
became Rudolph Gertrude.
R. G. didn't
marry until he was into his 30's and with responsibilities, applied for life
insurance, but was turned down as a poor health risk. And he mentioned this
frequently for the next 60 years.
However,
because of this he made some changes in his life style ..
he ate more fruits and vegetables, cut down on meats,
made a concoction that was similar to yogurt, but was definitely an acquired
taste after I told him I wanted to try it. In other words, he became a health
food addict. He also decided to limit his coffee intake to one cup a day .. this proved to be difficult
to stick with, so he started to look for larger cups. Eventually his pantry had
a row of cups that gradually grew larger. The last one was about 2 1/2 cups in size. And this was before mugs
and health food were popular.
R. G. did
everything with gusto .. even
in his 70's he climbed stairs two at a time. There was a time when he started
with a cold and he theorized he could rid of it faster by increasing the dosage
of a popular over the counter cold remedy so instead of taking one every four
hours, he took several every hour. The insurance company's prediction almost
became a fact as he ended up in the hospital in serious condition.
R. G. had a
summer retreat .. a 10 acre
farm just outside of Saugatuck,
Michigan. I spent my summers
there until I finished high school. At that time Chicago had three Sunday papers and R. G.
saved the comic sections from these all winter, taking them to the farm when he
went up there for the summer. He would stack them on a
couple chairs in the summer kitchen so that my sister and I had reading on
rainy days. I don't think I fully appreciated the effort that he made to do
this for us. His knack for doing things in a big way carried over to the
garden. He liked raspberries, so planted a large area of them. I was the chief picker .. my sister was too small.
It was hot; there were bees and stickers; the berries if over ripe squished;
and I hated it. And the worst part was that the nicest berries were always
given away and we ate the ones that were mushy. He was always climbing ladders
to paint and repair things. Every few years he would paint the trim on the farm
house and loved to try new color combinations .. one
time it was pink and baby blue; another apple green and pink; once Chinese red
and black, and then there was the time he decided to mix up all of his left
over paints and we were pea green. And he used to let me help paint .. a mess didn't disturb him
one bit.
It was in
Saugatuck that he started to work on his non-sink swim suit.* I was under the
impression that he had a patent on it, but when I researched this in Boston, I could find
nothing. Patents are listed by category and I went through every possible listing .. safety devices, outdoor
equipment, beach, clothing, boating, and I couldn't find his name. But I was
able to check back and learned that there had been a ship that went down in Lake Michigan near Saugatuck at about this time with the
loss of 30 lives. R. G.'s idea was that if his swim suit had been worn by
everyone on the boat as an under garment, they would have been saved. The suit
had four 1 to 1-1/2" wide rubber tubes from the hips to the top of the
suit (two in front and two in back) and these were connected by another rubber
tube that circled the hips. There was a small valve on one of the front strips.. when needed, you inflated the
tubes by blowing into the valve and closing it. The tubes were covered with a
flannel fabric so they wouldn't irritate the skin. When needed, you inflated
the tubes. You can imagine how I looked. I was his chief tester as he worked up
his idea. I can remember going to a small lake near the house (by now I refused
to go to the big beach at Lake Michigan) and
with R. G.'s directions, inflate the tubes and jump in the water, floating like
a big bubble. I don't think R. G. could find anyone interested enough to
develop this further and as he used to say .. the bathing suits started to get so skimpy that it was
impossible to put enough rubber tubing in them to keep a person afloat.
Now about the
Ripley column** .. it was in
the mid 30's that he appeared in it as having danced more than 1,000,000 miles.
R. G. owned a dancing school in Chicago
that taught everything from ballet to ballroom dancing. He theorized that every
waltz consisted of so many steps and he had waltzed a certain number of times
every day for a certain number of years.. thus the over 1,000,000 miles of dancing .. and every mile with his arm around a girl he used to say.
R. G. is
buried in the small old cemetery in Saugatuck. A year after he died, I was
there to plant flowers on his grave and had our son who was about six with me.
Steve was having a great time hiding behind tombstones and shrubs. I wasn't
making much progress while trying to keep an eye on him. I finally got him to
stay near and he asked if he could say a prayer and sing a song, but mainly I
thought at least I'll know where he is and I might get finished. I was so busy
trying to get done that I didn't pay too much attention to what Steve was singing
and all of a sudden the song he was singing registered ..
it was Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. R. G. would have
loved it.
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*In her diary
entry of Aug 1, 1933, Elizabeth Pamperien, whose family summer cottage was two
blocks south of the Huntinghouse home on Maple St., wrote "Went to see
Huntinghouse and he gave all of us Huntinghouse Non-sinkable Swim suits. It is
so funny". Elizabeth has passed on now, but local girlfriend Vivian Powers
Chambers, recalls "They had tubes of air in them to hold you up. We never
took them to the beach, but tried them out in the Kalamazoo River
between Saugatuck and Douglas, under the bridge. The suits were not very
flattering with all the tubes in them so we did not want to wear them anywhere
else. They did work though." Vivian and sister
Betty had taken dance lessons from R. G. when they lived for a time in Chicago. One possible
inspiration for R.G. may have been the 1932 Joe E. Brown movie, "You Said
A Mouthful" in which the "broke
inventor of a non-sinkable bathing suit is mistaken for a champion swimmer by
an attractive woman".
**In the
Ripley's cartoon of Dec 5, 1933, they wrote: " DANCED OVER 1,200,000
MILES- Mr. R. G. Huntinghouse of 4616 North Clark St., Chicago, estimates that
during the 54 years he has conducted his dancing academy he has danced a total
of over 1,200,000 miles. During his daily grind of 14 hours, he has averaged 66
miles on week days and 15 miles on Sundays - a total of almost 32,000 miles a
year."