The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’

周日报读:《我在失落民族英雄365英里征途中所发现》

The Daily

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2025-03-23

51 分钟
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Sometime in the 1850s or ’60s, at a terrible moment in U.S. history, a strange man seemed to sprout, out of nowhere, into the rocky landscape between New York City and Hartford, Conn. The word “strange” hardly captures his strangeness. He was rough and hairy, and he wandered around on back roads, sleeping in caves. Above all, he refused to explain himself. As one newspaper put it: “He is a mystery, and a very greasy and ill-odored one.” Other papers referred to him as “the animal” or (just throwing up their hands) “this uncouth and unkempt ‘What is it?’” But the strangest thing about the stranger was his suit.
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  • I use the New York Times Games app every single day.

  • I love playing connections with connections.

  • I need to twist my brain to see the different categories I absolutely love.

  • Spelling bee Sudogu is kind of my version of lifting heavy weights at the gym.

  • When I can finish a hard puzzle without pins, I feel like the smartest person in the world.

  • It gives me joy every single day.

  • Start playing in the New York Times Games app.

  • You can Download it@nytimes.com GamesApp My name is Sam Anderson.

  • I am a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine.

  • I kind of write about everything.

  • I think my beat is subjects

  • that I get totally obsessed with and then force my editors to let me write about.

  • And a subject I've been obsessed with for so many years now is the Old Leatherman.

  • He's a sort of legendary folk hero from the 19th century who used to walk in this giant circle 365 miles around through New York and Connecticut,

  • over and over and over again for decades,

  • at such regular intervals that people said you could set your clocks by it.

  • He wore this big funky leather suit that he stitched together himself,

  • and no one knew where he came from or why he was doing this.

  • He was a total mystery to the people who lived along his route.

  • Newspapers published basically like fan fiction about the Old Leatherman,