When I was a kid I had a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records that I read unti it was dog-eared and tattered. It featured many prodigious and ridiculous feats performed by folks from around the world but also reveled in human oddity. The tallest man in the world. The fattest twins. Things like that. I always remember it as the place where I first saw the photos of Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins who gained popularity in the midcentury 1800’s as an attraction with the P.T. Barnum shows.
The child’s imagination struggled to figure out how they accomplished the little things we take for granted while being attached to one another. It all seemed such a great obstacle, the trouble it must’ve been in doing something so basic as going to the bathroom. Or anything, for that matter.
Yet, they persevered and prospered wonderfully in this country, despite their obvious handicap. They married and had 21 children between them. I’m sure their wedding bed was a crowded affair. But they were more than circus freaks. They stressed integrity and intelligence and became known as shrewd businessmen who maintained a successful plantation in Mount Airy, North Carolina which you may know as the de facto location of Mayberry, the fictional small town Utopia from the Andy Griffith Show. Barney Fife and the Siamese Twins! Imagine the possibilities!
Of course, this was long before the time of Barney and Andy and Opie. In fact, it was before the Civil War and the twins, in fact, owned a number of slaves and supported the Confederacy in the conflict. Two of their sons fought for the South. After the war, they lost much of their property to the government . They died within hours of one another in 1874.
I bring this up because I just read that Alex Sink, the Democrat from Florida who is leading in the polls in the gubernatorial race there, is the great-granddaughter of the twins. I thought that this was an interesting sidenote to this election season, one that doesn’t involve yelling and character defamation. It is a great example of the American Dream, the descendent of immigrants (yes, immigrants!) who came here and succeeded despite the many obstacles they faced, leaving a legacy that brings one of their ancestors to the doorstep of a high office in government. What a great story in such a shrill time!
Redtree Times 
A recent book review in the NY Times begins with this paragraph:
Early in Darin Strauss’s first novel, “Chang and Eng,” a historical tale about conjoined twins born in Siam in 1811, Eng awakes to find that Chang has died in the night. “Then I too am done,” Eng thinks. The two men’s lives have been entwined almost beyond imagining, and one cannot survive without the other. Eng clings to his dead twin, then dies himself. It is impossible not to think of this moment, which appears once at the beginning and again near the end of the novel, when reading Strauss’s new memoir, “Half a Life.”
It’s worth a look.
I saw a doc a year or two ago at Full Frame about Chang and Eng. It wasn’t very good, unfortunately, with a lot of inadequate actors reacreating scenes, but I learned a lot.
Here in NC, we do like to think of them as ours.
The film was “The Siamese Connection” (2008), produced and directed by Josh Gibson. You can read about it here:
http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/local-filmmaker-josh-gibson/
Gary Oldman has written a screenplay based on Strauss’ novel so another movie might be made.
That’s the one, Al. And as much as I am loathe to trash anything that springs from the Bull City, the film was not very good.
Film is hard to do right. Far too many variables.
Mark Copeland’s painting of Chang and Eng and their 21 children is one of ten ten-foot banners commissioned for an exhibition at the University of Sheffield marking the 200th anniversary of P.T. Barnum’s birth.
http://www.bookpatrol.net/2010/03/humbug.html
http://www.nfa.dept.shef.ac.uk/news/humbug.html
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