Port City has had more than its quota of controversial citizens during its century-and-a-half history.
One local character spread his controversial nature nationwide: Simon Harrison Norman, “Doc Sy,” operator of a “cancer clinic” in Port City. Norman lives there to this day, in a seclusion markedly contrasting his days as a flamboyant con man, when he drove around the state of Iowa in his purple Cadillac and matching color shirt.
“Doc Sy” was not a doctor, of course... he didn’t even make it out of the eighth grade. But higher education was no barrier for Simon Harrison Norman.
Cancer is Cured
By a skillful if crude manipulation of mass media, Norman drew thousands of the despairing and desperate to Port City in the early thirties, with his slogan “Cancer is Cured” as a lure.
He printed his magazine
TKO
(Truth Kills Obstacles) and operated radio station KTKO, using Port City as his
base. According to his magazine, “Doctor Norman has proven beyond any doubt that even the worst, so-called ‘terminal’ case of cancer can be cured.” Open air meetings, attended by as many as 40,000 persons (five times the size of Port City at the time), watched the showman Norman, an ex-stage hypnotist, perform his miracles.
His purple Cadillac and purple shirt became trademarks of Norman’s when he moved his rallies to towns all through Iowa, touching at times Illinois, Nebraska and Wisconsin.
Such activities brought money in by the barrelsful. The “clinic” reaped profits of $50,000 a month by 1932, and Norman boasted around that time that his “personal consultations” netted him $30,000 on an average week. That these profits were plucked from desolate, poverty-torn Depression families mattered not to Norman. Asked in 1934 by a Des Moines
Register
reporter how he (Norman) could live with himself after victimizing destitute families, Doc Sy said, “There are no ‘victims’ at the Norman Clinic—only cured, healthy patients, ready to embark on a new life—which my staff and I have given them.”
Norman “gave” nothing—one fifteen-year-old Waterloo boy in later years reported paying Norman’s $100-a-week fee for the “treatment” of his father; comparable rates in a reputable hospital of the era, staffed by physicians, would be around $30 a week. The father, of course, died, in spite of Norman’s treatments and injections. One man used by Norman in a radio broadcast as “living proof of our miraculous cures” died within a month. The man’s wife later said that they had paid $300 for the cure, against the advice of their family doctor, who told them the case was without hope.
A photo story in
TKO
called “Ten ‘New’ Men,” reporting on a number of “successful” Norman patients, included two who didn’t live long enough to see the article reach print.
Quack King
When an American Medical Association spokesman said, “Of all the heartless, vicious ghouls preying on the dead and those who are about to die, Simon Norman is quack king,” Norman took it as a compliment. Over the door of his clinic he hung a sign saying, “Docs quack—Quacks cure.”
Norman guarded the secret of his “cure” very carefully, once saying, “A well-known doctor devised it for me, before his death,” another time saying, “A traveler to the Himalayas passed it on to me before his untimely demise.” (Norman apparently could cure neither of his benefactors.) Chemists of the day found the “secret” easily unlocked: one Norman concoction was made up of equal parts alcohol and glycerine, with a dab of peppermint oil; a second was nothing more than mineral oil; a third was red clover blossom syrup, which could be purchased in the early thirties for $2 a gallon. Ordinary facial powder served as treatment of external cancer.
Norman was born in Port City and left in his mid-teens to take advantage of his tall, lean good looks—particularly the piercing gray eyes—by becoming a stage hypnotist. In the early twenties Norman was making calliopes on the side, selling them to the circuses, carnivals and riverboats in which he worked his stage act. By the late twenties he was a broadcaster, peddling clocks, brooms, coffee, underwear,
flour, tires, furniture and silverware through the magic of radio.
Sometime around 1929, when the fortunes of others were quite low, Norman apparently ran into either the famous doctor or the Himalayan traveler, because by late that year he was on the air pitching his cancer cures. By early 1930, construction had begun on his clinic; by mid-1931, he cut the ribbon on his radio station, and, by early ’33, had his own daily newspaper, the
Midwest Clarion.
President Herbert Hoover, himself a native Iowan from West Branch, had forged a golden key and sent it on to Norman for him to use to start the
Clarion
presses.
Short Reign
Norman’s reign as quackery king was not as long as he would have liked, but it did last a full decade. By 1940, he was out of Port City, after several legal battles, and by 1942 began serving the four-year term in federal prison handed down in ’41 by the courts.
It was the AMA and other medical societies whose unofficial declaration of war on Norman finally caused his downfall. Ironically, his own reaction to their jabs at him in the
AMA Journal
caused him more trouble than the AMA itself: Norman vented so much fury in his KTKO counterattacks that the Federal Communications Commission yanked his license.
Without his most important base of pitchmanship—the radio—Norman, swamped by countless lawsuits, moved his clinic to Hot Springs, Arkansas, adding their famous waters
to his own “cures,” and changed the name of his station to XTKO, the transmitter safely over the border in Mexico.
But less than a year later, his new set-up thriving, Norman was charged by the U.S. Government for using the mails to defraud, and by 1942 Doc Sy was in Leavenworth.
Remorseful Doc
In 1946 he returned to Iowa, sans purple shirt and purple car, and retired into seclusion. He has been there ever since, apparently doing nothing more than sitting around counting the reported one million dollars he racked up during his reign as king of quacks. All but forgotten by the press, even in the case of his son’s political career, Norman’s influence is said to continue via a string of Port City industries in which he is supposedly a silent partner.
Another rumor has it that Doc Sy picked up a strain of remorse during his stay at Leavenworth, and it is believed by some that he is the guiding light behind his well-known and respected son, Republican politico Richard Norman, who has been successful in Iowa politics, though failing in his bid to reach the U.S. Senate. The
Register
has called young Norman “the most socially concerned, dedicated young man in the state legislature,” a sore point among Demos, who feel such areas their private domain. Assertions that Doc Sy’s son is trying to atone for his father’s misanthropy, or that the father is attempting to make amends to society through the deeds of his son, are pure speculation.
But it is a fact that the primary failure of Doc Sy’s fabulous years as the quackery king was his own unsuccessful
attempt to snatch the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from an incumbent senator.
And yet another fact may be key in explaining the elder Norman’s supposed attack of remorse: May Belle (Peterson) Norman, his wife and bearer of son Richard, died in 1945... of lung cancer.
Half an hour later I walked into the cluttered living room of my trailer, picking things up as I went and spending half an hour cleaning up the place—more as a nervous accompaniment to buzzing thoughts than as an act of cleanliness. When I was finished playing maid, I went to the icebox and got out a Pabst and popped the top and went back and flopped down on the couch. After I’d drained the beer, I aimed the empty can at the wastebasket over by the stove, across the room; just as I pitched the can, the phone rang, shattering my concentration, ruining my trajectory. The can clattered on the kitchenette’s tile floor, bounced back onto the carpeted living room floor, rolled a couple times and came to a standstill somewhere near center-room, creating an eyesore in my freshly tidied quarters.
The phone was still ringing on the coffee table in front of me. I leaned over and picked up the receiver. “Yeah?”
“Mal? John.”
“Oh, hi. How was Suzie Blanchard?”
“Outstanding.”
“That’s Army for ‘good,’ as I recall.”
“At least.”
“So what’s up? No pun intended.”
“That’s what I called to ask you, Mal. What have you turned up where Janet Taber’s concerned?”
“I did some research at the library on that politician Janet worked for, and on his old man. Did you know that that guy Doc Sy, the old cancer quack, was Richard Norman’s father?”
“Come to think of it,” John said, “that’s right. You know, you don’t hear much about the old man around town. Funny.”
“Yeah. Funny. It’s one of those things Port City folks just don’t talk about. Unless the doors are closed tight. And I think I know why. I think the old ex-quack’s still powerful in Port City inner circles.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, I can’t really say for sure, I’m mostly reading between the lines. But it’s beginning to look like Simon Norman is Port City’s answer to Howard Hughes. One thing I know for sure is he made a bundle, and made it off of people’s misery, at that. And he probably used that bundle to get behind a few budding concerns that developed into this town’s major industries, which’d include the feed plant, the office furniture company, the alcohol plant, the tire retreading factory—all of these and more, I bet.”
“How does this tie in with Janet Taber?”
“I don’t know that it does.”
I heard chattering in the background, and then John’s voice came back: “Uh, look, I’m still over at Suzie’s and, uh, I guess she wants a word with me.”
“And I can just guess what word it is. Look, see if you can find time today, between rounds, to stop over at Brennan’s and pump him a little.”
“See what I can do. I’ll stop over and see you tonight.”
I cradled the receiver on my shoulder, thumbed down the button on the phone with one hand and fumbled through the phone book with the other, trying to locate the college’s number.
I found it and dialed. I got Jack and filled him in on my library session.
“You aren’t thinking about trying to run down Washington’s sister Rita tonight, are you?” Jack asked.
“I was thinking about it, yeah.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Why? I’m a big boy now.”
“Not that big. With Thanksgiving tomorrow, the bars’ll be extra busy tonight. You know how it is night before a holiday. It might get a little rough if you go sailing in a black bar with that shinin’ white kisser of yours.”
“Ah, hell with that, Jack. I got to do something, and soon. I hate this sitting on the thing like this. I want to move on it, and I got nowhere else to go with it, except the Quad Cities and Washington’s sister, Rita.”
“Why don’t you just relax tonight—get your head together, son. Tell you what, I’ll do some checking tonight and see what
I
can find out about old Eyewash and his sister.”
“You don’t have to do that, Jack.”
“I insist.”
“But...”
“Look, it’s a terrific excuse for me to go bar crawlin’, son. I’m due.”
“Well, thanks. I’ll check back with you tomorrow morning.”
“Late morning. Gimme a break. Hey, what’d you turn up on Stefan Norman?”
“Who?”
“Stefan Norman. Did you try to contact him or anything?”
“I never even
heard
of him. Which Norman is
he?
”
“He’s the nephew of the old man. Norman’s late brother’s boy.”
“How does he fit into the Norman empire, Jack?”
“Well, the Norman empire, if there is one, appears to operate on a hereditary basis, only the ruling class has just about died out. You probably found out this afternoon that Norman’s wife died of cancer back in the forties, and son Richard’s dead, of course... and Richard was Norman’s only child. Norman has no brothers or sisters living—only had the one brother, and his only child was Stefan. Who is heir to the Norman empire, such as it is.”
“What role does this Stefan play in Norman’s life, as of now?”
“He’s in charge of something called the Norman Fund, has been ever since Richard died. Of course, he was pretty much in charge before that, too, since Richard was only a figurehead ‘chairman’ for the Fund; he had his political career, and his law practice as well.”
“What the hell’s the Norman Fund, anyway?”
“I don’t know, but I got a feeling if you could find out, the two of us could blackmail old man Norman and God knows who else and live comfortably for the rest of our lives off the proceeds. I suppose it’s a clearing house for the different under-the-table ties Norman has with the various industries in town. It plays at being a charitable organization. But all I can speak of for certain is the physical reality of a three-office suite here in town, in the Maxwell Building.”
“I wish I’d known about this this afternoon....”
“I forget that some of this stuff that’s common knowledge to me, from the business types I come in contact with, is news to you. I should’ve mentioned it. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. But I’ve got to see this Stefan Norman. He sounds like the man who could once and for all fill me in on how
much—or how little—Janet Taber had to do with the Normans. The Maxwell Building, you said? Think anyone would be in the office now?”
“No way. It’s after five.”
“Damn. Stefan Norman live in Port City?”
“No. Davenport, I believe. Commutes down every day, I assume.”
“Well, sooner or later I’ll have to take a little drive up to the Quad Cities and see these people.”
“Make it later. I’ll handle this Washington thing for you tonight, and by myself. The first round of it, anyway.”
He hung up and so did I. I leaned back on the couch.
Next thing I knew, John was bursting in the door.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Why not give me a goddamn heart attack while you’re at it?”
“Never mind that,” he said. He threw his coat off and sat down near me on the couch. I glanced at my watch: I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I sure had, because it was almost nine
P.M.,
now.